According to 2hu's post, the girl didn't really want it. So you confessing would just make her feel worse. At that point ant time, she is already far gone. I do agree that moving on would be the best option at that point, although the way every thing resolves itself magically and you 'somewhow magical time and space shit' get the girl anyway is kinda odd. It could have been a bittersweet or sweet ending where Charles does become a better person and the mc finds someone else or whatever. But I don't want to rag on a story I personally didn't experience myself.
Iexist
Engaged Member
- Jul 20, 2018
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This ended up picked up out of my backlog, mainly because I was curious about what Suba did with the game, using Dazed's tool. Which is why I'll start my usual game rant by talking about the translation. Also, for clarity, I only downloaded the game from the OP recently, after the edit on April 9, so if there's a newer version of the translation, I don't have access to it.
Now. The TL. Much like the OP states, this is around the same level of quality as other TLs I've seen from Dazed using GPT-4o, which makes it tolerable as far as MTL goes (unlike the word salad from other so called contributors that I could name...). Ahem. What seems to be somewhat better than Dazed's translations is the way the TL preserves honorifics most of the time, which is great for context. Though it still has the issue of translating "oji-san" and the like as "Uncle", which is definitely NOT the case in the context it appeared in the game... but there's no good one-two word translation for how it's used there either... The other problem I've seen is that items with long description aren't properly word-wrapped... which would be an issue in any game that was more serious... but in this one, it pretty much doesn't matter one bit.
There's also the usual issues with confusion in terms of pronouns and whatnot... though it definitely could have been worse.
I can't say if what improvements are there are because of edits or because of the fact that the game is relatively small.
Moving on to the game itself... it's... not much of a game. It's really a VN in RPGM more than anything else. The whole thing is pretty much entirely linear, with the only optional elements being related to you interacting with the events as they happen and choosing to do training sessions to trigger the events there. It ultimately doesn't matter if you do or don't, because events proceed as they will anyway behind the MC's back. There are no sex stats. The progression of the characters' skills and whatnot as adventurers doesn't really matter. The whole combat sections are irrelevant, and so is the leveling and gearing really on account of the fact that you can just take Charles in the party and he'll wipe out everything. There IS one mandatory fight that MC and Mana should win under specific conditions, but, uh, I don't think you can lose that fight even if you want too. (Except maybe by using the self-destruct item you can find...)
All in all, as a game, it fails pretty badly. You'd think that it having that 'darkened room' gimmick where rooms are hidden until you open the door and whatnot, that there'd be more events around this mechanic. Or that as once the girl is cock addicted enough, she and Charles would appear all over the map for you to stumble into at random or something.
Tough shit. That doesn't really happen. The gimmick is only really used for fixed, one-off events, and there isn't even any pixel-art or something for stuff on the map that the player might see but the MC wouldn't. Essentially, the fact that this is in RPGM is a complete waste, and what gameplay there is exists mainly to waste your time if you don't realize that you're better off just murdering everything with Charles in the party and basically never bothering with gearing until the end. There's some lore-bits scattered around in the Library and on the book-shelves of the Guild Healer in the capital, but they're tiny and not elaborated on all that much.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how you play the game, or whether you explore anything or not, because the endings are purely determined by one single choice near the end. There's only 2 of them, and the second of the lot is considered the True Ending.
I will say that if you don't explore a bit and interact with some things, the endings might be a tad confusing in terms of how and why they happen... but that leads into talks about the story.
The game's story is typical wannabe NTR shenanigans. I call it wannabe because for me, the whole BSS silliness doesn't register as NTR. Kyle and Mana are the typical childhood friends who are "more than friends, less than lovers", and both of them are too afraid to confess to the other or whatnot. The game doesn't really elaborate on why these two aren't a proper couple from the get go, though the game does imply that it's at least partly because of MC's sister to an extent. The two get nearly killed and they get saved by the chad, Charles, who of course takes a liking to Mana. So when MC wants to become his apprentice to become super str0nk, he of course makes sure she comes with them so he can get into her panties. It's not really subtle, you've seen this a bunch of times before.
Where the story stands out somewhat is through the elements that make Mana's fall happen. First, it turns out that Charles is the prince of the country and a descendant of the Hero King of the past, which is a Big Deal, because that man was the only one with the power to defeat the Demon King and to date, the bloodline remains important to keeping the minions of said Demon King in check. Because of those reasons, he has much more solid reasons to coerce Mana into his bed, it also provides much more solid reasons for Mana to not fight it or tell Kyle. Mainly because Charles could literally have Kyle executed and defying him is literally treason, as the main reason he uses to fuck Mana is that there need to be more descendants with the Hero's bloodline.
Beyond that, magic is used to literally allow Charles to fuck Mana all day long until she passes out, only giving her breaks to eat, on more than one occasion, which makes it much more feasible for her fall to the dick to happen. The guy is literally, superhuman and superior to all other men because of his bloodline, so her growing addiction to his cock as well as the absurd pleasure he can inflict on her makes a lot more sense than other games of this type. Furthermore, it's later revealed that Mana was cursed from the very 1st encounter with the Demon King remnants, which weakened her will and ability to resist, and she was cursed even worse later. All for the purpose of turning her into the future mother of the Demon King's reincarnation, which would also have the Hero's Blood too on top of its original power.
These elements lead to the final choice of the MC, and help explain what happens because of said choices. By the time said choice comes around, Mana is completely cock-addicted, but she still loves the MC enough that she feels guilt over her actions towards him. Which is why the choice to confess to her completely breaks her. Her guilt and the curse overwhelm her in that moment, and from that moment on, she just clings to Charles as his sex-toy. As is seen from her perspective, the only things she cares about are fucking him and enabling him. Because of that, she only becomes his fuck-toy and nothing else, and for obvious reasons, she'd further enable his bad habits and make him even worse. This in turn makes the both of them into extremely shitty parents, which in turn makes it easy for the Demon King to reincarnate as intended, especially with Kyle hating their guts in the background, even if he never does anything about.
If, on the other hand, Kyle chooses to take a hint and just buzzes off and leaves her to Charles, she manages to recover enough to become Charles' queen, and together, they end up loving their child. Said child, the reincarnation of the Demon King, ends up regretting what happened to its new mother due to the plan for its revival, it also ends up admiring Kyle for not giving in to hatred and despair. Which is why it essentially destroys the world and remakes it based on a past point, and gives Mana and Kyle a chance to be together and essentially asks Kyle to be its new father, joking(?) that it hates the blond hair of the Hero's bloodline and that it'd prefer to have black hair like Kyle's. The world is remade, Kyle and Mana end up in the cave where everything started with the power they gained on the road to S-rank, and the whole story changes. It's not actually time-travel, tbh, so the NTR itself isn't really avoidable in a real sense btw. Even if it was time-travel, both Mana and Kyle would have been sent to the past, even if their memories were erased, so for them, the whole chain of events still happened, they just don't remember them properly.
ANYway, for all that the game is deeply flawed and would've been better as a short VN that doesn't waste your time pretending to be a proper game, the story is actually better than other would-be NTR slop out there. It's internally consistent, it justifies what's happening well enough for a hentai game and it at least tries to be more than "hurr-durr bigus-dickus wins everything forever". It doesn't succeed that well at the last bit, but it at least tries. Plus, we never see MC's dick, so we actually have no idea how he compares with Charles, which is a plus as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, and, the smut, the hentai, the reason why we play these games. The smut is ok, typical stuff for this genre. There's a pretty nice marathon fuck sequence when Mana gets fucked for three weeks during the B-rank promotion quest. Sadly, that isn't repeated. After that it's mostly singular scenes and whatnot. The art is ok, if you like the style. It also feels like Mana's boobs get bigger in latter CGs when compared to the starting ones, but maybe I'm just seeing things. Either way, it's not bad, but not amazing either. There's some re-usage of CGs, but there's not that much of it. Most scenes have at least one unique pose and whatnot. I've seen plenty of other games with less scenes and less variation than this one, that's for sure.
All in all, for a first game of a dev, this is acceptable. I'd rate it at around 3.5 stars if I could be assed to bother with the tiny review window. That said, I feel that this is the kind of game that should be broken down by elements, rather than singular number. The gameplay is honestly around 2-star levels (not 1 because it at least doesn't bore you too much with utterly basic-bitch RPGM combat like other games do), but I'd rate the story around 4-stars. Even if it's not particularly original in terms of overall plot, the details make it better than other attempts and it's internally consistent. While subjective enjoyment of how it goes may vary, it at least doesn't have the usual long list of way too big plot-holes that stories like these usually have. It might be a single, straight road with a fork at the end... but it's at least a nice country road instead of a bombed out WW1 battlefield that I've seen in similar plots and even much bigger VNs handled by debatably better writers.
Now. The TL. Much like the OP states, this is around the same level of quality as other TLs I've seen from Dazed using GPT-4o, which makes it tolerable as far as MTL goes (unlike the word salad from other so called contributors that I could name...). Ahem. What seems to be somewhat better than Dazed's translations is the way the TL preserves honorifics most of the time, which is great for context. Though it still has the issue of translating "oji-san" and the like as "Uncle", which is definitely NOT the case in the context it appeared in the game... but there's no good one-two word translation for how it's used there either... The other problem I've seen is that items with long description aren't properly word-wrapped... which would be an issue in any game that was more serious... but in this one, it pretty much doesn't matter one bit.
There's also the usual issues with confusion in terms of pronouns and whatnot... though it definitely could have been worse.
I can't say if what improvements are there are because of edits or because of the fact that the game is relatively small.
Moving on to the game itself... it's... not much of a game. It's really a VN in RPGM more than anything else. The whole thing is pretty much entirely linear, with the only optional elements being related to you interacting with the events as they happen and choosing to do training sessions to trigger the events there. It ultimately doesn't matter if you do or don't, because events proceed as they will anyway behind the MC's back. There are no sex stats. The progression of the characters' skills and whatnot as adventurers doesn't really matter. The whole combat sections are irrelevant, and so is the leveling and gearing really on account of the fact that you can just take Charles in the party and he'll wipe out everything. There IS one mandatory fight that MC and Mana should win under specific conditions, but, uh, I don't think you can lose that fight even if you want too. (Except maybe by using the self-destruct item you can find...)
All in all, as a game, it fails pretty badly. You'd think that it having that 'darkened room' gimmick where rooms are hidden until you open the door and whatnot, that there'd be more events around this mechanic. Or that as once the girl is cock addicted enough, she and Charles would appear all over the map for you to stumble into at random or something.
Tough shit. That doesn't really happen. The gimmick is only really used for fixed, one-off events, and there isn't even any pixel-art or something for stuff on the map that the player might see but the MC wouldn't. Essentially, the fact that this is in RPGM is a complete waste, and what gameplay there is exists mainly to waste your time if you don't realize that you're better off just murdering everything with Charles in the party and basically never bothering with gearing until the end. There's some lore-bits scattered around in the Library and on the book-shelves of the Guild Healer in the capital, but they're tiny and not elaborated on all that much.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how you play the game, or whether you explore anything or not, because the endings are purely determined by one single choice near the end. There's only 2 of them, and the second of the lot is considered the True Ending.
I will say that if you don't explore a bit and interact with some things, the endings might be a tad confusing in terms of how and why they happen... but that leads into talks about the story.
The game's story is typical wannabe NTR shenanigans. I call it wannabe because for me, the whole BSS silliness doesn't register as NTR. Kyle and Mana are the typical childhood friends who are "more than friends, less than lovers", and both of them are too afraid to confess to the other or whatnot. The game doesn't really elaborate on why these two aren't a proper couple from the get go, though the game does imply that it's at least partly because of MC's sister to an extent. The two get nearly killed and they get saved by the chad, Charles, who of course takes a liking to Mana. So when MC wants to become his apprentice to become super str0nk, he of course makes sure she comes with them so he can get into her panties. It's not really subtle, you've seen this a bunch of times before.
Where the story stands out somewhat is through the elements that make Mana's fall happen. First, it turns out that Charles is the prince of the country and a descendant of the Hero King of the past, which is a Big Deal, because that man was the only one with the power to defeat the Demon King and to date, the bloodline remains important to keeping the minions of said Demon King in check. Because of those reasons, he has much more solid reasons to coerce Mana into his bed, it also provides much more solid reasons for Mana to not fight it or tell Kyle. Mainly because Charles could literally have Kyle executed and defying him is literally treason, as the main reason he uses to fuck Mana is that there need to be more descendants with the Hero's bloodline.
Beyond that, magic is used to literally allow Charles to fuck Mana all day long until she passes out, only giving her breaks to eat, on more than one occasion, which makes it much more feasible for her fall to the dick to happen. The guy is literally, superhuman and superior to all other men because of his bloodline, so her growing addiction to his cock as well as the absurd pleasure he can inflict on her makes a lot more sense than other games of this type. Furthermore, it's later revealed that Mana was cursed from the very 1st encounter with the Demon King remnants, which weakened her will and ability to resist, and she was cursed even worse later. All for the purpose of turning her into the future mother of the Demon King's reincarnation, which would also have the Hero's Blood too on top of its original power.
These elements lead to the final choice of the MC, and help explain what happens because of said choices. By the time said choice comes around, Mana is completely cock-addicted, but she still loves the MC enough that she feels guilt over her actions towards him. Which is why the choice to confess to her completely breaks her. Her guilt and the curse overwhelm her in that moment, and from that moment on, she just clings to Charles as his sex-toy. As is seen from her perspective, the only things she cares about are fucking him and enabling him. Because of that, she only becomes his fuck-toy and nothing else, and for obvious reasons, she'd further enable his bad habits and make him even worse. This in turn makes the both of them into extremely shitty parents, which in turn makes it easy for the Demon King to reincarnate as intended, especially with Kyle hating their guts in the background, even if he never does anything about.
If, on the other hand, Kyle chooses to take a hint and just buzzes off and leaves her to Charles, she manages to recover enough to become Charles' queen, and together, they end up loving their child. Said child, the reincarnation of the Demon King, ends up regretting what happened to its new mother due to the plan for its revival, it also ends up admiring Kyle for not giving in to hatred and despair. Which is why it essentially destroys the world and remakes it based on a past point, and gives Mana and Kyle a chance to be together and essentially asks Kyle to be its new father, joking(?) that it hates the blond hair of the Hero's bloodline and that it'd prefer to have black hair like Kyle's. The world is remade, Kyle and Mana end up in the cave where everything started with the power they gained on the road to S-rank, and the whole story changes. It's not actually time-travel, tbh, so the NTR itself isn't really avoidable in a real sense btw. Even if it was time-travel, both Mana and Kyle would have been sent to the past, even if their memories were erased, so for them, the whole chain of events still happened, they just don't remember them properly.
ANYway, for all that the game is deeply flawed and would've been better as a short VN that doesn't waste your time pretending to be a proper game, the story is actually better than other would-be NTR slop out there. It's internally consistent, it justifies what's happening well enough for a hentai game and it at least tries to be more than "hurr-durr bigus-dickus wins everything forever". It doesn't succeed that well at the last bit, but it at least tries. Plus, we never see MC's dick, so we actually have no idea how he compares with Charles, which is a plus as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, and, the smut, the hentai, the reason why we play these games. The smut is ok, typical stuff for this genre. There's a pretty nice marathon fuck sequence when Mana gets fucked for three weeks during the B-rank promotion quest. Sadly, that isn't repeated. After that it's mostly singular scenes and whatnot. The art is ok, if you like the style. It also feels like Mana's boobs get bigger in latter CGs when compared to the starting ones, but maybe I'm just seeing things. Either way, it's not bad, but not amazing either. There's some re-usage of CGs, but there's not that much of it. Most scenes have at least one unique pose and whatnot. I've seen plenty of other games with less scenes and less variation than this one, that's for sure.
All in all, for a first game of a dev, this is acceptable. I'd rate it at around 3.5 stars if I could be assed to bother with the tiny review window. That said, I feel that this is the kind of game that should be broken down by elements, rather than singular number. The gameplay is honestly around 2-star levels (not 1 because it at least doesn't bore you too much with utterly basic-bitch RPGM combat like other games do), but I'd rate the story around 4-stars. Even if it's not particularly original in terms of overall plot, the details make it better than other attempts and it's internally consistent. While subjective enjoyment of how it goes may vary, it at least doesn't have the usual long list of way too big plot-holes that stories like these usually have. It might be a single, straight road with a fork at the end... but it's at least a nice country road instead of a bombed out WW1 battlefield that I've seen in similar plots and even much bigger VNs handled by debatably better writers.
