VN - Ren'Py - The Swordbearer [v0.7] [Caramel Cowboy]

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.

First of all if you are here for a harem game or one with alot of lewd scenes, maybe come back later. I think I read there might be a harem path unsure but it isn’t in the game yet. As far as lewd scenes goes well there is a decent amount but I wouldn’t say there is alot of them either.

This game did start off negative for me but it got alot better than expected from such a rocky start. I honestly love this game. I ended up getting a lot of enjoyment value from this game because of the comedy. I almost would consider it a S tier game on my personal list might still change my mind on that later. For me all the positives outweigh anything, I didn't like to buy a large amount.


Positives

This game has a good amount of humor which always keeps the game refreshing to me and makes for a fun dynamic with the group of friends presented. Whenever there is a scene with your best friend I always get excited as I know it’s going to be a good scene.

So far the story is Interesting that makes me just want more. While it isn’t anything special as it’s still being developed , this game does have a story in mind first and foremost. However the story is a bit slow paced at the same time so if that is something that bothers you might be best to come back later if this game still has your interest.

While as of yet I haven’t felt like I got to know all the LI that well to be honest. I’ve liked pretty much every single one of them up to this point, good looking character models to boot. One of the big positives for me for this game is actual relationship building for the most part with these LI. Tho I do admit the relationship building isn't as great as with other titles with two of the LI, it doesn't need to be because you have an already pre established relationship of being childhood friends. Because of that I never felt like I needed to get to know them super well for them to feel like a good slow burn character or romance. Unlike with someone unfamiliar to the MC. But most of the relationships felt like a slow burn to some extent , even the one LI that you can have a lewd scene with rather quickly.

Mixed

There is 2 LI that aren’t with the MC for the majority of the game for story reasons. However one of them you will see scenes from her pov every once in a while. While I understand why and all that and it makes sense with the story feeling a bit slow pace, it feels like we might not reunite with them until Season 2 or the end of Season 1 at this point unless there are some time skips that happen. Which does leave a sour taste in my mouth cause I like one of them alot.



Negative

Not peeking ends a Path with a potential LI before you get to know them. This feels like a weird decision because not everyone likes to do the peek option just because it’s a “AVN”, also since we have yet to talk to her I feel compelled to go with a decision I dont like as I don’t know if I like or dislike this character yet. Also she ends up being one of the LI I like the most which makes it worst for me.

The early renders are just average or slightly below but they do get better with time by the end they were starting to look pretty good. Animations For the most part look decent or good however when the speed increases ( The go faster option) It makes the animation look really unrealistic and off.

There are some assets that are used that don’t fit the time period / setting like Bikini’s or beer bottles which can ruin immersion and just makes the game feel a bit weird at times. Not sure if the dev was having issues getting assets early on or what. But those only appear early one after that nothing felt out of place to me.

Pros: great graphics, not bad music accompaniment. An attempt at creating interesting characters. Alas, I have to stop here.
Cons: the story. It is simply boring and from here does not allow you to immerse yourself in this world, empathize with the characters. In addition, the impression that we are watching a drama played out by cosplayers at some festival. Lacy panties in medieval times? Perfect teeth on the characters? There was probably a dentist in every village back then. These little things are annoying, distracting from the main plot.
Nevertheless, if you want to enjoy quality renders and do not expect a story on the level of the best examples of fantasy, then pay attention to this game.
The developers have the possibility to fix some flaws, perhaps then the game will well deserve a score of 4 out of 5.
But at this stage - alas, 2.5 out of 5. For quality graphics, I round up the score upwards, let it be 3 out of 5 (as an advance for the future).
UPD: February 11, 2024: Upon reflection, I came to the conclusion that all this lingerie and other anachronisms can be written off by the assumption that we are talking about some alternate reality in which technological civilization was not destined to be born. Even with that in mind, though, the characters look very glamorous. So those 0.5 points can be added without any tension. 3/5.
But this does not remove the problems with immersion, extremely boring text, through which you have to tear through, forcing yourself with all your might. No, the story can't be boring, otherwise it will lose its readers.
Everything else in my personal assessment of this VN stands.

first, for the story, I love it a lot, Dev can balance between the humorous parts and the serious parts, and the render are absolutely good in my opinion, also the transition between each scene and each dialogue seems natural, not really rushed, and I love that each characters has its own unique characteristics, personality, it adds the feel of the game

Bought the game on steam as it looked promising and reviews were good on both here and there which is a rare thing but hype died rather quickly. This has to be an medieval fantasy AVN right, afaik? But the models and assets don't feel like medieval at all. They are 21st century girls having a halloween party or something. So the game fails to set the correct atmosphere to reel me in and keep me engaged in reading, but I carried on nevertheless since I paid for it. Introducing girls and plot with a bit of lewd content sprinkled in between then still a bland average experience. Dialogues don't feel that medieval also if you strip that knighthood conflict and put the characters in college then it wouldn't seem odd at all. That is my beef with this game. I didn't persevere in finishing to the end of the current content. Hot casanova MC seducing and forming his harem volume 549392543295, On top of that lewd content is vanilla after vanilla (as this game tastes like vanilla ice cream, it is ok to consume but you would rather have some spice or flavor am i right?) Hope the plot becomes original that I can increase the score.

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

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, honestly right now it's on my top 10 favorite vn's.

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 .