(0.56)
Not recommended, period.
There are much better adult games out there, so how the game managed to get such a good rating is beyond me.
It is rushed and there are several issues that essentially ruin the game. It could've been so much better if not for the collective of these problems, some of which should've been just fucking obvious and also easy to fix to boot, while others scream "amateur!", although that may be insulting to amateurs who care and make an effort to show that they do.
Pacing is 0/5. It's utter trash and there's no other way to put it. Development happens unnaturally fast. It takes maybe 2 in-game days and a handful of short conversations to go from 'total strangers' to true, eternal love, (and to break taboos for it). Magic isn't even involved. You also go from being an absolute nobody, to being essentially the most important figure in the kingdom during that ~2 days. You're essentially force-fed the plot at record speed, and there's quite a number of chunks of plot for you to choke on.
There's not much "transition" to speak of either, nothing to show the passage of time, one scene ends and the other follows immediately.
Not once I found myself confused, not realizing days, if not months have just passed between two scenes - but even the 7 days (or so?) that were supposed to pass for an certain event to occur happened after ~3 in-game days maybe.
And not because the event has come to pass in advance, no, it happened as scheduled, supposedly, you just can't play through all the days, and there's absolutely no indication of that anywhere.
While the Story is driving, the mother-in-law Pacing is sitting in the passenger seat actively ruining the moment.
Every moment.
The game takes no time to let the players sink in the new information, there's very little "down-time", pause between unloading another major plot point on the player or actually explaining existing ones, and that puts a hard dent on the story.
Otherwise the story is just generic, average, it has nothing new to offer.
Setting is your usual medieval high-fantasy with magic and kingdoms and other humanoid races, like orcs and elves.
It's not necessarily bad of course, I'll not hate on the game for it, my poor rating has nothing to do with the lack of creativity in this department on the writer's part, but it wins no points for presenting something new (or at least something "new enough") either.
The plot is also pretty much what you'd expect from this genre. It'd be fine, however, piles of issues keep ruining it, it's worse than it would otherwise be. Any by "worse" I mean it is wholly unbelievable because of the way it's presented, and because of the pace it's presented at.
(In case you were wondering, no, not because it has magic.)
Dialogues are annoying and for many reasons.
--First, bugs(/mistakes). You make several choices during your gameplay, and sometimes the game just "forgets" it, and subsequent dialogues play out as if you've chosen another, entirely different option. Which takes out of immersion greatly.
--Other times the name tags and fucked up and even though one character's supposed to speak, another's name-tag appears, making following conversations pretty damn difficult at times.
--Another problem being the simplicity of language, dialogues are fairly primitive; simple and on-point with little to no flavour (or personality) and the flow of conversations is just unnatural. (-immersion)
--Dialogues are also often problematic thanks to the ignorance of the writer; it screams it was written in the 21st century, and that's a problem when you're trying to present a, you know, medieval fantasy. Examples of this include being refused to be given alcohol without proof of the main character being 18+ (even as a joke, this screams "amateur!" yet again), being a "freeloader" until 18(???) but having to "find work" afterwards but not a day before, having to mention losing your virginity when you are exactly 18 and not a day younger and so on and so forth.
21st century western moral code, laws and "norms" are either forced into the story for some purpose, or just find their way into it due to the writer's lack of experience *and* attention. Honestly, I don't know which one is worse, but you don't need to be a writer, amateur or professional, to see a 100 shows or play a 100 games that get it right, in order to get it right yourself. You just have to give a remote fuck about plausibility.
--Then there are some grammatical and spelling mistakes, i.e. "purr a drink". It happens, and it, along with everything else, just keeps ruining immersion more and more, and this one really only needs some attention to avoid.
--Duplicate dialogues.
--Duplicate dialogues.
--Finally, some of the dialogue is simply missing. Too much text squeezed in "too little space", thanks to the ridiculous
.
.
.
distance between lines, and so the end of a sentence is cut of leaving you wondering what you just missed. And you'll never know.
Art is bad, mmmkay? There are 2 reasons for that, one would've been fairly easy to avoid, so let's address it first;
1/4th of every fucking image is cut off by the fucking oversized dialogue box. Did the dev not play their own game to notice it? On pretty much every image, the action happens in that exact range because scenes play out in first-person-view. It's glaringly obvious even in the very first scene and it pops up every scene after.
And having to choose between reading the dialogues or hiding it to take a look at the presented image is not an acceptable solution.
There are hundreds of games on this site that get it right. Most games, in fact, do get it right.
But not this one because this one's special.
They could've easily reduced the size of that box, hell, they could've made it fully transparent, with only the letters being white with a black outline. It'd have been a whole lot less intrusive.
Or they could've simply made the pictures take up the remaining 3/4 of the screen. That'd have been another agreeable solution.
But no, fuck it. It needs to be big, intrusive, and it must include a buggy menu also.
No options to change horrendous style, to resize it, to turn it transparent or to make the elements disappear to allow more visibility of the "background" images, to reduce letter size or the distance between words and lines. Terrible design choices.
As for the art itself, during conversations it's just appalling (amateur!!44!4). Thankfully the art of *those* scenes are significantly better, albeit still far from being exceptional. It'd be fine if not for the dialogue box.
That said, the images aren't numerous, in fact, what you get is basically 1 image per scene, with 1-2 variations with slight changes mostly to facial expressions.
Still, it's "decent" and I wouldn't bash the game for it (otherwise). Unfortunately, art during conversation is still horrendous and decent+horrendous is still bad.
Music and Sound effects;
None, nada.
There are option for them in "preferences" but there's no sound whatsoever.
Music and sound effects can certainly emphasise situations or set the mood.
I have no problem with having none, it isn't necessary by any means, but it'd only enhance the game-play.
It just doesn't, because there's none.
Other; some images, text and "interactive objects" (things you can click on for effect) reach below the screen sometimes, and/or are misaligned with the art. Preferences menu being one such example.
Overall, it feels rushed, not enough time was spent on anything, nothing was fleshed out, nothing was made believable or compelling. I can't really say any good about it because even the better things, such as the generic story itself (which could've been amusing still), are royally screwed by other issues such as bad dialogues and hasty pacing.
And because it's so rushed, there's no character development,
no world-building or exposition, none of that. Just a highly unlikely series of convenient events and changes.
I suppose it's great for a first attempt, if that's the case then congratulations (truly). But I am sorry, I'm not going to sugarcoat shit to make anyone feel better.
It IS a far cry from being consumer-ready.
