Vae Victis - Khan: Conquer, Ravish, Breed [v0.7.5] review
Genre:
VN & turn-based kingdom management game harem collector hybrid, with optional side missions often containing sandbox and/or dungeon crawler elements. (Yikes!)
This game started out really strong, but fizzled out completely once I got to the "kingdom management" part of the game. Once I got there I played for maybe two hours more. I invaded two countries, did some infiltration missions, got very bored and was done.
It honestly feels like I'm reviewing two different games. The first part was a nice little RPG action adventure and I really liked it. Then the kingdom management, waifu management and infiltration sections came along and derailed everything.
What I liked about the first part:
+ Excellent MC introduction. He isn't just a cardboard blank. He's got a unique, tenacious personality and there's an appropriate amount of backstory and world building being delivered.
+ A super excellent villain introduction! A murderous mom & incestous undertones. MC promises revenge. Unique and fresh!
+ After some brief chatting things start happening immediately. The pacing here is excellent. There's a daring jailbreak, action sequences and some interesting encounters along the way.
+ Bitches be lying, bitches getting laid. Things getting steamy!
+ There's some nice player options. I get to choose whether I want to act like a noble lord or if I just wanna revenge rape bitches who be tryin to play me for a fool to teach them a valuable life lesson. With some more nuanced options in-between, of course.
Everything up until this point was great, and now suddenly *poof*, all that good shit goes bye-bye, never to be seen again. (Or maybe it returns, what do I know? I didn't finish all the available content.)
From this point the story takes a hard left off a steep cliff and I find myself splitting my time between playing some kind of kingdom administrator and playing as a secret agent infiltrator.
First off, playing Tax Man isn't fun. The "strategy layer" or whatever you wanna call it wasn't fun in the slightest.
Make some numbers increase here, build a building there, try to optimize this and that number. Press next turn and watch some numbers change. Get more money. Squeeze those peasants dry. Attack with your number when it's bigger than the enemy's number. It's just taxes and accounting, man. The universal opposite of fun.
Second:
If you want some covert operations done in enemy territory, and done right, you gotta send in the King!
Seriously what!? This is beyond retarded.
Yes, send the single most important individual in the entire Resistance, alone, to kidnap acolytes and burn a temple, really?
There's nobody in the entire fucking army organization that could have maybe done that instead?
If my guy Khan is this mentally challenged, he's obviously completely unfit to rule. Let's just go with the incest queen instead and just be done with it, it's probably for the better.
Third:
What happened to the queen, anyway? What's she up to?
MC is out there raping ravaging his enemies and conquering their territories (Some of which are the Queen's alies, I would assume?) and what does our Main Villain do? She's got no agents out there looking for MC? No armies of her own to counterattack with? No reinforcements to send her allies? Some assassins maybe?
It's hard to believe that she wouldn't want to try to influence the global situation in some way with plots of her own. I feel this is the main weakness of the "strategy" gameplay: There's no active enemy! Everyone just sits there waiting to get invaded.
It's also a huge waste of a perfectly good villain! Such a great character definitely deserves a lot more screen time! (Again, maybe she shows up later, I wouldn't know.)
Oh man I could go on forever with all the plot holes and stupid mechanics but I'm gonna spare you all. I think I've made my point pretty clearly.
This game is a classic case of trying to do too many things and ending up with a confusing mess filled with plot holes and unnecessary accounting mechanics just dragging everything down, and along the way losing sight of the overarching story and the bigger picture.
This could have been a great RPG action adventure game, as evidenced by the very strong opening. It's such a shame.