[v0.6a]
An anime/manga/webtoon styled harem game with pretty good story structure and writing in general.
In a lot of ways, this dev reminds me of Caribdis. I won't get into specifics of the comparison, but those who know will know. Humor style, horror sequences, and the choices/route design philosophies line up quite closely.
There are no issues on the English side which is always a nice first step. No awkward dialogues or cringy banter. Plus, the story has clear arcs like you might find in a shonen manga. Each arc has a proper set up and conclusion which still tie in together to the overall narrative. You get a training arc, horror village arc, detective arc, etc. It's just well constructed and easy to follow along.
The characters are well written and quite charming. You might see the 16 LIs shown on the character sheet and worry that it's too many. Rest assured, they merely occupy the same character bio page. The story isn't stretched thin to try and give them all enough screen time. Some are clearly main characters and others take a back seat (at least until their time in the spotlight comes along, I guess).
The world building is a bit strange, but it still works out well enough. It mixes Greek mythology, naruto, and DnD styled fantasy. I don't know... it didn't quite feel all that cohesive to me, but if you don't nitpick at it, it should be fine.
On the porn side, it's a bit of a slow burn but not annoyingly so. I think it hits a nice groove.
Visuals are nicely done HS2 stuff. Nothing to complain about on this front except for the usual "same face syndrome" of HS2 models.
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Now for the less awesome things about the game.
The choice system is almost entirely illusory. You look at the character bios and see stats like Trust, Affection, Respect, and Lust. Maybe you are thinking that you want to do a "dominant" approach where you prioritize respect and lust. Alas, the coding is entirely linear. You don't make choices between the variables. Instead, the choices you make are basically, "Do I want to do stuff with this character or not?" If you do stuff with them, you will get stat increases that the script decides for you. If you don't do stuff with them, it just skips that chunk of the story entirely. No alternative routes for the most part.
That leads to a rather railroaded story and the MC. For the most part, doing stuff with the girls means helping them out and just generally being a heroic little dude. I'm not gonna be overly harsh on this type of design. It's the same one Caribdis uses as well. They want to tell a specific story and don't want to be bogged down by route creep. Still, it always leave me desiring just a bit more control over the MC's disposition.
The second biggest issue was the use of "transitions." I'm talking about the renpy function where the image fades in and out between clicks. The dev uses this mechanic to show movement of characters and such, sometimes in rather long segments. The issue here is that you are clicking along to read the text, often falling into the groove of double clicking to skip the fade in/out of the text box and minor effects. Then comes a long sequence transition that you just clicked past. It's sometimes hard to even be aware that you skipped a long segment. And if you get tired of double clicking on every dialogue line and enable "skip transition" in settings, you will miss a whole bunch of the visual elements. There are definitely better ways to go about this.
___________________________
TL;DR
It's good.
An anime/manga/webtoon styled harem game with pretty good story structure and writing in general.
In a lot of ways, this dev reminds me of Caribdis. I won't get into specifics of the comparison, but those who know will know. Humor style, horror sequences, and the choices/route design philosophies line up quite closely.
There are no issues on the English side which is always a nice first step. No awkward dialogues or cringy banter. Plus, the story has clear arcs like you might find in a shonen manga. Each arc has a proper set up and conclusion which still tie in together to the overall narrative. You get a training arc, horror village arc, detective arc, etc. It's just well constructed and easy to follow along.
The characters are well written and quite charming. You might see the 16 LIs shown on the character sheet and worry that it's too many. Rest assured, they merely occupy the same character bio page. The story isn't stretched thin to try and give them all enough screen time. Some are clearly main characters and others take a back seat (at least until their time in the spotlight comes along, I guess).
The world building is a bit strange, but it still works out well enough. It mixes Greek mythology, naruto, and DnD styled fantasy. I don't know... it didn't quite feel all that cohesive to me, but if you don't nitpick at it, it should be fine.
On the porn side, it's a bit of a slow burn but not annoyingly so. I think it hits a nice groove.
Visuals are nicely done HS2 stuff. Nothing to complain about on this front except for the usual "same face syndrome" of HS2 models.
___________________________
Now for the less awesome things about the game.
The choice system is almost entirely illusory. You look at the character bios and see stats like Trust, Affection, Respect, and Lust. Maybe you are thinking that you want to do a "dominant" approach where you prioritize respect and lust. Alas, the coding is entirely linear. You don't make choices between the variables. Instead, the choices you make are basically, "Do I want to do stuff with this character or not?" If you do stuff with them, you will get stat increases that the script decides for you. If you don't do stuff with them, it just skips that chunk of the story entirely. No alternative routes for the most part.
That leads to a rather railroaded story and the MC. For the most part, doing stuff with the girls means helping them out and just generally being a heroic little dude. I'm not gonna be overly harsh on this type of design. It's the same one Caribdis uses as well. They want to tell a specific story and don't want to be bogged down by route creep. Still, it always leave me desiring just a bit more control over the MC's disposition.
The second biggest issue was the use of "transitions." I'm talking about the renpy function where the image fades in and out between clicks. The dev uses this mechanic to show movement of characters and such, sometimes in rather long segments. The issue here is that you are clicking along to read the text, often falling into the groove of double clicking to skip the fade in/out of the text box and minor effects. Then comes a long sequence transition that you just clicked past. It's sometimes hard to even be aware that you skipped a long segment. And if you get tired of double clicking on every dialogue line and enable "skip transition" in settings, you will miss a whole bunch of the visual elements. There are definitely better ways to go about this.
___________________________
TL;DR
It's good.
