RPGM - Tales of Legendary Lust: Aphrodisia [Build 2-N] [CrimsonDelightGames]

Game starts off with a very well done sex scene that has been in the game since its initial announcement in 2021. This is still the best scene in the game, honestly you could watch this scene then turn the game off and save yourself some time from the monotony that this game devolves into. Its stuck between being a “hardcore” focused “RPG” game, and a “porn” game but it does neither well. It has so much pointless content that it baffles me why they would lead with that, instead of oh I don’t know including more erotic scenes? Yeah we have two erotic scenes but lets make a bunch of pointless resource nodes on the map that have essentially no use, brilliant! I check this game out every few years or so and always leave confused as why I tried it again. There is a golden rule in every form of creative writing of “show don’t tell” and this game doesn’t just tell you it regurgitates info at you, info you do not care the slightest about, because nothing has built up to it. For example, you will talk to a Riddle Master, and think “Oh solving a few riddles could be cool” But instead of asking you a few he asks you 20 riddles for no damn reason. Less is more in some cases and spewing walls upon walls of pointless text doesn’t immerse your audience or help with “world building”, it makes your audience bored and your story seem dull. I am not asking them to go from sex scene to sex scene but man pick a lane, instead of waffling between the two. This seems like a game that has no interest in being an actual porn game, but they weren’t confident enough with their storytelling enough to make it a standalone RPG game so they sprinkled porn in it, so at least they could get the coomers on- board. I gave it two stars instead of one, just because the effort put forth even if it is spent on questionable things, but yeah this isn’t worth playing.

I'm writing this as someone who doesn't play these kinds of games - I've also barely played D&D. But in short, this is a captivatingly interesting game! Art and visuals that are very well done, you can tell that there was a lot of hard work put into this.
There _is_ a lot of reading (especially for the NSFW scenes), but the writers absolutely did an amazing job at keeping you hooked and interested to continue playing. Music also goes well with the game.

I just have a few minor notes while playing:
User interface / User experience
Interesting that there's voice ( a nice addition, tbh ) - great voice acting!
The selected "Choices"'s background flashes quite fast, and makes it slightly difficult/iritating to concentrate on what's selected.
I wish I could "pause" or go to a main menu of sorts.

Again, the attention to detail on the art is beautiful.

But all in all, anyone can tell that a lot of hard work went into this game.
I'd recommend this to anyone who likes a role-playing game. I wish the Steam page's marketing showed this game's strengths a little more so that they got the exposure that they deserve.

Have to echo the review written before me. After such a long time there is hardly any progress in that game. What is there at the moment isn't much from any point of view, besides lots of text and endless clicking on a myriad of useless nodes which gives you endless useless stuff for your non existent inventory.
Also most of what you read gets so unnecessarily drawn out, that it is quite the task to have the patience to get through that.

All in all I can't see the game go anywhere in its current form and I have the feeling people are milked here with promises, which will never be realized.

I really want to like this, but I can't.
Over 3 years in, and we don't even have a basic character sheet or quest log. We get a lot, and I mean A LOT, of items, but have no inventory.
Even lewds are severely lacking, 3 in total.
Even the first main quest can't be completed, which seems to be a requirement to unlock the scene player to review unlocked lewd scenes.

All that is here is dialogues, and quite a lot of that, which is okay. And then a lot of clicking on round icons to get a massive amount of yet useless stuff.

First time playing CRPG adult game. The art is fantastic and I love the writing! Before I played this game I thought I might be bored by a lot of reading, but it turns out the writing perfectly attracted my attention. Truly love the drawing, almost every scenes are sexy and make me fap a lot.

Game is pretty buggy, with a laundry list of warnings on how to not break it.
Game intentionally breaks a bunch of quality of life features already baked into the engine. for example, save anywhere was intentionally removed. requiring you to backtrack a lot to a save spot for no reason at all.
Gameplay consists of running around from resource node to resource node and spamming spacebar to harvest them.
Gameplay is too much WIP. all those resources you harvest? they are for crafting. find a craft spot? all of it says WIP and can't use it yet.

Main story is
> commander tells you to harvest 100 nodes then come to keep to report in the keep
> grinded through 100 nodes
> went to keep... WIP

the changelog says there are a bunch of quests but they are all apparently side quests instead of main plot...
ok, let me try some side quests... talk to some randos in the inn
... excessively verbose nonsense. You have to read through the dialog to know what is going on. but it is just literally insane people blathering on and on and on about literal nonsense.

UI has some poor design choices. such as resource node loot covering up realtime conversations.
The art is very good.

A very promising start, rating 5 for potential though I would give a 4.5 if half marks were possible on here.

Writing is plentiful and excellent with many choices, it does feel some scenes sections drag a bit but I can forgive that for the breadth of world building and the quality of the writing itself.(this carries over to the sex scenes so far)
Art is very solid, no complaints about what I've seen so far, though that was so far just the first sex scenes. Backgrounds are colorful and detailed.
Soundtrack was surprise but so far pleasant one.
Gameplay wise,
Presumably meaningful choices in dialogue though too early for any to come back around yet and see the difference is promising.
I haven't gotten to combat yet(not sure if in demo)and I presume time will have some sort of constraint later but atm the exploration phase feels slightly tedious in all the random things to gather with no downside to do so besides imput tax as far as I can tell.
This is slightly compounded by the lack of a inventory UI which I imagine will be quite bloated when we get one due to the vast quantities of different types of materials given by gathering.
Excited to see more and hope CDG all the best with the project.

And so it's been a little over a year since I saw the first version of the game.
+
Not bad drawings (but it can be noticed in the #1 post).
Thoughtful (I would say at the level of a good such dnd game) dialogues with multiple choices.
The grandiosity of the plans
-
is more of an alpha rather than a beta interface, you can say no, as well as many functions (saves, maps, character profile, inventory, etc.).

Which in my opinion (humble), it would be necessary to edit /add.

The names of the dialog participants (as the title) - it's not critical now, but when there will be 10+ in one dialog in the dialogs...
There are a lot of elements for interaction, almost under every bush you can find gold / equipment / books. If it is not difficult, it would be possible to bind them to a timer (day/night for example). This is certainly not critical (so the key moment is if not difficult), it just looks a little unnatural.
Well, in general, there are a lot of things that can be entered here, but all this concerns the interface or those areas that the developers have not yet touched, so it will be premature to discuss.

This game is extremely ambitious. Just going off the tutorial, there's planned to be crafting, over 5 companions, lots of NPCs to talk to, resource gathering and management, some sort of combat system, different "routes" based on the scenes you pick(maledom, romance, femdom), lots of different roleplay options, many quests, etc. They even say they structure the game around old cRPGs like Fallout. Pretty tall shoes to fill.

The thing is, I don't see how they can fit all this in the game without fucktons of money or this game taking a decade to finish development. As promising as the game would be with all these features, I think it would be a good idea for the devs to really think if they need all of it in the game. Trying to do too many things at once is how many games end up getting abandoned.

Now let's move onto the game itself: The writing here is going to be the most important part simply because there's so much of it - and simply put - it drags on... like a lot. Don't get me wrong, it's written well. The sex scenes, characterization, descriptions, are all good quality. It's just that it seems like each conversation or sex scene will just never end with how long they go on for. I don't think this is just me either, because just in the first sex scene alone, I saw a good amount of text that seemed very similar to some I just saw 2 or 3 textboxes ago. Not to the point of copying and pasting mind you, but it's still noticeable. The conversation with the field medic and adventurers you meet also seem to be REALLY long winded. Like the field medic conversation gives you the option to lie or tell the truth 4 times when it could've just been done in 1 choice and the adventurers just talk in circles for a while. I love conversing with NPCs as much as the next guy, but I was seriously considering just closing the game a few times because of how long it just goes on and on. Tim Cain parody was funny tho, fucking died when they brought up /tg/.

The fetishes the game offers seem to be varied, not just the super vanilla stuff a lot of games seem to have. However for the one sex scene that is in the game, the kinkier stuff seems to be tied to the femdom route with options for sweatplay, ass and feet worship, ballbusting, smothering, incest roleplay, etc. The options for romance and maledom are just blowjob, vaginal, anal, etc. Might wanna make the options for those two more varied.

The art is very nice... until I look at the jawline of every woman in the game and wonder how they look more masculine than I do. Now is that to say they look like straight up men? No, but it definitely does lead to some vibes of the girls looking like they're trans, which isn't everybody's cup of tea. Besides that, no problems with the art.

Overall, I'm really cautious over being excited about this project. It's really ambitious and it has some flaws that if aren't ironed out, could really dampen the experience. That all being said, it's still shaping up to be a really fun and unique experience considering I've only ever seen one other porn game inspired by cRPGs. Hope the devs manage to finish this thing.

Solid writing; very strong artwork; CYOA style scenes is a fantastic choice for this type of game. Ambitious project with great people behind it - and apparently I need more than 200 characters for a review.
When fully realised, I think this could be truly something even from a regular gaming perspective. The hardcore fucking is a delectable bonus.

Very excited about the development of this project. It is ambitious in all the right ways.

Content in the demo was diverse, well written, and robust.
Planned game mechanics are nuanced and unique.

Really looking forward to the project.

Amazing artwork and writing. Not much to say but it won't let me post without 200 characters so uhh I guess it could do with some animations. Overall I really liked it. Looking forward to more updates.

I'll be blunt, at the moment it's only the preview version but it surprised the heck out of of me.
Pros:
1. Amazing, and I do mean 11/10 amazing art. The game is a joy to look at.
One sex scene in the PV but it had plenty of art-scenes.
2. Writing that made me interested even if there is quite a bit to read. I've played my fair share of "text-heavy" adult RPG and yet with what I've seen so far in this one, I don't think I'll get bored learning about the world and storyline.
3. Looooots of potential. This could be the next Big Adult RPG Game.

Kinda-Con:
1. The only issue I faced was probably that it didn't want to launch properly immediately but the ReadMe provides quite a few troubleshooting options.
2. PV too short, I need more.