VN - Ren'Py - The Fiery Scion [Update 29c] [Vander]

A decent AVN that is held back by three major weaknesses.

On the plus side the story and writing are good overall. The game has plenty of sex scenes which a lot of visual novel authors seem to forget about.

Three major weaknesses:

Character Models & Renders

Character models and renders are several generations old and it shows. The author opted for 2010 era character models when much better ones are available. There's no charm or advantage to doing this IMO aside from faster render processing. Perhaps the author can't afford good hardware to render the game on, don't know. The visuals are a weak point of the game. It's difficult to get immersed in the sex scenes when the character models look terrible.

Harem & Love Interests

Instead of creating deep and meaningful characters the author chose to throw new love interest after new love interest at the player at hyper speed. Good writers create a small cast of characters and develop deep and meaningful relationships with each of them. Not so here, instead, in order to keep the story new and fresh, the author opted to throw new love interests at the player instead of developing deep relationships with them. So many authors make this mistake. Perhaps they simply don't have the necessary writing skills to develop deep and meaningful characters so their only option is to throw new love interest after new love interest at the player on a continual basis. This results in all the love interests blending together and being forgettable. By the time the story cycles back to love interest #20, it's been too long and I don't even know who I'm talking to anymore.

Choices

Few choices in the game. The few that are there are minor and don't have a real impact on the story. Most are asking if you want to see a bonus scene or not or call someone by a different name. The author basically made a kinetic novel and added a few minor choices and called it a visual novel. The game is a kinetic novel and linear in near every way aside from a few minor choices added in as an afterthought. The player has no choices on who to add to his harem or add as love interests.

Summary

Overall, I applaud the story and the high amount of sex scenes but can't overlook the three major weaknesses of the game which brings it down considerably.

I'm not sure I need to leave an actual "review", as opposed to general observations.

As a medieval magic, feudal project, the concept and the storytelling is compelling.

Rendering and characters are well presented.

If I have criticism, its the "oh yes my lord" reaction from all female LI's, and instant acceptance of such of the many wives, concubines and general shaggers the lordling has in his harem, no matter their status.

Now I fully understand the storyline of a degredation of mens proloferation because of a "curse", but it just detracts something from the story for me. Not enough to make me not want more - indeed, I am looking forward to much more! Quite where this goes and for how long will be interesting - I have played this only for the first time start to finish 1-3 in various sittings, so now sit eagerly awaiting the next update.

Absolutely fantastic game story wise and very solid rendering as well.
It easily goes to my current top 5 games.
Characters are great, writing i like as well as the premise of the game itself. See myself following this dev for the foreseeable future.

The Fiery Scion has some of the most fantastic and immersive world-building I've seen from a fantasy AVN. I've been following it for the past year, and the updates are of consistent quantity and quality; It's well crafted and should be considered the gold standard for stories in AVNs.

The characters were and still are fantastically written; each one has a unique, believable personality that complements the story exceedingly well.

The visuals were a rough selling point for me, especially the lighting in some of the earlier parts of the game, but it seems Vander has improved immensely, not only in the technical aspects such as environment and animations, but also in the writing.

TFS is the Isekai Ecchi Anime you always wanted, you know? With a good budget, a nice story, character progression, cool but also naughty moments.

This game made me feel more emotions than all Ubisoft games published in the last 10 years.

If you can afford to turn a blind eye to the game engine, it's a must play.

Uh... how does one review a game like that.

I'll try to be brief. Basically, if you have breeding kink, and I'm talking actual breeding and not just creampies, you'll like this game.

The game is a fuckfest. I mean it, there's so much porn in this porn game, which is a difficult thing to achieve, but the MC fucks a lot, and every woman he fucks, joins the harem. And there are so goddamn many women in the game. Like, I think I lost count at 20.

That's both a pro and a con of the game - if you like a particular girl a lot, it may be a long while until you even see her on screen again, let alone have fun with her.

The game looks... passable. Visual fidelity of AVNs overall has gone up since this game started, but if you like high quality visuals, you won't find em here.

Then why 4 stars, you ask? It's enjoyable, and the actual story inside the game is fun and well written. Dialogue and character interactions are good. It sometimes falls to the wayside in lieu of, you guessed it, more fucking.

What I personally would have preferred is a way smaller LI cast, with more time given to individual gals, but that would be knocking points off from the game for something it is not trying to be. So that's just something to keep in mind while playing.

my favorite game

good story, good looking girls, you can get them pregnant and maybe produce cute kids like Maria and Solange.

Great Mage with Fighter physik (Bodymuscularity).

Would not mind another game just like this with a different setting.

And Vander you are a great guy for developing such a great game.
Keep up the perfeckt work

A visual novel with strong dungeons and dragons vice, or any rpg in general. Thus as a fan, I really enjoy the setting of the game. Now for the AVN part: The render is alright and improving, the character is diverse, the plot is interesting enough for me. Overall I think it's 8,5/10

Really love the characters and the plot is actually really interesting. My only critisism is with how the dialog is presented, it feels kind of flat, no pauses for delivering feelings and things like that. But its a minor problem, the dialog itself its great. Looking foward to see where it goes.

I was surprised at how enjoyable this was to read so far (update 23b at the time of this review). This title bears a thematically-standard thesis of a medieval man who wants all the women he can get, yet the plot and dialogue writing weave the sexiness and the story together very nicely: if only more of the current main-stream fantasy games had such a coherent narrative!

The visual aesthetic and sound design aren't entirely to my liking, but over all this is quite good with recognizable characters and set pieces that work hard to bring the story-world to life.

An entertaining tale! I hope this story goes on for a great while longer, which it may indeed.

For me it was love at first sight, with elements such as: harem, magic, family and sex, in an engaging plot following the trajectory and growth of the MC and his family. I like the quality of the images, architecture and the time it takes to release a new episode. We cannot fail to thank the developer's dedication.

It's... fine. Sort of.

There's a story, which immediately sets it apart from the majority of games here. It's slow and meandering and has a bit of D&D game master vibes, but in the end it's ok.

The harem set up is good. I don't like harem games usually, but the world building supports it well and it's integral to the story, so it's fine.

The characters are interesting and that's what ultimately made me stick with it. But at the same time it also leads to the games cardinal sin:

Like many other games, it throws more women at you than necessary or even useful. Every update half a dozen girls come along as love interests and I rarely remember who the MP is even talking to, because he fucked them 2 updates ago. It does the game a disservice, because it ultimately reduced engagement and makes all love interests shallow and uninteresting.

I'll never understand why Devs keep doing this, but it makes this game worse than it intends to be.

The game has a really great story! The world building has me hooked and I can't wait for more updates. It's just a fun ride, although dialogue can be a tad bit cringey at times, it just work for some reason. Really good stuff!

More people need to know this game! The story of this game is one of the most refreshing I have seen in a Visual Novel in a long time. This guy deserves props, and I hope he gets more recognition. Plus he updates regularly with big updates.

This game is so damn good it's honestly ridiculous, it subverts cliche's and common tropes, the MC is a chad without being a douche, nice without being a pussy, the girls are plentiful but their stories are well thought out and detailed and their individual romance arcs are satisfying. The main story is very interesting and something i spend a lot of time thinking about after every update. Definitely give it a try, it's so much better than your average fantasy harem game.

Version Part 1

A well thought out, comprehensive and intricate fantasy story world backed by a huge cast of characters that far exceeds typical AVNs. The frequency and mass of each update is also right at the forefront of the industry, so this already enormous game is still rapidly expanding even as I write.

Finished Part 1 and we are talking about ~10 hours of gameplay with normal reading speeds, so one can imagine the finished product would easily stretch beyond 20 hours.

Story
MC is a recently graduated battle mage under the tutelage and service of the Lord of Wildale. In this fantasy world, the number of females far exceeds males due to a curse and it is a norm for guys to bed multiple women and have a harem of wives and concubines. MC forms an adventure party with other females that takes up various assignments around town.

The main plot is not that apparent at the start, though it comes along nicely as you progress. Naturally with such a setting, expect MC to collect lots of gals for his harem and fuck his way out of many situations.

What is rather unique for Fiery Scion is it avoids the cardinal sin of information downloading during story world building. Instead snippets of information of this world - its geography, politics, culture, magic and economy are slowly introduced to the player during MC’s adventures.

Players are nicely eased into a believable fantasy world without information overload and the fact that we are able to interact with so many characters through MC does create immersion at a level seldom seen in other AVNs.

Game Mechanics
There are no choices in the first few hours of the game after which there are occasionally rare choices that seem to be along the lines of choosing a light or dark path. From what I can tell, it varies dialogue at some later stage, but otherwise the main flow is decidedly linear.

Background / Character Renders
In terms of quantity and customization the backgrounds are certainly top tier, however some of them are rather unrefined with rough edges, lack of detail and inaccurate size proportions especially from certain perspectives. I guess it’s an inevitable trade off for the rapid pace of updates and development.

A shout out to the developer who does not hesitate to expend character models - there are many many minor characters in Fiery Scion and all of them regardless of gender and importance have their own models. There are no shortcuts like colored silhouettes, blur unfocused background people or third party narration without a formal appearance in this game.

Unfortunately a major drawback of having players witness so many character models is the LIs become indistinguishable - other than Karla, Monica, Erika and Arwen, most of the time I had difficulty telling who is who.

Character Development
MC’s character development is fine, we do get a feel of his thoughts, dilemmas, love for his family and frustrations throughout the adventures.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the LIs - MC has sex with so many girls on a fuck and go basis skipping character or relationship development. I understand it is expected in a harem AVN that LIs are predisposed to the MC, but the cock worshiping in this game is simply too much. Most of the LIs come across as brainless zealots who will do anything to have sex with MC and by the time the 20th girl does that you simply don’t care.

So far only Karla, Arwen and Monica and potentially Erika in the future behave like husband and wife in a “normal” relationship and can have a proper conversation without going all gaga over MC’s cock. It’s a shame to have such a well built up universe let down by a myriad of 2 dimensional love interests.

Sex Scenes
There is certainly no lack of quantity in Fiery Scion, but it would have been better to focus on customizing each scene for a smaller number of LIs and make them memorable rather than the current strategy of doing an avalanche of scenes using the same stock renders and animations with different girls and background.

The same set of pussy eating, cowgirl, missionary and doggy animations repeat in many scenes with only minor differences in background and models. In fact I struggled to remember who is who and who/when/how MC had sex with previously.

BGM and Sound Effects
BGMs are ok abut limited, the game could do with a larger repertoire of tracks in the playlist. After all Fiery Scion is a hefty game and should be matched with a befitting variety of tracks.

Conclusion
I like the lore - it is well crafted and believable and players learn something new about the world as they play along even in the later stages. The number of characters that MC interacts with is very impressive and coupled with the rapid updates make the current size and potential of this game beyond expectations.

This would have been a platinum benchmark for AVN if not for the lack of character depth with most LIs and the repetitive sex scenes which lack variation. Overall I consider this a slightly flawed but overall impressive 4.5 stars game.

Amazing game with amazing characters, I know is not the best looking game here by any means but the ability it's has to keep you wanting to know more and the charm of the gals especially the more important ones is enough to keep you non stop playing, not gonna lie I wasn't expecting much but it ended up being one of my favorite avn out there, very recommended without a doubt

+ excellent story with great world building that makes the big harem MC has natural; one of those rare stories where you never feel the need to CTR forward

+ massive amount of content, hard to believe that this is less than 2 years old, one of the hardest working devs for sure

+ varied women for everyone's taste

+ a cast of very likable and interesting characters, one not only reduced to teh MC and his LI

- as it is with harem games, it's hard to give every LI the attention they deserve

Easy 5 stars!

Renders are quite dated and sex scenes are mid at best. There are many games that are better in quality of renders and sex scenes. If you're looking for a quick relief, be aware.

If you're looking for an interesting story and some steamy scenes, this game is one of the better ones on this site. I never felt like CTRL'ing through it. There is always something intriguing happening in the main story and after one point of plot ends, another starts. The story flows naturally and is easy to follow.

MC is no bullshit guy, which is refreshing. Can't say much without spoiling. Though his model is pretty bad in the first season, it's somewhat fixed in the second season (haircut). Girls fall for you pretty easily, and I usually dislike that, but for this game there's an actual reason in the plot itself.

There are a lot of LI's with various body types, so everyone can find something interesting/attractive. Since this is a harem game, You can romance everyone and be sure there will be no drama later on.

Overall this is a great game. If you don't care about graphics much, I would recommend trying this one out.

I enjoy the story, the animations may be a little on the weak side but the story makes up for it. The Dev is also very active in their discord and gives frequent updates. The girls are unique but I have fears that some might get forgot with the vast amount of them though. The in universe explanation of why there are so many ties into the lore.

One of the best things is that the main character isn't super OP. He is stronger than most people but there are still threats and he doesn't just one man army all his enemies. Everyone gets a little time to shine.