VN - Ren'Py - The Fiery Scion [Update 28a] [Vander]

This VN starts out quite well for the first hour or so, with good world building, storytelling and decent enough sex scenes. Unfortunately, it slowly an inexorably goes downhill from there. The dev builds a world where women greatly outnumber men and end up basically throwing themselves at the MC, and the MC only very rarely refuses a woman, whom he makes either an additional wife , concubine or slave, depending on the circumstance. You end up needing a scorecard to tell who is who and lose any connection you might feel to any of the characters.

And some of the wardrobes of some of the characters are just plain bizarre. This is set in a medieval Europe type of setting, but in this world, slaves wear modern french maid outfits, even when traveling for days on dirt roads driving horse drawn carts.

Males in this world seem to have superhuman sexual endurance, able to ejaculate 5-10 times in a single day, every day.

When I finished the novel I was very disappointed What started out to be an interesting and very promising story became a simple endless loop of meet women, bed woman, add woman to household.

4-5 stars for the beginning, 1 star for the how it ends up, final rating of 3.

[Rev @ The Fiery Scion Update 4a]

Mmmm. yep, that'll do.

Art's nice. Some minor weirdness with fabrics and flat backgrounds but if yer starin at drapes in a porn game yer doin it wrong.

Writing is enjoyable. Scenario and narrative aren't the most novel, but handled well. Characterization is endearing. I will come back and find a way to nuke this rating to zero stars if Lord Dad is killed prematurely or poorly; he's one of my favorite characters. The one major gripe I have is that I don't care to see blood and gore in my porn game (particularly against women) and the couple instances of nuking the bandits from afar without even hailing them doesn't quite seem in-character.

Porn was very nice. Hope for more girl/girl and group sessions, but otherwise I very much enjoyed the proceedings. Reader beware: I have an impregnation fetish and so does about half the cast, so if that's not your bag you may not get the enjoyment I did.

Gameplay wasn't relevant: it's a VN and my usual gripes about those was washed away with the enjoyment on hand.

TLDR: Fuck yes.

Really enjoyable. If you're into breeding as a fetish this seems like it'll be full of it. Renders are workable and the writing is coherent and has very minimal mistakes, it furthers the story rather than pulling the reader out.

I love the concept and pretty much everything about it. If just the translation would be a bit better it would get 5 stars from me. The english is still good enough to not throw you out of the reading flow, but it is definitely noticable that there is room for improvements in terms of proofreading cause there are a bunch of typos and errors that happen when you write quickly and dont check what you wrote. I love that this game has a focus on family building and that you can actually see some cute children which is a very rare thing on this site.

If the theme and the tags look good to you give it a try.

First, the things I don't like.

- Subjectively, I don't like two of the kinks that have a strong presence. First, the girls have very hairy pussies. Like, whole ass forests down there. Second, pregnancy/breeding. I won't hold it against the game since everyone has different tastes, but for me both are turn offs.

- The writing, while decent in concept, is paced oddly with sometimes too much focus on the mundane, as well as being filled with spelling and grammatical errors.

- The renders range from bad to okay. The shadows often have jagged edges which is especially noticeable when they are on a characters face. In general the world looks a bit grainy and dark.

- The MC is a bit too nice and vanilla, I think; he goes out of his way to ask multiple times for consent from each girl. It's a porn game. Consent is implied, lol. It's fine if you don't want rape in your game, but I think this veers too far the other way.

Now, things I did like!

+ I really appreciate that the game has NSFW content outside of just the sex scenes. A lot of conversations and world building is done with women who are just casually nude, or close to it, which makes getting through blocks of dialogue much more... Engaging, let's say. It's something I wish more games would do.

+ MC has a personality. As I noted above, I think he's a bit too much of a pussy, but I'll take a hundred of this guy over just another lifeless insert you can find in any other game.

+ World building is well done. You aren't hit of the head with a massive block of text explaining everything in detail, rather, it is provided over time with a lot of showing rather than telling. Likewise, the setting itself is fairly interesting, and I like that it's based on D&D.

+ Having a large harem is great. The more the merrier, as far as I'm concerned. Wives, maids, slaves, fuck buddies, queens (hopefully... she has the best character model in the whole game), it's all great.

Overall, I absolutely think the positives outweigh the negatives. Yes, you can find better looking games. Yes, you can find better written games. But I think this game has an X factor that's hard to put in words; maybe call it passion, because I think it's obvious that this is a labor of love.

Fantasy, Harem, Pregnancy these things caught my interest.
The beautiful visuals, the hairy pussys (which are far too rare in games) in the previews got my attention.
But what made me fall in love with this game is its heart and humor. The game is filled with heartwarming, touching, and funny scenes that make you feel relaxed and at home playing the game.
The sex scenes, and the promise of the pregnancies to come resulting from them are very hot, but they are not the main draw of this game. Important and great yes, but if you're only going to skip all the talking and not pay attention to the characters or story, you're not going to have a good time. The story and the characters telling it, are the core attraction.

The general story and world ideas aren't unique, and will be familar to many. The approach however is fresh and stands on its own. This story and world are its own. The story, as of Update 1b is really just begining, the seeds well planted for what is to come. Aspects are familiar, sure, but there's a great feeling of freedom and openess, and you can't help but wonder where the story is going to go from here, how it and the characters will develop.

The heart and humor are ever present, even in not apparent. They ground all the scenes and the characters. They given them depth. The love and care between the various characters both explicitly and passivly, really remind you that these people are people, and what it is you as the main character are fighting for and to protect.

The only two small negatives I could mention are there are some language issues, due to the author writing in a language not their own, these can be a little jarring to start and get less common as the game goes on, but more they get lost behind rest of the game. You don't really pay them much attention because you're busy with what's actually happening. Nothing is lost or the lesser for these issues. The jokes and humor shine as brightly as they ever would

And the current, as of Update 1b, lack of player choice. I wouldn't go so far as to call this a Kinetic Novel, there are choices at times though they are very few. This should, I hope, change in coming updates. As it stands, player input is required enough to not make one feel removed from the story and only an observer.

A neutral issue for me, is there's no audio at all in the game. No music, no sound effects.

[Update 24b]

I doubt anyone will read this, but I felt the need to update the review, so here goes.

This is a very good VN, and would be deserving of 5 stars if it didn't have some rather glaring flaws.

For positives, I really like the story and the world. The dev has a clear vision as well as an understanding of how to make compelling characters that feel like actual people.

The lore is pretty good as well as decently unique, and the setting was hand-crafted for AVNs, with wanton sex and women wanting to jump the MC's bones all the time.

It's a good enough story that I'd probably read it even without all the sex.

Now for the negatives. While every character is unique, I do think there are too many of them. At some point, it became hard to remember anyone that hadn't been introduced in the first part.

There's a lot of repeat animations as well, so the sex can get kind of boring if you're not reading update to update.

The Uncanny Valley issue mentioned below is also still present, though I do think it's gotten less prevalent.

The biggest flaw, for me at least, is the grammar. It's just bad. Exhaustingly so.

That's basically it. Definitely worth the download, but flawed enough that it doesn't get the 5.

***

I'll start by saying that there's potential here, potential that I think the developer can realize given enough time, but for now it's decidedly your average F95 game.

The renders are your average fare, though some characters look straight out of the Uncanny Valley (the captain of the guard comes to mind as an example.)

The writing is... impatient, I would say. The pacing is fast, we're getting introduced to all these characters and concepts and worldbuilding and it never really slows down. It's missing some downtime, so more relationship building and calmer storytelling. Another thing needed is a proofreader, urgently.

I quite like the premise, not to say similar things haven't been done before but there are definitely fresh ideas here too. We'll just have to see where it goes. Same with the characters, really.

In short, I'm going to keep an eye on this game because it's definitely interesting, but for now 3 stars seems like a fair assessment of its quality.

I like it

The story is good and feels unique, how it's implemented feels like the VN is it's own universe in the making, the characters all have different personalities which is something I constantly look for, I can see this being a favorite of a lot of people, favourite character so far is kes, I want to know more about her and build a impactful relationship with her, though Monica is pretty cool to so idk.... Threesome?

Something I can see needs work is dialogue, during sex scenes and normal day to day events it feels very much the same far to often and could be branched out.

No Ntr

Sharing- So the sharing is between the Li only, no other man will touch your women, I know people may not like lesbian content so that's something that should be mentioned, I like lesbian content so I'm different and enjoy it, it's not made to cuck you, its well, from what I've played it's basically 'keep it in the family' type of deal (not incest) though I will recommend the Dev make it optional to appeal to a larger audience but I'm not gonna go on about it more.

Anyway, good luck Dev, hope to see more soon and hope you find success

The MC is a bit too nice for my taste in fantasy setting. Hopefully, he does have a bad side in the future. Still, I'm a sucker for DnD setting so i do wish this game to be a success. The writing is ok but if this is not your niche, you will be bored out of your mind.