VN - Ren'Py - Secrets of Sorcery [v0.23.0 Public] [Habardgames]

Unexpected this game to be this good!
Had it in my "play later" list for a long while, thinking it would be something generic, and it actually played in my favor since there is so much content now.
Enjoyed the ride for a whole week forgeting about everything else, since this one sucked me in with it's story and characters. Bonus points for no cringe moments and a ton of wholesome ones. Deserves much more attention than it currently has, I guess it's a curse of all latecomers on koikatsu...

Getting so tierd of MCs you just cant relate with, why do so many makes MCs with a mindset of a 12 year olds, obsessed with tits and cant stop thinking about seeing people nude, its just so cringy.....its like the age demographics is for the 8-12 year olds and not for 18+.

What make game really shitty is that it has a relationship system in place which is normaly a good thing but this one does nothing and means nothing, you cant lose points what so ever, you just gain points every time you are with someone, be it by choice or forced you just gain points constantly.

And yes this also means that every girls will be forced on you even if you hate them since there is 0 choices other then who to go visit, and you cant say no to anyone either even though thats what it felt like in the start where you could say dont think about your mother like that, but those choices does nothing since you gain points no matter what you pick or what you do, so its pretty much a 100% pointless system.

So its yet another pointless and mindless fuckfest game like so many others, this one is just very very slow on top of that, just clicking around reading the same dialogs over and over untill you get enough points to progress or find the right thing to click at just the right time....
Its really just a 100% kinetic and should have had the tag for that to warn people about 0 choices.

Think of it as a really shitty and boring sandbox where you have to click a text to go somewhere without have a single clue when or why since there are no hint system, and even though there is a ton of event with each character dont expect it to be anything at all, most are just you sitting and talking with someone, not something i would call an event at all.
You can try your luck with the wiki link thing but that dosent show characters events and you cant progress main untill character events are done to so yeah....

As for the story its very vanilla, weird, boring theres just nothing to make game fun, no relationship build-up, no choices, story is bland, no animations, its just all meh.

My advice is to skip this one, its just not playable unless you love spending a few hours mindlessly clicking texts and hope you get lucky to find something that will progress, i went to day 200+ and barely made a dent got to tierd of clicking shit so gave up, maybe if game got a hint system to tell you what to do next it could become playable but right now its just not.

Girls are pretty bland, no animations, standard background music.

Story: 4/5

Story of this game is pretty decent for what it is. Each character has a depth to them and each one goes through some personal shit. The universe is pretty generic (MC finds out he has magic and magicians have to live in secrecy), but the worldbuilding usually makes sense considering the setting. The pacing is not rushed at all and if you're interested in the story, you're not overhelmed.

Characters: 3/5

Nothing too interesting here. Even though each character has depth and some background story, they feel like they don't belong in this world (Hana and Sumi are exceptions.) Taking into account the supposed tough and ruthless upbringing of the magical families, the characters are obnoxiously nice. We're told how the magical world is cruel, but most of the magical characters are total opposite of that. This makes no sense. Non magical girls are completely generic archetypes of nice anime people.

MC: 1.5/5

Yuuki Rito form To Love-Ru. Overprotective ultra kind pervert. Stumbles himself into a harem of girls who love him for no reason at all.

Branching: Non existent, there are no paths in this game, you're essentialy forced to get through all the content. There might be rarely a choice in an event here and there, but it affects only the said scene, so no rating here.

Gameplay: 2/5

I'm really generous in this rating. The two points I gave are secured in their entirety by the fact that I haven't encoutered any bugs so far. Other than that, this might be one of the worst progression systems I've encountered. To unlock events, you essentialy need to mindlessly click random character locations and pray to god something happens. There is no indication of what you should do besides the wiki, which is really not the way to do things. Wiki is a nice bonus to have, not a mechanic that should be necessary to utilize in order to sensibly progress.

Sex scenes: 2.5/5

Not giving minus points for lack of animations. You either have animations or frequent updates, this game has the latter. I also give bonus points for the fact that his game is not filled with characters ready to go lewd with the MC as soon as they see him (it has only one, which is too generous considering the MC). Other that that, it goes super vanila. You might think there must be different kind of flavours explored considering the number of girls, but you would think wrong. I'm a femdom player, the teacher Sumi is hinted to be a femdom character, but you get none of that really. Other than that, you get vanilla content with vanilla girls with a few variations of promiscuity.

Overall: 3/5

Too much senselss clicking on random location for a few lines of dialogue, characters with somewhat flashed out personal stories, MC that would fit only in a hardocre femdom setting where he gets absolutely shit on or the most generic and unoffensive Shonen jump harem manga to be hated by the reader. Pack all this into a school setting inside a generic world with decent lore building.

Overall the game is pretty good with likeable characters, story and events.

The only thing that really drags it down is it's gameplay since at the moment of v0.15.5 there is no explanation at all in the game how to play the game and how it works is that you get to choose between 2-6 different options to interact with one or more character. Doing so will start an event with them but to progress and see new events you have to most often first repeat the same event X times but you must also have seen X events before the next event unlocks.

Which means that for instance to unlock the next event for X character you have to see her event 5 times but you must also see the event of characters Z+Y+A but to be able to see the event of character A you need to have first progressed and seen two events with character B. However in game there is no explanation of this or who you have to see to actually progress the game so instead your stuck with having to randomly pick events and play them over and over again in hope of triggering a new event and then once the new event is triggered you have to again just randomly pick events to trigger the next one and so on.

You can bypass this randomness by using the wiki to search for what to do next but it's not really good gameplay if your forced to play the game while using a wiki to not spend 10 hours completeing a game that has 1 hour of content.

A work around to this would be to either a) streamline the game so the events just plays out one after the other or b) simply include some kind of guide that points at who to interact with next instead of having to go through 12 characters at random each time a new event is triggered.

In short this is a pretty good game that is completely dragged down by having a gameplay that would be okey if at least something in the game explained how it worked and pointed at where the next event was instead of forcing the player to either guess randomly or check the wiki.

V0.15.0

A really good game with a lot of unique characters and a gripping story.
There are a lot of good points about this game, but a few places where the game lacks seriously.

The best thing about the game is the story and the plethora of unique and good characters. The amount of content till now is enormous and good.

But the game seriously lacks in the sandbox aspect, the events are soft locked and depend on other events, the game is completely unplayable without the wiki. The amount of H scenes is very less, and not even 5-6 characters have such scenes, hope in future the content will be more.

But overlooking the extremely complex sandbox and meagre amount of H scenes it's a really good story and everyone who likes a good story with good characters should give it a try.

This game genuinely surprised me with how engaged I became over the course of playing it. I was originally skeptical with some of the scenes, the spelling, and the somewhat generic entry plot, the characters became more endearing and story more interesting as I became more invested. It isn't without flaws, but there's a lot of untapped potential here I think.

Pros

• Interesting and diverse cast. Characters gain more depth than I thought as you progress
• Story becomes a bit more involved, and characters seem to crossover into each other's stories often, making it feel dynamic
• Has a wiki, which is very helpful when you're stuck
• Some good ecchi teasing and takes a while to get to the sexy payoffs, which id how I prefer it. I like the teasing

Cons

• No animations
• Some sex scenes have very unflattering angles, specifically Sumi's
• Really needs a proof read. Some random capitalizations, sentences missing words, typos, etc. Not horrendous, but noticeable
• Mom progression both moves too fast and too slow at the same time. Quickly acknowledges the attraction to MC but it's a while until things really get going

I kind of like the characters in this game, and the premise seemed promising at the start, but I'm getting really tired of the basic game mechanic--You can see that there are a certain number of events left in this update for a certain character, but no particular indication of how many repeated interactions you have to go through with each character in order to trigger another event. The other thing I find frustrating is that the plot progress is glacial. I get a feeling it's going to take many more updates to make any significant progress in the story. I'm frankly getting tired of the game and I may not stick with it for much longer.

English: 8
User Interface: 4
User Experience: 3
Art: 5
Dialogue: 7
Story: 4
Opinion: 3
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Avg: 4.86/10

I wanna start this with a question. Does this sound familiar?

"MC suddenly has to go to the only school location in the Koikatsu catalogue, usually 90% females, for some contrived, semi-mystical reason. The game has a default Renpy UI using ugly default menus to travel from location to location for the three time periods of each day. You get one story interaction, then repeat the same canned scene of MC interacting with the love interest but no actual dialogue or personability. Just something like "We hung out and she said crazy stuff, you really shoulda been there." But you could have been, the writer didn't want to do their job. You repeat these same scenes over and over until you get a unique scene containing no more than 10 lines of ACTUAL story exposition, then have to fall back into the aforementioned boring gameplay loop. The story also lies and says it's a slow burn and focuses on the story, but between every line MC ogles or lusts after any and all women he meets in his mind. It tries to give wholesome vibes but all the love interests end up looking so young you can't help but feel like they're disgustingly underage. All the while, you never get to the actual point because this is a sandbox. A bunch of completely disconnected events that are supposed to be building to something. But since the game is a source of income, stringing the story along forever is in the best interests of the creators so the real conclusion is you'll never get to the point."

Obviously, that last little bit is my opinion based on experience. So far the sample size of VNs like this all do this so I have low expectations. But anyway, that sounds like at least 5 of the other KK VNs on this site, and frankly, none of them are captivating. At least to me. The synopsis is MC is sick (even though it's never really shown) and it's because he has magic and the government and Arcane Council will hunt down anyone who has any. So he's enrolled in an academy with a teacher that will help him control his powers. As of this moment, I haven't learned much more than that, I haven't clicked enough locations to see any more story bites yet. The council is just a looming evil that isn't more than some foreboding thought as opposed to this oppressive force exacting their will on everything. No matter how much the three characters that directly interact with them say they are. So all you get until the story expands are the boring slice of life nothings that I talked about. I'm not asking for explosive action or constant drama, but more than "Hey how're you?" "Oh, good" "That's great" then MC thinks "God she's hot" ad nauseum.

And in the description it boasts great characters, but here they are:

Azumi, adoptive mother that doesn't want to lose her son but sUdDeNlY tHeY'rE aTtRaCteD tO eAcH oThEr
Ina, a budding private investigator that's eventually uncovering the truth of the council
Hisaaki, good guy friend with a missing gf
Kimiko, sporty girl with some mild personal trauma that makes her want to excel at all things physical
Akira, rich kid caught up in family drama
Nari, innocent nice girl that actually isn't a harem facilitating cuckquean I'm shocked (but we'll see)
Sumi, standoffish teacher that doesn't trust people anymore, so much so she feels comically out of place
Midori, innocent weeb artist with middle schooler syndrome and social anxiety
Hana, smart bookworm daughter of a council member supposedly trying to change things from within
Takane, playful rocker girl that's bi and enables the "God she's so hot" type dialog
Asuka, big tiddy onee san without the ara ara
Kat(cat), A cat that was turned into a person to add a neko tag and has the intelligence of an animal so it feels gross to interact in any sexual pretense with someone so mentally challenged

The whole time this story trudges along, MC acts like it's still his second day in town. Meanwhile its been FIVE MONTHS (in my playthrough so far) and acts like he's fresh faced and I don't get it. While I understand this is some elite school with rich families (that somehow they smuggled TWO random plebs into) it isn't communicated well being portrayed by Koikatsu models that look like happy anime girls or the spanish worm aliens from men in black if they're males. All in bright teletubby technicolor. I'm sure there's a semi-decent story here somewhere deep down, but the big issue is the sandbox. It's completely unnecessary and actually hurts the story because by the time you've actually done the arbitrary requirements for the next event, it's been so long since the last even you've probably forgotten about what the hell is going on. I'm not sure if I'm keeping this line, but I don't even think I'll finish this one to current end of content before calling it quits. The other issue is that MC does nothing. He wants everyone to be "nice" and be friends. While every other character does everything all MC ever does is bridge the interpersonal gap between two people that sit a desks width apart. And he does it with the "Why don't you just talk to them?" approach.

Now on with the "romance." What's shown makes no sense, and what the writer would have you believe is slow burn is really "you haven't wasted enough of your time clicking the menu option to see this character, to romance this character yet." All the while MC is still trying to get with all the girls. Sleeping with Takane while saying he loves Nari but never telling her that he's raw dogging her. Or that he's trying to screw his own mom and touching a girl that has the brain of a cat? This isn't wholesome. This isn't sweet. MC and his horny monkey brain just walk girl to girl saying "wow, you've had it hard, vent to me, it's okay. You're so hot, wanna make out?" And you can't tell me anything different as all the conversations and meaningful moments all cut to black with a recap text saying "We had a long talk for X amount of time then parted ways." Or something comes up that means the interaction has to abruptly end. So you the reader feel no connection to the characters. And when MC actually thinks "Hey, maybe I'm a piece of shit" Sumi says "Not if you reflect on it" Then rewards him with sex.

The English is fine, but there's a bunch of spelling mistakes, even words with numbers accidentally in them or outright missing, so no editing is done retroactively. The UI is completely default with a font that is not the easiest to read. The UX is "Click this renpy menu to interact with this girl and get +1 updoot" So it's annoying. The art is base Koikatsu. The dialogue isn't bad, at least when mc doesn't chime in with thoughts like "But god that ass." And the story is spread so paper thin on top of not knowing what the hell to do to get to the next event and when that I just can't enjoy this.

I like it. It's not perfect but it's a good little dating sim, the story is decent, the girls are cute and have personality, the MC is the nicest guy ever and is friends with everyone, even the tsundere. Worth a try if you like these kinds of games.

Review of v0.05.5
While definitely not for everyone, I've enjoyed what's been done so far, and think that this game has a lot of potential.

Pros:
The story and characterizations are quite engaging and easily kept my interest throughout. I always wanted to see what happens next, and would be sad when this version ran out of scenes for someone.

Good looking characters. It's Koikatsu models so you more or less know what to expect, but the dev did a great job at making the girls look cute and the guys not look like deformed freaks, much better than a lot of other Koikatsu using games that I've played.

The grinding is about as unannoying as grinding can be. It feels odd to put “it's not nearly as shit as it could be” as a pro, but this is the kind of thing that can make me drop a game extremely quickly, and I never had that urge at all during my playthough. It has a scene counter to let you know if there's anything left to do with someone, there's no clicking through a pointless map, or wondering what arcane set of circumstances are needed to progress. Affection unlocks new scenes in sets of five points, so if you've raised someone's Affection by five (quick to do) and don't get anything new when visiting them on a weekday or the weekend then you just need to work on raising someone else's Affection first, simple.

Cons:
Very slow burn. If you're looking for a good game for a quick wank, save yourself the time and skip this one altogether. There is sex and other lewd content, but it usually takes a while to get to them, and a lot of girls still haven't really started to get that romantic with you as of yet in this version of the game.

You don't really DO much with magic so far. The fact that you have magic is never forgotten about, and is always in the background driving the story forward, but the MC using his magic in a way that does anything important to the plot only really happens once. I assume that will change latter on in the story when the MC actually knows more about what he's doing, but for now it is what it is.

While the MC is mostly fine, and doesn't come across as a brain damaged idiot like a lot of them do in these kind of games, there's one blindingly obvious plot twist that keeps being hinted at that he just doesn't seem to be able to notice. I'd bet bottom dollar that it's going to spring up in a future update, but it is slightly annoying to have him constantly missing something that right fucking there in front of him, that you'll likely have figured out the first in game day.

Still, none of that was enough to actually hurt my enjoyment. So if nothing I've mentioned sounds like a deal breaker for you, I'd totally recommend giving the game a try.