This game is really good. The art and writing both absolutely nail the joyful moments, and the sad ones really hit hard. I kept thinking each character would be a cheap cliche and each one turned out to be so much better than that.
The sex scenes often feel sparse in text and number of pics, and you can definitely feel some more sparseness to later parts of the game, but I'd definitely recommend giving this a playthrough.
Items of feedback:
- I kinda wish bad things (not counting flashbacks) weren't an instant game-over. I was messing around trying to get various girls to dislike me, but besides zenelith and the elf village, failing encounters is either plot-armored or a game-over and refusing to do them just halts the plot. Betraying a certain elf was exactly what I was looking for, but then she... just never showed up again? The sister's dialogue was great though so maybe I missed some content. I probably saw the optional rape tag and envisioned something more along the lines of a Ravager power fantasy sandbox, whereas this is more using it as a brief storytelling tool like an R-rated movie might. I understand if that's the tone that the devs are going for though.
- Similar to the above, I didn't like where advancing the plot automatically locked me into an "I love you" romance, sometimes way before the romance actually happened. I felt like some perving activities should have had a choice, and some non-perving parts should have had a choice. Sometimes I just want to be platonically helpful and sometimes I want to make mischief, you know?
- The grind feels like artificially padding the playtime after a certain point, especially when reaching silver and beyond results in zero game state changes that I can find.
- The current ending feels like a cop-out nothingburger. After learning of Massive Revelations that feel like they should have Impactful Consequences, you leave the town you grew up in, your academy dreams that you are 1-2 months into, and every character you met without so much as a goodbye, never to see them again, as you go live the rest of your life as a soldier in the army. I don't see how that is a logical response - something along the lines of "I'm taking the strongest allies I've ever seen who happen to be my closest friends on a cross-country vigilante campaign to track down the demon and kill her" would make more sense to me, and be a bit less... arbitrarily depressing? Although that would bring up the question of why that campaign isn't the final act of the game. The current hasty ending has no climax (the fight is basically already over) and just feels very at-odds with the entire rest of the story, which never shied away from bringing characters together for deep emotional moments like ditching everything & everyone does.