This review loses a lot of stars, it's a "decent" game but ultimately an empty RPG maker adventure game. The biggest star it loses is due to why I quit playing, a soft lock.
First off I like the premise, though I felt that the game sort of jumped the gun on the first sex scene, she seemed to go right for it with no hesitation, also the inclusion of the mechanics of having a bow but losing it and never getting to use it just to have the first option in the combat menu rendered useless seems odd. The idea of running around draining the life force out of people is something many people will enjoy.
The mechanics seem to pile on pretty quick, you get fully built before your first job upgrade and you don't really get any additional powers for the second and third chapters. You can seduce pretty much everybody, though the "anti-succubus" crystals are put in places where the dev clearly wanted to skip out on dialogue.
That does lead to the first MAJOR knock off of a star here, and that is the fact that you can seduce shop keepers, and doing so drains them and you can't shop from them any more. There's a "benefit" to doing this, but if you don't buy enough lock picks before screwing the guy that sells them then you can soft lock your game when you need more of them. This is because the game is heavily designed around save scum, where you're permanently punished for mistakes with the only option to reload the game. There's no recovery.
Second the encounters are all pre-placed, this means that there's a defined grind, defined amount of experience, chest loot is pre-defined (and there's lots of empty chests that cost lock picks which goes back to the save scum design problem). There's no way to recover if you don't have enough gold to buy all the lockpicks you need, lockpicks raise in price at some point which can mean not stockpiling early makes it super expensive. Frankly the design of all of this is mostly frustratedly cursing the game for not having a load game feature without backing out to the menu. This is where we lose the second star, the design is frustrating because the balance got "patched" by simply raising prices. Empty chests requiring a lock pick that is used up is an absolute gaming sin, and yes, that alone is enough to carry a loss of a star.
The character design is where it loses yet another star, and that's because of character consistency, yes yes I'm the guy knocking games down a star for the "big titties" tag, and while I WILL say that the big titties are mostly designed ok, my issue is the fact that the progression of the characters is they get to be more powerful succubi which makes the characters we liked for having their modest breasts are quickly replaced with balloon boobies. I push for body type diversity. You can have the big breasts, but it's cursed to lure people in with other body types just to have them transform into the same body type we've seen over and over again. Something I tire of with "transformation" is that it's always about trending towards that same "ideal" body type. I don't mind it happening, but at the very least the rogue of the party could have gotten even flatter to at least acknowledge the existence of other ideals.
Ultimately I was happy with the lack of "subscribe to my patreon" and demand for people to donate to their project. And I do hope to see improvements on future releases, but my major concerns are definitely the potential to soft lock the game with the hard requirement for lock picks and dispel scrolls and not having a farmable way to get money. Honestly, at least for the third chapter, she offers you a bed to sleep in, why can't we use that to full heal and respawn all conquered enemies, even the shop keepers in case you screw something up? I'll definitely try the game again if a patch comes out that addresses any one of these three major issues.
First off I like the premise, though I felt that the game sort of jumped the gun on the first sex scene, she seemed to go right for it with no hesitation, also the inclusion of the mechanics of having a bow but losing it and never getting to use it just to have the first option in the combat menu rendered useless seems odd. The idea of running around draining the life force out of people is something many people will enjoy.
The mechanics seem to pile on pretty quick, you get fully built before your first job upgrade and you don't really get any additional powers for the second and third chapters. You can seduce pretty much everybody, though the "anti-succubus" crystals are put in places where the dev clearly wanted to skip out on dialogue.
That does lead to the first MAJOR knock off of a star here, and that is the fact that you can seduce shop keepers, and doing so drains them and you can't shop from them any more. There's a "benefit" to doing this, but if you don't buy enough lock picks before screwing the guy that sells them then you can soft lock your game when you need more of them. This is because the game is heavily designed around save scum, where you're permanently punished for mistakes with the only option to reload the game. There's no recovery.
Second the encounters are all pre-placed, this means that there's a defined grind, defined amount of experience, chest loot is pre-defined (and there's lots of empty chests that cost lock picks which goes back to the save scum design problem). There's no way to recover if you don't have enough gold to buy all the lockpicks you need, lockpicks raise in price at some point which can mean not stockpiling early makes it super expensive. Frankly the design of all of this is mostly frustratedly cursing the game for not having a load game feature without backing out to the menu. This is where we lose the second star, the design is frustrating because the balance got "patched" by simply raising prices. Empty chests requiring a lock pick that is used up is an absolute gaming sin, and yes, that alone is enough to carry a loss of a star.
The character design is where it loses yet another star, and that's because of character consistency, yes yes I'm the guy knocking games down a star for the "big titties" tag, and while I WILL say that the big titties are mostly designed ok, my issue is the fact that the progression of the characters is they get to be more powerful succubi which makes the characters we liked for having their modest breasts are quickly replaced with balloon boobies. I push for body type diversity. You can have the big breasts, but it's cursed to lure people in with other body types just to have them transform into the same body type we've seen over and over again. Something I tire of with "transformation" is that it's always about trending towards that same "ideal" body type. I don't mind it happening, but at the very least the rogue of the party could have gotten even flatter to at least acknowledge the existence of other ideals.
Ultimately I was happy with the lack of "subscribe to my patreon" and demand for people to donate to their project. And I do hope to see improvements on future releases, but my major concerns are definitely the potential to soft lock the game with the hard requirement for lock picks and dispel scrolls and not having a farmable way to get money. Honestly, at least for the third chapter, she offers you a bed to sleep in, why can't we use that to full heal and respawn all conquered enemies, even the shop keepers in case you screw something up? I'll definitely try the game again if a patch comes out that addresses any one of these three major issues.
