Downloaded, played through the available content. The game has the groundwork to be a good game, and it needs some work to get there.
World - 6/10: Lots of potential, so far the map has some odd dozen locations so far that we could access in the future, which hopefully will create stories.
Writing - 7/10: One female interest, the priestess is fleshed out, the other is a bit one dimensional at the moment. Given the state of the priest, I would assume that the mage will get there. The state of the world is currently largely inaccessible, however that just means the author has room to grow and create stories.
Art - 7/10: At time of writing, the erotic content consists of brief nudity. I would not consider the game erotic at the moment. I'm willing to get this a pass, as the models used are high quality. I got the sense that the author wants erotic scenes to be meaningful, so.. In time I think this will get better.
Combat / Systems - 2/10: The combat and it's accompanied system choices are the worst part of the game currently. The game clearly draws from an iteration of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) for it's systems. In theory, drawing from D&D is fine. However, because the way the systems have been applied, the end experience for the player could be a source of frustration.
First, the author has given access to all the spells to there respective class, which results in counterintuitive balance. As a cantrip, the priestess can deal 1D12 to a target with an evil cantrip or 1D6 to all enemies with a holy cantrip. Whereas the Wizard's best single target cantrip deals 1D10 and the mage's 1d6 AOE includes friendly fire damage. The discrepancy is rooted in that mage spells are balanced in that mages cast all mage spells, where as priests are limited by alignment / deity in D&D. Put another way, some priests can cast powerful evil offensive spells, OR powerful holy healing abilities but they're not the same priest.
Another quirk from taking the D&D system is the randomness of hitting. I haven't dug into the code so I can't be 100% sure, but it seems that combat system uses the D20 system way to determine if an attack lands. 1d20 + (X) compared to a target's Armor Class. This approach is functional, but doesn't give results one might expect. Similar to how the spell system is applied, the resulting combat comes out as a bad end user experience. I estimate the hit chance is somewhere between 30-40% for most attacks, which would what one would expect for 1D20 vs a difficulty of 14ish. This would imply that our characters do not have combat talents/proficiencies / magic bonii or other ways to mitigate randomness. As a result, combat feels bad as both sides just flail at each other, neither side able to do much damage. Part of the challenge of implementing the D&D framework into RPG maker is that players don't have the ability to customize function. For example, I cannot build the mage to specialize in ray attacks at short range. I cannot have the main character go into a rogue class and get sneak attack bonuses. I cannot have the priest go into summoning specialization to allow my new rogue MC to flank and backstab enemies. Lastly, the reliance on the D20 system will result in the main character, a martial character, falls behind as he is primarily reliant on base attacks without power attack / cleave / multiple attacks per round or added bonuses from other sources such as smite or sneak damage. This means his damage is primarily from the weapon itself, which places heavy limitations on his damage.
Additionally, skills are implemented but the only use appears to be peeping at the females at night with perception. Again, in theory the skills could be useful and meaningful but it seems difficult to see how this could be done in a way which feels meaningful.
I would encourage the author to entirely ditch the framework of D&D. The framework gives a foundation and tools, but many of the tools aren't useful. In combat, the reliance on the D20 for rolling to hit creates a large amount of randomness and without the mitigation of said randomness (feats/talents/proficiency/situational bonus), combat comes out as a slow lull. For spells, the lack of spell limitation applied to the priest creates a discrepancy with our priestess friend far out damaging the mage. For skills to be important, it would require that alternative interactions be designed with and without the needed skills. This quickly multiplies the amount of work required to solve problems. It seems like fully implementing skills in a meaningful way would be daunting at best. Lastly, players appear to not have access to all the ways to progress / customize characters such as feats, specialization and more. Please consider drawing from a different set of rules as the choice to use D&D comes with a lot of extra work with relatively little reward.
TL ; DR -- Drop D&D, look at other systems to emulate. Consider looking at systems in other video games such as Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics or other RPG maker games. Making D&D work "properly" is a lot of work, much of which won't offer a payoff in a hentai game.
Overall, keep an eye on the game as it could be a great game. In its current form, the game has a long ways to go. Still, I am looking forward to how the game progresses!
Hi, first of all, thank you
VERY much for the time you invested in writing this very detailed feedback! It helps us a lot to take the right path to evolve the game!
I'll try my best to answer some points without going into spoilers:
World - I have plenty up my sleeve. As you said, the map is big but the locations that you can explore right now are a small part. Lestone alone (on which we're currently working for the next releases) is composed of 7 districts and has plenty of content inside. To unlock (and code) everything will take time, but this was a long run from the beginning.
Writing - Thank you for reading everything! About the wizard, the only thing I can say is that her storyline will get juice starting from the Mage Academy where she studied. Planned in future updates (one of the districts of Lestone), it will take time to see her warm up, but it's intended. Anyway, every character you will be able to recruit during the game will have her own story and questlines to complete. Clearly, this is largely dependent on the zones unlocked by updates.
Art - Nothing much to explain or add here, to be honest. Just thank you.
The infamous combat system - This is straight to the point and this analysis is very appreciated. That's something I've been wondering about until the release of the demo and this update. Being a Master of DnD for years and being used to the system got me biased that the combat system "d20 based" was easy to implement in an RPG Maker game. As for the coding part, yes, it was. But the usability is... Meh.
I thought about it for a good week, but unfortunately abandoning this system now would mean completely blocking the production of the game and rewriting from scratch (at the current state of coding, the number of skills grew to 346) not only the combat but also many other events that use similar mathematical formulas and dice rolls. At that point, it would be better to throw the game and create another one.
I think I can get it to work by making targeted changes, not so much to the system itself, but to the formulas and statistics.
I took it as a personal challenge; also because continuing in the game without this system, I would not be able to do some things that are part of the story that has to come.
Like for the passing time mechanic, I'm planning for the next update changes that will give combats a "smoother" feel.
To start, reducing the misses to the bone should already give the end user a different feel. Then I'll adjust the aim from update to update.
Returning to the point: as for the talent checks, the number of them is very low and it's used merely to give "shortcuts" to players to access zones (Cawic now and Frithuie Keep in 1.02) or uncover some random events along the road.
Talking about MC, he has a completely custom class that grows spells and abilities as he levels up. Around lvl 5/6, he is likely to give up his physical weapons completely until he runs out of skills and/or mana.
And that's all I hope. I probably missed something but the core that I wanted to talk about is on the plate.
Right now I'm at work so I hope I didn't get too distracted and wandered more than necessary.
Having said that, I am happy to engage in this type of proactive discussion and I hope to hear from you in the next updates!
THANK YOU!
