Unity - The Lewd Knight [v0.991] [Feodosiy]

I find it very hard to reduce this game to a single numerical rating, but at the same time I can with absolute confidence reduce this game to just two words:

Lacking direction.

I'd taken this game for a spin a while ago—version zero-twenty-something—and decided to hold off my review in case it could redeem its flaws. It did not (ver0.55). So here it goes.

The main issue is that this game absolutely lacks a story that ties any of the elements together. I have to disagree with metaphor choice in another review that this game has the skeleton of something great. The skeleton is exactly the thing this game doesn't have. It has some decent chunks of adult content that are not connected to each other or any global progression. This leads to pacing problems and exacerbation of grind. Don't get me wrong, the game is grindy enough, but it feels even more grindy than it objectively is because the pacing is godawful. Basically, if you have 50 mooks to slay and 10 events to show, you can either make the player slay all the mooks, then show all events back to back. Or you can have shorter progression spans. 5 mooks, an event, 5 more mooks, another event, etc, etc. Guess which way will feel at least somewhat acceptable and which one will be a source of pure misery? It's all about pacing.

Moving on. What writing there is, can be described as anemic. Utterly limp-dicked, if you will. Now, this is supposed to be a corruption game at its core, but because there is no written overarching corruption progress, Annabel's attitude toward sex is all over the place, and it makes no sense. Is she a slut, a prude, or simply ignorant in the ways of sex? She is all three, depending on scene chosen. This is a big failure of characterization.

There is one bright spot in all this doom and glum. Some parts of the story are delivered via comic panels/storyboards. These are actually good, and I would love to see more games using this technique. So yes, I get why people urge this dev to stick to making comics. It's because art and comic panels are the best positive points of this game by far.

All other functional parts serve no real purpose other than occupying players' time. There is a combat system with nominal deckbuilding. It lacks any depth, whatsoever, because you don't really build the deck. You just grind as many upgrades for any card you can, as it's always the best option. There is an overworld with different methods of travel. It has no real purpose. I could go on, but my point is that this game is choke full of features that are annoying because they are implemented without any tuning or consistency in sight. For example, your house has a coat hanger that you have to use every time you want to leave. Not only this mechanic is meaningless, but no other location has it, and you can leave some places literally naked (Annabel just automatically puts on the appropriate attire). WHYYYY.

Oh, and I almost forgot the forced losses. The game now has 3 of these (4 if you count the experimental powerup), despite the dev recieving tons of criticism for introducing the second one. Why devs do this? Forced losses are shit. Adding insult to injury the game gives no indication that the fight is unwinnable, you have to waste your precious time to verify this is working as intended and is not a bug. And then you have to suffer slowly losing all your HP bar while you skip turn after turn.

And yes, the game is buggy as hell.

In the end, the good and the bad doesn't average out to a neat simple number of X out of 5. However, since I have to do this for a review, I'm gonna say the overall experience is Poor, two stars. It's not too late to steer this ship to greatness theoretically, but chances are, this is just wishful thinking. The mythical "potential" isn't worth shit; I judge games based on what they offer right now. And in its present state The Lewd Knight is not worth your time (at the very least, use the cheat mod).

The art is really good definitely the strong part of the game , but to much grind for my tastes.
The story is fun and entertaining, but I'm sure the game will be much better if tone down the grind.
If you can pass that you will enjoy the game.

The art is good.

Everything else is bad. It's buggy, really buggy! Grindy, boring, lacks direction, bad controls and H scenes are a chore, and also bad.

I think the dev should just do comics. Don't see this ever getting better.

Excellent game, really. Great theme, outstanding models and graphics, distinguished mechanics and quite a few hours of gameplay. Still some stuff to be implemented I believe, but I will watch the progress with excitement.

Great game, I love the slow corruption. The strip bar transition from shy is some of the best ive seen. A tad buggy. I would have loved some minor harrassment in the fights and a similar shyness in the webcam story (it might have had dialogue, but my game was bugged so it moved straight from guitar playing to allowing everything). Well done

[v0.5] review

2 words:

Buggy. Grind.

Be warned if you decide to play this game: I can assure you the good reviews below are "prospective" reviews. I think they understand what this game could become, and that's why they are scoring it highly. In some ways I actually agree. There's some really nice bits in here. The art and animations for example.

Does that mean you should try this game in the state it's in right now though? Well that question is fairly simple to answer:
HELL. NO.

This "game" gives less than zero fucks about your time. If you want to try this, be ready to have 16 hours or more to spare. And also be aware 99.99 % of that time will be spent grinding and going through forum threads trying to figure out where to go next, or how to get event X to trigger. Or trying to manage your files to get a full save to work.
Even with the cheat mod, this is a terrible terrible grindfest the likes of which I've never seen before. It's seriously the grindiest grind I've ever come across, and I've tried a lot of grindy games. This project is the definition of failing to understand the importance of pacing in games.

Then there's the bugs. They are everywhere. I've downloaded the 0.5 version but it could just as easily have been a version from 2 updates ago, because I can't get anything from the changelog to trigger.

The skeleton of something great is actually in here. But I doubt we'll get a playable version soon though. Check back in maybe a year from me writing this (2021-10-21).

(2022-11-14 edit). Ok so it's been a year, and nothing has changed. Game still gives less than 0 fucks about your time and is still buggy and intuitive. Come back in 2 years.

In short: Skip this one for now. Come back later.

Unsure about all the negative reviews because this game is brilliant and I'm glad I stumbled across it.

The art style of this game overall is amazing as well as the protagonist herself being very hot, I quite enjoy the speed of the story arc and how she slowly gets into doing more degrading stuff throughout it.

Really looking forward to see what the future holds for this game as it has huge potential, I'd like to see other areas done with the same approach to the parlour as the art style is brilliant. Possibly more happening in the office as in the cupboard area? Or even more content within the bar would be great.

A real hidden gem. Amazing art and smooth animation. Gameplay is repetitive but good. The addition of the massage parlor is amazing. The gameplay from the massage parlor is spot on. If the job in the office were more like the massage parlor it would have a reason to keep going back. Maybe like he starts off groping you leading to undressing and kissing. This type of game layout would be wonderful for a Legend of krystal game.

The story is amusing, the artwork is absolutely fantastic.

The grind can be a bit tedious and I wish you could speed up some things but those are forgivable.

I'm giving it two stars because of the ridiculous forced losses. I can forgive the first fight, as it shows how untrained and naïve the main character is, but when you get to the next instance and you spend 15 minutes destroying a fight because you've put in the time and effort to actually play the game, only for the fight to refuse to end because the game can't advance until you lose, just kind of defeats the point of it being a game. Might as well be a kinetic novel if the gameplay has no point.

Like all fedosity games, the artwork is great and the game idea is good and unique, but the actual game is riddled with bizarre choices weak mechanics and bulls!t

What story there is could have been written in 30 minutes, the majority of the game is just grind. There are mechanics that work one way in one scene and then don't work the same way in another similar scene.

Take for instance the biker boss, the first time you fight him you you have to lose. There is no indication that you have to lose and I had no problem in keeping the fight going for 30 minutes. I had to come here to find out that you actual have to lose to him to progress. In ever other fight scene there is a button you can press to auto lose, but in the one fight that you have to lose that button has been removed....

I'm done with this Dev.

I really wanted to love this game, and there are parts that shine through, but overall, there's some pretty big roadblocks along the way. So much of this game is mundane grind and tedium and it's easy to get burned out. The UI desperately needs an easy-to-understand quest system, and gameplay gets bogged down quickly. The biggest plus for this game is its amazing art style, which is the sole reason I'm giving it four stars.

I have no idea where the other reviewers are taking the comparison for the scoring ... but for the platform, idea and execution, this is the perfect combination with great graphics and art to boot !
The protagonist is beautiful, she is funny ( the humor overall is the main idea, but it has that parody feeling to it nonstop which I personally like).

I am giving this a 5/5 and I would even give more if they expand on what they already have.
Keep it up.
Can't wait for part 2
Or maybe a spinoff of the detective OR landlord of the apartment ...near the motel.

Even though the game can have it's bugs and the story might not be somewhat tied together yet, I have faith that this game has truly the potential to become a top 10 game.
The art is just god tier, animations are amazing, the humor and the sketch for the scenes are very well done, the parody of a hero genre it's just overall great, some people might dislike the whole card system and while I as well prefer something more action in the moment, I think it fits and it's still well done.
5 stars because I believe in this game potential.

This is really an underrated game. There are so many worse games having a worse picture of characters, poor ideas, etc but they have better rating this one? I would expect this game to be at the top 10 when I filter the games by the rating.

Quick review so far.
Pros: Art style is great.
I can be very funny at times.
The card battle system is interesting
Cons: The lack of quest is very mundane, which can make the game become boring.
There is nothing to strive for besides upgrading but that can be fruitless due to there begin nothing to really use them on besides grunts.
Working out needlessly eats up too much time.
Buying that apartment is useless, unless I'm unaware of something

Good game to play if you have played all the other games.

Fairly new and buggy at times. I absolutely love the art and devs sense of humour. I'm surprised the dev managed to add Er.ik Sa.tie, which I loved too. I played the 0.35 version so hopefully next updates bring better content and stable release.

One cheat mod available but game crashed a couple times so I'd say stay away from modding unless you know what you're doing.

Good Job Feodosiy, hope to see more from you.

Still a bit of a grind but I enjoy the game and the artist's content. Can see they're doing work to make the game more stable, but still run into the occasional text error, food and bought items not displaying correctly, etc..

I think the game deserves a better score than it gets, I feel it still has a lot of potential!

Played for a little over an hour. Expected a card-battler with a sexy heroine. There was literally one fight - a scripted loss -followed by endless, boring back-and-forth between an office where the character is demeaned, a gym where you wait for stats to increase, and a home where you can't do anything. I don't think I made any real choices, and it isn't sexy.
It's possible that I didn't wait around long enough for the game to get "good", but if I don't have a reason to stick around after an hour, your game at best has pacing issues, at worst is just bad.
The art and animations were good, there just isn't substance behind it.

The game is pretty dope. The art and animations are great. I played it in the past a bit, and got a bit frustrated with the grind, but don't think its a bad game.
People don't understand how hard it is to make a 2d game with drawn animations. I do, so hats off to the dev.

I don't get people here voting negatively on drawn 2d games. We need more like this.

Needs a lot of work. Slow and plodding, not always clear with what you're supposed to do next. Go to the professor's place and first it got stuck on fast forward or something, then it got stuck with the cursor not working. Art style is appealing, though.