RPGM - Completed - The Enigmatic Domain [v1.01] [One Heroic Man]

The game is definitely a mixed bag, but it has good looking characters, visuals and animations.

To get the bad out of the way, the "game" part of the game is mostly annoying rather than fun. The job minigames are mostly trivial clicking, with the worst being the office job that asks you to solve a math question like "50+42" by incrementing an answer field one click at a time. The game uses a static walkthrough image rather than ingame quests which is not ideal to navigate and means you need to remember which step of each character quest you're on. Some of the steps are triggered by showing up on the right day and time to a random location, so you can't really avoid using it.

The plot is contrived but it's alright. The bigger issue is that the game has 10 LIs to get through and spends very little time on any of them. I've finished the game and barely know anything about any of them or why they're gung ho to be part of the MC's harem and help them take over the world.

Lastly just to note the standard RPGMaker issues - no dialogue during animations, you can't control when they advance, and the custom UI has a lot of bugs.

On the plus side the visuals look very good. The overworld sprites and custom UI both look pretty nice. The renders and animations are all nicely shot, lit and rendered. I realize this is the shortest part of the review, but this is what we're all here for and the game does it well.

I'd like to see a sequel to this that is the MC and the LIs actually running the dungeon. Give the different characters some screen time as well as having some time to give us insight into what actually makes the MC tick. I think it would also give more room to have some more creative animations and scenes.

This game kinda sucks, but is better than one star. The good thing is a lot of the fixes are pretty simple. Easy stuff first:

The movement is inconsistent, as sometimes you have to interact to enter an area and sometimes it just walks you straight in. Worst offender is the clothes shop as it is at the end of a "hallway" and half the time you run in on accident.

The story is so disjointed. It introduces a gathering mechanic at the beginning then never uses it again, why bother?

Once you reach the endgame, the girls in the house are very boring. A scene you could activate by talking to them would make it much better.

Hiding the ending behind a paywall is frustrating. I understand the alternative clothes/cheat menu being exclusive but plot shouldn't be.

Payments should be more sensible: 10g per day or 500g if you do 5 in a row seems dumb, there's no reason to do construction over bartending (10x difference in payment), etc.

Stuff that's good:

I like the models, HS is less common nowadays and its good to see someone who knows what they're doing with it. I like that it can be finished relatively quickly, except for the grindy bits, it feels like a weird short story that doesn't extend itself longer than it needs to. Unless the next update puts you on a spaceship and starts to use RPGM battle mechanics, lol. Finally, the walkthrough is appreciated and creatively done.

I think the dev has some interesting creativity but could use an editor.

This review might be subject to edits as i try out the game ... But so far I don't feel it deserves to be that lowly rated . The story seems fine , the characters are so far interesting the art is good... The only real cons for me are the rpgm engine , and judging from past posts and the feel of the game , the removal of a lesbian path .

Game seems to at least attempt to be story-driven, but the introduction story is incredibly vague, rushed, and confusing. I have no idea what's going on, who the characters are, or why I should care about anything that's going on.

Infinite loop when defeated in combat, respawned outside combat w/ 1HP next to the enemy, immediately drawn into combat again, defeated again, etc.

The game seems to be fairly early in-development at time of this review (v0.2), so it's possible this game might improve in the future. However, at time of writing, I consider this game unenjoyable and virtually unplayable.