VN - Ren'Py - The Fiery Scion [Update 27c] [Vander]

Pros

• Good story
• Good writing
• Lots of sex scenes but many aren't meaningful
• Lots of content

Meh

• Generic Honey Select animations
• Generic sex scenes
• Slow game pace
• Slow burn
• Far too many side events that add very little to the main plot and story
• 100% linear story (there are some choices but the story is still linear)
• English problems throughout - not bad but noticeable. The author isn't a native English speaker and little proofreading (if any) was done by someone who is so the English is rough at times (wrong words being used, missing words, misspelled words, poor grammar, sentences that don't make sense, etc.). Most of the time you can tell what the author is trying to say but all of this could have been avoided by using a native English speaking proofreader.
• No gallery
• Few game options

Cons

• Poor character models (Honey Select)
• Poor visuals
• Ugly MC who is supposed to be good looking
• Few choices - Game is a kinetic novel disguised as a visual novel
• No choices with who you take as love interests
• Huge harem that is way too big - few of the LIs would I consider to be meaningful relationships

The poor character models and visuals just don't cut it in 2022-2025. The character models are barely serviceable (two steps above stick figures).

I know the author tries to justify this huge harem due to the curse and religious teachings of the time (Ishtar) but it just doesn't work well. You can't have 24 or more love interests and have meaningful relationships with all of them - it's impossible. So major sacrifices have to be made to have this type of harem story. What are those sacrifices? I'm glad you asked. 75% of the love interests are basically throw away characters. The MC fucks them once or twice and you rarely interact with them for most of the rest of the game. Why? What's the point?

A good portion of the love interests are forgettable and only good for one or two rolls in the sack or to put out a baby. I often forget who some of the girls in my harem are (not joking) due to only interacting with them on rare occasions. Who is this girl I'm talking to? Oh yea, I fucked her two versions ago. Yawn...

The game is essentially a kinetic novel disguised as a visual novel. Content vs number of choices is extremely low. Most players won't even look at or consider kinetic novels so the author basically created one and added a few choices here and there so he could call it a visual novel. The game resembles a kinetic novel much more than it does a visual novel.

The only saving grace of the game is the compelling story and overall decent writing. That's it. So many throwing 5 star reviews at games like this like candy. Players tend to over review, not under review and that is clearly evident here.

The story is compelling but proceeds at a snails pace. Lots of "fluff" events are thrown in daily that distract from the main plot. I'm not talking about a few distractions from the main plot, I'm talking a LOT! The MC has his attention drawn away from the main story for a near countless number of reasons. If you want to read about every single thing that a person does in a day you may enjoy the plot moving forward at a snail's pace. Personally, I prefer a summary focusing on the highlights, not a daily diary account.

Examples? Sure! The story often has to describe the MC having breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The same thing occurs with having a bath, waking up each morning, and going to bed each night. The daily grind is real my friends. Little attempt is made to speed up the plot, story, and main events. In fact, it feels like the author pulls out every tool in his arsenal to slow the main plot down intentionally.

The MC tries to screw every girl in sight (I'm not joking). Nearly every girl desires him and wants to join his harem. The girls that I really want to add to my harem aren't allowed until much later in the story (the MC's adventuring group). Monica is added fairly early but the other two are added much later. The MC adding the dwarf cook to his harem was ridiculous IMO. Author - "Hmm, I haven't added a new girl to the MC's harem for two hours so let's have him fuck the dwarf cook." Come on dev, really??? This type of craziness is common. So much story time is wasted on meaningless stuff like this...

The two most popular games on F95Zone (which I won't name) focus on a small cast of characters with the MC developing deep and meaningful relationships with each of them. Doing this well makes for a compelling and deep game that is both immersive, engaging, and fun. One of those games was even written in Honey Select 2 (it's not hard to guess which one).

I recommend the game to those who don't care about the visuals and just want to read a slow burn daily diary kinetic type novel and have lots of sex with countless forgettable love interests instead of focusing on a handful and having deep and meaningful relationships with them (and having a focused plot that moves at a reasonable pace).

So, the cons first:
-The dialogue can be a little cringey at times but you get used to it
-The mixing of modern language with "olde english" is weird as well, for example a pair of women using the word "scrub" to describe a man, and then you might see a line like "I am faint with hunger"... it's kind of stupid sometimes
-The graphics obviously aren't the best, and a few of the character models aren't the best looking (but the majority of them are)
-The animations are nothing great and even a little janky at parts
-I get that it's a mega harem game, and I won't knock it for that despite that I prefer smaller harems, but I wish we were able to reject at least some of the women

The pros then:
-Interesting story and events, plus good world building
-Very sexy character models, even if the graphics leave a lot to be desired
-Characters have some decent depth considering it's a mega harem game
-No sandbox

Summary:
Honestly, whether you like this game or not is going to depend almost entirely on whether you like the main sexual themes: mega harem, impregnation, and nearly every new woman you meet lusting after you openly. If you like these themes then the cons I mentioned above will not be as big a deal. If you're ambivalent or don't like those themes, then the cons are likely going to be a deal breaker.

Excellent story and copious Honey Select sex without countless varied love interests. What more can I ask for? The story is well written and makes it easy to suspend disbelief as the world justifies (a childbirth curse) the reason for men to have many lovers. Despite this fact, it’s not the center of the story which revolves around the MC’s learning about his growing magical power, political intrigue around the area he lives and the world at large, adventuring with his party, and so much more. There’s a lot here, and while the Honey Select sex scenes are just the cookie-cutter ones, there’s enough of them and with plenty of build up to whet your appetite.

I’ll admit that, as an older man, the adult scenes don’t really do it for me, but the story keeps me coming back. A highly recommend it if you’re a fan of longer stories intermixed with plenty of story-justified sex.

Great VN, I like the story and the models used. I especially like the way the children and fairies are shown, size wise. Other VN's with children or smaller people show the distorted.

Always watching out for updates, which are more frequent than some others I follow.

One of the best of this genre. The story takes center stage and it's decent, holds your attention when it wants to. The side characters are good and most are memorable but sometimes there's too many of them. Animations are decent.

[part 1]
absolutely sensational.
good world setting, story, idk what to say but download the game and experience it yourself, it worths.
very nice characters, all your women are sweet, nice, dont take any shit from each other, but know when to apologize for their mistakes, you know?
the MC is great, he is strict but fair, horny but not a pervert, treat his women (not just his women) with respect and love (i fucking love it), has ambition, knows how to shoot fireball and shit, not a whinny lil bitch who uses dirty trick to get into women panty yk? great great great
decent music (still at part 1 so maybe theres more)
also very nice to have a father figure for once, finished part 1, know why people loves Athagan so much ImstillgonnaromanceLilianaImsosorry
the game also focusses on topic that I very like such as marriage, pregnancy... so 5/5

A decent AVN that is held back by two 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.

Two major weaknesses:

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.

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.

Overall, I applaud the story and the high amount of sex scenes but can't overlook the two 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.