VN - Ren'Py - The Nobody in a Hero's World [Ep. 1 Part 3] [DuckDevGames]

Review:

The game has its strengths, but it also falls into some common pitfalls of visual novels. Here’s a detailed breakdown:

Storytelling: The game suffers from slow-burn storytelling, a common issue in visual novels. The main character (MC) is initially portrayed as a coward and acts foolishly, with little character growth for an extended period. This lack of development can be frustrating for players looking for a more dynamic protagonist. Additionally, the player doesn't have impactful choices, which limits engagement and agency within the story.

Humor and Tone: The game leans heavily on comedy and clichés, which may not appeal to everyone. Personally, I find humor games challenging to take seriously, as they often undermine the narrative's gravity and make characters seem like caricatures. The story begins with the MC, a disgruntled worker who dies in an absurd manner, only to be mocked by a minor goddess in the afterlife. This sets a comedic tone reminiscent of the anime "Konosuba," which may not suit all tastes.

Character Development: The MC is introduced without any significant power-ups or special abilities, simply a workaholic with no heroic background or compelling motivation. This simplicity, combined with a flat personality, makes it hard to root for him. The game often places the MC in embarrassing or cringe-worthy situations, which can feel repetitive and uninspired.

Comedy Execution: The use of humor at inappropriate moments disrupts the story's flow. For example, during a serious scene in the adventurers' guild, the MC is hit on the head for touching a sword. Such scenes feel out of place and detract from the overall experience. Another instance involves the MC being attacked over a dropped snack, which felt unnecessarily exaggerated.

Tropes and Themes: The game relies on the trope of the MC being beaten up by female characters, a common element in harem and ecchi genres. This can become tiresome and feel like overused slapstick, rather than meaningful character interaction. It’s important for comedy to enhance the story, not undermine it.

Harem Elements: So far, the harem aspect is limited. Besides Kino, the only other notable character is an elf blacksmith who trades favors for a sword. It remains to be seen how these relationships will develop, but currently, they don't add much depth to the story.

Positives:

• The characters are well-designed, standing out from many other visual novels.
• Ambient sound adds to the immersive experience.
• The H scenes are well-executed and visually appealing.

Conclusion: In summary, the game has potential but is currently held back by slow pacing, excessive use of comedy, and a weak MC. If you're looking for a lighthearted VN to pass the time, this might be a suitable choice. However, if you prefer more serious and impactful storytelling, you might find this game lacking. I’m giving it 3 stars for now but will keep an eye on future updates to see how it evolves.

Game with a great pacing and real good story its a VN and has no sandbox elements but this is compensated by it being the funniest indie adult game i've encountered so far, looking forward to the blender rework

This spoiler-free review is based on my playthrough up to Episode 1, Part 3

If you just wanna know if it's worth playing, the answer is a resounding yes. It's a top of it's class game. It has great story, great cg/art and great sex scenes.

Now to get in the details, I'll split the review in sections:

Characters
They aren’t bland. Each character possesses a distinct personality, imbuing them with a sense of soul rather than merely appearing artificial.

CG/Art
Overall, it’s excellent. It effectively conveys the story. In certain instances, it’s actually flawless. Lighting is extremely important for this type of CG/Artstyle, and it's done magnificently; you can see it in the preview screenshots. The sex scene CG/Art is almost god tier, but lacks animations (I'll talk about that later in the review). I really really like the character models, especially the faces; the eyes are really well done. My biggest complaint about the overall CG/Art of the game is that in some places they lack detail, and enough to ruin the immersion.

text and UI
I'm just gonna mention the negative things: There are occasional mistakes in the writing, which is honestly quite disappointing for a game of this caliber. There's a super annoying dark vignette at the bottom of the screen at all times and disappears temporarily solely if I press H or the mouse wheel. Doesn't have an option to hide quick settings.

Music
It's amazing, and it positively contributes to the overall immersion.

Story
For an adult vn, which often have bad, average, and/or bland stories, this one is actually decent. The dialogue is great and soulful. The humour is above average and actually funny sometimes. I never felt the need to rush through the story just to reach the sex stuff. It’s an overall enjoyable experience. Definitely better than 95% of the adult vn out there. I'm glad that there are dialogues I can skip, otherwise I would find reading unwanted content quite tedious. There was a major sex scene, and it's one of the best I've seen; that shit was super hype and well made. The story actually builds great anticipation towards the sex content, and it doesn't disappoint once it gets there. It actually exceeds expectations.

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The dev mentioned on the f95 game page that animations are planned for future updates, but he wants them all be custom made because the koikatsu animations have already been seen by everyone in other games. I'm all for this. This game already has almost god tier sex scenes, so if animations are gonna be added, it has to be done right otherwise the viewer's imaginative expectations will be ruined and the overall quality of the game will plummet.

Honestly, I'm just super excited for the future of this game. Great job dev

The title of this game is a bit of a ruse. I had initially started this game since I figured the premise of the game would be about a nobody just working his way up and trying to survive day by day. Turns out, this plays out just like basically any other isekai with some extra steps. The MC doesn't start with much, but through a series of convenient coincidences, everything is simply handed to him at a rapid pace. Powerful allies? Seconds in he gets a loyal one. Minutes in he gets more. Powerful weapon? For deeply contrived reasons he gets one for free minutes in. How about combat strength and devlish good looks? Was gifted that for free from the start. Oh no! The MC is about to get hit by an attack while he's completely unarmed! Hey, look, there's a shield on the floor.

The MC is also is a bit of a whiney bitch when things aren't literally handed to him (even though almost everything is). Homie got a second chance at life and he's complaining about how he can't be the hero in it. Add on top of this, the MC literally not doing anything at any point to deserve anything, and him just quickly throwing away his old life with seemingly no attachment to it whatsoever, and I can see this being a major turn off for some people. Makes me almost yearn for the days of silent or blank slate MCs. However, this is pretty common for isekai stories in general, so I can see certain other people easily forgiving all of this.

The game does a good job with everything else, though. Characters are fun and are well defined in terms of their personality and visuals. It does a great job of not crushing your balls with exposition dumps and slowly feeds you lore at seemingly perfect times, although it's all very generic. It also does a good job of being immersive with it's perspectives and scenes, and it's very clear a lot of work was put in to every frame. There are a lot of moments you can just skip, but I don't, I sit around and ask everyone every question because I like the dialogue. Mangas are often limited by pages, and page space, while visual novels are just static character portraits, while this game strikes a perfect balance between both. It got to the point where I straight up forgot I was playing a porn game until a dick got whipped out.

In the end, it's more of a 3.5/5. Would have rounded up, but am rounding down for an overextended development time on a game that didn't have much game in the first place (about 1-3 hours of content while basically being a kinetic novel).

TL;DR: I should hate this game. It utilizes extremely tired old isekai tropes that I've always despised. Main character is a muppet who barely does anything and get's everything. Anything unrelated to the MC, however, is pretty good and it's clear a lot of love and passion was put in to this game, and it was enough for me to see it through to the end (of chapter 1) and at least try out any new updates. Whenever those come.

Game got good renders and decent h scenes but sucks bad at the plot, buildup, development time, etc. It's feel like a make believe story with bunch of cartoon characters with no personality or emotions. The characters models are well made and so is the enviroment. Tho, without the plot, it get harder to continue, The pacing is weird, story are outall over the place and way too simplistic. Got bored after 20 mins.

This game goes really god damn fast. There's basically no buildup or romance, just find a girl, go "man she's cute" and then of course she just feels an inexplicable urge to hop on your "nobody" cock. It's kinda dumb, and isn't winning any oscars, but at least it's funnyish. I don't actually hate this game, I just think it's more designed for people uninterested in slow-burn games. Objectively, I think this is a game people would enjoy if they want to skip nuance and get to boning. I personally would have rather had more buildup, maybe much more, at least for big characters like Kino.
It doesn't really do it for me, but maybe it'll work for you. Worth trying anyways. If I could rate 3.5 that's more accurate to how I feel.

love it. the H scenes are amazing, I love the story and cant wait for more of it to come out. I really love that it feels like im reading a manga with the some parts that made me chuckle and smile. Amazing writing, amazing characters, and an amazing setting that more H games need.

Excellent so far, looking forward to further updates!

Would be great if the scenes were a bit more animated, but given you're doing this as a part time hobby rather than a job, I can see how much bloody work that would take, so that's only a seriously minor critique

All in all, the story, character and scenes we've gotten so far are brilliant, so as I've said, very much looking forward to whatever updates are coming next!

Best things I can say about the game is that a lot of love went into making it's visuals stand out from the average kokatsu game making the characters and environment look above average. MC is likeable and the story has comedy in the right places with exagerated facial expressions that make the characters feel more lively than standard kokatsu games. No engrish was found and plot made sense.

Giving it 5 stars to encourage the devs to not abandon the project and have more people try it out

Review for Ep. 1 Part 2

A promising start to a comedic isekai with some real personality to it.

It's always nice to see a Koikatsu game step away from the standard school/city style genre, and even nicer to see it done well. Though it's relatively short, I quickly found myself engaged with the characters in particular.

It honestly feels a bit rare to have an MC who isn't a chore to play as, but this goes even beyond that. The MC is funny, but otherwise comes off as a rather normal dude for once. Not an edge lord, asshole, or constantly having horny thoughts dominate every piece of dialogue. It's nice.

Another real positive is that dynamic created with our "travelling companion", a mushroom girl. Their dialogue meshes well together, and she's just a likable character plain and simple. The other characters we meet are likeable as well, but you don't see a lot of any of them given the early stage of the game.

Again, because it is early, there isn't much to say about things like story. Our first task is joining the adventures guild, and this version ends during the process of that. I'm always down for a good fantasy game though, so I'm interested to see where this goes.

The lewd scenes definitely have some care put into them as well. While they aren't animated right now, they are put together better than most AVNs, which I seldom see with Koikatsu. I respect the dev's decision to not use the standard Koikatsu animations, and seeing that they can pull off good scenes without them is a real plus. Still, having animations is pretty much always better than not having them given the same level of care, but it seems there's plans for that so I have no real complaints on that end.

I'm excited to see this game develop. Feels like it's going to be a real treat once it has a good chunk of content to play through. Definitely worth checking out!

Going into this, I thought it would be your standard harem isekai, with boring characters and a simple plot. I'm extremely glad i was mistaken, and saw that there was yet to be a reivew, so thought i'd make one.

Story: To start, the story has always been an interesting premise to me. It's why I enjoyed the story of Kingdom Come Deliverence. You're not the chosen one, nor a hero, you're just a random dude, ready to make a name for himself, that to me is far more interesting than OP guy 9000 with his army of huge booba women around his arms.

Headpats: There has already been technically one headpat, which is a 5 star rating in itself, and i'm sure it won't stop there.

Characters: The characters are all fun and likable. Especially when the MC has a personality, which im sure will be better defined in the future through choices - not to say the MC has no personality, because he does - just to say that it will likely be clearer in the future. In terms of Kino, if anything happens to her I may just have to hire Agent 47 for no reason in particular. She is the most adorable character i've witnessed in a long time, and she quickly grew to be one of my favourites. The goblin king (i forgot if he was named) too was a simple, but well written character. A good starting antagonist for our MC.

*Bonk* worthy scenes: There was only two so far, and neither were animated, but I agree with the developers reasoning for doing so. Stock KK party animations are so overused, and creating your own would give this game a touch of uniqueness (if thats a word). The scenes themselves, were plenty hot, with good build-up, rather than, "wan sum fuk?".

Humour: Reminded me heavily of Konosuba, and i absolutely loved the humour in that, fans of that anime would surely like the written humour in this. As someone who uses humour in the worst possible times, it is easy to empathise with the protagonist, and follow along with the jokes.

English: Very few flaws with the language, coming from someone who has lived in the UK for their whole life.

Overall, this game is a perfect mesh of all the things that i enjoy in a story. A moldable MC, distinct/interesting characters, good writing and humour, and well-written English. It is absolutely worth your time.