RPGM - Completed - Ruins Seeker [v1.01] [Nupuryu no sato/Kagura Games]

Overall a pretty good game with good story. Recommend everyone trying it! It's not quite 5-stars, but very close.

Im erasing my previous review since it was dog shit and putting up a new one after replaying the game from start to finish


First of all i have to say.... This game is PEAK! the zenith of all zeniths! A piece of media that was denied its rightfully deserved glory and should be Lauded with the highest applause! sadly due to the stigma that is deeply smeared upon H games this title is buried in obscurity *Ahem* had to get that out of my system first but heres a breakdown of it

General Gameplay:
First of all this doesnt play out as a standard RPGM, it uses a binding of isaac esque playstyle where you clear rooms and upgrade your arsenal in a rouguelite dungeon crawler style and fortunately the game is more forgiving than that so the casuals can still finish the game without bitching and moaning about the difficulty being too hard and if thats still too hard then its just skill issue at that point.

Honestly the game really took me in for a ride since each weapon has a different gimmick from others and you can choose which weapon suits your playstyle better. It was really fun to mix and match my melee weapons to my range to see which synergizes well with the skills you unlock.

For example theres a knife in the game that hurts more in proportion to the MC's horniness. Stacking damage buff to unleash it all in one single hammer strike to one shot enemies was pretty fun and thats only a few of them.

Visuals:
The visuals are great with its execution since the artist really owns their artstyle instead of recycling a cookie cutter unoriginal slop thats unmemorable and just painful to look at. The artstyle have a solid lining and small animations that gives life to the characters and the world as a whole. I assure that you wont be forgetting this game anytime soon after you play it even if you overdose on generic RPGM since the artstyle is memorable.


Music and sound design:
The music really brings out the scenes with somber soundtrack for when the feels roll or an energizing rush inducing beats that makes you really wanna smack that boss hard or when the tunes starts singing a choir which at that point you better start praying.
The weapon sound effects as you swing or shoot also nails it in the details department and adds a layer to the fun of using different types of weapon.
Some scenes have a fully voiced dialogue for when shit gets serious and for emotional moments that will throw an emotional left hook to your guts.

Story and characters:
Mayhaps the best and strongest point of this game is the characters and the story. The air of mystery as you start out on your journey to uncover the truth of the heavens ladder compels you to dive in again and again and again until you finally reach the top to get the answer that you started this journey for.
The side stories are deep and really emotional and the conclusions for side quests doesn't guarantee a happy ending or some deus ex machina where everyone is happy. Your choices and progression is reflected upon the town you play at and the game have a solid way of always reminding you this.
The most refreshing and strong point about the characters is that our MC isn't some self insert blank slate that acts naive like a typical isekai MC thats needs everything to be explained to them.

Hentai:
The scenes are animated and has variety to pick from with the usual defeat cutscenes for normal mobs and a unique CG for boss defeats. Honestly for an H game, The H department is lacking but by the later end you will be playing it for the story and not the H anymore that i gurantee.

Conclusion:
Since this review is getting too long ill end it here. This game can be summarized with "game first, hentai second". Play it if you want to experience an engaging game with a great story thats dashed with a side of hentai. Go for the true end, you wont regret it...

It's a pretty much linear RPG/VN. Combat is standard fare, interesting enough to be engaging. The story was actually quite fun. The animation is great, and if you do just want to see the gallery, it's quite good. But the dialogue does add to the experience.

Animations are nicely done, but don't bother with the actual game, just drop a save and enjoy the H-scenes. I have never felt more bored by a 2D dungeon crawler ever.

If there weren't these nicely animated H-scenes, I would rate this a 1/5

Bonus marks for the more than playeable gameplay in this one, great combat system which keeps you engaged.
A loooot of monsters if you are into it, not enough tall-men imo. Also wish Vise got a little more action rather than being a voyuer.

Congratulations to the game for getting a show as well

Overall: While the core gameplay and Quem/Vise interactions are good, the game feels a bit truncated in places and the h-content isn't really integrated into the rest of it. It's still completely enjoyable if you ignore the h-aspect.

Before we start: the game may run fast if you have a monitor with a high (>60hz) refresh-rate, so it's best to grab one of the fixes from the game thread.

Good
- The gallery is available from early on, and new scenes are unlocked as you finish chapters so you never have to lose a fight or walk into a trap on purpose.
- The weapon system is quite good. There's a nice variety of weapon types (both short- and long-ranged) so you're likely to find something you like. Duplicates you find upgrade the copy you already have and max upgraded weapons sometimes get bonus skills, so you won't necessarily discard your old stuff when you find something new. You can, of course, ignore most weapons and just stick with the first thing which works if that's your speed.
- Quem and Vise's interactions are cute, though many of them don't come up naturally and instead need to be triggered by the player sleeping at the inn or talking to Vise in her shop.
- The ability to play areas in rougelite-mode or normal-mode can help shape the game to your playstyle. I particularly like how rougelite-mode forces you to try out different weapons, allowing you to find new favorites which you wouldn't normally have looked at since the stuff you've had longer is probably stronger.
- The main menu can change based on your story progress. It's a minor thing, but helps the story feel more poignant.

Bad
- Despite being "Lewd Curse" themed, said curse never really comes into play since Quem usually suppresses it through sheer willpower. I do find that aspect quite amusing but still: there's a brothel which you can neither work at nor patronize (no matter what the npcs say), and later in the game some NPCs are like "I get all hot and bothered when Quem comes around" but you can't perform a back-alley wristy or anything.
- Despite being "Lewd Curse" themed, 100% of the scenes are rape. There are different varieties of rape (date rape, mind control, interspecies, etc), but you'll be disappointed if you were hoping for prostitution or Quem/Vise action.
- Speaking of rape, Quem gets raped in the prologue. I know there's a "if there's no sex within the first 10 minutes I turn the game off and uninstall it" crowd, but these scenes always feel really cheap. There are far more elegant and engaging ways to get across that it's a lewd curse or crapsack world.

Medium
- Quem's standing art sort-of gets in the way and there are no resize or transparency options.
- There are a lot of casual conversations which take place when you rest at the inn... which you may never see since you heal when you come to town so there's no reason to spend money to rest at the inn.
- An early quest lets you choose whether to murder a guy who deserves it or let him live, however the vast majority other quests only have a single scripted outcome despite Quem going "let's wait until we get the full picture before we decide how to handle it." This is additionally irritating since some quests are basically the same so you think Quem would come prepared the second time around.
- As is unfortunately common in works featuring time-travel, I feel that Ruins Seeker doesn't stick the landing. It presents some interesting applications during the game, but the ending leans a bit more "we can do whatever because time travel."

It's not optimized well and some of the dialogue is plain hard to follow. I wouldn't normally complain about these things, but for a lot of enemies a dip in framerate will kill you. Once you do get comfortable with the mechanics and framerate it's very easy though. Gold and items can be abused heavily after a single bounty, and the only dangerous thing about bosses is some of them have a sprint/charge. Most enemies can be kept far far away with sweeping weapons like polearms and scythes. Unfortunately there isn't enough variety in items or rooms for the roguelike mode to be much fun either. The dialogue is mostly fine, but plots like the robinhood one had no impact though that could be more how rushed it was and less the translation. The ending is pretty typical, and the reveal about the curse doesn't make much sense since the monsters in Heaven's Ladder aren't part of the regular world.

There were a number of good sex scenes too, but it commits the cardinal sin for these games. It can't be played with one hand, although it doesn't really matter in this case. The sex scenes and game progression are completely separate. I would recommend playing through a zone, and only watching the scenes in the recall area afterward. Fortunately you don't need to lose to unlock them.

It was good, until

• It forced loss me
• Spammed NPCs on interact points, making selection difficult
• Limited save points and save slots
• Showed a way too easy boss with 2 only different, yet very similar attacks and way too much HP
• Asked if I wanted to dungeon rogue-like that invalidates progress
• Had the audacity to crash, it doesn't have Jap. names or awful localization for it to have an excuse and I'm not replaying since last save point

It's not bad, just weird and seemingly untrustworthy.

WOW! Fantastic game! Feels like an actual game with some r18 scenes sprinkled in!

Pros:

• Amazing Story and Gameplay, the gameplay gets excited me to play the game and the story/R18 scenes gets me to stay playing. The gameplay is good enough to play even without the R18 scenes.
• Good character development for the duo, you can understand their feelings in situations throughout the story.
• Cute Art style and Sprite designs.
• Sprites are visible in the r18 scenes, would like to see this more often from developers.
• Good length of r18 scenes, well put together.
• Good music

Cons:

• Not enough r18 scenes, which are almost all exclusively when you lose a battle.
• Not enough r18 scenes outside of losing battles.
• The r18 scenes aren't the best, they feel like a still image is being manipulated looks almost paper-like in the sense that you could make the same scenes out of pieces of paper you cut out. Paper isn't very sexy.

Final Thoughts:
Its a cute fun game with a strong story and great gameplay but lacks a strong adult theme component.

A game that's best described to be unpolished and made in a cookie-cutter format. The kind that you'd imagine to come out of soulless developer, but at least well-trained ones rather than a "JS Web Dev Bootcamp Dev".

Along with that, comes generic art, gameplay, music. Good, but generic. Though you could tell that they cheapskated out on the developer end. Rookie bugs uncharacteristic to the "quality" of the assets.

Just another product of capitalism, nothing to see here. Though, it is a fun exercise if you have any development experience, to spot every corner that they've cut, and guess what features were stock asset/bought asset.

Honestly, this game is like a gem that has not been polished to perfection.

The reason for this is not the quality, but its content.

In terms of quality, it's definitely a 5/5. The music is a great, the MC is likeable, and the 3D animations are gold. Plus, the adventure and combat systems make me want to explore every part of the map.

However, I was very disappointed that there was so little content the game had to offer. There have been no updates since the game was released in mid-2020, so I'll presume the developers won't get their hands on this ever again.
First of all, the h-scenes are, you guessed it, 'defeat-only scenes'. I bet 70% of japanese hentai games are called 'hentai games' because the actual 'hentai' part is unlocked when the MC is defeated, but for a game this polished, I was very disappointed. The animations were great, but the game would have been much better if there were 'battle h-scenes' (you know what I mean).

Also, I don't understand why aphrodisiac potions are a thing when they are utterly useless-I think the devs implemented this but forgot to give it its actual effect, since what it does is make Quem horny, but it doesn't affect game mechanics.

Lastly, the brothel. The brothel does nothing. I played the game a few months ago, so I don't know if you can go in or not, but there were no h-scenes regarding the brothel. Its like the game was labelled a h-game for its defeat scenes and not for the actual content.

Overall, I'd say everything was great except that the aphrodisiac potions and brothel function doesn't work. I'd not really care if this was one of those crappy rpg games, but the game itself was so polished that I felt I wanted to further develop this game myself.

Word of advice: I'd recommend trying out this game because the combat system is pretty cool. If not, just get a complete save file.

Best thing about the game is it ain't the shitty standard rpgm fighting fare and is entertaining. The dungeon being a chaotic clusterfuck of time and space make it real cool. Disappointing you can not have her wear rings or something enchanted to raise her defense

The only way to sell items that I have found is from a improperly titled "buy"

First and foremost this is a ERO game... and the ero part here is bad. I get more disappointed the more I play. Defeat only scenes it seems is legit fucking retarded. Something I really shouldnt bother to rant about but I can not ever stand no matter how perfect, no matter how contextually fitting and so on and so on the principle is so painfully stupid and counter intuitive. The great thing is the by winning you get the defeat scene so dont have to do the entire retarded tedious bullshit of lose then win to progress or fuckin whatever.

Overall I finished cause the story was actually decently interesting and I was hoping for it to be longer and with some more twists or something but it didnt have em but nevertheless it was alright

Overall
if you are looking for a game that has adult content (meaning sex is not the focus) then you may enjoy this! i highly recommend this one!

What i liked
This was a great experience, being real time instead of turn based was not only refreshing. but it was appreciated with how much battle there is in this.

the art style and character designs, voice acting and animations were nice

i enjoyed the side quests which while many were defeat some target the purpose behind it was not always the same. leading to some interesting moments.

i like how most of the sex scenes get treated as a dream (even if it doesn't make much sense)

what i disliked
after completing a side quest, there wasn't always a way to immediately go back to town. we have to keep going through pointless rooms until the exit point.

never able to punish some bad people.

because of side quests. the female leads moral structure isn't always consistent.

vise (your partner) sometimes is following you and you can talk to her. while this can be nice at times. it was also annoying occasionally as i would be trying to talk to another NPC or interact with something and it would talk to her instead. this also could lead to other annoying moments.

Probably one of the best games I've played so far from this website, with only a few complaints.

Excellent gameplay mechanics that felt like it had a balanced learning curve. Story wise it may be predictable, but that doesn't make it less enjoyable. Premise was intriguing too. Characters were well-voiced as well and the ero scenes were good.

The only few complaints were that this was too short. Some parts of it got repetitive for the completionist, and for those looking for nukige this isn't quite it.

That I spent long, uninterrupted hours just to complete the game speaks of my opinion to the game, though. Kudos to Nupuryu no sato and Kagura Games.

Came for the faps, stayed for the feels.

Well made to be fun with a fun mix of genres and well written to be funny and insightful, despite its adult nature.

I generally look for games that will provide quick access to sexual action, and this didn't disappoint, but the depth I found in post-nut clarity had me looking forward to what else the game had in store for me.

Great storyline, cute likable characters, and solid enough gameplay. There are times when I felt like this was more of a softcore game with sex scenes later added to give it stronger appeal, and there are elements of the map (i.e. - the brothel) they could have taken advantage of to give it a little more longevity or replayability, but even still an enjoyable experience. Loved how you don't have to lose to go be able to watch a scene.

GOR H-game but its not worth it. The reason I give 4 stars because of the plot and the gameplay.

The plot is really interesting, not really twist but rather expectable outcome. Has a total of 5 chapters, each own has their own scenario mini plot. But dont worry it wont connect and sensibly each other so the player can speedrun this game smoothly.

And dont worry about GOR scene. You just need to finished the chapter and you will get the said chapter all the scene involved.

The gameplay itself is one of the main charm from this game. You basically run all the map with right click as a dash. And its also use mouse to functionally combat and used it to hover the target on enemy. I have low spec pc and you still can play this game (but with poorly fps)

This game also let you upgrade and evolved your weapon. But the downsize of this system is you can only enchant 1 time after you done explorer the ruin. To make up for this enchant system, the game let you auto enchant went you pick up the same weapon. But to evolved the weapon, you need to upgrade it from blacksmith. And I think this fair, because after you finished the game you basically can directly go to the floor before boss room in last chapter. And then, you can just use portal back to the town. And the game flagged you already done a ruin dungeon and you can spam enchant.

Overall, I love this game. Please do support the developer if you find this game interesting. Theres nothing to lose. You can challenge yourself in roguemode and its really fun too.

EDIT: When I said GOR scenes, its almost like 90% of its H-content. So, I think its quite fair when it come to combat by using both hand to operate.

A delightful erotic game that has gameplay on par with normal games. Reviewing in order

Lewd stuff: The lewd times are basically all game over scenes, but the gallery auto unlocks for all enemies you fought after reaching the next level. The lewd scenes themselves are mostly nicely animated and have decent sound, although the specific lewd thrusting sound is reused often and mildly annoying. Overall nice for lewdness, but due to gameplay its much easier to just play this as a regular game and then view the lewd scenes after the levels.

Gameplay: It is fantastic. Movement is quick, fluid, and responsive. Weapons feel nice to use and are fun to collect and level, enemies are dangerous but fair, and bosses have interesting mechanics. This is a game I ended up playing for over 10 hours already because it is simply fun.

Art: As good as the gameplay. The game is mostly in a pixelated style but with a level of detail and fluidity not normally seen. Characters are gorgeous, enemies are distinct, and the environment is detailed but not overwhelming.

Ruins Seeker is a good game for gameplay or lewdness alone. Thankfully the creators decided to make it a great game by having both. The only negatives I have is some enemies don't have animations for lewdness and that I want more game. The worst part of Ruins Seeker is that I want more of it.

This is a decent game, but a bad H-game.

First of all, it requires both hands to operate, which is already a red flag that the developer doesn't expect anybody to masturbate while playing the game. Second, there's barely any sex, I've played for about 4 hours and the only sex scenes were 'monster defeat' ones and I had to specifically seek them out. And some of them aren't even shown on screen, you just get a text blurb in the style of 'and then they had lots of sex'.

It's obvious that the devs wanted this to be a regular game first and then they tacked on some porn scenes. The scenes themselves are nicely animated, but getting to them kills all the mood and the fact that you have to constantly reposition yourself from twohanded gameplay to onehanded sex scenes ruins the great potential of the art.

i play the game expecting to be another generic ecchi game but i was punched by the game and proven wrong, it got good game mechanic, replayability and a really compelling story and i found myself enjoying the game's story more than the h content itself