RPGM - Completed - Sheryl ~The Alchemist of the Island Ruins~ [v1.03] [Pakkri Paradise]

This is the type of game I love.
If you want to do lewd stuff....it is up to you or you can play it just like any
other action RPG.
The graphics, sound, voices are good. Even if you skip the whole alchemist part you can hack your way through this island (it takes around 7 - 10 hours...the later if you do the quests).

it's ok i feel like it could have been better i never understood why is there a brothel and could never access it i got kinda bored at the end by how many quests i did 3/5 from could have been better if there was more lewd stuff to it

- decent story (i really like the sudden serious part)
- decent game (not turn based so a bit refreshing even if it's easy and simple)
- decent loli (good to lewd and to not-lewd)
and very cute sprite work (on both wholesome and non-wholesome sprites)

i don't understand some of the fetishes tho, like ear cleaning and girl's pee (and other juices) but i still enjoyed the game so much.

more than enough to give 5 stars

100% the game in terms of the item catalog. 20 hours to complete all the missions on the virgin route 0 infamy with the best ending. The rating on this site doesn't do this game any justice. Story spoilers abound. FYI I would give this game 4.5/5 for the sole purpose of the orb grinding that was self-inflicted but I would rather round up.

Pros:

• The vibes of the game is very Rune Factory. Cute music. Cute pixels. Very simple plot of trying to stop the alchemy shop from going under. And then…
• It goes Higurashi really fast.
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• The humor is rather top notch. Outside of the one horrifying scene, the game is rather light-hearted with a lot of sex jokes. Some of the NPCs in the main town are really funny to talk to. There’s also some dark humor (when you take the train to go to an area where you have already been, you can potentially run over people and obtain human meat that can be used by alchemy. This is actually the first hint this game was going to have an actual messed up moment).
• The supporting cast in general is solid for a hentai game. It is very easy to learn their name and personality. The fact that h scenes in the game can change their entire demeanor is also a plus (to show that Sheryl can’t save everyone and keep them pure).
• The main villain is a really good plot twist. While it’s easy to suspect who the three members of the organization are based on story cues before the reveal, the leader is actually shocking even if you had some suspicions. You’ll be just as surprised as Sheryl was who didn’t suspect a thing.
• The art is adorable. H scenes are both pixel and drawn depending on the scene (traps are always on the world map while city events and the other girls are always cgs.)
• Combat is simple Zelda-like gameplay. You have an attack, magic and item button. The skill points you earn after leveling up can be used either to increase your stats or to get new spells. Personally, I just need ice, poison, magic shield, haste and physical shield with at least the medium heal. You’ll be set. (Poison works on a lot of optional bosses that have a lot of HP and ice combos into itself).
• Item gathering is simple. Every time you leave the screen, the items come back for you to farm. Some items are easier to obtain than others.
• Most of the basic items can be bought at the store. You have to make your healing potions yourself but the starting items made for the earlier quests are easy to do.
• Except for a few quests, most of them can be done at your own leisure. If you can’t find an item in an area, it is most likely in the next area. Money is rewarded for the majority of them on top of fame.
• Money is very easy to obtain although it's difficult at the beginning only because the game is stingy. You can sell materials at the general shop on top of completing quests. The money piles up late game when you start getting all the high paying contractors.
• When you rank up your shop, you actually get to keep the money. I was scared at first that I would have to pay the old man the money in order to promote, but you get to keep the money but you have to hand over the items he asks for.
• As you get farther into the game, Sheryl’s library becomes accessible. You can start reading recipes that aren’t obtained from buying them in the shops. Most hentai items tend to be behind these books and the high ranking potions. End game equipment tends to be found in hidden locations.
• There are five areas in the game. To get to the next location, you have to earn the respect of the locals, defeat their representative and often defeat the end area’s boss too (so there’s like 2-4 bosses per location). Some are harder than others because of how the game won’t let you collect stuff in the next area so you have to hold off.
• The game is rather realistic with how most adventures don’t actually get far in life. Only a few ever make it to the high ranks. It only takes one bad mission for people wanting to re-think their life. It also hinders growth for years. It’s actually what makes Sheryl different. Even when you’re playing as her, she doesn't give up.
• There are a variety of h-scenes that can be obtained in the game. 1/3rd of the game is in the town, 1/3rd is losing to specific enemies and bosses (other girls are also included in this) and the last are traps that you can trigger on the map). Even on the virgin route, you can still obtain a third of the scenes as long as they don’t involve vaginal sex.
• There are a variety of h scenes (vaginal, anal, oral, monster) and there is one really funny one that would traumatize the average player but not me. (It’s a bara scene with the blacksmith.)
• The game will tell you when you 100% the recipe book and the bulletin board quests so you don’t have to look at the achievement sections to see if you got it.

Cons:

• The game doesn’t have a balanced difficulty. Normal enemies have dumb AI and die in a few hits without fighting back. If they get more than one hit in, it’s because the game is lagging and not anything to do with you. The harder enemies do more damage because of lag on top of magic stats not scaling with your stats despite leveling up. When you’re stronger than the enemy, you only take 1 damage but magic just ignores this in its entirety. The Goblin Shaman can still do 50 damage when you’re around LV 30 (you’ll have a lot of HP by then but the point still stands). The lesser dragon is only difficult as a result BECAUSE of the fireballs not only having a janky hitbox but how they can hit you multiple times with it.
• Some of the game still isn’t translated. While it makes sense that the item box won’t be translated because it requires every image to be translated (and there are over 100 items), some NPCs are still speaking in Japanese on top of the guy that tells you how to get the multiple endings, many actions within Sheryl’s shop (like the mystery vase and the laundry action) and random areas in general are missed entirely.
• Beating the “final” boss (the dragon) is very anti-climatic. You win, but only a few NPCs comment on you beating it. You have to beat it in order to get to gold rank. I feel like with such a build-up from the beginning, you would think there would be fanfare, but it's just another day for Sheryl.
• Some side quests don’t actually show up on top of NPC heads. Sometimes, you have to talk to them to instigate a sidequest. An example is the drunk guard in front of the alchemy association (I didn’t even know he was drunk. I just thought he was sleeping). Others include the timed side quests. Side quests involving elves after the first area are also considered secret quests that won’t show up.
• Timed side quests are stressful for no reason. I get the point is to show there are actual consequences for trying to leave the area to get the item when the characters are screaming for help and are dying of poison or fatal injuries. It forces you to constantly have items in your inventory. The fact this also happens to an important character that can get killed as a result of not having an antidote on you is just obnoxious. I think the game should have put a clock next to the quest icon to show that there was a time limit, so you wouldn’t have to turn the game off and ignore the NPCs until you got the item they wanted.
• The menu system when equipping magic is actually trash. Switching weapons from a staff to a bow is one thing (and won’t happen often anyway), but there are so many magic spells in the game and you can only have one equipped each time. You have to go to the menu and equip another spell to be able to use it. (You can also press the Q button to open up the menu of all the spells you currently learn. It saves a lot of time, but it takes up the entire screen). Most people would think this isn’t important if you can spam one spell for most of the game, but there are some situations where this doesn’t work and requires you to have a defensive spell (magic shield is your best friend). I think the game should have had the z button be a second spell because enter and spacebar are already the attack button. No need for three attack buttons, one magic button and one item button. Which is another thing…
• The item button should not be assigned to S. It should be D. The amount of times I wasted using a potion because I hit the S key instead of D can be counted on two hands. During magic based bosses, running out of potions could spell sudden doom.
• MP items are very hard to come across. You would have to rest up and move to the next day or pray for a level up to restore MP. The fact that the MP item is only found via crafting a recipe found in the hidden room of angels says a lot about the game when the majority of food items only heal HP.
• The game doesn’t tell you which H scenes will result in losing your virginity and which ones will be oral or anal. You could run into a location and suddenly lose your virginity because the game doesn’t give you a heads up. I have to rely on logic on if doing something will result in it or not. I find it funny how getting caught in a rope trap resulted in oral sex but falling into a teleporter trap resulted in the loss of virginity.
• When people say that your virginity doesn’t matter, that’s an actual lie. Turns out some content gets locked out if you don’t maintain your virginity. The main loss is mainly money that can reduce the amount of grinding you need to do to get to a 4/5 star shop.
• On the other hand, maintaining your virginity means locking you out of half of the h scenes the game has to offer. The brothel area isn’t even available until you complete all the brothel related quests, but you can’t participate in any of them until your lewd is at 30.
• The marketplace doesn’t update their inventory after you get up to iron rank. This makes visiting the place useless except to stock up on lower level items.
• Not all materials can be obtained from asking the guild. At first, this doesn’t seem like an issue, but then you realize that late game items from bosses and orbs from certain enemies don’t show up. Story wise, it makes sense. No one is at Sheryl’s level outside of the dragon slayer (who does everything himself). However, it forces the player to grind for items. The gargoyle orb should have never been this hard to get but who decided that the gargoyle had three items it could drop and one was a repeat of what other enemies were dropping at a higher chance???
• The orbs in general are the worst items in the game because of how hard it is to obtain them. You can’t buy them. You can’t have adventurers grab them for you. You have to farm them yourself and not every enemy has them. As mentioned above, the gargoyle drop rate is atrocious and you need 4 of them to complete two back to back quests. The rabi orb is the only other orb required but you can easily farm the rabbit at the end of area four. AND WHO THE FCK THOUGHT IT WAS A GREAT IDEA TO LET A BOSS HAVE A 3% DROP RATE?!
• Difficult to 100% the game's first playthrough because virgin route, infamy route and slut route all have unique achievements.
• The supporting cast falls out of the story after you complete an area. I was sad that the valkyrie and mage who were part of the wham episode faded out after you got the silver rank.
• Because Mr. Ending Hint Guy isn’t translated, the game doesn’t tell you how to get the best ending or that there are multiple endings. Nowhere in the game will tell you so you just have to hope you did everything and made the right choices.
• You get locked out of an early mission involving the Robin Hood grandma unless your infamy is 30. Infamy actually affects your ending by a large margin. Increasing it happens by stealing money instead of giving lost item bags back to the guard and intentionally lying to people on where they need to go. Because it’s so hard to get infamy up and almost no real benefits, I feel like the infamy requirement should have been lower because there’s nothing wrong with stealing from the rich (even though the game is like, steal from everyone else).
• Personally I think the true ending hurts the overall story.
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This game was in fact, a journey. I have more time getting invested in H games with decent gameplay and good characters over long established RPGs at times. It realistically only takes 5 hours to beat if you try to mash through the dialogue, but the game doesn't make itself easy. When you beat the game, you can unlock all the H-scenes.

My real rating is 4.5-4, but the two-star rating it has right now is way too low, so I bumped it up.

Only play this game if you, like me, like obsessively collecting every item, drop, and collectable in the game. You play as an alchemist and the main gameplay loop is about grinding materials to craft the stuff you need to complete the requests you get. The grind for individual items isn't bad, but you will need to do it over and over again to complete the game.

The combat is not balanced very well, but I never found it offensive to play. enemies either take half your health per hit, or deal 1-2 damage each. The fact that we only have one active spell in combat and need to open the menu to change it can feel restricting at times, but mele is your go-to for damage dealing in the first place since there aren't items to replenish mana until the late game. As an aside, just ignore the holy and ice flavor of magic, don't waste your points unlocking them since fire hits everything just as hard anyways.

Reviewing the lewd content is a bit of a mixed bag. The game had two major sides to its scenes: the stuff in the town and the stuff in the dungeon. The stuff in the dungeon is all pixel art and looks really good, but the stuff in town is all CGs, and they don't look very good. Most of the CGs have only a couple of still frames, and about half of them don't even change their expressions, much less anything simulating movement...

The story was a real banger. I found myself way more invested than I thought I would be, and just generally enjoyed the little story/character bits.

There is a few issues with the translation. I found about 8 or 9 instances where the text was not translated and I was left guessing at what was said, but it was, overall, a small part of the game. Also, this game has hundreds of little icons that pop up when you collect any material in the game. None of these are translated, but it doesn't really impact the experience since the pictures are right next to the moon-runes.

Review of v1.3
Do I recommend? I do as long as you're ok with some grind and like the art style
Time to complete was about 12 hours
Art: 5/5 for cuteness, 1.5/5 for eroticism
Animation: 2/5 (very simple and only on some pixel art)
Gameplay 3.5/5
Pros
Really nice art that has a lot of uniqueness and enriches the world
Gameplay mixes it up from the standard rpgm combat
Most of the game is well paced and does a good job of breaking up action, crafting, and h content
Cons
Art wasn't a good fit for erotic content in my opinion, make a much better game than h game.
I had some crashes and some dialogues that were untranslated as well as some icons that didn't match what the quest was asking for.
The last 1/4 of the game was very poorly paced and became extremely grindy that was not nearly as fun as the first parts of the game.

Overall I think it's a decent little game that is fairly fun even without the h content, but has a few issues that could be ironed out. Didn't work as a good fap game for me though.

If you like Atelier / Mana Khemia games, you'll probably like this. If you dislike games that give you chores, maybe look somewhere else. It's a 7.5/10 game, it has its flaws but if you can look past them, it's a nice experience.

I started playing it yesterday and clocked in 12 hours without even noticing. Started at 7 PM and it was 7 AM before I even took notice.

Yes, it's a bit dark, but nowhere near "Black Souls" level. The faint of heart may need to get prepared for some heavy scenes after 1-2 hours of gameplay (depending on how much you wander around), but don't give up. The good endings are good endings.

Really don't give up, the game gets a bit lighter as it goes (but also "not too light", this is not your Atelier game) and there's some good things that come from all the bad, if you take the right choices (do all the bulletin hunt quests, kids! Doing all guild and castle quests is not all that important though!).

Overall, the gameplay is interesting but unbalanced (especially if you use achievement points, I don't know if those were even intended to be used or if that's a cheat), magic system works well (although I unlocked only 2 spells during the entire game), bow and arrows are overpowered... For a game with this 2000s RPG Maker engine, it's surprisingly good. But if you compare it to newer Unity or RPG Maker MV games, it's below average.

Pros:
- Excellent art, beautiful maps, excellent world-building
- Interesting story, although with flaws and lots of unexplained parts
- Main characters are interesting and all interactions between them feel organic
- Several different endings, and the true ending is exactly what players want
- Quite polished gameplay for an older RPG Engine, although below average compared to newer engines
- Excelent translation, only a few missing flavor texts from random NPCs, but 99% of the game is well translated

Cons:
- Several parts of the game features are underdeveloped
- Lots of backtracking
- Lots of padding with quests, too many IMO. If it had half (and more interesting quests), it would have been better. Took me 12 hours to get a "100% vanilla ending", but it could have been reduced to 6-8 hours without the "fat"
- Relationship system with other characters should have more interactions/scenes, it's very shallow. Lost potential.
- HEAVY AS HELL on certain scenes, which can go as low as 5-10 FPS, and it's not even the fault of my computer, it's just badly optimized for an old RPG engine. But it's not enough to be an issue, at least on PCs. Android users are probably fucked.

Overall, I loved it and I haven't even unlocked all sex scenes yet, I just played the virgin playthrough and it was good. I'll actually buy this game now, it's really worth it and I want to see a sequel. It's not "One of the best games", but I went expecting a cutesy "Atelier / Mana Khemia" style game with a 7/10 or 8/10 score and with the same problems that Atelier games have (bad quests, lots of padding), and got exactly that, albeit darker and with more rape. But still cutesy.

This game is about grinding.

Almost no time/effort is spent trying to make you care about the very limited story events. The Hentai events are haphazardly just dropped in, and you are given no real progression or "corruption".

Very lazily developed, there are some reasonably nicely animated scenes, but if its not integrated properly into the game development, you might as well just go look at some static hentai images.

It is unfortunate, considering this circle's popularity I expected more, there's better reviews describing what's wrong the game mechanically, but there isn't much going on here in h-scene department either, ultimately leaving the game just tedious and unrewarding.

The game does try to give the illusion of corruption mechanics somewhere in it, having a lewdness meter be the first thing you see when you access the camp menu, it won't take you long to realize that it is completely irrelevant, if you're expecting to slowly corrupt the young and naive alchemist Shyrl into lewder and lewder scenarios, you won't find it here, instead you'll get a scene with ONE "Lewd" variation, and that's if your lucky. The fact that this is somehow includes an "Append" to add content to the game is rather hilarious considering the state it is in.

A lot of grind. It's in all locations. I spent 7 hours playing and then got tired of exploring the world.
I downloaded the full save and see Full gallery
A lot of pictures have not been translated. There are also moments in the dialogues. Pixel animations are normal. But 18+ pictures and content are worth 3 points. There are a lot of repeating pictures.
The enemies are weak and stupid. At the beginning of the game there is a mini-boss - Tree. Is it just standing there or is it buggy?
Regular enemies are also stupid. It's too easy to win. But if you just give up to watch Scenes 18+
You will be teleported to the very beginning in the Heroine's House.
I did not study the entire tree of magic, as I had everything starting at level 1, it remains that way. I only pumped skill points into Attack Boost. The Heroine herself - 3 points. There is nothing special about it, like many Japanese or Chinese games.

a brief introduction, this is the end of the introduction

50% or so of the scenes are cowgirl, and very repeated
2 anal scenes.
some pixel stuff is great
Grinding for items is annoying
You get way more quest then you need to complete the game, which i didn't, i used the full save after six hours of game time.
The grind wouldn't even be that bad if not for all the back tracking/going straight home after each H event.

So i didn't know you use achievement points to get skills, so i sunk the majority of them into stat ups and creamed the game with my regular attack and mid tier equipment, so there's really no difficulty if you do that, the main problem is there's just no scene variety/fetishes, just the loli one. Starts strong and ends up not hot about 2 hours in.

[v1.3 +Append]

The game could have easily worked, and yet the grind and inconvenient menus make it a chore.

It seems incredibly unpolished.

• There's 'stamina' that never runs out
• Food items that are just unnecessary healing / quest items.
• Many, many ingredients and 'consumables' with no use outside of quest item.
• Level system doesn't match the quest progress, expecting you to heavily grind.
• There is a dedicated 'healing item' slot, that only accepts healing potions, and not any of the overwhelming amount of consumables.
• There's a magic slot, that can only hold 1 spell.
• Harvesting spots and mob drop pools have multiple items, making it a grind.
• Enemies can drop nothing, something really generic for their 'category' and still have some rare item shoved up their ass.
• There's a way to look up what and where drops are, from an unorganized laggy list back home.
• Most common enemy drop is fuck all.
• Menus are unorganized lists with consumables of all types, ingredients and misc. all being shoved there.
• Some of the simpler quests reward ridiculously small amounts of gold.
• Some H scene's aren't marked, some don't add H statistics, some do.
• There are a few ways to get bonus buffs, but I have guesstimated only 1.
• There's a way to go to and from 'gathering' space, but its restricted enough to only slightly shorten the walking.

It's a game, a boring, tedious, seemingly unbalanced and unpolished.
You could play it if getting nothing is acceptable and both running in circles to refresh item drops and back and forth for quest fulfillment is okay to you.

Average game, nice art, but I really don't understand why game dev's make such easy games to the point where it's just a visual novel. If I wanted to watch hentai I would just do that. If it's a game, it should be at least somewhat challenging.

Aight...Imma let it out of my system before I begin this Review....

OUUUUUGHHHHHHH SHEEERYYYYLLLL CUNNNY OUUUUUUUGHHHH

Aight now onto the review:

This is a game to enjoy not just for cunnyisseurs but those who wants an entertaining game with a good storyline backing it with pakkri paradise not holding back and putting fucked up themes (play the game I wont spoil it here but please...play the game) with its story first being about you getting rid of your debt, into a massive hole Sheryl must face as well just because she got caught up with it as well.

Dont take this as a dark game thou...in the end this is a cute and funny game with cute and funny moments and ouughhs everywhere. its just that it doesnt shy away from dark themes and will base some scenes on such themes

gameplay wise, its nice. getting rid of the good ol' turn based combat into a beat em up with skills made the progression much faster than its predecessor (which is also mentioned in this game btw nice) but overall you're just gonna want the healing spells and one ranged spell and the rest may as well go to buffing up Sheryl's Atk.

The main reason why I didnt gave a 5/5? the ungodly amounts of backtracking if you're dedicated to see all scenes in one playthrough and me having to cheat money out of necessity (it may as well be a me problem but ehhh) and stat locking some events (which wont be a problem if you're trying to complete the game like myself)

Overall a cute and funny experience with dark themes...Pakkri Paradise didnt dissapoint...also massive improvements of sprite animation as well which is pog