Tower of Alfimia is a RPGM femdom-focused game by Dark Night, whom some of you might be familiar for their other game (which was actually made after this one) known as Princess Honey Trap.
ToA follows many of the principles of that game, which are:
-All enemies are girls (minus rare exceptions)
-All girl use sex moves on you, which must be resisted through careful use of an "Endure" skill
-You are setup to lose some fights
What makes Tower of Alfimia somewhat different from Princess Honey Trap is that 3rd principle: while you ARE heavily rigged towards losing some fights (especially in the beginning), you are allowed to win every single encounter if you're really lucky or just use the cheat items. This makes this game much more enjoyable if you're not big on "enforced" femdom, where overcoming the odds and turning the tables on your would-be assaulter is fully acknowledged in-story. You can even assault ("Level drain", as it is called) the enemy yourself in a few cases!
Don't get too excited about that last part though: those specific scenes are literally just text, and they're heavily discouraged as part of the plot.
By contrast, all other scenes have drawings, and there's lots of these: so much so that it's clear that multiple artists had to help with their production. This bothered me a little, since I personally prefer when the art direction is singular, but all the art is generally good. Sadly, unlike Princess Honey Trap, only a few of the scenes are animated.
Gameplay-wise, this game falters a good deal: you're either just using your strongest moves if you're using the cheat items, or you're rolling the dice hoping your attacks don't miss at crucial intervals while you're struggling to survive each new encounter. Either way, it's a slog to get through some battles, and they ALL feel the same: the enemies just use "Temptation" over and over, and you have to just hope you can tank the damage long enough until you win (and that you don't die from all the talking they do). You can lose some events and there's some scenarios exclusive to losing some key fights, but the point I'm getting to is that rarely does it feel good to actually try to win with this gameplay: you're either struggling to victory, cheating to the end or purposefully losing. There's very little sense of progression with your skill or understanding of the mechanics.
This clashes with the plot: it's ostensibly a game about building romantic-lite relations with some beautiful girls, and the companion you start with gets the most of it. But winning all the time and sticking to the game's "good path" means you get barely any sex out of it: there is as far as I can tell only a few instances where you can freely have sex (without any assault or trickery) with a girl without dire consequences, and that's the one-off slave girl that needs EXP to free herself from the haughty rich bitch, and the shopkeepers.
That's right: the only sex you get in this game if you're winning all the time is from characters you build basically no relationship with...and those scenes are technically optional anyway. You can veer off this path a bit with your choices, so that's a plus, but besides a few instances like the fight with Karen for the Elixir, the plot generally want the player to be "prudish" and delays you or harshly punishes you (if not outright ends your game) otherwise.
So despite my initial praise for this game allowing us to win virtually every fight, it feels rather hollow if it means missing out on 99% of the scenes if we do so: I would have liked more opportunities to have sex while winning, even if it wasn't as many.
I wouldn't complain about it so much if it wasn't for the game's final part putting the pressure on the player to always win. Even with the romantical tone of the endings, you don't get rewarded with a consensual sex scene (Ending 2 technically does, but it's considered a bad ending because you didn't pick the obvious choice.).
I guess what I'm getting to is that this game REALLY wants you to lose, but to progress to the game's end you have to win, so it ends up being a drag to continue the plot because you don't really get any scenes out of it (unless you're planning to lose sometime later, I guess).
I get that it's femdom-focused and it's proud of it, but if I can't consent to said content and progress to the game's end at the same time, then it feels like the game doesn't want me to indulge in femdom.
Regardless, despite everything I've said, the game's art and animations are great if you're into said kink and the story variances during the middle of the game are interesting to experiment with, so it's a 4/5 for me. I just wish the gameplay was enjoyable too.
