However, you would think they put so much effort to make the 3d battles to perfection, they would do something to anime the CGs … but no, still the same old still pictures and no voice either.
That's certainly true and a bit of a shame, but the writing of Rance H scenes are some of the best around. Not always too sexy, but always lots of fun (until it isn't. Rance isn't exactly the best with virgins, if you ask me, and he could really put some more effort into getting them wet and relaxed a bit maybe, even if he only cares about himself... but it's rance, and he likes it a bit rapey - which is fine in my books, it's just some chars don't really deserve to be treated this harsh, not for their first time anyways, that must be rather traumatic, bwahaha. what a stupid dickhead, rance... and then, when he actually has a bad bitch right in front of him, he's rather constraint in comparison, not really sure if this is a bit of a char or a writing oddity/problem, anyways...)
I'm into the third chapter now, about to kick Nero's dumb ass. Time for some first impressions. The good stuff first:
- Level 1 Kanami H Scene. Love it.
- Shizu underpants shot during her special move (not that 3d graphics are good, but it's still a great shot. absolutely nakadashi.)
Questionable stuff:
- Chessboard fights with a single attack and a single special move per char (some may also wait, charge, and some have passives that may activate).
- ...and gear (weapons, armor) is fixed? I did read somewhere that attack upgrades would be taken over to another weapon, so some chars might get something new, I guess. But doesn't look like this is a big deal? At all? No finding new shiny weapons and rare stuff and shuffling it around to chars, nothing? Uhhh, uhhh...
- And then enemies spawn out of fucking nowhere, right behind you, where your magicians and healers are, and not from where you'd expect further reinforcements to come from. Lovely.
Fighting seems rather lame so far, and I sure hope it gets better soon. With only one attack (and a special attack) this doesn't seem to be very deep/interesting. And healing seems to be even limited to a few heals.
Huhh. Do chars ever get more attack variants at all? And then you've got a shared power meter for the whole crew, so you gotta decide which special you wanna really use...
Uhhh, uuhhhuuu.
I'm not convinced, nor impressed so far. And I sure hope this will pick up some steam/juice/anything real quick.
Question: does gold have any other purposes other than upgrading weapons and armor? And could someone - slowly - explain the armor part to me? So far, I've just put all my gold into upgrading weapons (what a dumb system with those misses and tripple upgrades - it literally adds nothing, statistically speaking) since I do get to keep all that. But armor will be reduced if hit, so the question here basically is what is that armor worth and when? Is this supposed to be for special fights only? For later in the game? Am I supposed to maintain that shit at a constant 100% for all chars (from some point on)? I have absolutely no feeling for how to handle armor and what to invest in this, so any words on this matter would be welcome.
The bad:
- Level 1 Russian H Scene. Terrible, even by Rance's standards. Anyways... so, she's the Sill replacement for the time being. Sexy slave and a healer. And there will be some backstory, meaning she is probably someone, someone. Got it. Why not. I like it. But for fucks sake, make her first time just a little bit nicer? She did literally nothing wrong. She didn't even refuse. Good slave and all. And then that. That poor girl has sex PTSD now, for crying out loud (she did).
Merci's scene wasn't much better either, but at least there was some funny blackmailing going on (and it seems to develop great from here on out, eeeeek.., gahaha).
- 3D graphics are ugly, add absolutely nothing and don't age well. Sengoku still looks fantastic, and even Kichikuou is still very nice (just very lacking in sprites for at least some animation). All chessboard maps could be awesome pixel graphics (with perspective too), same for chars with a bunch of attack variants, effects and what not. And don't get me wrong, it doesn't need to be hipster pixel graphics. Just... something nice to look at? Rance VI sprites looked awesome and even lewd, where applicable, full of S O U L. This lowpoly 3D nonsense is garbage. Chars need to be nice and lewd, always, not just in H scenes and on stat screens, but in particular during regular gameplay/fighting. For fucks sake.
- ...which also just might make the fighting a bit quicker and more smooth. Why the fuck can't I turn off these dumb 3D animations for good/as default? This interface is stupid. You have to toggle the animation off for every single use, and there's also nothing in the config? Am I dumb/blind or is the game dumb?
- Chessboard level design so far is lackluster, if not annoying. Movement could be interesting, but not like this, it barely matters. Levels are too small (given the amount chars may move around anyways) and uninteresting. The fuck does it really add? Take that 5-star difficulty Gurang super extra level that just popped up, it doesn't even matter where anybody is and a simple rance quest setup would do just fine, if not much better/cleaner. Meh.
I do hope levels will get larger, with less respawning of enemies out of thin air, so you'd end up with something like a classical jagged alliance gameplay, that could be nice, but I wont hold my breath... From what I get so far, there will be a completely different game mode later on, which just means they dropped the ball on this chessboard thing, couldn't really improve it and said, fuck it, move on, we try something else, maybe that's gonna be fun, or something. I don't know.
...yeah, mostly not so good so far. Not really sure why everyone else seems to be so happy with this? Hmmm, I'll keep playing, see what happens. Maybe I'll catch a gal monster, I don't know. There will be gal monsters, to be caught, right?
