Wolf RPG - Completed - Thanatos [v1.61] [Triangle!]

I'm really conflicted about this game. On one hand it has one of the strongest foundations i have ever seen in an H-game, with amazing animated artwork, a great looking map area with a lot of cute custom sprites, a bunch of different systems to keep you engaged and a difficulty that is actually fairly challenging. But then you realize that the H art gets wasted on extremely generic scenes with no buildup leading to them, the map area is pretty but completely devoid of any meaningful things to do to the point where even all the quests don't take you to every area in the game, all the gameplay systems looks complex on the first glance but turn out to be wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle and the difficulty swings wildly at different points of the game instead of slowly getting more and more challenging and complex.

Still, it's far better than most of the garbage that gets put out so it's definitely worth a try.

I deeply enjoyed this game.
The combat system is easy to understand, your character gains levels quikly, there is little grind in normal (something i apreciate, no grind would feel wrong/empty but a grind fest is just plain boring), items are useful and not there just to ocuppy space in your inventory (tip: craft handgranades, they can knock down enemies with a good probability and do decent damage to all enemies even at mid-late game)
The scenes have a good art style and are animated (good animations), the story is easy to follow and not too deep, but also not shallow, and the translation is really well done (had no problem understanding anything and the translator even redrew a few images to translate what was in them, extra points for that).
For me is an overal 5 stars

Pros:

• Very good CG quality with some nice movement.
• Very nice Voice during H-Scenes.
• Acceptable story, although I don't like it very much.

Cons:

• Despite the "Romance" tag, our Protagonist does not end up with any girl route at the end of the game at all.
• Heroines have no name. Only some stupid class names like Warrior or Assassin (WTF ?).
• Combat mechanics are ok, and do not affect anything to the story. Crafting mechanics are mediocre.
• Game has no Sprint toggle.

I have not finished the whole game, but I played enough of it to get the picture of how it will play out from where I am quitting.

This game is a huge wasted potential. I've never felt so bad playing a game because it could be SO much better if they just polished it a bit more. The game is divided into 2 parts. The first run is a mandatory "evil" route for story purposes. The second run which is basically a NG+ is a mandatory "good" route. This approach itself is rather terrible in my opinion. The 2 parts use different mechanics. Evil route uses the monster forms and good route uses a "doll" form with human party. Both routes have separated story chapter progression from the general exploration which was another weird decision imo.

I'll touch upon the evil run first. At first, the monster system seems kinda cool. But you quickly realize that it's extremely limited and doesn't really offer much. The monsters differ in stat gains and their 2 skills, but it's not interesting enough nor varied enough to keep your interest past the first hour of playtime or so. You have a equipment crafter in your camp from the start, but it never comes into play for this route. Some humanoid monsters say they are good with equipment, but they can't equip anything. Turns out equipment only becomes available in the second run. There is battle sex, but it's repetitive and not fappable (no proper dialogue and you gotta spam buttons).

So after you "beat" the game on the evil route, you restart and are forced to be a good boy. The heroines you raped in the first run become your party members. I quit around chapter 2 of this route because it was so boring. You carry over items, equip, and gold from the first run. You can buy OP stuff from the town right away. You can carry carry over the strongest weapon from the previous run if you bought it with Karma points.

They have some of the groundwork for a great gameplay eroge (changing forms, crafting, gathering, etc etc), but every aspect of the gameplay falls short. The end result is just something that leaves you with disappointment at what could have been.

If the H content was any good, the game could have been salvaged at least. But the H is also a huge wasted potential. The artwork is absolutely top notch. This artist is amazing (I feel like I've read his works on hentai sites). Plus, it's animated quite well. However, the game is pretty much devoid of any eroticism. There is no such thing as build up, corruption, proper H story arcs. Battle sex lacks dialogue. Story sex has some dialogue but the context of the scene just doesn't do much.

So finally, is the actual plot any good? No, not really. It's basically "you are stuck in a MMO. What do you do?" It was quite bland. Granted, I quit before the main romances and stuff starts on the 2nd route, but it is the game's job to get me invested in the story and it failed to do that on the first route.

The translation was fine though. It's a great fan translation. I didn't find many things wrong with it.