VN - Ren'Py - The Swordbearer [v0.10] [Caramel Cowboy]

Unique-ish story line and light hearted writing, potential to be a 5 star game. If you don't care for plots etc, this won't be a game for you (handful of sexual scenes, all with side characters)

Right now the game is not that polished (spelling mistakes, particularly in the earlier episodes), and it seems to be too ambitious to ever be completed at its current development pace (little over 2 years in), there is about ~3 hours of content presently. It also doesn't really seem like choices matter much, as the only real choices seem to be if you want to see content with a character or not (and if you choose yes, guaranteed to get it)

Some of the (presumably) main characters were just introduced in the last update. There is not much content with the other primary characters who have been introduced since the beginning. The game would be better off reducing the number of LI, as there are too many right now for any of them to be reasonably flushed out/completed as story lines.


This game has a lot of potential, but its hard (for me at least) to get invested in a game that is unlikely to be completed


Edit:
9 months later, more like a 3.5* but will give a 4* for now. The storyline is finally starting to advance, there are just too many LI, none of them are getting flushed out.

I know these games take a lot of work and time and passion, so I will try to be nice here.

This is a great-looking game. The scenes are well done, the characters are pretty, the animations are good... but it is all so boring.

The story is as basic as they come, the writing tries to be funny (and mostly fails) and there's absolutely no tension. You know from the start that the MC will get all the girls. Nothing bad will happen. It is a basic adult fantasy and I am sure that's enough for the majority of you.

But if you expect good storytelling or even the hint of conflict or struggle or anything that isn't bland male vanilla porn fantasy, this isn't worth your time.

The game looks very good and the premise is fine at the beginning of the game. But the actual story is not good. It's pacing is so slow that it took me three days to finish this borefest.

The biggest problem with this game is... that nothing interesting happens! Two years in development and the story is still at the beginning of the heroes' journey. Nothing happened to move the story forward.
It feels like I'm playing one giant filler that doesn't want to end.

Pros:
+ Good visual and good looking girls
+ Music

Meh:
The jokes fell flat most of the time. The humor is kind of childish like fart jokes etc.

Cons:
- The story in essence drags
- I hate all of those pointless choices

Definitely 6 stars ... if you are someone like me who loves story in an erotic game then this is the game for you. The game definitely belongs in the top 20 of the best games in development at the moment. Definitely worth supporting financially.

I like most of the things about this game and honestly believe it has a lot of potential if the writer decides to change some things.

1. Let's first talk about the writing, I like the general story. It's one of those MC is a "chosen one" type of stories and I'm not complaining, I love those sort of stories. What I dislike is the MC is written like a literal child, he acts like a toddler, dreams about riding horses in rainbows and clouds, and overall extremely immature. When he is not acting like a 9 year old he is written like an extremely generic valiant nice guy. Basically if someone turned a golden retriever into a human and added a bit of perversion into him, that would be MC. He has no emotional depth to him, even though his parents died there isn't a single moment in the game in which it seems like that incident carries any weight for MC.

2. The pacing of the story is extremely slow, like it feels like the dev purposefully drags out stuff in an attempt to build suspense or something like one of those soap operas but it falls flat on its face. For example somewhere around ch4 there is a fight between one of the significant characters and an insignificant character and that fight is dragged on for the entire chapter and it doesn't even end there, it is carried onto the next chapter for it's conclusion and that fight itself doesn't have much significance either other than revealing some information about the character. Granted the fight takes place in parts between shots of MC's story but it still feels extremely dragged out. The same can be said for the overarching plot, it's also very dragged out, the game currently has 6 chapters and we still don't know anything that we didn't already know in ch3.

Other than these points I think the game has a good foundation, the LIs can be a bit generic but that's not always a bad thing, the visuals are very good, the animations have also improved a lot, the characters are good looking. I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

This one is really good

The renderes are really nice, the story for now seems rather simple but honestly i love simple stories if they are enterteining, and this one is awesome, the characters are so well written and captivating, the models are all unique and gorgeous, and the humor is top notch too, i caught my self laughing some times which isn't a easy task for a vn game to do that.

I'm just worried with how slow the story is progressing, because i feel like the first 3 chapters are like an epilogue, and the fourth one is just them travelling to get to the knights guide, the
fifth one is their first day there and the sixth one is their second day there, then the banquet with the king and that's it for now, and this game is what? in 2 years into development? so if we take in consideration that the vampires will atack in 30 days in game for now, and that every chapter has 2 days of content, we will have to wait 15 more updates to get into the battle, that's at least more 3 years into development, and honestly 30 days in game feels short asf, we have to believe that in 30 days this raw guy with no technique will be the oh almighty swordbearer? in my opinion this could be fixed quite easily just put some black screen with a text like " a week later " or something like that.

But other than that, this game is fantastic and i can't wait to play more and see how the story will develop.

I'm sure I would replay the shit out of this!!
Man this is good!

I love the comedy and humor!

Downside is this is supposed to have more porn. because. you know. . . .porn game?

But yeah,
Nice visuals, superb story and humor.
I'm coming back. I'd support if my job hunt went the way I was hoping it would.

HUGE POTENTIAL. Characters have unique personalities and all of them are super beautiful (even the guys are hot ngl ). Story progresses slowly but seems to have strong potential to deliver well. Renders are fantastic and animations are well done as well. I hope to return once we get more chapters done. Best of luck to dev

This review is for v0.5
Please keep in mind that it's bias toward my taste of game.

Art & Renders, Animation: 5/5
Beautiful, nice character design, very good animation too. Background, proportion, shades, etc... It's very nice indeed. No complain about that.

Writing: 1/5
Now this part i may had to despite, the pacing of story is TOO SLOW.
Too much small talks in this game, it's overwhelmingly unecessary. it feels like i'm playing Japanese game where a scene have 1000 lines of words. It would be nice if all the effort into small talks instead put it into more adventure/action scene.
This game name "Swordbearer" should've named "Mouthbearer" because everyone talk so much.

When i look at the name of this game, i thought it's an action/adventure game. But turn out it's more like a slice of life game.
The story writing here is like these classic "hero journey" troupe. Boring and repeative.
MC is a little bit mature but Naive. Only thing he good at is using his mouth.
>MC discover power, panic, scare, runaway. The classic type of all the stories. Preferable for teenager audience.
I would rather prefer MC that cunning, adaptive, determined. If he discover power, he get use to it immediately. Make uses of whatever he can to develop himself. Who wouldn't pass on an oppotunity?
It would be more nice if MC discover power > reflect on it > train himself to master it and be stronger. Rather than had to have someone hold his hand like a baby.

Anyway, it's the version 0.5 already but i think it will need to be at version 5 till we get to see some action/adventure. Yes, that's right, 10 more updates.
So far only 1 serious action scene in this game and it's from side characters.
At this point i'm afaird that this is not an action/adventure story anymore.

Overall: 3/5
Story is at it worst, renders is at it best. Very conflicting.
Let give the dev 7 more years till 2030. I'm sure we will have some good character developments till then.

Wow what a great game. The story is great and intriguing, not the same old mom and sister content you see everywhere. The characters are all unique with their own personalities and quirks. Has a good level of humor and seriousness. They also do a really good job of having the characters feelings on point. Great game

Perfect quality AVN, the renders and the quality is very recommendable. The comedic type of visual novel is what makes this game far superior. Medieval touch with a sprinkle of wittiness.

Characters are superb and how they are presented to each scene.
Romance very nice and quality as well.

Awesome and interesting AVN. One of the best i've played recently (and maybe the best)! Keep the good work! Nice humour, nice renders and nice animations. Waiting for new releases and if it comes to steam, i will buy it without hesitation!

[v0.4 Final]
*Disclaimer that I didn't mange to play through to the end of the current release.

Somewhere between "average" and "good," but I'll stick with 3*

The writing lacks something... A soul, maybe. It just seems like a very safe and by-the-books attempt at a lighthearted romance/harem adventure.

It almost read like a result of the writer checking off boxes. Lighthearted, check. Romance, check. Humor, check. Good guy MC doing nice guy things, check. But the jokes fall flat. The banter seems forced. The romance feels unconvincing. None of these aspects are glaringly bad, but it's just rather bland. I think personally, it was the constant attempts at humor that didn't even get a chuckle out of me that ultimately made me put down the game. It made me think that I would even enjoy cringe humor more than what I saw here, which was neither cringy nor funny. Just... no reaction whatsoever.

That said, the game is technically sound. No issues with the English. Well done free roaming sections. Nice renders. Good use of render variations to show visual dynamics. Music was a bit forced because it felt like an attempt to convey unearned emotions through the soundtrack rather than the writing, but the tracks themselves are good enough.

This review is a bit more subjective than what I usually try to convey, but the bottom line is that it has what it takes to appeal to the genre enthusiasts. For people that need more compelling writing in "vanilla" games, it leaves something to be desired.

v0.4

Story focused in medieval fantasy setting.
Storyline looks good so far however it is a slow burn, really slow mainly cos of the slice of life narrative. So try to stick around or don't attempt to binge, you'll get frustrated.

Models and renders are quite beautiful, animations is pretty much what you'd expect from the average VN.

A few lewd scenes sprinkled throughout though its mostly vanilla stuff so no kinky or hot content.

I do like the love interests offered so far. They have their own personalities, backstories and some of them are to my liking in terms of character and looks.

MC himself is likeable so far. So that's a plus.

Looking forward to future releases.

Review for The Swordbearer v0.4 -
PROS -
Excellent fantasy story in medieval setting
Great renders and gorgeous female characters .
Goffy and likeable main character .
Music and sex scenes are animated and well done .
Free roam is nicely done .
One thing that I found not to my liking is like other reviewer mentioned it just needs a lots of click in sex scenes like asking every time to move on in a sex scene , if i want to see previous scene i can simply rollback it woud be nice if you find a way to reduce the number of times to click on move on . But I didn't mind that too much and to summerise excellent story driven game with likeable charecters . Highly recommended .

Great looking game and the writing's good enough that I spent the first 30 minutes reading every caption... but it just kept going without anything significant happening. The entire game is the MC flirting with a few girls while he prepares for a journey, then they go for a walk and meet a few other people. That's it.

I really wanted to like this game because it does look great, but all these rambling conversations that are completely pointless to the story are enough to put me to sleep. The ONLY significant lewd scene is awkward with way too many "go on" / "continue" choices, it needs to be a ton smoother.

Damn, I really like the story so far. It has great characters, so I am going to play it till the end. The character designs are appealing to me. I like the scenes so far. It's great that all of the characters have different emotions. Every character has a unique story to tell. Humor is very good in it. Please make it harem bro.

A promising start to a game, with decent variety of male and female characters, with a setting in which plenty of interesting things are possible.

It's clear that a more than a basic level of effort has gone into the renders, with things happening in the background in scenes where others might have chosen to leave things bare.

Models are good overall.

Review for v0.4

What's really making this game work for me is all the humor blended into the story. It's not taking itself too seriously so far, but not in a way that feels ridiculous or nonsensical. It almost feels like a medieval slice of life, but there's also a deeper plot at play that's being slowly revealed alongside everything else. Though it's worth mentioning we haven't seen a ton of that yet given the game being in such an early version.

The game just has a lot of charm. The characters, the dialogue, the renders, etc. Everything is fitting together nicely, making for a pretty solid AVN so far.

I wasn't sure about some of the music at first, but it really does fit the tone of the game. I think the one thing I'd have complaints about is that some of the sex scene dialogue reads a bit funky. As an example, there's a line that just says "*plays with your lips.*" To me, it reads as if someone is trying to roleplay. I also don't need a line saying "kisses you" when I can see the renders of the characters kissing. Smaller issues really, but it was something that stood out to me.

The game is really a fun play though. Worth checking out if it caught your eye!

Version 0.3

Terrific visual novel. So far everything has been perfectly executed. Perfect blend of sexual tension, intrigue, humor, and relationship building. Story is very engaging, can't wait to see what happens next.

Great work, Dev!