Renryuu: Ascension is a wonderful RPGM game, and one of the first that I had ever played. This review will be a reflective look over when I started playing (Pre V20) and when I played again recently for new content. I'll break it all down into segments for easy reading as well. Also potential *SPOILERS*.
Story
So, as many people have said in their reviews of this game, the story is very hit and miss. You play as
Ryen, a dragconic half-breed who seemingly is written in a way that he is apathetic to most things, except sex. His motivations seem rather lackluster, as he is just bored with his academy/adventurer guild lifestyle so by chance he becomes king.
Interestingly, not only does Ryen not have much motivation for anything, but his girlfriend (
Tsubaki) doesn't have many aspirations besides being with Ryen. Which is strange given that she starts with the base score that all other characters do, and is probably one of the hardest characters to sleep with. (See
new blade quest for better understanding) I recognise what the wiki says, however it doesn't feel like it correlates with the game well enough.
Anyhow, the story carries on as you play as king, with your sidekick paladin "friend" called
Trey who sadly feels a little underwritten. I sense that when playing with him, he is supposed to be a very "for the people" kinda guy, but doesn't comment enough on your decisions, especially in the policy tree. (Like slavery, drug legality, etc.)
During your duties as king you basically are an adventurer with vast wealth, and can more or less do what you like. After your introductions in the castle are made, you get to look over the country overview, which is honestly one of the biggest highlights of this game that seperates this from your average RPGM.
This overview screen allows you to fully customise your country, and gives you more places to visit, which can lead to new scenes. It also has resource management which gives you some variety over your average fighting in RPGM games, which for a genre of games like this is a real breath of fresh air.
You also have the policies, as a briefly touched upon above, which allows you to set the laws for your land. Other than changing small stats of your nation, such as happiness, knowledge, religion, etc. These do have minor gameplay changes, as you will see some of your citizens behave differently. For example, if you make slavery legal, in the brothel you will see the slave seller, which is usually in the thieves guild area.
Throughout the game you uncover a plot with relation to some artifacts, and a certain someone you know is behind it. Your goal is to stop them from the madness that is their end goal. Now, the story itself here is fine, but because of how the pacing of the game feels, and the characters involved, I personally find myself more engrossed in the side characters as opposed to the main plot. This is entirely my opinion, you may feel differently on that one.
So, what are the side quests like? Well, they are actually quite interesting. Most side quests you do that are based around your main characters, which I will leave a link to
here to see them all, are interesting and tell you a lot more about them. Not only that, but you are usually rewarded with a scene every quest too. Definitely a bonus.
The other side quests not based around your characters for the most part are okay. Nothing majorly interesting, but not boring either. One quest from the main plot I have found causes issues for players still, with the dev still having to tell people where to go. That being about the mythril pickaxe. I feel by this point, it should probably just be made easier to get, or more obvious to avoid confusion, but at the same time the information is readily available (Thanks to the
dev being very active in the community, even on here)
Originality
I've mentioned it quickly above, but I will quickly recap again that I think this game is definitely original in its own right. It takes management aspects not seen very often in this genre and applies them in a meaningful way. You never feel broke or limited in power, and the story can be interesting.
Performance
I can't say I've ever had an issue with this game from memory. So I would say it's pretty solid in terms of performance. Although, with an RPGM I'd seriously hope it would be.
Scenes/animations
Okay, so the part most of us actually care about the most really. How good are the scenes, and are they animated?
Short answer: They are varied in quality. I don't believe any are animated, but I will edit this if I am proven wrong.
Long answer: So the scenes weirdly enough for most characters go from what feels like really low quality images, to really high quality based on how much work you put into each character. I don't think this is intended in a way of rewarding the player with higher quality scenes, more that the original artist was changed at some point.
I personally find it a little disorientating having 2 entirely different art styles of CGs in a game, but again that's my take. The original scenes feel really basic, and not very lively. While the later ones are actually quite good. If I were to offer one core critique from this review, it would be updating old CGs to keep the game flowing with one style. However, I do recognise that this does cost money, and a lot of time.
Grammar
Like in most heavily text based RPGMs there were a few errors along the way. But it remains very consistent throughout the game.
Summary
Renryuu: Ascension has a lot of content. I don't just mean scenes either. The quests are plentiful, the battles can be hard, the characters are intriguing (case by case). The dev clearly invests a lot of time into this game, and interacts very positively with the community on any issues, which in itself should be incentive to support him on if you really like this game. All in all, I will give this game 4/5 stars. It's really good, but certainly has a way to go before being a 5/5 in my eyes.
If you made it to the end of this review, I appreciate you taking the time out to read it, and hope you enjoyed the read too. There was a lot I did want to discuss, about each character, but this is already long enough, and I don't wish to bore people.