VN - Ren'Py - The Swordbearer [v0.11] [Caramel Cowboy]

Why have a medieval setting if you're just gonna make everyone and everything behave like it's the 21st century? Everything from the characters to the world itself reflects none of the values and overall lives of people from the Middle Ages. There's some attempts at having the setting influence the story, but they're so half-assed it makes it seem like the developer knows nothing about the setting they've chosen. They don't seem to give a damn about making it believable. Incredibly lazy, and just pulls you out of the experience.

Beyond that, The Swordbearer is a boring and poorly written game. The dialogue isn't awful or anything, but the plot and characters are extremely uninteresting. There's no emotional connections, no exciting story, nothing to grab your attention. The renders are good, which is this game's only saving grace, but beyond that it's just the usual mindless slop.

VERSION: 0.11
SUMMARY: Not as good as you would think or hope
RATINGS: (out of 5):

1. Models: 5
2. Animations: 4
3. General Visuals: 5
4. Characters: 3
5. Story: 3
6. Writing: 3
7. UI & Gameplay: 3
8. Content (amount): 4
9. Sound & Music: 3
10. Fetish & kinks: 2

Average: X of 50 possible points giving a X% rating i.e. X stars.

PROS:

1. Models are definitely good looking.
2. Animations are pretty good also.
3. Writing is good, structured well and reads well. BUT (see cons)
4. Music and sounds are nice for immersion BUT! (see cons)
5. Interesting story with good lore and history, clearly a good amount of research and planning went into it.

CONS:

1. Music does not always fit, this may be a personal gripe but some of the music is poorly chosen and sound cheesy or from some 80s sitcom. Music that actually works in a game like Timestamps, but not in a medieval game setting sorry.
2. Writing can be annoying sometimes, where the humour is just not funny or even more, its not fitting at all or simply too much of trying to be funny.
3. Some really long winded scenes happen to characters other than the MC and his troop happen often and really take up a lot of screen time and are kind of boring all which distract from MC who we really are interested in...
4. MC also looks a bit like a boy and has really no appeal particularly in medieval times where facial hair was more prominent.
5. All sexual scenes, which there are not many of are also fairly vanilla and boring. No kinky sexual scenes or fetishes at all...

FINAL THOUGHTS & SUGGESTIONS:

• Per the above points, one would think that with the stakes being high that everyone is trying to get ready for a big battle that things would be more serious and intense but the jokes are going, our Ivar instructor is having a boys night and the MC and his companions are off alone on a trial just chilling on their way back. The main plot falls away and its story is almost forgotten, which is exactly what you dont want. Humour and fun parts are good but they need to be random and short and not such long extended scenes particularly where there is such a big threat looming.
• Per above point and to emphasize again, this story really feels like more lack luster than it should be or makes the player believe it to be. It all is suppose to be very dangerous, ominous and world changing, but the bad guy gets little airtime, we know next to nothing really about him and his motives and the people that know about it are all way to chill and relaxed to really make the player feel there is any threat or seriousness to whats happening. This is a major fail in writing and the game pretty much has lost itself at this point. There is no balance in the story and a "happy" less serious and shallow narrative was followed instead of a adding best of both, or at least 35/65 ratio.
• Speaking of scenes, some scenes in this game are way too long, too much time spent on introductions and other characters taking screen time and not our MC, its jarring and annoying. When its done its for pure context and needs to be way shorted than what it is now. Now we get this content and it counts toward lines of codes and scenes/renders? Its often very irrelevant to the greater scheme of things...
• Overall not a bad game but I believe 5 stars are much too generous and not an accurate rating of this game, there are other better by far, this game has a good amount going for it, but ends up boring as it can't seem to bring all those good aspects together in a good enough way...

It's boring.

You can stop reading here, anything else i will write just will reinforce that single sentence.

It's like having an ideia for a build in a game, then putting in the effort to farm the itens, levels and etc, then testing it and discovering that it doesn't work like you thought it would; It works, but it's such a letdown that who cares, i rather create another character (Or in this instance, play another game)

Story has a basic premise that doesn't evolve quickly enough, you know what is going to happen, the author knows, everyone knows, but everything goes so slow. MC has a dumb face that goes along with the fact that he is dumb, but i guess it's fitting when everyone in this universe is stupid to some degree. Exemple?

Random exposition to their backstories when you say "Hi" or complete lack of security to some of the most important things possible (The royals, the princess, the swordbearer and the sword), a guild that has 0 structure or teaching,

It doesn't have tense moments or deep enough connections with the characters you talk for you to care. If anyone in this game died, i wouldn't be bothered in the slightest, maybe Leliana since she's kinda hot, but that it, because of her looks.

Plus it really doesn't feel like you should have options, it's either get content or refuse it, you don't trade it for something else, the thug attacks you? You can't try to fight him. She is a vampire? You can't be understanding from the get go because look, i made a super cool fight sequence.

You start in some village in the middle of nowhere about to leave for the Capital. The story takes too long to kickoff and the pacing is pretty shit with regular cutaways to other characters and constant exposition about characters you're going to leave.

The girls look and act too much alike, this isn't helped by the fact that you're regularly romancing the daughters and their mothers. The sex scenes are rather mediocre, they're on the shorter end and constantly require input.

There's not much effort that goes into the setting, whether it's the assets used that don't belong, or the lack of assets such as our party going on an adventure with only the clothes on their back.

As for the good, the prose and English are good, the humor is solid, good music, you're not the only guy around, everything looks good, and that's pretty much it.

This feels like a highschool spectacle with medieval props rather than a genuine medieval setting novel. Peak reddit writing. Characters are referencing renaissance and modern culture while residing in middle ages. They also made four gay remarks in the first half an hour of playthrough. I'm beginning to think that this is some kind of obsession for the author. Not only script is boring and quite embarrassing to read but it's also drawn out. It's been almost 4 years and we aren't even past character introductions yet. I'm sorry but I don't really see a reasonable justification for a 4.5 star rating. High quality renders of DAZ models alone ain't gonna cut it.

10 episodes review.

It's not a top quality vn with a lot of sounds, voices, big titties and butts. You won't find here top quality rendered and photoshop processed images and a lot of sex at the end of every scene.
This game has it's own charm with light narration, kindly humor, pretty sound, pleasing to the eye images with realistic bodies in medieval setting with magic, vampires and many other races. And of course you'll have a few nice sex scenes where they should be.

Good luck to developer. Bookmarked and waiting for season 2.

I finished this current update and I have mixed feelings about this game, I will share them with you.

Appearance Characters 5+/10
There are a lot of them, I have the impression that they are made on one shoe, they are too pretty. So they are all either very pretty, or too childish and inappropriate for their age. The characters are divided into important and some kind of radomowe. A serious minus is that there are mature and older women and ugly, but what if you can't do anything with them or there are very small exceptions. For example, our MC's aunt. (Aunt is my favorite character, but building a relationship with her is slow as a snail). Mothers look the same as daughters, without signatures I wouldn't know who is who. It would be enough to add some gray hair to the mother's head or a few wrinkles. Female characters don't have a big bush between their legs. The appearance of the female characters' underwear looks not like from the Middle Ages. But like bought a moment ago from a modern store.

Graphics8/10
nice

The plot is interesting, but nothing groundbreaking 6+/10

But it starts at a very slow pace. Dialogues are sometimes boring. Many hours pass before we leave our boring village. Some mistakes in dialogue and plot

Dialogues 4+/10
There are a lot of them but sometimes they are very boring

Music 5/10
Something is playing

Sex scenes 5+/10
I don't have too many of them, they are not very interesting

Choices there are a lot of them 8/10
But they do not always have an impact. Sometimes we see the consequences of our choices in another place. But it is short and not very interesting. For example, we sent a letter to some character and I have a scene where this character receives this fox and there is a short dialogue.

Interakrywna mechanics 3/10
I have very often but it is boring we can choose any character but not all. talk to her but dialogues are boring some rare random sex. Or we collect hidden objects unlock the gallery not too interesting. Or rarely we get some quest.

To sum up if you like fantasy climates in the Middle Ages with a twist of the eye. You are not afraid of a long beginning of the plot. few mistakes in the plot. You can try.

highly recommended

story and graphics are top quality

I played the game for the first time with version 0.9, I didn't notice any bugs and the estimated playing time was 10-12 hours

Lots to read and interesting story so far.

What I particularly like are the jokes that are made and the NPCs are all very well written

If you haven't played the game yet, I can only recommend it

I spent at least 6 hours playing the game(can be a lot more i didn't time it) and after i reached ep 4 i dropped it !

Sure the game has nice story and nice characters and i wanted to know what happens next but the story is so unbelievably slow you feel like a snail ! like in other games you think the introduction part of the game is going to end in like 1 episode at most right ?

Well, i reached episode 4 and then i felt ok i just finished the introduction ! this game is still barely allowing the mc to leave his village lol and it's not because there is this huge big plot you need to solve in his Village

No ! You just hang around talking to few neighbors and celebrating your birthday and that's basically all you do in 7 hours plus of gameplay time !

And the worst thing is the game tease this amazing plot cooking in the background where this vampire invasion is coming and how you will have supernatural sword as the mc to stop it and save everyone

But out of the 5% of the game where it tell you that this is what is going to happen later, the rest 95% of the game is you talking to one of your neighbors about some random shit that doesn't matter for anything

Sad i wasted all this time on it

Great visuals, great characters, nice story, funny and worthwhile. The story is not very deep and but it is okay so far, I hope in future updates it gets better. The sandbox is pretty short and easy to follow, so it's okay.

Renders are very nice, the sex scenes that are in the game are well done, Story is written without errors.

The problem is it is a boring story and the overall game is not erotic. There is minimal erotic situations and everything is very vanilla to the extreme.

By vanilla I mean the entire game and dialogue have vibes of "hand holding" level. That is very cute and wholesome, but not erotic,

A top tier VN that focuses on the story rather than a fap fest.

I really appreciate the girls are generally petite and not the monster jug deformities you see in so many VNs.

The writing is excellent, with a good mix of drama and humour and I really appreciate the slow burn nature of the game.

Hard to find any fault at this point - looking forward to the next update.

Very rarely do I have the patience to sit through a RenPy story game. Often the writing is terrible and I am just here for the art. This game is different, I love the world and all the characters, Long live Swiftwind!

The description sounded good, so I played the game. But I was really disappointed.

Yes, renders are nice. Yes, the story might be nice (I could not be bothered to find out).

For me, the most important thing of a VN and similar is the storytelling, followed by the story, and then everything else.

The game started very bland and boring, with anything but a novel story. There was nothing new or exiting, just boring old tales. I started skipping, just to see that for some time nothing changed: just boring old tales. Then I stopped playing, because just skipping to the fap scenes is not how I want to experience a game.

For me, it was 1 or 2 stars. I see that this might be too opinionated, so I give 3. This game is very, very far away from 4 or 5 stars.

Based on v0.8

I started out liking this game, then I didn't, then I liked it again, but at the end of the day, it's a solid entry, especially in the fantasy AVN genre.

Let's start with what I don't like. Believe it or not, it's the humor. Even though I find a lot of the banter enjoyable and I have actual laughed out loud a few times, it's relentless. Once the humor started, it rarely takes a break. I would like the MC to be just a bit more serious, and perhaps as the story progresses, the seriousness will naturally take over, but right now it's a bit much.

The biggest problem I have is with the Vampires. Uuuggh... I just hate vampires. It is such an overdone plot device. At least this time they are not friendly and are appropriately bad guys and gals and so far I am okay with how they are being handled.... well at least until this latest cliff hanger. If there really turns out to be a vampire LI, I am going to puke. Fucking "Twilight" ruined vampires... ffs.

I am also not that excited about the future harem tags. Harems just ruin every decent AVNs out there. Seriously... harems are not a kink, they are an easy way out. You don't have to deal with any drama with harems, especially harems where all the women are faithful to the MC but the MC is welcome to "spread their love." <looking for my puke bucket>

Otherwise, there is a whole lot to like. The MC is great. A little too corny at times, but he makes mistakes, doubts himself and is concerned about his friends and other people. No Gary Stu here and I appreciate it. I also like the writing. It's really good and it seems like the dev has the story mapped out pretty well. Nothing seems like it was just added as filler. Everything seems like part of the planned story.

And while the graphics are not earth shattering, the dev has gone to the effort of creating unique and attractive looking LIs and NPCs. All the characters seem to have well thought out backstories with some depth. The h scenes are a little on the boring side, but it does not take away from the story. So many of these AVNs start out well and then flounder because the dev did not map out the entire story, but this dev seems to have it together. If they are just winging it, they are doing a fantastic job of it.

Anyway, if you like fantasy, humor, hot LIs and a good story. Give this a download. It's worth the time. Looking foward to the next release.

I played through v0.8 in a few evenings.

The game is set in a medieval world, where magic works and the usual fantasy races exist; though it seems the big bads are vampires instead of orcs this time around. So far the story has been mostly human-centric and non-magical.

The MC looks goofy and often acts like a spoiled child, but seems to possess a strange attraction to all the females in the story (and some of the males).

The game looks good, and many of the LIs are quite attractive. The sex scenes and animations are few in number so far, and are on the simple and basic end of the spectrum, but I thought them adequate.

In playing it I got the feeling that the dev was absolutely desperate to avoid, at all costs, advancing the story. Scenes stretch on for ages, filled with insipid dialog, and even after their end is telegraphed they take forever to wind down. When it seems that the story absolutely must progress: time for a flashback, or a silly dream sequence. How about a mini free-roam? It comes with bonus images, just hunt for things to click on!

The tone of the game is all over the place, swerving from serious drama to slap-stick comedy. Horror and comedy can work together, but having the MC playing the clown doesn’t cut it.

There is also far too much injection of current-year sensibilities into this not-current-year scenario; with the dev being careful to check every box in the latest DEI guidelines.

If you really like medieval fantasy settings and have a high-tolerance for retarded humor, this might be worth your while.

Fantastic game! It's a Fantasy comedy-drama that delivers a great story, with both tense and funny moments.
Having inherited a magical vampire slaying sword, the MC joins the knights guild to prepare for a coming vampire invasion. He also mingles with his guildies, meets a princess and gets his butt kicked over and over during training.
If you like comedy in a fantasy setting, you'll love this!

Story 4/5
Its is pretty good even though it can have a rough start where choices are ignored and story text shows the opposite of your choices, like i turned down the prostitute and yet when MC gets asked what he did doing the day, he thinks about how he got hes dick sucked by a prostitute and came on her face, and thats from doing absolutly nothing with her, but it does get better from chapter 3 or so.

Expect this to be more story based and choice driven when it comes to relationships, you can turn anyone down or go after anything that walks, so the choices are really good, but keep in mind it dosent have harem tag so not sure if this will be a single girl ending or multiple aka harem.

Story is drawn out and i mean realllllly drawn out, theres alot of none related story text and just getting to know people, game is getting close to 3 years old now and even though its V0.8 the main story has barely even gotten started yet, so i would expect V1.0 would just be season one out of who knows how many so it would proberly be atleast 3-4+ years still untill this is done, just a guess though.
I do like this type of novels and dont mind slow burns and story focused games.

What i would have liked would be a better main LI selection, i wasent really a fan of how 3 out of the 4 looked and the 4th dosent show up untill late game and not sure if shes even a main LI? shes the last one of the 4 on frontpage.
If i had to vote i would have picked the girl at the bar/inn as a main LI the one you meet on the way to the capital and get to fuck once in two diffrent possitions, to me she was proberly the best looking girl of all the girls but shes just a one time girl and thats it.

Anyways like i said main story is really slow progress, buts its about MC taking the role as the swordbearer becoming a knight and fight vampires, so yes game does has vampires, elves, magic and that kind of stuff, but for now theres really not much of it, guessing that will really start in a season 2 at some point.

One thing i did hate is how MC desides to trust a girl vampire, when he just seconds earliere thought to him self how cunning vamps are and hes only goal is to save the world from vamps and he then just simply trust one? either hes only able to think with hes dick or hes brainless and shouldent be able to save anyone at all, i love the girl and the look of her but story wise its awefull.

As for adult stuff and sex scenes there arent really that much yet, i went after all the main girls and MC has only been with 1 of them so far, then theres a couple of sides/one offs and maybe the dancer from the start is a main LI as well but not sure, in any case there is a bit of sex scenes in the game but its not really the main focus and i dont mind that.

Girls 4/5
Its a bit of a mixed bag really, alot of them are really just meh, but a few i did find pretty hot, theres a bit of diversity in builds as well but mostly they are all average sizes, only really seen one smol which was the girl at the bar/inn and would have liked to see atleast just one smol main LI instend of 4-5 of the same builds for main LIs, also found it weird and idiotic that the best looking girls are either side girls meaning one time fuck and some arent even that, makes me wonder what dev thought about when pickng the more ugly ones only as main girls.

Animations 3/5
They are ok but not really special in any way, they are good enough to enjoy but seems to be a bit to short and lacks in dialogs doing scenes.

Music 3/5
Pretty average background stuff, nothing special and none with lyrics.

Choices 4/5
Even though story dosent always line up with your choices or even ignores them altogether, it still works very nicely when it comes to relationships, none are forced, dev promissed nothing would be forced so wondering if thats true when it comes to the princess but i hope so.

Even though I'm reviewing the game as the current version of it is [0.8], I actually played on version [0.7]. Obviously, contains spoilers.

So "The Swordbearer" is an adult visual novel about a not that much of a nobody MC who is rather quickly revealed to be one destined to become a new bearer of a magical sword in order to save the realm by defeating this great arising evil in form of period-hunters... I mean vampires.
Sounds just like another cliche story of another cliche character. And, sadly, it is.

MC with sad backstory of not having parents for very long, so the people around the village became his family? Yes, check.
An artifact of great power passed down to him from one of his parents? Yep we can check that one too.
Given to MC later than should be given, but not late enough, so there is still time to win the day? Well at current point of the story he only knows about menstruation-stalkers and didn't face them yet, but I would still say yeah, because MC losing ain't an option in history like this.

I can look past cliche. I can bear it if story is good enough, but... it ain't. Yes, it can suprise you quite well sometimes with a great and really realistic moments, yet those are but a few. I mean, moments like intercourse not simpy ending after handjob or cumshot, but actually progressing further to penetration and later pillow talk... unless, which is possible and actually happened, someone is going to interrupt it midway or is really not comfortable with going further.
Friends throwing those little verbal insults and comments at eachother about eachother without serious meaning behind those insults.
Yet those few simple moments can, and ofter are, ruined very quickly by the stupidity of characters of the situation.

The first moment I though story and characters are going wrong way was when MC managed to convince that bodyguard to simply walk away. But I really started to question it when MC and his friends simply sent thier stuff with some random merchant forward, including that, now MC's, magical sword. Then it only went worst.
Random traders on the road ain't really that much of a stretch. But with one guard camping in the middle of a forest and being welcome to strangers? Oh god, please no. And that guard was simply retarded and acting like a little girl instead of beaing a guard.
Knight guild was actually more of a summer camp with recruits doing what they actually liked, instead of being put into basic training. And no, getting beaten by the skimpy ninja girl can't be called training.
But to be honest I reached my bullshit line at the moment when MC actually managed to sneak out princess out of the castle, with help of her bodyguard and lady in waiting and was at the end ambushed by a cliche bandit which was, obviously, defeated with power of friendship (with magical sword), just to simply faint later. Instead of being punished for such action or even scolded, he was just let go free. Seriously?!

At least my pain was eased a bit with jokes. I have to write I have quite terrible sense of humor. I laughed at the horse-pital joke harder than I am willing to admit. I liked those not meaningful insults thrown around between MC and his friends. But even I write dumbing characters more and more for the sake of repeating the same jokes is quickly getting boring and even if someone is into that kind of humor, he may quickly get enough of it. And, let's be honest, this kind of humor ain't really for everyone.

As for characters they do have personalities, but basic ones if you ask me. If you count out the humor masking everything, as every one is simply joking around, you can quite fast an easily distinguish those characters by thier core element of it, especially as every time MC is interacting with them, you, as a reader, are reminded of that almost at every single dialogue like.
MC is a smartass beloved, for no reason, by all as every single girl wants to simply fuck him.
His best friend is a jester, always joking and always being laughed at.
Best friend's sister is a sexually repressed botanist always talking about how shei s a botanist and loves plants.
Thier best female friend is constantly reminding everyone they need to train, because she is always traning, because she wants to become the greatest archer.
It feels... fake. As if those characters have to be different just for the sake of being different. Without the humor they don't have anything in common.

And your choices actually doesn't matter. I refused the blowjob in the borthel. Wasn't a problem to mention it as if I actually recieved it in one of the dialogues.

Now, to the good parts of the game. Characters are looking good, but not too good. If you take a few seconds to look at some of them, they simply doesn't look the same. Princess is beautiful, while your best friend's sister is but only average. But it might be just my personal preference.

Intercourses are actually great, even if only few are in the game by now. But what's more important, as I already mentioned, they simply don't end at handjob or a single cumshot, but progress into penetration, unless a girl is a virgin and wants to take it slow or you are somewhat interrupted by a story event. Those encounters also contain not only multiple angles, but also multiple actions and even multiple poses. A single intercourse in this game would be like ten or twenty sex scenes in a game with more linear sex progression.

Still, even the best sexual encounters will not save the game. At least not for me. Not if I have to push through characters turning into idiots for the sake of jokes or for the sake of story.

3 stars, only due to those sex scenes.

I tried to play this VN several times now and I have finally to admit to myself that I am underwhelmed.

For a plot that is supposedly about a fantasy adventure, there is literally zero tense buildup. The characters basically live their best college life in a remote village and from time to time the antagonist is shown in his castle, planning evil things. There is no sense of drama, no urgency and no conflict to speak of. It's just a village dating simulator with no gravity whatsoever.
Even the relationships feel ultimately meaningless, as they are of little consequence to all the other relationships. Having a girlfriend in this village means that you can play around with every other lady without repercussions, without any sense of commitment. It's just a harem galore without any explanation as to why that's an accepted norm. The MC darts between all good-looking village girls with the charm of a teenage gigolo. His best attribute is that he doesn't take himself seriously and that he is handsome, and apparently that everyone else is either homosexual, too old or incapable of finding love. Hell, when the MCs best friend says he found a girl the MC has nothing better to do than to make fun of him. "Ha-ha, how is your fantasy girl, ha-ha". That's what friends do; didn't you know?

Joining a guild in the capital feels more like the equivalent to the teenage dream of becoming a firefighter or an astronaut. There is no sense of history to the guild and what it means to be part of it, it's just a thing you write an application for and when you are kind of cool you get accepted. It's not even clear what requirements need to be fulfilled. Apparently, none.

I could attribute all that to the comedy aspect of the game but I am fairly convinced that it's just bad writing. The actual comedic moments are fairly simple and many of the jokes fall flat or are repeated every other scene.

Yes, the models look fairly beautiful, yes, a bigger plot could maybe take place at a much later date. But I am nowhere near that point. Instead, I basically play a college AVN in a medieval village, and not even a very convincing one.
There are just no redeeming qualities that give me hope that this will turn around and develop into a decent plot. Which is, honestly, disappointing.