VN - RPGM - Onhold - Saria Reclaimed [v0.17] [Velminth]

Tried out 0.15.2, it was okay. I REALLY like the artwork, but the gameplay was sluggish. I'd give that one a 2.5/5 with the short amount of time I invested into it.

Then I tried 0.16... what the fuck happened? Why is it a visual novel now? Why is the combat watered down? This is rough. 1/5 easily.

I'd recommend going to the itch.io page and downloading the "Legacy 0.15" version. v0.16 is trash, straight up. A DAMN SHAME since this game has one of the most unique character designs I've ever seen in an h-game (ignoring bad character designs, of course).

Been here since 0,1.
Remaking the game from scratch could've been ok, but it's a fucking disaster right now.
I was here when it was a straight rpg, and liked it, I was here when the card battling was implemented, and while there was a curve, it was still good.
Now?
It's a barely comprehensible mess.
Everything was working fine on the player end, I have no clue why Velminth decided to change things so drastically.
It's basically a game of chance if you can play the game now, the balancing that was decent before hand is completey gone in favor of total randomness and the story that was there before has been completely removed and replaced with something I ddin't care to read the first go through because I thought it would've been the same story as the original, which seemed to be post apocalyptic dark fantasy, which was setting up for an absolutely awesome story, to the point it could've done away with the sex entirely and I would've played it.
Now the story is a near incomprehensible mess.
Previously you could gain a pretty good understanding of the world through talking with characters and quests.
Now it's a visual novel.
If the gameplay was still enjoyable, which might end up fixed, I'd play it every update, but right now, it needs a massive balancing patch, because losing a fight on the first turn shouldn't be a 1 in 3 chance in the second and fourth fights.
Couldn't even get past the fourth one.
If you must play it, play the "Legacy" version until further notice.

Just no. Read the thread and you'll understand. Dev is outrageous and poorly decisions, remade the entire game from scratch, abandoned it and called it "Legacy version", bans people on discord who criticise, blocks comments on itch.io and apparently bad mouths even his supporters.

0.16


MOST OF RECENT 1/5 REVIEWS SHOULD BE REMOVED

they should review the current patch not their disappointment from the previous versions.

having said that, the game is still bad. 1-2 bugs, i think "Mood" stat is not implemented. some erotic choice scenes are not implemented and:

H-SCENE: THERE IS NO ANIMATION. only a couple of still pictures on defeat. no consequence of defeat. you can retry again with same dialogue. during fights they do some ero-molest attacks to decrease your willpower, and if it reaches 0 you lose. (same scene if you lose by willpower or by HP)

it is a bad game currently, but imo in time this could be a really good game because it has all the necessary components: good art and good base for corruption... but this patch should be treated as a 0.01 demo version. for some reason dev completely nuked it by releasing this changed version with such a halfassed way.

there are 5 fights, then it's game over. you can finish it in 20min even by getting constantly oneshotted by last enemy.

the story makes nearly no sense either. your team of samurai got LOST, but probably unhurt, so you have to retrieve them like they are children because apparently these samurai cannot find their home without you. it's crazy.

the writing is annoying. it's really "high quality", too much even, yet the dialogue/monologue/story is garbage. so the contrast is huge between skill of writing and the game itself. it's like dev hired an actual professional high quality writer to assist his low quality story.

well all in all with too many mistakes and being a short game it still doesn't deserve a high rating as of right now but i will change my vote if it changes in later patches, i gave it +1 for potential, i would have rated it 2/5 cuz this current patch is not recommendable to play but the art and basics are there so imo for potential 3/5 is acceptable as a "first release"

Ah yes, let's take an amazing game and make it absolute doodoo. Go back to what worked. I don't care what your excuse is. You had gold. Something better than Karryn's Prison. And now? Trash.

I fucking loved this game through and through and would play these demos for hours. They were awesome. Even the changes like the card system were okay with me. But this sudden VN style or whatever you would call it, blows. This actually sucks. And there's this chapter/level format which sucks you right out of the experience.

Wind back. Make shit right. This ain't it.

Patreon supporters should get what they paid for. I had high hopes for this game , rarely we had any cool headed tomboy warriors for a corruption ero game though the card RNG system is absolute garbage, the open world itself made the game unique, it makes your decision more immersive with the corruption aspect, like whoring as a massager and those defaming posters of her beside the city walls. Unfortunately Velmith has other plans he thought it was a great idea to literally swap this game's entire genre into a generic ass visual novel. v0.16 is a direct down grade from previous versions of this game, this update might aswell be an another game instead of an update. As for my final words, I'm hoping that Velmith would change his mind an undo the mess he brought upon himself, if not condolence to Saria Reclaimed the infamous tomboy ero game.

Come closer and let me tell you a story about promising beginnings, rough progressions and painful realizations at the end.

This game came out swinging, a lot of us saw it as contender for the next Karryn's Prison. It had an interesting vibe (kinda Souls like), battle fuck and great drawings. Yes, the UI sucked and it was completely unbalanced, but nothing that couldn't be fixed/smoothed out over time.

Then came the changes to a card battler and everyone was scratching their heads over that decision. But most of us were still cautiously optimistic. Maybe it just needed more time.

And after a long wait of about 6 months it turned into a crappy VN without any battle fuck. And the dev's promise to never return to the roots, that had us hooked and hopeful at the beginning.

So to keep anyone from this huge disappointment, I have to rate it not only for what it is (which isn't much to begin with), but also for the loss of what could have been.

It's now some kind of boring ass one way novel with options like suck dick or don't suck dick with extra ( not many in fact) steps...
You lose the exploration part for a choose chapter 1 with 5 subscene...
At least we got the fast button to speed up the story we see 10 times because we lost a fight.

Dev is allowed to change his game sure, but at almost two years of development I can't feel that the original project became to overwhelming for the dev and he has now simplified the project to meet their own needs.

May look at this later on down the line but for now yeah it's a shell of its former self.

What used to be a promising battle-fuck RPG is now a VN with a card game attached to it, with explicit mention from the Dev that battle-fuck would not be re-added to the game. Could a VN card game work out? Sure. Is it what got many of us interested in this particular game? Not at all.

Pretty much every aspect of the game that I enjoyed has been gutted, and while I do enjoy card games, I'm not looking to play a porn game with ordinary card combat followed by just a CG viewer. At that point, I'll just look up the CGs online and play a non-porn, better card game like Slay the Spire instead.

0.1-0.15 the game was a sidescrolling RPG with side content, explorable areas, repeatable encounters, and a progressive corruption system. This version went through two major iterations: a turn-based move selection combat model up to 0.14 that transitioned to a randomized card-based deckbuilder game. This was going to have "core tenets" where you effectively chose an illustrated job that affected your in-combat stats.

As of 0.16 the game has gone through another major revision to a card-based visual novel, eliminating much of the content and dramatically altering progression to a series of missions. An absolute mountain of art and content was completely discarded for this new direction, and it might get really interesting in the future.

The developer is interesting. On the one hand, he is a full-stack artist-developer with an incredible work ethic and reliable content-release schedule. On the other hand, the changes in direction have been accelerating since the latter half of 2023 and he's become increasingly unhinged in response to criticism over the clear lack of direction the game has shown.

0.1-0.15 was very much my thing. 0.16 is not, at all. If you like card-based visual novel combat H-games 0.16 might really check your boxes. What you're seeing in this comment section is the whiplash between the very different versions of the game, the content removal, and the dev's extremely aggressive attitude toward criticism.

The game has been drastically changed/reworked from the original project and in doing so lost many of the systems I enjoyed. Now the amazing art solely carries the game. The original mechanics worked well with the story and world-building, and while the story remains mostly intact I personally don't feel that the new mechanics fit or feel as immersive as before. However the main reason I rate the game so low is not just the game itself but the attitude of the developer and their decision making. I cannot recommend supporting Velminth financially unless you are okay with them completely reworking a game you like from scratch. I think it is a betrayal of trust and the developer straight up says that financial support doesn't influence their decisions which can be a good thing but more of a bad thing. Good because they won't let some paypig straight up dictate how the game should be made but bad because they will do whatever they want with your money and what you like ultimately doesn't matter in the end. The project you start supporting may not end up being the same thing as what you ultimately get.

I really do respect the art and the vision, but good art ≠ good person. And at the end of the day I prefer to support someone who shows passion and good will to their community, and willing to make logical decisions and compromises without completely dividing the community because I feel if you've made a decision that does completely divide the community and has many people vocal with valid criticism then you have done something wrong.

The game used to be a RPG card battling game, now it got remade to be a VN card game. Obviously the gameplay is now lacking (ie: you can't explore areas/all the spritework is now gone), tons of missing scenes, and none of the corruption mechanics are going to make sense with this new change. There are no plans to revert this change and contempt for anyone who doesn't like it, no stability, so any update could completely rework the game into a different genre, So it's no longer the game I liked.

Yes, this game is red flagged!

In the version before v0.13 Everything went well, the game was fun and had potential.
v0.14 Messy combat system for card battles. Nobody really liked it and the reviews dropped to 3 stars. I was never a fan of this card combat system, I played it for the sake of it. because the greater atrocity had not yet been done, it had not removed the role-playing element from the game!

0.16 onwards has now become card battle vn game! What is the purpose and meaning of scrolling the image? What is it about direction? I don't understand.
There are no animations, no sprites, no open world, nothing. Just a piece of static crap. Just go to the gallery and watch all the CG instead of scrolling and playing a mediocre card game.

It's really sad to see how this game has become a development hell with red flags. Instead of focusing on releasing more content, the dev kept messing around with the game's rework, leading to little and little content in the game so far!

Anyway, I'll keep it on my list of games but I currently don't feel like playing it, we'll see how long this game holds up before it's abandoned!

Dev took the game part of the game out.

Early versions were great and shaping up to be similar to Karryn's Prison which is my all time favourite battlefuck on this site.

Card update came, I didn't find it terrible. I was fairly indifferent to it.

But now it's just so over.

The game has turned into a regular viewing of hentai pictures. The exploration of the world has been removed. The system of corruption has been removed. Interesting events like massage, respectively, are also removed along with the open world. Now it's an average Ren'Py game.

Changed my review from scratch

This game has felt the test of time like a carton of milk left open on the kitchen counter. Turn back and seek solace elsewhere; you won't recognize the game anymore.

A shame.

On the surface, you sought a good H-rated game, which contains not only a stuff to jack-off, but also a quite of interesting gameplay. You learned to twist the lies of VN-creators and furries, believing yourself master of the system. But the Developer said, "NO! You WILL play another shitty-ass VN and you WILL be happy."

Might need to recreate the thread or something, always weird when this happens since we're effectively rating a different game, I guess?

Was waiting to review until the old version of the game juiced up some, but there went that.

Uh, new game is basically a VN. Not a very well-designed or written one, but the art was what carried the previous game anyway (as well as the quite enjoyable setting).

The current state of the game is that it's a buggy mess with not much content, so I can't recommend it to anyone. It's basically a proof of concept, not even a tech demo.

I am certain it will improve over time, but I can only judge what is there, and not only is there a subpar amount of content, what is there isn't all that great a showcase for the future.

I still hold out hope for the narrative/setting (i.e. environmental storytelling), so who knows, it's possible this will get iterations and/or rewrites.

Never before have I felt so dejected by a project.
What started as what I thought was a neat mishmash of stuff from different games, like Kenshi, some of the LISA games, Karryn's Prison; put into a system and style that both were onto something pretty amazing. Update by update, this game only got better, there were bumps and the sort on the road sure, but that's just what happens with any game system. Not to mention with time, we not only got pretty nice (even if over-done at times) voice acting for the titular protagnist, but really great cut-in art and what not too. Say what you want about the dev, but I think their art is top-notch.

Then... Came the out-of-nowhere card builder combat rework.
All I could think of at the time is... "Why"?
And even now in retrospect, I'm stuck on the same question. It just made no sense. Was it supposed to be hopping on a bandwagon in the same way that everyone and their dog started making Battle Royales? Because that's what it felt like.

Despite this, I was staying mostly optimistic and I figured maybe with some fine-tuning it could probably have been as good as the Karryn-ish system but just different, but now it's... An entirely different beast and, yeah. That didn't happen, it never got the chance to.

While I don't feel as saddened given that I never contributed to this project monetarily, which yeah, the developer owes me nothing and I fully admit that. But, holy- I am so glad I didn't throw any money at this project because it's changed so much I wouldn't be getting what I wanted to support in the first place.

I suppose if there's anything to learn from what happened with Saria Reclaimed, it's that ought to go about these sort of games like does with AAA games and Early Access indie titles these days, which is to observe from afar if you can. Lest you get invested and end up disappointed with what the project morphs into.