Based on the finished v1.0112 (but which I have not completed at time of writing)
My usual disclaimers when writing reviews on here are that A. I am here for the "plot" not the plot and B. I am very picky with visual novels and think broadly they can be very subpar. So, take both of those into consideration for my review when thinking about this game.
Pros
- Incredible visuals – Pretty much every review has said this and I’ll back it up. NLT have a reputation for making some absolutely insane renders and they deserve it. The girls are ALL hot as fuck. They’re obviously mostly super curvy and booby, but I personally love that. Add to that some exceptionally revealing costumes and it’s basically just a smorgasbord of eye-candy. Unquestionably one of the games strongest points.
- Tonnes of content – Depending on who you talk to this game seems like it has between 20 and even up to 40 hours of content. Admittedly there is a LOT of grind in this (see below) but it also has fucking loads of sexy stuff. There’s constantly new sexual scenes and things being introduced, and the game actually tries really hard to be very cinematic so there’s a lot of fully animated scenes, plus even some voice-acting which overall makes it quite easy to get into individual scenes of the game.
- Improvement to the formula – I think this might be slightly contentious but I personally feel like Treasure of Nadia improves upon the formula of the previous game (Lust Epidemic) I feel like the grind is masked a little more by constantly having options of exploring, progressing the story, going back to have sex scenes or even do the mini-games. I was actually even quite impressed by the puzzle mini-games which were actually quite challenging sometimes. There’s also a fast travel option AND (super importantly) an in-game clue/guide which is honestly a game changer. All-in-all it felt like a lot of the super slow grindy aspects of Lust Epidemic were really streamlined here.
Mehs
- Vanilla as fuck – If you’ve seen Lust Epidemic, you’ve seen the content you can expect from Treasures of Nadia. The most exciting stuff will be anal sex, threesomes/moresomes and impregnation. As a personal fan of the latter, this gets a pass from me. But honestly at this point I’d still call this pretty boring given how it doesn’t really get any more kinky. Personal preference of course, but it’s just not that adventurous. Some options for more BDSM and domination might have been nice.
- Slow sex scenes – In line with the above, a lot of the sexual animations are suuuuper slow and almost lethargic feeling. Like, it’s hot to look at because the models are so great. But sometimes you just want to grab the screen and tell the protagonist to actually FUCK the girl, rather than just slowly slide back and forwards. It just never feels rough enough or even passionate enough sometimes. Like it’s all about the aesthetic rather than making it HOT.
- Super naïve girls who need to be walked through every type of sex – Another personal gripe. I despise it when H-games do this, the trope of the girl who is a mega virgin, the very IDEA of sex is one that makes her sensibilities cringe and she also has absolutely no idea how any of it works and believes it’s all totally sinful and forbidden and awful. Then because of this the protagonist has to slowly corrupt and (basically) trick the girl into thinking "oh sex is actually okay" and then "oh sex with the protagonist is actually okay" and you really have to do this painstakingly slowly for obvious reasons... I fucking hate this trope and Treasures of Nadia does it not only once but TWICE. Fuck me it’s exhausting.
Cons
- The grind – I know I said it is better than it was in Lust Epidemic, but “better” does not mean “gone”. You will STILL have to backtrack constantly over and over and over in the game. You will have to go to a girl only for her to tell you to go do a meaningless thing and then you come back and JUST WHEN PROGESS IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN you have to fuck off and do yet another meaningless thing. There’s constant barriers and ridiculous obstacles and it drags on and on and on. Yes. It’s grindy.
- The “wank shack” – Fuck me I hate this mechanic. I’d forgotten about it in Lust Epidemic and it is much, much worse here. First of all you have to go through an extra level of grind so you can get enough money to invite girls over to your house for sex (despite them boning you anywhere you want in-game). You also have to find the scenes in the map in order to unlock them. But for what? The actual content here suuuuuuucks. What happens is you invite a girl over and she heads upstairs, you can then click on a scene and watch a looping gif of you doing that to the girl. It has no text description, no dirty talk and importantly NO CONTEXT. I tried out a bunch of these and again, visually they look great, but as arousing content go they’re terrible for fapping because they feel so removed from the game and feel so pointless.
- Cut-scenes without subtitles – If you’re going to have fully voiced cut-scenes you NEED subtitles. They unquestionably had the resources for this, so it's always a pain when it's missing.
Treasures of Nadia has all the promise that it could have been a very fun, hot game. If it weren’t made by NLT. Having played through 60% of this now and a big chunk of
Lust Epidemic I know for sure that the RPGM mechanics are quite simply not for me. If you enjoy the constant busywork and clicking away, then fair enough. For me, I know that I can deal with it to an extent but eventually I just find it exhausting and mind-numbing to the point where I can’t even enjoy the sex.
You play as an adventurer, “son of Indiana Jones” type of character and that in itself is fairly fun. The tropical island setting is pleasing, and a lot of the interface and interactions are all really streamlined to make actually playing the game as painless an experience as possible. It has all the set-up it needs to be essentially a fun romp, but then just consistently falls flat.
The writing is honestly a little bland and forgettable if you ask me. It’s competent and honestly pretty decent, characters are believable (to a degree) and dialogue flows naturally. Plus there’s a very clearly some spelling and grammar checking going on as I didn’t notice any issues with that. Having said this, it’s nothing to write home about, and the broader plot points often just didn’t really leave much impression on me.
Weirdly, I actually think one of the best mechanics the game has is the puzzle room. This ACTUALLY felt like decent gameplay and was the one time I approved of the use of the RPGM mechanics. Which was weird to think about given that most games these days actually try to get away from the 2000's era "play a puzzle to unlock nudes"…
For me, my biggest issue is what I touched on in the cons and mehs. First off the sex scenes are visually stunning, but they feel so… Clinical. Without any kind of text description or dirty talk they often just aren’t quite as hot as they could be and so never really deliver on the promise of how good they look.
This is doubly true then for the out-of-context fucking that happens in the wank shack. I wrote a review for
Subverse a while ago which uses a system called the Pandora system where you can see looping sex gifs of your companions based on things you earn in-game. I hated that system and I hate this one. With no context for the game and no description/dirty talk it really feels like this is the protagonist taking some time off from the main game to go and just daydream about some of the girls. It’s supposed to be them actually visiting him, but what it feels like is us fantasizing about fucking the girls by watching the MC fantasize about fucking them rather than actually doing it.
Both of these issues I think stem from one core problem: that the devs seem to be under the mistake apprehension that decent visuals is everything one needs to make a sex scene super spicy and hot. Allow me to disabuse you of that notion right now: it is not. Stellar visuals and voice acting are nice and all, but there's so much more that goes into making a sex scene actually fap-worthy.
It's genuinely such a shame because the game has the potential to be world-class fap material but quite simply isn’t. It never really gets to that point of being super exciting and passionate or dirty. Instead it seems that NLT have taken the message to heart that the way to make guys cum is just throw a few pretty looking gifs at them. I mean, jeez guys… Have higher standards!
I think in the end one of the biggest issues is that the game simply drags on for too long. With the vanilla and repetitive sexual content PLUS the repetitive game-design, by hour 30 you will not be seeing anything new or exciting and you will still have another 10 hours to go and unfortunately the writing of the game simply cannot carry it.