(The game is untranslated - I used Mtool to make a really crappy MTL of the game, but my game won't advance after the third mission set, so IDK. So my review is only on what I've seen - the first three mission sets)
So first off, very crappy (nearly incomprehensible) MTL - Ahriman games usually have very erotic text in them, so if fully translated I can see giving this an extra star, and if the text is 10/10, even two extra stars.
Apart from text, as for the game and mechanics, I was a bit disappointed. The game eschews typical dungeon exploring in favor of battle gauntlets - every mission is a gauntlet of fights, one after another, and besides this there is nothing to the game. The gameplay in the fights is better than a typical rpgm - trying to beat every battle in the tougher missions can be fairly challenging - but there are some downsides.
Notably, aside from intentionally suiciding to see the H-content at the first opportunity (something I very much dislike needing to do), you aren't very free to explore the H-content, as losing is quite painful. You'll have to redo the whole battle gauntlet, first of all, which especially for the longer/tougher missions, is a pain. But even before that, you'll have to break out of captivity and win a battle to get free. This is fun the first time but ends up being kind of annoying.
That's just the bad ends/loss scenes though. This is also a battlefuck game - enemies will restrain/sexually harass you during combat as well. When this happens, you'll have some choices on how you want to escape. Pretty cool, but the issue is that if you're playing well, you can entirely avoid all of this, for the most part. You can see when enemies plan to harass you, and kill them before they do it, and even if they restrain you, as long as you have TP saved up, you can instantly escape while dealing damage to them. So you end up stockpiling TP and more or less entirely avoiding the battlefuck mechanic, which you would hope would be more central, but isn't.
Also, as a fan of bondage (obviously), I was also disappointed with the art in combat - it's just chains or hands overlayed on her normal sprites, there aren't unique sprites or art to show her restrained. This might sound like being picky, but recently there have been games in this style which DO have a lot more unique restraint and fuck sprites during combat, and the comparison brings this game down in my view. There are also in-fight cutaways showing her ass or tits getting slapped, etc - this is great, but it gets reused for every fight, and gets dull quickly.
Also worth mentioning that the general production quality still hasn't much risen past the level of Ahriman's earlier games, which is somewhat underwhelming (this game screwed up my desktop resolution for an hour even after I closed the game, lmao).
Ahriman's best game is still probably The Moral Sword of Asagi, imo.
So first off, very crappy (nearly incomprehensible) MTL - Ahriman games usually have very erotic text in them, so if fully translated I can see giving this an extra star, and if the text is 10/10, even two extra stars.
Apart from text, as for the game and mechanics, I was a bit disappointed. The game eschews typical dungeon exploring in favor of battle gauntlets - every mission is a gauntlet of fights, one after another, and besides this there is nothing to the game. The gameplay in the fights is better than a typical rpgm - trying to beat every battle in the tougher missions can be fairly challenging - but there are some downsides.
Notably, aside from intentionally suiciding to see the H-content at the first opportunity (something I very much dislike needing to do), you aren't very free to explore the H-content, as losing is quite painful. You'll have to redo the whole battle gauntlet, first of all, which especially for the longer/tougher missions, is a pain. But even before that, you'll have to break out of captivity and win a battle to get free. This is fun the first time but ends up being kind of annoying.
That's just the bad ends/loss scenes though. This is also a battlefuck game - enemies will restrain/sexually harass you during combat as well. When this happens, you'll have some choices on how you want to escape. Pretty cool, but the issue is that if you're playing well, you can entirely avoid all of this, for the most part. You can see when enemies plan to harass you, and kill them before they do it, and even if they restrain you, as long as you have TP saved up, you can instantly escape while dealing damage to them. So you end up stockpiling TP and more or less entirely avoiding the battlefuck mechanic, which you would hope would be more central, but isn't.
Also, as a fan of bondage (obviously), I was also disappointed with the art in combat - it's just chains or hands overlayed on her normal sprites, there aren't unique sprites or art to show her restrained. This might sound like being picky, but recently there have been games in this style which DO have a lot more unique restraint and fuck sprites during combat, and the comparison brings this game down in my view. There are also in-fight cutaways showing her ass or tits getting slapped, etc - this is great, but it gets reused for every fight, and gets dull quickly.
Also worth mentioning that the general production quality still hasn't much risen past the level of Ahriman's earlier games, which is somewhat underwhelming (this game screwed up my desktop resolution for an hour even after I closed the game, lmao).
Ahriman's best game is still probably The Moral Sword of Asagi, imo.