OK, I played the game up to the first fight against the soldiers.
I'm afraid I've to report that the story failed to catch my interest, but I urge you to ignore this negative feedback as I don't think my tastes are representative of the average AVN player.
In general, I'm not personally interested in playing the story of a deeply wounded character that does a deal with the devil to get back at his enemies. The part where the MC's whole world is destroyed is supposed to be deeply touching and emotional, but it's so overused that for me it ended being just
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.
Parents killed, farm burned... We have been there too many times for getting truly involved. I should know: I wrote not one but
two near-identical scenes for the game I'm developing.
It doesn't help that the enemies are faceless monsters without any backstory. They're just generic, cartoonish evil bastards, and I don't know about others, but this definitely broke my immersion to the point I stopped playing before seeing if the fight mechanics/narrative were satisfying (it didn't help the "blind them throwing dirt in their eyes" trick when they were shown wearing full helms).
Enough ranting about the story. As I said, you shouldn't be concerned about my opinion over that. Let's talk about the art, instead.
+ In general, I don't mind the AI-generated backgrounds at all. But I know for a fact that some players are going to be put off from rendered sprites over "artsy" backgrounds.
- The fact that large slabs of the VN show only the background, at most having a "talking head"/side image, is definitely not a plus.
+ The use of HS (or whatever it is) for your base renders is way too subjective for me to comment about. (Meaning that I hate HS renders, but many like them, so let's move on.)
- The models and the backgrounds being disjointed is a huge issue and my personal opinion is that you should face it, or you'll end up abandoning the project at a later stage. I see that you already played with Stable Diffusion to give your character renders a similar style to the other pictures like in the dead mother's scene. As I don't believe you can do a half-decent game without much more integration of characters and background, I think you should spend more time creating similar scenes for the early game.
+ Animations: frankly I don't give a rat ass about them, but it seems like it's a deal-breaker for many commenters. I see that some backgrounds are animated, I guess to distract from the fact that there's nothing in the foreground. Maybe it works for others, but I'm afraid it doesn't for me.
On the petty side:
- As I often do, I played with the default name, which is "Warlord". It kind of breaks immersion, I suggest you to play with a different default name. As the sisters are called Cassandra and Alexandra, I see a theme that can be exploited. Names such as Leander, Achilles, Icaros and Menelaos strike me as appropriate enough, but you surely have better ideas.
- I believe the fact the MC is a young farmer should be more strongly hinted at, or even outright stated, in the very first lines or even before that.
- There are two animated backgrounds, just after you leave the with's hut, that have the wrong size, but I'm sure you already caught that.
- Let's say all together no to game-over choices. If the MC just express pity for his mother as motivation, instead of killing him, the succubus could, after a scornful and disgusted retort, dig into his soul and force him to admit that, actually, he's lying and he's after revenge.
I thank you for your offer to explain more in detail. I'm actually interested,
but in a detached, academic, half-assed way, as Stable Diffusion is not a path I can walk with my 10-yo PC (2GB VRAM). One of my partners is toying with it, but I'm generally left out of the loop as I'm a different branch (and way too grumpy anyway). as I'm playing a lot with Stable diffusion, after discovering that it runs no-prob even on my 10yo computer, and I'm currently using it for the placeholder art of my own VN.
Suggestions for an overview text:
"A young farmer is living a quiet, hard life with his caretaker and two beautiful childhood friends (relationships can be changed) when an accident leaves him bedridden and dying. The same day, war breaks on the farm, as a band of enraged soldiers attacks it. EDIT [copy-paste disfunction, sorry] A dark spell will bring the protagonist back, but left with nothing but rage and a hunger for revenge he will start to wage war against the monsters that took everything from him."
