Ren'Py - Randel Tales [v1.8.0-2] [Ero Sandwich Studio]

TLDR: it was alright, if you are looking for an optional time sink this could be it. I enjoyed my time. The best advice i can give is to not get your expectations up, even after awhile of playing the game.

i liked the art, it was usually consistent. The beginning of the game was GREAT! It makes you feel like this has some good potential!
Clearly alot of love was put into this. My downfall, was in expecting this game to be really good, because it really could have been. But it was an alright game.
Gameplay? plays like most Renpy games do. Alot of people took a shit on the MC, and i have to agree. Although he does have his somewhat cool moments, you end up expecting more out of him. But then again, he is supposed to not know much and everything happens in such a little time period.
Diologue writing is good, Story was reddit wholesome chungus (unless you want to be evil, evil man) but for a lonely man like me it made me blush and wish these things were happening to me a few times. Characters were a bit cliche but i dont mind.

The game started out so good, but the writing never improved. I would say it got even a bit worse. The art is very inconsistent. The old style had certainly more inconsistencies, but it was a far better fit to the writing and world. Some even had animations. The new art style is edgy and the characters most of the time don't look like themselves. It doesn't fit the tone of the game at all and no animations either. The MC has some inconsistencies as well, but worse he is boring and a wimp. Most of the time he loses or even gets used as a bait multiple times. He can turn himself invisible for a few minutes and it is mentioned that he learns magic and swordsmanship quite fast. He should be able to achieve more. That he is basically always teamed up with people who are better than him in at least one area and in that by far.

This game is incredibly bland and boring, DNF.
There is a lot of grind going on in a tiny but completely gated open world. The protagonist is your standard featureless, dumb, vanilla, spineless, boring weakling. Much of the adventurer stuff doesn't make sense like the dev got told about an isekai at the end of 50 rounds of Telephone (the kids game).
The game moves so slow that you get gated on a character and by the time you can continue your flow is broken and you already lost interest. Even with cheats I could not get past all the glacial conversations and just gave up after a while.
There is a variety in image quality, between bad and mediocre. There is nothing to make your peepee excited that's for sure. Also, there are simply not enough images to make the characters come to life, different postures in conversations would be a start. Here we follow the Japanese cheap mass produced game style, a few of the same images with slight alterations like a different expression pasted on.

I normally don't mind sandboxes if well done but this is a different beast.

The drawings are too inconsistent and disproportionate. In other words, there are at least 4-5 different art designs of a character and the appearance of the characters changes from scene to scene. On the other hand, it requires a lot of grinding and reading. Therefore, the progression is very slow and boring than I expected. We have to read and memorize a few books in order to follow Gabby's personal route and you are tested by being asked questions about them. I never liked to be forced to read a text and to remember what was written. I've been playing the game for a few hours and I've already lost my patience. I haven't seen a single animated sex scene yet, but I'm not even curious about the rest of the game anymore.

Randel Tales [v1.6.10-3]

A fun story, a mediocre game, but still fun, this game lacks pretty much 90% of the elements that make a rpg fantasy game, it is, and always will be, a VN, it still has a lot of gamebreaking bugs, but as long as you save often this should not be an issue, the game is decently paced, and a little long, the surprise comes when you find out this is only part one, i 100% explored everything and it took me 92 in game days, and that translates to about 4 hours, pretty decent.
Sex scenes are decent too, not good, only decent, but characters are fun and well made

RATING 4/5, OR A B RANK, see you in another life when the next game comes.

Honestly, this game is really fun to play.

It has all the classical parts of a new adventurer style as well as a nice balance of school/academia setting. There is history and lore to the world, meaning you spawn into something grander. You also have to pay attention to some things like dates, monster names, and symbols. Otherwise, good luck typing the monster's name to look it up.

IMO, it has a really nice art style and character design, and so far, it is a really well-made game in terms of storytelling with some nice plot points and light twists. There is a right amount of lewds that are not all over the place but well distributed. And, in my expirence has a Skyrim style of "what do you mean another side quest, I'm the side quest's side quest" which is pretty neat. Also, days are split into five periods, which I personally like.

All characters are either hot, cute, cool, or funny. With plenty of shenanigans, lewds, wholesomeness, and appreciation to the world building.

I wish is for there to be more content and for the pasing to stay the same thoughout. And of course even more content!

Honestly, although I did try, I cannot pinpoint any problems or negative aspects of this game. It's surprising I like it this much.


Version v1.6.9-6

One of the best games I've played in the past few years. The overarching story, worldbuilding, and characters is at a peak that you don't see in a lot of this genre of games in recent years.

The gameplay is quite simple but with lots of ease and flow to the point-and-click style, the graphics are versatile yet iconic in design for almost every new scene having a certain charm to it while also making you feel the emotions the devs intend you to feel, and the writing is down right beautiful and real.

My only gripes I have with the game is that the UI isn't quite developed and feels kinda boring to look at a bunch of lists and stats as you progress. Adding more detail and functions to the UI buttons will probably fix that.

All that much is there to do is to get more meat on it's bones (like say more solo quests the player can go on for money, one-off scenes, or both) and polish the hell out of it (make the art consistent), other than that love the game and can't wait for more!

Meh, you'll either like it a lot or hate it. Has great art and setting is good while very overdone at this point. The grinding is beyond aids, way too easy to get softlocked because of bs and it should have been a linear vn style game instead of open world with the amount of useless clicking you'll do.

But the characters are something else... If you like japanese harem style characters you'll love this but if you're tired of the overdone tropes you'll probably want to never play this. I wish I didn't lol.

Main character is by far the worst so don't play this expecting him to do *anything* significant, he's boring, weak and spineless. Because of this, the choices don't mean shit in the game since his very personality limits any interesting plot direction. Even grinding stats don't mean shit, he's still gonna be weak and a bitch because of "plot" reasons.

Written for v1.6.9-5

TLDR;
Avoid using rollback or don't play this game at this time! Wait for bugs to get fixed.

TLR;
Overall I like the game, the writing is engaging, even though a bit inconsistent at times. The MC is lame, despite having the bold stat, he still acts like a pussy and is a dead weight most of the time. But the other characters are pretty, likeable and interesting.
Unfortunately all that falls right into a drain the moment you roll back at the wrong time and break the whole game or at least one plot line if you are lucky (more on that later). Add an insult to injury, we also have the generic lazy sandbox with time and place related events, fortunately no RNG, but it's still terrible and absolutely destroys any kind of enjoyment/immersion with the pattern of "do the event" -> "open tips" -> "skip some time" -> "do another event" which I just can't express, how much I hate. Oh and of course the grind, another nuisance that can fortunately be skipped through URM or console.

Now onto the don't play this game at this time issue, which is: all values are persistent throughout the session. That means if you do a rollback at a certain place, some values are changed twice, quite possibly breaking storylines and likely soft-locking the whole game. Same goes for loading a different save, which at best crashes the game, at worst adjusts some values without you knowing. Until this is fixed the review stays at 1/5 ⭐. It is simply unacceptable and I have no idea how could they fucked it up so much.
And it's not just the rollback issue, there is for example this part that I had to dig out from the code to stop breaking Lori's questline that triggers every time you go to sleep:
Basically, you drop Lori as a LI the next day after the date's date, no matter what the outcome of it was, or you forgot about the date altogether. Great!

**EDIT**
I'm so sorry, I fucked up. The rollback/persistence issue was my doing while using my modified version of URM where I created a bug.

An excellent game that could get even better with time through some changes. Nonetheless, the art is gorgeous, and the animations are truly amazing. People often think that artists complete their work in just a few hours and maintain the same style without evolving over time, which is simply not true. It’s incredible to witness the evolution of the art in this game. The effort and dedication put into the game's art are remarkable and well-deserving of five stars.

However, like every game, it has its flaws. The grinding system for swordplay, archery, and magic is neither fun nor appealing. Additionally, some game design decisions are questionable. For instance, I missed almost every scene in the Elven Forest and couldn’t figure out why. I also believe the game could be more enjoyable if more characters had deeper involvement. While I like all the girls, only Cinthia has guild events. Gabe could use more development, as could Thea. But for that, the game might need a more significant overhaul.

Still, it’s a great game with lovely characters, stunning art, and incredible animations. I hope the project continues to grow and improve.

I played v 1.6.2

Overall pretty good, but lacking polish. The art is good, but inconsistent. The story is interesting, but the writing is also inconsistent. The gameplay gets repetitive, and seems unbalanced. I enjoyed it, but it would be really cool if the dev managed to carve out time to go back and rework things to make the experience more holistic.

I truly cannot comprehend how this game has 5/5. I'm glad to see 2D art actually being made, but there are some genuine flaws that people just seem to...totally ignore?

First off, the protagonist. He's spineless. I'm not sure if this is a product of the more kinetic-style of choice making in a lot of places or if the kinetic choices are as a result of the protagonist, but he sucks. He's a blank slate. I've played this game for hours, and what I get from him is: he loves his uncle, and he wants to be an adventurer, and he's a pushover. That's it. Everything else is entirely dependent on what's currently happening. Sometimes he's good with a sword, sometimes he isn't. Sometimes he's good with a bow, sometimes he isn't. Sometimes he's sneaky, sometimes he isn't. Sometimes he's knowledgeable, sometimes he isn't. It's very convenient when you write when nothing the player does really matters, but it isn't great for an AVN that FORCES YOU TO GRIND STATS (more on that later).

Next comes the characters, who essentially remain identical. This wouldn't be an issue if they were interesting to begin with and just felt familiar throughout, but they started out as generally one-note and just stay there. The worst example is Cynthia, who starts as a bitch and continues being a bitch, while the protagonist continues to be a fucking wimp (to the point where she literally points it out, multiple times). Characters like Gabe, Lori and Taliya don't really evolve at all, the most you learn are their goals and some of their backstory and that's it. Nothing feels like it's evolving, which isn't great when I'm on my 50th in-game day.

Another big flaw is this game is designed for grinding, but there's literally no value to the player. There are 3 main stats: sword, bow, and magic. Magic, as far as I've seen, is totally useless at the moment. I have found zero purpose. They have gold too, but that's useful to buy 3 items and then nothing else. You'd think they'd incentivise you to get more gold to buy more equipment to boost stats, but they haven't even done THAT. Then there's the stat of sneaking, which only appears useful for ONE activity of groping someone in their sleep, and there's agility which again seems to be useful for one activity. This is MEANINGLESS grind to make you feel like you're actually progressing by giving you busywork.

The actual main story has barely evolved for me, but it's abundantly clear that the dev is using a lot of tropes to get it moving. Oh wow, orphan who's parents died a mysterious death? A devil woman you see in the art that you see ages after but conveniently see talking about "energy" being detected? Well, having played AVNs with basically the same variation of the same story, it's pretty clear how it works. Some people might call it nitpicking, but with the amount of boring dialogue I have to read, the unnecessary grind I have to do, and the lack of genuinely good sex scenes, I at least want a story worth reading.

A smaller side point is that some characters genuinely appear like they're drawn by different people who are trying to replicate one person. Cynthia and the MC have different shading, different facial and body proportions, they even have different PICTURE quality. I assume this may be due to the MC being the first drawn and then adding more people, but it's quite distracting.

The thing is though, that a lot of these flaws are present in a lot of other AVNs. It's not that it's egregiously bad, it's that something with effort just seems to fall into the exact same obvious pitfalls. Grindy, repetitive, unfulfilling, cliched. Hopefully it adds stuff around it to actually give it purpose, but at the moment there's very little. Just not worth the time. 5/10.

Generally well done.

the gameplay basically consisting of grinding numbers up to access scenes would've dropped the score for me, but now that there's a "easy mode" it ain't bad. No more need to press "train sword" 115 times. Its still boring but its nothing particularly anoyying anymore.

Art is well done, actual BG as well as non H-scenes are drawn, no general complaints. Some inconsistency of proportions and framing between scenes but nothing major. Good amount of content as of right now.

Updates aren't super frequent but seem to be coming at a steady pace, guide is also convenient

First off, since I can only rate in whole numbers, I put a 3 but it's really like a 3.5. Getting the obvious stuff out of the way, the art and everything else is very well done. I also really like the artystyle. Also, the girls all look nice and I like that you have an easy access journal that tells you what to do next to unlock stuff, however i also hate it. The fact that you have a journal that tells you what to do to unlock stuff means that the only "gameplay" is to grind the hell out of dumb useless stuff like leveling your weapon skill, studying, answering quiz questions and doing dumb pointless time hitting the space bar at the right moment to get a point. That's not gameplay, that's just busywork chores. A lot of sandbox games fall into this trap where leveling up a skill is supposed to mean building your class, but it's NOT. If you want to build a class around something like swords, you have to have that skill INFLUENCE the way you play, not be a dumb skill check that you need to mindlessly grind for. If I'm going to pick swords, that should be how I'm interacting with not only the "combat" (which there really is none) but also other characters, such as dialogue or choice. Because that doesn't exist here, this game is nothing more than grinding meaningless modifiers to unlock scenes which you can just view in the gallery since there is no influence on how you see those scenes. You can't even choose how you interact with the girls, what your personality is or anything. Overall, this game is nothing more than very pretty window dressing on top of a bottomless pit of pointless grinding mechanics.

Story 2/5
Main story is a bit meh, mostly boring and very vanilla and nothing new which dosent help either.
Games tries to be a RPG game but theres no real fighting, either your skill is high enough or you cant kill something, its really that simple and MC also has magic? which you can train just like sword and archery but hes never use it for anything other then invis spell to be a pervert....

Also Im not a fan of forced relationships or sex scenes and multiple girls are forced but for some wierd reason you can turn down some like Lori and Cynthia...feels a bit idiotic that you arent free to choose your self with all of them, so its not really a harem game, its more like a half mindless fuckfest game instend.......
MC also seems to fall in love with girls very easy and girls will ofc trow them selfs on MC as well, its all just boring and pointless, and no faithfull route possible what so ever.

And story dosent line up with it self which is annoying as well, like go after Lori and MC will fuck her and tell her he loves her, then Gabrial ask if MC has a crush on anyone and he says no none...?? its like the hole story is just about fucking girls and everything else dosent matter and for me its more about story so game fails big time on that when it dosent keep track of whats going on doing the choices you make.

MC is so damn submissive that it gets annoying, no matter how big a bitch someone is to him he just eats it up....and the fake choices is even more annoying why even put that shit in a game, i mean come on pick "be bait or dont be bait" click dont its game-over....its not only annoying but also keeps showing MC as the submissive idiot over and over.

Another thing that kills the hole game is Twig, you can deside if you want to bring her with you to safety or not, when you try to bring her with you Taliya tells you she cost a 100 gold then she changes it to multiple 100s of gold, i had 900 with me which dosent change fuck all, game just kills her off instend of letting the player save her, proberly one if not the worst thing in the game.


Girls 1/5
I dident really lilke most of them, dont really think its the art since its pretty decent and did like Thea as the only one when it comes to how they look, the rest was just meh, oh and did like Twig as well but yeah.....

Animations 2/5
Well alot is just simple picture to picture so in other words not animated, the few that are animated are really not that good, bad cam views for the most parts and personaly i dident find them that good.

Music 2/5
A little music here and there and some sound effects.

Choices 1/5
There are some fake choices like convince someone to do something or study, clicking study is the same as convince which makes little to no sense, as for relationship which is the most importen to me persoanly, you have choices to close down some LIs path, but it still makes a huge flaw and force a relationship on you more then once, which i just really hate.

Good game, good writing and story. Fairly buggy and feels quite unfinished in areas, hence the missing star. Still, great to see more 2dcg games in a world of crappy churned out 3dcg games, cool art style

Review for version 1.5.9. Contains spoilers. You have been warned.

To put it in the most simple words I can find, Randel Tales is but another game falling under the description of Visual Novel, standing out before the line of others with only the different, yet mediocre, style of graphics and option to pick a gameplay type between the standard linear Visual Novel and not hard, yet rather annoying by it's repetitiveness, grindfest. With incoherent semi-virgin female characters and missleading gameplay.

The Graphics:
As usual, a Virtual Novel, is made mostly of static graphics with animations reserved for the really important scenes, like intercourse between main character and female characters. The thing is, while static renders are quite good, even those indicating some kind of actions like fighting, the animations are just awful. They stand out of the style of the graphics
and in some cases even look like they are unfishied.
Also, they are very inconsistent.

Story:
In current version there is really not that much of a story, at least about the MC. You mainly follow the stories of the characters you interact with. You are also informed about your choices actually matter and even having consequences.
Sadly, there are only but few choices that matter, and the consequences are rather straightforward, it's either you dying or the character you interacted with. In many cases when you should be given a choice to make, yet for the sake of the story it's already chosen for you, and in the end the consequences of it.

Characters:
They are inconsistent in thier actions and dialogues. That's all I can say without going into spoilers.


As for MC, no matter his personality, he always acts like a pushover and a person having only kind in mind. Kinda weird for someone with bold personality, being master swordsman/archer/mage and living in a world where everything outside the village is wanting to either rob/rape/kill you.

Gameplay:
Recomended gameplay out of two given is the second one, the grindfest. I advise you, if you wish to play the game, to not play it. I did it, and I can tell you it ain't fun and it's basically waste of your time.

You would think Randel Tales contains some form of RPG elemets, because it has all that adventure guild, parties etc, right? You would be right if you thought about the grind and the stats. Items and backpack? Not so much.

All you can do is to grind three batte related skills of which one, magic, I didn't even found it used for anything. Beside that there is also a currency, gold to be gathered, yet without enough places to use it. You can only buy few items, needed most for quests rather than to improve your combat capabilities.

I was told to hunt some flying enemies. So I wanted to buy a bow. Tried to get one at the market, couldn't even get in, couldn't borrow one from the arena either, because there was no option. To my suprise I had a bow with me all along. And infinite amount of arrows with it too. Good thing someone told me about it eariler.

When I had some more gold i wanted to go there to buy a better equipment.
To my suprise I was still unable to get into the market, nor the lone trader had anything of use to me.

One character said to not forget a certain item, because it's important in the quest we're doing. So I went, once again, to the market just to find out, once again, I can't really get there and the cauldron trader didn't have it eaither. So I proceeded with the quest without it, hoping for the best, just to see, in a dialogue, MC had it with him all the time.

This visual novel game is an absolute masterpiece in every aspect. From the captivating storytelling and well-developed characters to the stunning artwork and immersive soundtrack, it surpasses all expectations. Every decision feels meaningful, leading to multiple riveting endings. A true gem in the world of interactive storytelling. 5/5 stars without a doubt!

this game does the bare minimum to get each of its tags and its h scenes are disappointing compared to the great character art normally this would be an average game except there SOOOO much clicking around. Going as fast as possible while skimming took about half an hour per sauce and then i had to either risk clicking though another half an hour and losing my erection or backing up and rewatching a basic animation until i finish add the risk that a scene might not be the tag you like and the grindy clicking and other bs also not a "harem" game most of your h encounters are one time things none of your partners are aware of each other except for one who you can optionally tell about your previous engagements and many good looking models that soak up lots of time talking remain undoable soooooo.

It's a cute game. It's interesting. Thing is, it's been in development for quite a while and the plot hasn't really progressed that much, we're just scratching the surface, so I wonder when will it (or ever) be complete.

Minor gripes : scenes are well drawn but not really fappable.

Major gripes : MC makes dumb decisions in some places with no choice given to us, also he seems super weak even if you train him a lot and is often being protected. So far (3 years in) skill checks are few and far between and I'd wish they were either removed completely or used more abundantly.

The little of the story I've seen so far though is interesting and it can turn out to be a great game - but It's like we've not even cleared the prologue yet, and so much time has passed. That makes me wonder.

Definitely worth trying out though - just don't focus on the stats too much and make a save game before you go on missions and you're good, you can train if you need to.