VN - Ren'Py - Tribulations of a Mage [v0.20.0] [Talothral]

Just like The Sorcerer, its a perfect choice for fantasy enjoyers and Harem enjoyers. I would've liked to of seen animations but that's not paramount to the games enjoyability.
Perhaps a little confused on setting, drifting back and forth between eastern western influence. But again its a fantasy game so who am I to judge.

Review for v0.7.0

I'm pretty partial to high fantasy settings, and this feels very much like a sort of classic take on the genre. We play as an experienced mage who's been effectively handicapped after getting his soul damaged. We want to fix that. Due to specific circumstances, we are working under an emperor as a sort of means to accomplish that among other reasons. Lots of different races, your usual magic, mysteries, lore, etc etc. It feels like a world with some thought put into it, which is nice. One thing I do want to praise especially is the environments. There's a lot of detail going into them that I appreciate.

The dev has a certain writing style that I do find enjoyable overall. It's a lot more mature than your usual AVN. I also like playing as an MC who's confident and intelligent without having to be cringe alpha chad. I have a feeling he's going to be a bit of a Gary Stu as the game goes, but maybe not egregiously so. Other characters have been fine enough so far, though maybe a bit stiff in moments.

Building on that last point, I think that's one of my bigger criticisms. I don't think emotion gets portrayed very well. A lot of things feel very logical in the ways they play out or are talked about. A lack of passion in the way characters express things maybe is the issue.

I think what also hurts the game and plays into that problem is the camera angles. It feels like just about every shot is a distanced wide-screen view of all the characters relevant in the given scenario. No close-ups of faces, switching around when someone talks, or just any kind of dynamic angle really. Again, it feels a bit stiff at times because of this. Doubly so with action scenes, which haven't felt very exciting so far.

What's probably the biggest point of contention is the lewd scenes. I'll be honest and say I think they are by far the weakest part of the game. Especially in comparison to a lot of modern day AVNs, they just aren't very erotic. I'll say I like the variety of girls, but most of the scenes kind of feel thrown in more than anything. They aren't animated, the renders are fine and only fine, and the overall composition of them leaves things to be desired. It doesn't feel like there's much passion behind them.

I've only played one of the previous games from the dev, but from that alone I feel like I can say this game is much of the same you'd probably expect. For better and for worse. If you liked the other games you'll probably like this one. If you didn't, I don't think this will make you feel different. I enjoy the game enough for what it is, but I wouldn't recommend it to you if you're here for the sex.

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Pros
+ Decently 'mature' sense of mood writing
+ Main characters will feel fairly individual, if a bit uninspired
+ Good visuals
+ Some degree of self-awareness
+ Amongst self-inserts, this author has made it a point to do their best to avoid making you feel embarrassed by your insert MC.
+ If your idea of a good self-insert is an unflappable and willful harem MC, the general writing outclasses most of this website.
+ The author has historically finished all his previous games.
+ If you were already a fan of his style, you can stop reading this now, I'm almost assured that little has changed and you should know what to expect by now.

Cons
- The mood writing is always the same. It never changes. If you're lucky and not the type to notice this, it's great.
Unfortunately, you've read this now.
- Despite a decent spread of identities, they're shallow proxies of common tropes with little in the way of interesting points or growth.
- The self-awareness it has would be considered sufficient compared to the bulk of its peers but not to anything considered good.
- I've said this about games and writing like this, this MC is basically Kirito if he was allowed to be edgier and own a harem.
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Spoiler: summary & pointless monologue

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As soon as I saw that some of the text was in an almost unreadable font, I thought to myself that this was going to be bad. I wasn’t mistaken. While the graphics look nice, and the dev may have a good story in his head: he does not know how to tell that story in this medium.

Imagine picking up a novel, and flipping to a scene where a character walks across a room: “Mal got up and took a step towards the bar. He then took another step. A third step he took, while onlookers marveled at the sight. A forth step followed, then finally, a fifth, at which point he found himself near the bar. A sixth step took him still closer, and finally a seventh step put him close-enough for his beard to scrap the bar-top.” Now imagine that the pages of this novel often turn themselves, whether you are ready for them to or no, while sometimes they get stuck together and you have to struggle valiantly to progress at all. That is the sort of prose, and user experience, you will find in this game, only told in pictures instead of words.

A rather good story so far, as to be expected from this dev, but useless adult/porn content. I can't help but feel the dev would succeed much more outside of the "adult" market. The sex scenes haven't improved even slightly since his first game. It's a real shame. Should go with still-rendered but high-detail or actual animated sex scenes in this day and age, this in-between looping between two renders without any text is way way worse than either of those options. You don't even get the option to control the pace of the sex scene because the dev decided you should have to stare at his 2-render loop for nearly a minute each time.

Visually, there are barely any improvements either. Characters still do the thousand-yard stare when talking to each other just like they did in the other games by this dev.

If this was just a visual novel without adult content, I would likely give this at least 3 stars for the story-telling alone, but the fact remains it's an adult VN and that aspect of the game is just terrible, with zero hope for any improvement because the dev just doesn't care to experiment, change, or improve anything art-wise even after years of experience and growing monetary support, despite being the most criticized thing in all of his games.

As per usual from Talothral, another great start to another VN.

This dev puts a lot of thought and energy into storytelling. It shows with how much time he spends on improving his craft.

Story--5/5
Renders--5/5
Characters( as of now)--5/5

I've been following and subscribed since the first novel. Talothral has improved leaps and bounds with each story that has been created. This one is no different.

Review

This one starts off with a fire. Then you get flashes of the past that has put the MC on his current path. Struggle, fight, sex, magic and good story telling pull you into this new world.
I recommend this VN and this dev. Constant improvement and great story telling drive this VN with every update.

Once again a nice game from Talothral. I love his games (ok animations could be a bit better - fucking looks like rabbits ). But with Talothral you can be sure that his games will be finished. I don't know any of his games that have been abandoned.

Story - 4,5/5
Renders - 4.5/5 Better with every new game
LI's - not much atm
Animations like all Talothral games - 1/5

Why i give him 5/5 for this game? Because he is one of few developers who completes his games and give us frequent updates.
Ive played all Talothral games and i like them, story is always fun, rich variety of LI's in all his games and i see his skill progress.
So yeah 5/5 for this.
Please pay attention to animations more and work on them.
Looking foward for more

The game, and therefore the journey of our heroes, is only just beginning, but even now I have to say that this game will once again be a masterpiece of the genre.

Everything is just right again, the atmosphere, the environment, the characters of the people who have appeared so far, as well as their dealings with each other.

The story is excitingly told and I can only look forward to the further adventures of our group of heroes.

The story looks interesting, the dialogues are good and logical.
the renders look great especially the panther and very good detailing, but the sex scenes are boring, no roleplay or anything , no animations as of now.

The dialogue font is default , and game font is not good, it's hard to read the text when the scene changes.

The characters are average, no in-dept detailing and all.

v0.2.0
As a big fan of the previous works, I've been waiting for the public release of the first version of this new opus!
I really like the new world of fantasy and magic in which we're immersed, and the characters are pretty and well made (with hair!).
The story, although in its early stages, seems really interesting, but I would have liked a little intro, because we're literally plunged right into the story.
It's still a bit early days, but this first version and with the author's experience, this story is and will be excellent!
I can't wait to see what happens next!