VN - Ren'Py - The Art of Diplomacy and... Love [v0.15] [DS23Games]

A hidden gem among porn games. It has great story (it's basically an adventure with some spicy scenes), even better characters and very good gameplay. There are simple management mechanics here (nothing annoying mind you, in fact it makes the whole experience even richer and more enjoyable), there are various paths and all of this with some gorgeous female models.

All in all it's a great game with even greater potential. Goes on my watch list definitely and I've just become a patreon (at least for a while since my budget is very limited).

[v0.15]

⠀⠀⠀Summary: we take a role of a young peasant dude that basically got no family, no home and no backstory, except that he spent his childhood either on the farms or in the tavern. Nowadays he's a small-time thief and his latest endeavor failed almost fatally. The story starts with him kinda chillin' in the woods and accidentally killing the passing by noble. The noble had a recommendation letter from his parents to become an apprentice of some powerful count of these lands where nobody knows him personally, so our lad decided to pose as this noble guy, because he's got nothing better to do anyways so why not?

⠀⠀⠀Writing is actually spot on as it uses some old vocabulary, sentence structure and idioms for immersion, finally a medieval setting where the characters aren't just a bunch of millennials that look out of place. We have fantasy races like elves, goblins and even furries, but this doesn't appear to be 'high fantasy' as magic so far seems to be a foreign concept and Gods are more like stuff out of legends. This has nothing to do with writing, but the selection of visual assets and music is spot on, which enhances that immersive feeling. The MC is pretty nice fella, not autistic, fairly capable, but also not omnipotent and not a natural chick magnet. I'd say his persona is well-balanced all around. The story presents several conflicts throughout the narrative in a form of obstacles for out protagonist, so far they are: 1. goblin girl, who's blackmailing MC 2. other men who serve as a competition 3. MC needs money to pay rent or it's gg. There are it seems seven love interests in total and right off the bat I'm going to complain that this pool doesn't include the dark-skinned servant girl with freckles. Why make her so cute in the first place and then just not use the assets? Though there are a couple of erotic scenes with her, which I missed on the first playthrough, but she's still just a side character unfortunately. Anyways, the girls aren't just blank slate barbie dolls but actual people with interests and personalities. Speaking of which, they have initial stats (traits) too, which can be tweaked one way or another depending on the player's choices.
⠀⠀⠀Speaking of choices, there are a whole plethora of them, so folks that are constantly complaining about kinetic novels will drool all over here. Choices themselves seem pretty complex too and even the build in hint system (kinda like a walkthrough) isn't always clear about the consequences. There are character stats and they will dictate what kind of choices will be available to the player going forward. There is also money which you can earn and spend in various ways. But there is no grind as money serve more like a gatekeep to how many opportunities/decisions you have. Keep in mind each day you will need at least 2 silver to pay rent tho. This is definitely a VN at it's core but there are some sandbox elements. I've already touched on the finance management, but we also have limited free-roam sections. These mostly perform a function of skipping undesired content, like if you don't want to talk to a certain girl or go to the brothel, you may skip them altogether. UI for free-roam is not point&click interface but rather just a list of activities, so you will not be getting lost. On a side note some choices can lead to different outcomes based on RNG, and there are quick time events. Not a big fan of both in renpy games to be honest as they seem out of place here and just add frustration. You can re-roll undesired results of RNG infinitely and rollback all failed QTEs (or fail them on purpose, that's an option too). On the topic of netorare: definitely not a focus of the game. Personally haven't found any, maybe I've missed it, which is rather easy with this many choices, maybe it's simply not added to the current version. Anyways if even the mere possibility of ntr is too much for you, there is an option in the setting to disable it completely. I myself like it ON with the ability to avoid it, which makes romance more impactful in my opinion.
⠀⠀⠀On the topic of erotic content: there is not much yet and what's already there is rather unremarkable, as there are no animations (slide-show doesn't count), no sound effects, very few renders, not a lot of build-up and stage direction leaves a lot to be desired. If you want to see more scenes then I'd generally recommend going for "libertine" choices.

You probably shouldn't play this just yet as there is not enough content and definitely not enough lewd scenes for a proper adult game. But if you're curious, sure go ahead and check it out, as what's already there is pretty good, with an exception of porn that is. I think this has a potential to become an outstanding AVN for medieval fantasy enjoyers but it's not there as of now.

Playtime: 2-3 hours

Really loved the game, it contains many good and hot models, as well as a very engaging story.
Can't wait to play the next steps in all the routes since it provides entertainment to various tastes
Hopefully we will get a little more of Neela and the blind chick

I'm actually really surprised how little traction this game gained here on this site.

This is by no means a must-play, the game is too average in many ways for that, including the very underwhelming sex scenes, but it's definitely one of the better games you can find here.

I liked the MC, which is actually a really rare thing these days, he isn't your usual Gary Stu, yet still capable, you can also shape his personality to some degree. Same with the LIs, who have stats like submission and purity, which is really nice, though it's still too early to say how impactful these changes will be in the end. Same with the kinks, how will the game handle sharing/swinging/NTR, which seem to be planned.

The writing is not too verbose, which is a BIG plus. I'm skipping through most games because most porn devs are pretty bad writers, so it's really refreshing to play a game that's not trying to bore me to death with walls of meaningless text.

Anyway, a solid 3.5 with the potential for more. Best of luck to the dev.

Great First arc to the game !
The premise of the story is interesting, the LI are diverse and really pretty, and the RPG elements (influencing your character and the LIs) is really interesting !
I just wished that, if locked out of a choice, it would still appear at least greyed out to give pointers to other possible ways of playing !
Keep the good work going !

v0.14

The game has very interesting premise. Even if there is no clear bigger goal to aim for, the goal to integrate MC to noble society does create enough problems for the MC.
The story’s structure is fragmented, making it difficult for the narrative to flow smoothly. This has been fixed by having a menu, where you can always choose the next conversation. But this does not fix the underlying problem, that the story does not flow smoothly.

Writing is really good. It does fit really well on the medieval setting. I really like how formal some conversations are and how MC is trying to act like noble. It makes it easy to get absorbed in the story.
The game is weird mix of economy handling, diplomacy, seduction and adventure. Game is trying too hard to make MC a ultimate handyman for all the problems.

The sex scenes have not been that good. At least the game has few beautiful ladies and there has been enough nakedness to keep things spicy. Most of the women look good enough.
Sadly the game is trying to be so many things, that it has no time to create meaningful personalities. Maybe at some point.

Great game so far, I enjoyed playing it. I think maybe it's a bit of a slow burn, there is a lot of nudity and teasing, some handjobs, one tit job, maybe one blow job? There hasn't been any penetration yet that I've seen, but besides the lack of that, I think the story, the MC, the girls are all great, it's got a very solid base, I just think the game could definitely ramp up the sex.

Very cool game like the characters with their distinct personalities, the gameplay is also good, so far you got only one situation where depending on how you handle it(like a diplomacy choice driven mini game) you get a different outcome.

So far a promising start let's see where it leads.

This game is great. All of the characters are very distinct, likeable, and attractive while also having a wider variety of body types than most games like this. The pacing feels great and it never feels like you want to rush to get to the next scene. Hoping this game continues

Always get my guard up with Fantasy-style stories as it becomes all to easy to fall into the general fantastical tropes of over-egged world building dripping with uninteresting walls of pseudo-fantastical drivel text. As of so far (and it is very early days yet) we've managed to keep fairly light and to-the-point, which has allowed an otherwise somewhat basic 'peasant steps into nobility' premise to breath a little bit. Certainly has potential and I'm rating the title right now with where I'm feeling the quality will be at if we remain at this level. Whether there are more engaging story hooks incoming or interesting character development opportunities still remains to be seen- but I am hoping for such so this doesn't sink into 'slice of life' meandering. No offence to slice of life style games, mind you- I just think this game could be deserving of more.

Nice start. The story is interesting, the girls very attractive, long ears or not.
For lewd scenes we have to wait a bit longer I think, but that is okay at this stage of the game.
But one suggestion to the Dev: Please offer larger letters and style for the text. It is difficult to read. Then I will add the fifth star.

This is really a great game. Characters look good, men are manly, women are sexy but everyone looks unique. The women run the spectrum of physical and personality as well. There seem to be several stories going on at the same time, with the MC at the center of each. All of these stories are interesting and well written. The choices seem to have impact on the story with quite a few options. So far the game is a bit short but it has a great start thus far.

VERSION: 0.12
SUMMARY: Good start, nails it on most fronts, a decent fantasy setting with solid writing and plot.

1. Decent looks models on most fronts (nothing over the top)
2. Writing is pretty good, structured well
3. Story is pretty good, its something different, not odd, believable almost and characters are mostly interesting making you curious to see how things develop.
4. Renders are decent looking, nothing earth shattering but not bad.
5. UI interaction isn't bad, built in walk-through and option to dsiable NTR, which is all good.

CONS:

1. No animations, only still renders
2. Sexual scenes are few and far between and that that is there is rather vanilla.
3. Not much to see yet, though there is a decent amount of story.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

• WRT the vanilla sexual content and or lack thereof, this is probably in some way to be expected, though there would have been ways to introduce more action without causing too much fuss over progression with main love interest.
• Could be a fairly good game, lets see what develops and how its developed further.
• Some more TAGS for what we could expect to come, vanilla is...well vanilla...so

Review for [v0.11]
Honestly, a fantastic beginning to an AVN, and I think the best contributor to it's quality is that it isn't over-enthusiastic. It isn't promising us the world or delivering this amazing and in-depth beginning that is totally unsustainable for a full release. The expectations are set, and they're contained, which gives me hope that this won't be one of the dozens of initially good projects where the development slows to an absolute crawl, or is swiftly abandoned after the dev realises they bit off more than they could chew.

Now, what do I mean by these expectations? The story is set that you're a small-time pickpocket who ends up accidentally killing a noble and ends up replacing him for personal gain. This isn't some "omg you're the chosen one, born to defeat the ultimate evil!" It's "you're a crook who gets lucky". The good news as well is that in a medieval setting, his position DOES allow him more privileges than most, so his actions in many circumstances are valid. They work for the world. Many women would want to cozy up to a man who's the son of a baron (even if only the third son). It also gives potential for the future, with the chance for interacting with other baronies, royalty, as well as the family of the man he's impersonating. You see the potential for the future, and so you find what is happening NOW as interesting.

Speaking of the now,what's on display is a good package. Is it amazing? No. But I don't think it claims to be. Airplane isn't Schindler's List, but that doesn't mean it isn't an amazing film. It (for the time being) absolutely meets the expectations. The description I have is: simple, yet effective. Visually it's good, the girls are hot, dialogue isn't bad, the choices make sense, the choice system is easy to comprehend, it's a solid package.

I am happy to see this come out, and within it's first 6 months it's doing well. I hope that the progress for the AVN continues and it gets the support it needs, and I recommend anyone else who's looking for a project to support to support this one (obviously, I have literally zero personal interest, I am just a dude who reads porn games). If it fails I'm certainly gonna be disappointed.

Well it's short to really judge, but I like what I see in v.0.1.

The story and writing are decent. Sometimes a bit basic, but simple doesn't mean bad.

Renders are good.

Characters are interesting and some of them are very pretty.
I especially like the cat girl, maids, the blind girl and the two ladies MC saw on the way to Count.

It has potential.

[0.1]