Ren'Py - Randel Tales [v1.7.0-3] [Ero Sandwich Studio]

Wonderful fantasy game filled with implicit messages that ultimately lead to fascinating twists.

Alright, I don't like making reviews but I feel like this game deserves one (for whatever my opinion is worth). This was written to reflect version 1.0.3.

The Good

• Interesting, attractive, and unique characters.
  • Each character is unique and will hook you (or not, that's the whole point). They all have different personalities, backgrounds, and sense of humor.
  • The characters are all very visually appealing and even have expressions. That's right, you'll see 2d PNGs blushing after you stare at their tits. Nice.
• Main story is actually interesting
  • I'm a sucker for fantasy games, movies, and anime so it is no surprise that Randel Tales immediately earned my attention.
  • The story is explained bit by bit throughout lessons. That's right, you will go to school and actually learn something. Well done dev, this is already better than a college.
• The protagonist has his shit together
  • Don't you hate it when the MC is a weak-minded loser who gets pushed around all the time? Well, not in Randel Tales.
  • The MC has his own ambitions and doesn't fall under any of the most common tropes with these sort of games.
  • The MC is normal: He isn't in an FBI watchlist for being a sexual predator and he isn't a wimp either. I like that.
• Mechanics:
  • There's an interactive bestiary, how cool is that? There are a couple of entries missing (like the "Lelluk" I think it was called) but is still a very neat feature.

The ok

• I made this category just for the music. The music is GREAT but goes quiet (there's no music) in some scenes for whatever reason, which is kinda awkward.

The bad

• The game feels very incomplete.
  • The game is a sandbox and just like most sandbox games of this genre, the world feels big but empty. Take the Adventurer's guild for example: There's only like 4 quests and after that it becomes a dead place. Same with the Academy.
  • Multiple spelling mistakes throughout the story. I'm not expecting flawless 10/10 writing but some mistakes are just hard to ignore. Trust me when I say this, you WILL notice the mistakes when playing. There's not many, but still.
  • Many questlines are not finished (some didn't even begin). I don't know if this is intended or not but it's truly a shame since the characters that interested me the most didn't have a questline.
• The grind
  • I hate grinding in these sort of games. However, Randel Tales does offer a "cheat" mode to skip all that. Yeah, it didn't really help tho.
  • Most stats feel useless as there are only like 3 skill checks throughout the whole game.
  • Leveling up skills takes a lot of time so you better believe I used the cheat tool (thanks dev).
• Empty choices
  • There ARE choices in this game that will get characters killed (including the MC) at a later point of the story.
  • However, most choices fall under the typical "doesn't matter if you're an ass or a boob person, you ain't getting none anyway". For dummies, what I'm saying is that most choices don't matter. Most.
  • I will say though that the impactful choices were very cool as the author usually hints the player with implicit messages and expects you to not only pay attention but also make observations and conclusions of your own. Very cool.
  • Unfortunately, the sense of responsibility after fucking up is little to none existent as you can always go back or save scum. I personally don't mind as I don't usually fuck up, and when I do it's just to see what would happen. Those "what if" scenarios really do deliver in this game.
• The combat
  • This game features 3 type of variables in combat:
    • Choice selection (very cool I like this)
    • Stat checks (very cool I also like this)
    • QTE (fuck you.)
  • While the QTE aren't difficult, you gotta understand, I play with a controller, laying on my bed. Yeah. Not cool.
• The quests
  • All quests are very entertaining. However, they don't follow a flow-chart.
    • This means that you could view a scene with a character at the end of the game that was supposed to be viewed earlier. It's a bit trippy.
  • A lot of quests take place at the same time of the day, which means that you will have to choose who to do first (if you catch my drift) which leads to a broken flowchart.

Overall, Randel Tales is a very enjoyable game for comedy fans and fantasy fans alike. I know I wrote a lot under "the bad" category, but that's just me being nitpicky. Honestly, while I rarely do this, I will honestly admit that if this game were to ever be released on steam (in a much later date) I would buy it in a heartbeat. Very great game, I look forward to playing it again in a year or two. It is a very ambitious project that not only delivers but also has plenty of potential to milk.

Q&A:
What's the playtime, you ask? About 2 sessions of 3-4 hours (I was hooked. In other words, about 6-9 hours.
What's scene/per hour rate, you ask? About 2-3 scenes an hour but only after you are halfway through the game. Before that point it's more like 0 scenes per hour.

If you like reading (to some extent) or are a fan of fantasy stories (with magic and shit) and cute girls, then give it go and consider supporting it. I promise you that it's a pretty cool game (I am not to be held legally accountable for this claim).

Psst, Dev ,if you're reading this, don't take the cheat mode out on the final release. Thanks homie I knew I could count on you.

v1.6.8-2
After 2 years of my comment I replayed the game. Well as far as I notice there is not much of a progress since i played it eventhough still arts of this game are solid and latest animations looking awsome. Nothing to add or remove to my old comment at the moment, still 4 star and still promising.
-------------
(Aug 25 2022)
Unique art takes most of the credits of 4 stars..
Also promising sandbox, diversity of chicks, storyline and substory of characters has a good foundation. Option to keep each chick in hand is cool. The game can be developed someting marvelous.. I think, to achieve that more sandbox options are needed... maybe improving your home etc for micro management or repetable guild quests and combat system or some kind of management in guild like sending people for missons and improving the guild attract more guild recruits etc... Creating a living economy makes it a little bit rpgish insatead of visual novelish .
in a nutsheel its "highly promising"

One of the best h games out there. I became immediately invested in its characters and art and left hyped for future content. My only real complaints are that it can be grindy and repetitive at times, wait times for quests are excessive to say the least, and there's not enough h scenes with each girl. There are a decent amount of scenes in the game, don't get me wrong, but really only a couple for each love interest. Also, there are no buttholes in the game witch always bothers me. That being said, this is still an excellent, stand-out game that got me invested to a degree I no longer thought possible. Well worth your time.

You said your game can't be at the level of Summertime saga, but actually, I end up enjoying Randel tales way more.
The way you build the world, the way we interact with characters and they interact with others are so lively and interesting.
+Hilarious yet very deep storytelling
+Cute and lovable characters
+Pleasant music
+If possible, adding voices and sounds would make the game incredible
-A bit confusing about the traits and stats but they don't really matter
Protect Thea at all cost!

It's... sweet.

That's probably why I'm giving it a score this high. I hadn't realized how rare sweet romantic stories have become. The main thing about Randel Tales is that its protagonist does not come off as a pervert (Sander fills out that role). It's not that he's not horny, but horniness does not make up an entirety of his character. He has other aspirations. As a result, this is a slow burner, which is totally fine. The girls and the —somewhat branching— story matches this tone, as does the art style. The girls generally have a soft side to them, which makes them quite loveable. So, yeah, summing it up in one word, it's sweet.

That said, there are some big issues that made me seriously consider lowering this score, to three stars.

First is dialogue, which is not stellar at times. The author should open script files, hit search for "hehehehe" and slap themselves for each instance found. And then rewrite it to something like "She chuckles a bit ruefully". Basically, this needs one good editing pass.

Two, speaking of rueful chuckles. Needs more facial expressions, which aren't exactly hard to draw, not compared to full scenes. The game relies heavily on the somewhat "cutesy" art style, and lack of diverse and lively facial expressions during dialogue undercuts it heavily.

Three, fill out the damn free roam part of the game. You can't have like just two history lectures, and then play the second on repeat. You can't have a bog standard dialogue "Hey, you want to talk about something? No, nothing? K bye!" for every character in the game basically at all times. This really makes the world of Randel feel lifeless and artificial. Have some goddamn random filler! Your characters will feel much more real if you do that. There's also a need to do some QA on consistency, particularly when and where each character is approachable for small talk.

And finally, QTEs. Fuck I hate this shit. I mean, okay, you can have minigames to determine your success, but then you can't have your grindable character stats. As it stands, I already worked to have the sword skill of X, therefore make a damn stat check and let us move on. And if you're really that enamored with QTEs, ditch the stat grind. You can't have both, it is really annoying.

TL;DR: four stars because I liked romancing cutely drawn girls that have a soft vulnerable side to them. But gods the game's sandbox part needs some TLC.

Great game with quite an engrossing story line. I really admire when a game has a good plot to go along with the usual expectations.

You will generally like the characters and root for the MC, and there were actually times when I actually cared about what would happen to the MC next. I think this is a deeply underrated game that is worth a shot to anyone considering.

v0.7

Very charming story, worldbuilding, and characters. The waifus in particular are wonderful.
The art is fantastic and sexy.
The game is a little grindy but only a little. And even that can be easily avoided by just using cheats for stats. Just make sure you say yes when it asks you if to enable cheats (not mandatory).

Randel Tales

Version reviewed: 0.6 Public

Positives

• actually has an enjoyable story and worldbuilding - it feels like a raunchy DnD session
• the art is simple but endearing, it has animated scenes as well
• good cast of characters (can't wait for the forest girl to show up )

YMMV

• all around it's pretty vanilla, which fits the tone of the game, but you're not gonna roleplay Devil's incarnate here
• girls are not concerned at all with getting pregnant or the protagonist banging other girls (their storylines are pretty much independent, which breaks immersion a bit given how "grounded" the game otherwise feels)

Negatives

• a fair bit of minor spelling errors, etc. (nothing that breaks the game in any way)

Fun game! Still early but a lot of fun content already and genuinely enjoyed the characters and interactions. Great art style and dialogue!

Scenes are super hot. Appreciated the cheat mode to avoid the grind.

Hope to play more soon.

Edit from 14.08.2022
Bunis returned, and he brought all of the deleted content back with this update! YES!!!
Now the good and evil choices actually matter again.
As promised, joining your patreon starting today. Keep up the good work man.

Pros:
+++++ Nice, hand-drawn art style
+++++ Plot, characters, and worldbuilding are all pretty fresh, honestly
+++++ Pretty into all these competent, decently-written, attractive women, tbh
+++ Optional rape. Which could be skipped, I guess, but I'm personally glad I don't have to. We ain't all into it.

Cons:
- Lacking visual polish, particularly with the UI
- Minor typos. Whatever.
-- Kinda grindy in gameplay

Summary:
Them's some big pros and three very minor cons, from where I sit.

As far as visuals, it's not the prettiest game in the world, but it's visually distinct and compelling in a kinda webcomicky way. Plus hey, none of the usual, weird uncanny valley models lumbering around. Plus plus, pixie cuts make me feel some kinda way.

As far as writing, beggars can't be choosers and MAN does porn make me beg for it, but this is pretty damn decent. I appreciate the effort and skill that must take to execute alongside everything else. Also, unpopular opinion: good characters are more attractive.

This obviously could use some polish down the line, but it's a sight for sore eyes.

A very great 2D game for players to download and experience the story with:
Art style: 10/10
The art style for the game was unique, maybe it wasn't a top class high quality you would see from professional artist but it have it own charm and very fitting with the atmosphere and the tone of the game's world. It will grow into you and you would slowly love the style
Characters: 10/10
Every single one of them was great, each of their design was different and hand drawn by the developer himself so you won't see anywhere else to have similar design unlike the 3D assets. Each character like Gabe, Evelyn, Uncle,... have their own personality and way of living in their world that make you feel like they are "alive" and not a generic NPC. Because of that you won't feel bored and want to follow and complete the story to learn, to understand, laugh, cry and love those characters with each event and moment you spend with them
Story: 10/10
The story was a great mixture of light heart adventure to straight up dark, with many time you will laugh at the comedic tone when interact with Sander but later you will feel your back turn cold when things truly got serious with death and destruction. You would have some very warm and happy moment and right there being throw down into a maelstrom of sinister, evil and madness that awaiting MC to encounter in the future
Gameplay: 8/10
I must say the combat system was fun but still not there yet, you have a few hunting quest, training, level up your own skill and the Guild rank,... but it was very interest and I want to see it to be develop more in a few updates. For now the gameplay would still mainly fetch quest, you go around and complete the things that needed and come back to deal with the problem (if the recipes was right then you pass, if not then the enemy could have murder MC and it would be game over)
Music: 10/10
Nothing to say, the music was great and you could stay for hours to just listen to it specially if you go into a romance scenarios
Conclusion: 9.5/10
Very great game, players need to download and try playing it at least one before pass by it. Maybe it wasn't a generic 3D with hot models that you could see everywhere in every 3D games but it will not disappoint you
Ps: Would be great if we got some incest content like MC have sisters or cousins and maybe a little bit of hardcore content @Bunis

- Story nice.
- As a 2D game, the art work and animated exquisite.
- Relationship between the characters much detailed.
- Giving good understanding (about tasks / path) for the user / player.
- The developer know what we want ... hehe ~

Amazing game as far as 2dcg games go. I liked the art, and how it's properly animated. I like the gameplay in that it has zero bullshit attempts to stretch the game by adding dumb grind (it has none). I liked the plot, generally speaking, and the characters are alright. The game is a bit too short, but it only just released and it's already longer than 90% of games on this forum

Randel Tales [v0.4.1] [Bunis]

PROS
+1 Star - The writing is great! I enjoyed every single of it.
+1 Star - Art is not bad. However, it is not consistent.
+1 Star - Animations.
+1 Star - Large Content.
+1 Star - Every character has their own personality.
+1 Star - Decent music and sound effect but some scene has no music.
+1 Star - Choices/branches affects the storyline.
+1 Star - Less romantic/cheesy lines.
Overall: +8 Stars

Neutral:
• It doesn't have incest.
• Has a rape scene but MC is not the rapist.
• MC cum inside but every heroine were not worried that they might get pregnant.
• Lots of spelling, period, punctuation and capitalization errors.

CONS: This can be fixed.
-1 Star - There is no option for pull out or cumming inside.
-1 Star - Pointless, repetitive grind that is made to delay the progress. However, I still prefer this than doing some repetitive mini-games.
Overall: -2 Stars

8 Stars - 3 Stars = 6 Stars

- I wish there was an evil route, where the MC can decide to rape/dominate.

Great history, the pictures are great too, can be more great, but the game overall brings back the good feelings those light novels give. Im playing the 0.4 and the history is really good in content, is rare I keep reading all the texts. thanks and keep going, great game

story: really good and with lots of though on it.

character: very well done.

draws: some are good and some are very good.

scenes (all of them): well done.

gameplay: really well done and with lots of though on it.

music and sounds: nicely done.

conclussion: the strongest point on this game, is the gameplay. is a nice conbination of "sense of adventure" and "your choices matter". also the characters of this game are on spot.

this game TOTTALLY deserve your time and money.

psdt: there is some places that needs upgrades and maybe a fix or two, thats it.

I don't normally play games and care that much about the story, but I was drawn in by this story for some reason and I really liked it. I like the animation, gameplay, and sandbox elements as well as the characters and lore aspects. I think the dev does a good job of setting the stage for you as well as giving you an opinion on the world they live in. On a more personal note, I like most of the fetishes in the game as well as the sexiness of the female characters (I'm a straight male as I imagine most are who play these games), but if I had to add something, I guess it would be more opportunities to dominate some of the women and choose a more evil route without losing the chance to still sleep with or rape some of the women. Perhaps something more along the lines of non-consensual which leads to consensual sort of story line branch.

As this game is still in very early version (0.2), and there is a high chance it will end up stuck in my backlog hell for far to many updates, many issues might be outdated when you read this.

Here I have to note that I'm not a native English speaker myself, therefore I might be more lenient with my decisions on language than most readers.

Art: reminds me of a "Aching dreams" for those ancient enough to remember it (you won't find it here, was on Newgrounds). It gives of this crude but cute vibe. Not for everyone, but if you like what you see on previev images, you will like the rest.

Animation: some scenes have this basic "a few cg in loop" style animation, I don't mind or care for it that much, honestly. I know that there are many who like even these basic movements, though.

Story: for me, this is THE most important part of the VN. Story is rather basic, nothing innovative, but that's not a bad thing. There is visible amount of thought put into the setting, trait that's sadly rare to found recently. There were a few things that bugged me, like MC not using invisibility during July's event, or mention of Wall Crawlers before you met them (depending on order in which you play your missions). I think these will be ironed out later on, but it shows how easy it is to miss a little detail when allowing player to choose his path. Another thing is that the game clearly warns about importance of choices, whille a lot of them do little to the story so far.

Grammar: there are many mix ups between small and capital letters. Quite a few spelling and grammar errors and a few missing dots and commas, but everything was easily understandable. Autor doesn't seem to be native english speaker, but he mentions getting an editor soon, so I hope that these issues will be fixed later on. Some people in comments mentioned that font was bad, but it's does it's work, so it might have been about an earlier update. My only issue is that picking bright cyan blue, on rather bright yellow for USER INPUT font is a really bad choice. As user imputs are rare occurance, especially outside of naming characters picking hard to see color makes it very difficult to notice what's going on. Not to mention that the function they are used for could be done far better by simple menu with if statements. There will always be players that will write it in a wrong way somehow.

Gameplay: a bit grindy repetition of training / hunting / etc cutscenes. Most can be skipped by using cheats, which I advise doing, as they have no point beside delaying player progress. No random, interesting cutscenes, not much difference between early and late levels, no minigames (althrough that one could be a good thing). Aside from that and ONE random quick time event that SHOULD have been either estabilished earlier (for traning, maybe?), or removed completely. Just like already mentoned user input's, they aren't typical elements of Ren'py VN, so tying FIRST instance of that mechanic to instant death event seems like a bad design.

Under the hood stuff: I usually don't mention content of gamefiles when rating a game, but in this case there is an effect on gameplay. Namely, author seems to don't use labels to unify events. This means that in certain scenes, despite having already seen the same resuslt, while picking different choices you'll be unable to fast forward as Ren'py will see it as separate events. Annoying for completionists like myself, but it can be easily bypassed by picking "unseen text" in options.

Music: I rarely turn game music or voice acting on, as I prefer playing YT in background, but from what i've heard it's a decent, if a bit generic VN music. It get's the job done.

Conclusion: far to early in development to say what it will turn into, assumning it won't freeze in development hell, but more than enough as a proof of concept to keep checking on it every now and then.

This is my first review, i had to make one, this game deserves more players.

The art is great, the story is well written, it has good humor and great characters, i like the mc and the interactions with the characters.

Seriously play it, it's really good, you can feel that they put some love in it, and i'm gonna love to see it to the end, loads of potential, ive even thrown 5$ in patreon, it deserves more attention.