So this is so interesting. I've always wondered what it'd be like if an H-game dev just skipped the story and made an incredibly dense game in terms of H-content. Combined with good art, sounds like a hell of a game.
Rignetta's Adventure is that but it somehow feels incomplete. I'm not sure why. It almost feels like with the amount of H-content they had, they could've stretched it out into a really special game but instead, it's just a sprite animation collector.
Anyone feel the same way? I mean, it's not like every great H-game has a story. SiniSistar, for example, has no dialogue at all, is primarily sprite-based, and has less H-content than Rignetta's Adventure. But it somehow feels way more complete.
Is it the complete lack of goals in Rignetta's Adventure? The lack of CGs or changes to the character's standing CG? (I feel like it might be this?) The encouragement to basically walk through mobs once you've collected their gallery drop since they literally don't give you anything else?
Do any of those sound right? Can anyone tell me why I'm feeling this way?
When it comes to lewd games (and games in general) i don't really care about the story. I care about gameplay. You can spice games up with good writing, compelling narrative/plot, music and whatnot, but at the end of the day you can't serve spice as a dish by itself. If i want a good story i'll go read a book or watch a movie. I want deep game-mechanics that are engaging and fun to explore, and good balancing to keep challenging.
So with that said, i should probably enjoy Rignetta's Adventure right? Well its not that simple, although this game seems to have rich/interactive gameplay it kinda falls into a steady rhythm quickly (with the exception of bosses). The core gameplay loop is encounter enemy, figure out the pattern at which they put out hitboxes, avoid them while hitting them, proceed to the next stage. This isn't necessarily boring by itself, but the game isn't very difficult so i just end up steamrolling my way forward which is what makes it boring for me. When you eventually get lazy enough, you'll get caught by something and you either mash out or die very quickly.
This is definetly the part that annoys me the most about the game and where i feel like the most assets are wasted. There are mechanics in place where you will lose stats and a "lust" counter increases the longer you are grabbed. But.. the grab progresses so fast that you never get to "explore" those mechanics? It just feels so binary, either you mash out or you die. I never felt like the lust mechanic ever came into play. Effectively this makes it a GOR type game, instead of having the porn be integrated into the gameplay. And if you were to enable the permanent stat loss, unless im missing something, there isn't a "renewable" way to regenerate your stats so it feels very bad and you just want to restart the game if you ever do get caught.
I guess the developer had an interesting vision for how the lewd interactions were supposed to be, but couldn't quite get it right and just focused on making more content and finishing the game instead of tweaking/balancing. That being said, this is still a great game by all means. In particular the boss fights were really interesting. The animations are cute and simple, so it still gets a lot of stars in my book.