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

Now, lots of things have changed, quite literally. Honestly, the game deserves an extra star for artwork alone, but for me artwork is more of a wrapper than the candy itself, so I decided to rate the game for what it's become.

I have no idea what prompted the dev to remake the game from an immersive sim with battlefuck elements to a raw VN-esque game we've seen multitudes of times by now, but, hey, it's his game - I don't really care for his motivations, he's free to do with it whatever the hell he wants.

Now, would I want to play this? Aw hell no, I'd rather just take a look through an unlocked gallery or decrypt the images for a quick wank.

What I loved about this game that's gone missing post v15:

• Gradual corruption.
• An ability to "train" different bodyparts. Whenever possible in games like this, I like to make a slutty virgin hoe, and in this game this was possible.
• Enemies' actions and Saria's reactions described in various floating messages that made things feel more "dynamic".
• Speaking of dynamic things: battlefuck system to rival Karryn's Prison even in it's raw state.
• Exploration in a vast, foreign world with lore sprinkled all over it for the player to piece together.
• Character creation that was in a league of its own aesthetically.

Now we have none of that.

The dev is a pretty free-spirited person, which is something I can respect. It's important to do what you like to do and not what the others tell you to. However, he also possesses a couple of traits that I abhor to the point of borderline hatred: arrogance and lack of discipline. Refusing to listen to some of the more well-constructed critique and refusing to finishing what he's started initially - it's honestly not a good look nor a way to behave.

If you, dev, whatever your callsign is that I won't even care to remember or look up now, reading this: whatever you might yourself believe, in reality - you done and fucked everything up. That's all on you. At this point I'm pretty much speaking for majority of your former fanbase: none of us will want to "play" your "game" again, unfortunately. You might still have a chance to redeem yourself, but given your childish attitude in general - I wouldn't really count on that. Comebacks like NMS or CP2077 are very rare even on a smaller indie scale like this.

To summarize: the game that we've loved is gone, the art is still stellar, the dev is a dick with no hope for redemption.

I hope some dedicated fan will pick this project up and finish the job. With tools currently available to people now(AI image gen, for example), it's quite possible.

v0.16
"And so it was, that nothing is made to last forever."
Well, time makes fools of us all. I was hopeful last time I reviewed this that it was headed in the right direction. But v0.16 is literally an entirely different game. The gameplay is different, the story is different, the underlying systems are different, the vibes are different. Just about the only thing that remains is the RPGM engine.

I downloaded it to give it an honest shot, and truthfully, it is further from being a good game than the last version. Thus, moving my score from 3 to 2 stars.

The combat is boring and buggy. I think there's something going on with the menus/combat where the hidden clickable elements are still clickable. If you open the unclearly labeled "fetish" menu and then click down where the deck icon is meant to be, it opens the deck menu behind the fetish menu.

In general, it feels like the dev fell in love with Library of Ruina and made some approximation of it out of the assets they had available from this game. These kinds of reworks happen a lot in game development, but rarely in the public eye with people already paying you.

I don't think it's impossible for this to turn into a good game, but it solidly not a replacement for the game it was, or the game people wanted it to be. I also think that patrons should be wary going forward, because such a drastic change all at once means that the dev likely won't hesitate to do it again. Don't get too attached to a game that may never be.

Also, a small pet-peeve for English as a second language writers: punctuation like "!" or "?" goes right at the end of a sentence. There shouldn't be a space, it functions just like a comma or a period.

v0.11

Combat balanced has been improved, but much of what I said below is still true with the added problem: Lewd combat is pretty boring. It's possible to win with lewd techniques now, which is a huge plus, however, it does mean sitting through the same cut-ins over and over for way too many turns.

Also, not sure if this is a bug or not, but it seems that only one enemy is able to "finish" per turn. So you may be fighting 3 enemies with a lewd technique, and all 3 of them have filled their climax bar, but you'll have to survive 3 more turns to actually let them all finish.

Overall, headed in the right direction, but still pretty janky.

v0.9

This game has a lot of potential, but it's still a long way from what I would consider good. Obviously, I know this game is still in development, so this will all likely change, but I want anyone who is looking to play this the lewd way to know what to expect.

+ The world design and story (so far) is nice. Feels like a Souls game mixed with something like Kenshi.
+ The art is solid.
- The combat is very unbalanced. Standard combat is WAY too easy and lewd combat is WAY too hard.
- The loss "battles" are pointless and may as well just be static CGs because you cannot lose them, and you can't do anything besides wait for them to play out.

The lewd stuff is clearly inspired by Karryn's Prison, but it doesn't quite nail the pleasure, stamina, energy, willpower system. In Karryn's you spend willpower, energy, or stamina in a balancing act to do damage, buff yourself, restore other bars, or initiate lewd combat. Those bars typically recover on their own, but their max value is reduced over time as Karryn fatigues and orgasms. You lose when you run out of energy.

Saria Reclaimed's lewd combat is fundamentally flawed. You lose the fight when you run out of willpower, and as far as I could tell, there are no abilities to recover willpower in combat, it refills slowly each turn.

You know what else makes you lose willpower? Orgasms and most utility abilities. So even if you try to stop her from orgasming, you end up spending MORE willpower on reducing her pleasure than you would if you just let her orgasm. If you want to win a fight by giving a blowjob for example, you typically have to kill all but one enemy, get them to jerk off for a little bit while you let your willpower slowly recover, and then initiate the blowjob and hope that they finish before you orgasm yourself into a loss.
You can also very easily get yourself into a position where you're having an orgasm literally every turn, and the only way to stop it is to spend more willpower (aka kill yourself faster) to reduce your pleasure enough that it won't fill all the way next turn.

I wanted to be able to play this like Karryn's where you can fuck your way through all the combat, but normal combat is SO much easier and lewd combat is so broken that I switched back to killing enemies after grinding passives and lewd abilities for over an hour.

This game is amazing. I love the atmosphere, the skill tree, the stat tracking, exploration, fighting, and the clothing destruction. The dark skinned muscle girl protagonist is also really hot! I hope the game can have a "day-to-day" tempo, so that you as the player can "take the world in" and feel like you live in it.

This game requires you to lose to get scenes. This is problematic on its own, and made worse by the fact that when you get a defeat, the enemy kidnaps you and force you to do heavy backtracking. The scenes are also I think unsatisfying, the men kidnap you to a secluded dungeon to... jerk off on your face then leave?

She has a ton of spots of sensitivity, but she doesn't actually need to be touched there, if an enemy jerks off while looking at her sensitive spot, she just orgasms? Also, enemies will literally not care if you are killing them, they will keep just jacking it. There's also this annoying cut-in every time the enemy looks at you, the game in general is just sluggish and doesn't make sense.

The art is funny in that it has the same strengths and weaknesses as my own art. The detailing and expressions are good, the proportions and perspective aren't. So I will say it is good art. One thing that annoys me is the art is reused in ways that break immersion, for instance if you are getting ass grabbed by a green monster, the hands grabbing you are generic white guy hands. I understand small budget games they need to be economical, but all I'm asking is that you recolor the hands green, I think that's a reasonable expectation.

I've been pretty harsh on this game, but let's talk about positives. The atmosphere, world-building, and sprite-work is all very top tier. It's very rare an H-game gets me invested into the lore, but this is an exception. The main character is well-designed and voice acted. Having a side-scroller type world is a refreshing idea for this sphere.

I'm giving it a 3 star rating for now (v0.8), but this game has high potential and one I will replay when it gets future updates.

+Sexy MC
+Good art all around
-Buggy as it can possibly get
-Time consuming, even the most basic features waste precious time, specially sex, enemies take to long to cum
-Combat is very meh, you never fell powerful
-Grindy as hell, even with cheats encounters will take minutes
-Getting the PORN in this PORN game is absolutely tedious

Grab a save, turn on the cheats and fap for a few minutes until you realize it's not worth it

Game is well made overall, high quality art, beautiful interface, nice gameplay and interesting mechanics. The game is still not complete and it has a lot of potential. I am sure it will be one of the best games around when it is complete.

3/5 if you don't mind a little grinding . 2/5 if you despise it.

INTRO
I've played KP, so I'm guessing the intro has something to do with status alinement.

GAMEPLAY
Sit down and pull that sword out because you are going to be grinding for a bit early game. So, this game is very combat focus, but its skill tree cost is asking for a lot. Standard turn base combat that leaves me wanting more from it.

MAP
The map isn't terrible but it takes getting use to. Ramps can be hard to identify sometimes because they blend in with the background. You will find yourself going, "can I climb this" as you run up a cliff's drop off. It's barely worth searching for goodies, since most of the items you get aren't worth a damn. I know that I'm in a desert wasteland but these items make me want to skip exploring.

ART AND ANIMATION
Art is very good. Would be nice if there were more poses especially when an enemy disarm you. Don't know about H Scenes but from what I see they are just still images. Some animation would greatly raise this game score.

COMBAT
It's going to be fun for about 30mins and then it's going to be a snooze fest until you unlock some skills way down the line. The amount of stamina you recover is so bad that you will find yourself wasting so many turns recovering than actually fighting, especially with multiple enemies. Making this cost a turn makes fights drag on more than they need to be. No options to fight unarmed so you just have to tank the next blows until you get your weapon back, though there might be a skill that could solve that but that just lead me to the question of why just have that already unlocked and not hidden behind a skill. Getting knocked on your oatmeal of a dump truck due to an enemy attack or running out of stamina, is the biggest middle finger this game will give to you.

TLDFR:
PROS
Good art
Original looking sprites
High potential to be a fun game and not just some fap fuel.
Story has some eldritch horror feeling.
CONS
Leveling up is terrible. You don't even feel strong, you just suck less and that shouldn't be a feeling.
Heavy grinding
Lack of animation variety
Exploring for goodies doesn't seem worth it
Enemies can scale really high
Avoid group fights if you aren't over lvled (time to exp rate isn't worth it)

good art held back by a terribly slow game. Everything takes ages to do. Every single encounter drags forever and the corruption takes an eternity to kick in. even the most mundane encounter can take a few minutes since there is a lot of downtime between animations

Being a Karryn's Prison fan I have high hopes for this game. Seeing the artwork and constant updates, I feel like that the dev is talented and hard working. I played this game for the 1st time after waiting many months, as I wanted to try it after decent amount of content was added. The art is amazing, however where the game lacks is the mechanics. Being a new game, the lack of content is understandable and I have no doubt that will be added later, however the corruption mechanics and defeat scenes are far from desirable. When I first played KP, I played non stop for 12 hours as I was hooked. Here I found myself bored after 2 hours or so. But I still rate the talent and hard work of the dev highly and will give it 4 stars purely based on what I've seen so far. Good luck

Honestly, fantastic game. Think Karyn's prison but as a 2d sidescroller. The only issue I have is that the enemies level up with Saria, which makes for some wonky encounters if you try to grind for xp. Your stamina goes up but your mental and willpower stay the same, and if you have a specific body at high corruption, you can end up instantly losing without triggering any of the good cg's associated with it.

I'll continue watching with great interest to see how the development plays out.

The game is good, I already played it and I think it's great, I hope I can play it completely, I like the drawing style and the female character is sexy. (It would be great if there were H-scenes with some predetermined monsters.) I'll just wait and see how development progresses.

0.6.1

Pros:
+The art style is amazing
+Really like the combat, but the skill tree is a little confusing
+I Like the VA
+The story seems interesting
+Has Autosave so you don't have to worry if the game crashes
Cons:
+You have to grind a lot to level up the corruption
+It has some bugs that I hope will be solved

A really good game overall, if it continues at this rate it will be excellent when its finished


(Sorry if I made grammatical mistakes, I'm still learning English)

Excellent potential, similar to Karryn's Prison which is an excellent game.

This game is pretty early in development but has so much potential. Is definitely one on my watchlist and it should be on yours as well.

Stumbling out from the alleys once more, I spot yet another jewel swirling through the gutters, and upon inspection, I find it rather unrefined, unpolished, and waiting for a future to make it's unassorted carbon formulate into something beautiful. Something that can gleam.

Does this gleam?

Well, sometimes yes, sometimes...well I wouldn't say no, more so just spotting various sized cracks needing to be polished off. However, before I delve any deeper, the biases on my side is that I mainly played through this on it's built in cheat engine, and even then it was a slog. And with that slog, it reminds me of something very similar that'll be mentioned later on in this review, which is both the bane and beauty of this game.

And as always, I'll try and be as honest as I can with what comes.

So what is this game? Mainly, it's a sidescrolling RPG with a busty, ab-olicious beauty leading the helm. You're basically a knight, you've been sent into some accursed wasteland where you meet your usual sand bandits, sand troglodytes, sand dogs, sand trolls and other sandy characters. Through all of this, you blip through your standard battle menu that every RPGM game pretty much sports and slowly succumb to brain death by pressing the attack button ad infinitum while occasionally healing yourself for hours on end. That's basically the core element of this game that'll be the hour long fests it sports.

Now the above sounds like a chore right? Well it is, but I find that there's something magical brewing within this grindfest. If, very big if that is, it's heading in the direction I think it's going. For one, this game alone reminds me of Earthbounds weirdness in terms of atmosphere and tone, which at times pairs with the scifi mystique of Metroid in some areas, while also sporting a visual style alluding to Dark Souls on grit-ifying scenery and characters. That alone makes me feel as though this game has a unique story and approach to it's own style it wants to sport sans the lewd. Of course that's all in it's early stages of becoming something alone without porn, though, the gameplay is a far cry from carrying that. At the moment.

I mention the above, as it also reminds me of a similar title on the lewd. It basically is almost emulating Karryn's Prison down to a T in terms of it's access to the lewd. It really feels like two different games slamming into each other at times, but they blend together well once you start to see it. Considering too that the same argument can be made about Karryn's Prison, since at a glance it's a slogfest roguelite that barely features sex in the beginning with Karryn fighting you every step of the way, but grind enough and your Karryn can become the woman of your lewd infested dreams.

Same feel carries on for this, in which Saria at first is a Knight that doesn't want anything to do with sex, but raise those similar looking stats and bars that KP features and eventually she'll start doing many actions that go against her initial hesitance (lacking in art currently and unfortunately). It very much takes inspiration from that in trying to emulate it's systems in terms of attaining titles and raising sensitivity bars that then start to affect the various lewd stats of Saria herself.

But, unfortunately, to get to that point I feel is far more of a grindfest than KP. In KP, there's titles out the ass that feel like bread crumbs towards your eventual slooty goals. You feel on track if you're going on that path, as trying to corrupt Karryn led to a whole new dimension of gameplay that switched up your entire approach in playing it. Yet here it mainly feels like a brick wall, where you're always stuck trying to feel for a crumb yet only getting the cold touch of yet another defeat screen. Not a game over, it's like being "defeated" in Karryn but not as modular yet with it's participants, and very sloggy after awhile. And currently there's really nothing pushing you or rewarding you down that route save for horny and cg.

I feel like once that system gets going with more cut in art, titles and a better grind progression then it'll be damn near as good as it's spiritual predecessor. Alongside it needing to implement a proper lewd system in pushing the player to utilize sex as a viable alternative to combat (which it currently lacks, lose and you get said defeat scene(s) that you can't skip unfortunately). I will say however as a fair warning from me, that said system is already somewhat in place with it's bones showing in raising corruption meters for Saria's various sensitivity's all the way to 100%, but the grind to get there is damn near unfeasible and really lacks the meat and seasoning for it to be entirely enjoyable.

Overall I do see this game shaping up into something great if the dev keeps on it, but at it's current state I can't recommend people to play it as is. As unless you're prepared to grind for hours only for small cut in scenes reminiscent of KP and a handful of proper CG scenes, then sure jump in, but otherwise wait until it gets much more refined then delve in. Yet as said, I think this game is on the right track and I can't wait for more. 4/5!

Easily one of the best games of it's kind I've ever played. Even regular gameplay is enough to cum, and the CGs take it to the next level. Voice work is great, dialogue is stellar, and the slow but sure corruption of her chastity even if you try to play perfectly is great. I like making an effort to win the battles and still being corrupted bit by bit - instead of purposely losing battles just to see the scenes.

[v0.17] (Itch IO ver.)

Not balanced at all, especially not fun for getting RNG one-shot with no counter-play.

1. Enemy can start and based on your last turns final action (or at combat start), you are given a stance, with potential 1/2x or 2x incoming damage multiplier.
2. Get one-shot by their high number starting action without any counter-play.

If there's some way around it, I haven't found it, if there's some use of replaying combat, haven't been interested enough to find it due to same-y and at times unfair combat. But hey, losing (never fun) makes (some) progress!

The other complaints are:

• Weird UI and seemingly unfinished/unexplained camp and progress mechanics
• Incoming and Outgoing damage multipliers only make sense with VERY low numbers, not enemies' most of my health size.
• Damage types and Stances not making sense for multipliers, like vulnerable to self, the others cycled (example below).
• Damage types and Stances not making sense on cards, like dealing one type and taking a different stat.

I hope the remake becomes incorporates the lost content and is less strict about its [VN ] category. The progress map shows upcoming adjustments, so it's not entirely hopeless.

(though the game in total had only about 2 'balanced' versions of not being too easy or too difficult)

Bonus:
Damages multipliers for stances by my understanding

This is a very great game and has amazing potential.
It is still being built from the basics since every update changes the menus.
It is okay though
The game is fun and like Karyyon's prison, can't spell it right but don't care.
It is making good progress and has good content.
Anyways very great game, have a lovely time and I wish you well with luck~!

Its missing some art at the moment and is very grindy, but overwhelming potential and is currently in a half-decent demo state despite being so early in development. Bugs are fixed consistently and art is constantly added, and the grindy-ness will be more balanced out by the length of the full release

Game is really really boring in its current iteration. Art is pretty good but that is the only merit it has going for it. The only way to get certain scenes is to get a bar up to 100 on its associated area. Want a blowjob scene or titjob scene? Get the bar up to 100 for mouth or tits. Its painfully slow as is to do this and you basically just have to tank hits and pray to unlock scenes. Also if you lose you can just get in this "endless" loop of losing because your willpower doesn't regenerate. Idk art is good but isn't enough to save just how terrible the gameplay feels. Not a fan of "losing to see porn" games in general but gave it a chance based on the art and the off chance the gameplay was fun. Wasn't worth the time or effort.

really good animations and drawing style, played for a good 30 min exploring everything and i really liked the content even for this state of the game, lots of potential on this one, hope it keeps updating