Wow, people are mostly talking about the next game... Guess I'm really late to this particular party... Still, such is the way of the Backlog, so it's only now that I'll be posting my usual Rant of Questionable Sanity for Witch of Eclipse.
The 1st thing I'll comment on is that, as far as I'm aware, this particular game was a transitional project for ONEONE1. It was intended to be smaller in scope (when compared with the likes of Ideology in Friction and Samurai Vandalism at least), so it's not surprising that it's notably smaller than SV in every way. (Except maybe H-animations? It somehow feels like there's about as many of those as in SV, but it's been ages since I messed with SV, so I might be remembering wrong...)
Regardless, the important point is that ONEONE1 wasn't trying to outdo themselves with this project in any way. They were mostly still experimenting with Unity at the time after the head-aches of SV, though what exactly they were messing with is not clear, since the game flows and UI are identical to SV... with one particular exception that actually makes this game oddly notable in ONEONE1's lineup.
What's that?
Well, this is the first ONEONE1 game where you can choose some presets in terms of the protagonist's sexual experience at the start. Where all previous games started with a fixed situation (and virgin FMCs have been the thing for a looooooooong time now in ONEONE1's line-up)... in this game, Liz can be set to different levels of sexual experience and sluttery, up to the point where she's one step away from the max level. Yes, you can start the game with Liz at B level, a total slut willing and able to jump on every dick in her path and capable of the typical ONEONE1 H-combat animations from the very first goblin she runs into.
On top of that, this matters not just in terms of making smut available faster, but there's small details here and there that change due to Liz's slut level. Things like the women of her home village being glad that she's leaving because all the man want to fuck her even over their wives, or adventurers shouting about living just so they can fuck her again... There's all sorts of things even before the narrative branches the way it tends to do in ONEONE1 games. It's not a huge thing, but it does make the world feel more alive than it does in most H-games, and it makes it feel like the fact that Liz is a slut or not matters. It may not seem like a big deal, but honestly, it's definitely a lot of work that many H-games don't even try to put in, so it's impressive that ONEONE1 made that effort. I particularly liked the fact that if you do all the early Brothel stuff and take the special job, then the noble dude at the brothel turns out to be Faith's would-be husband and recognizes Liz as a prostitute. That was honestly really well done.
The H-content is, of course, plentiful, when compared with many other H-games out there. There's the typical parade of dudes and monsters that can fuck Liz all over the place, in and out of combat. There's a lot less H-scenes for the side-girls though, and less side-girls in general, with Faith (the would-be rival and friend) being the only side-girl with any notable amount of scenes. (5 in total). I suppose it's also worth noting that you can make Liz an exclusive anal slut who only takes dicks in her mouth and up her ass, but not in her pussy. The fact that there's also some options for lesbian sex is new too, but that's too under-developed to really matter much, and it's not like you can have Liz form a romance with a girl or anything. (Which is weird considering that parts of the game seem to imply that this is where things could have gone between her and Faith... but i guess it was too much work for the Devs. The most we got was that one rape scene in the evil route.)
I suppose one can comment on the fact that this is the first ONEONE1 game in quite a while where the FMC doesn't have a potential boyfriend in the wings. That's been the case since... uh... lessee... SV had it, Ideology had it. Oni and Blade had it. The Heiress had it. Dark Elf Historia had it... uh... I don't remember farther than this, but you get the idea.
Sadly, that's the most I can praise about Witch of Eclipse in terms of new stuff, because everything else is more of the same stuff as their established formula. The combat is piss easy and boring, made even worse by the fact that damage tops off at 9999 and doesn't seem to go any higher, which means that leveling past ~40 is pretty pointless. The skill selection is even more boring than usual, because Liz is a Witch and only has magic and not particularly interesting magic either. Equipment was super-simplified in the same style as SV, so it's even worse than what was available in older games...
Basically, much like before, it's not worth picking this up if you want to have compelling gameplay as a priority for your H-game. There's better games for that.
The story is nothing particularly impressive either. Perhaps the most notable bit of the story is that you can have several early bad-ends which is not typical of ONEONE1. Liz giving up on being a Witch, Liz being turned into a monster's fuck-toy while an early town gets destroyed... so on and so forth. They actually put in a bit of effort here... but it doesn't matter that much when realistically, you will never see any of these outside of intentionally giving up. Still, it gives some faint hope that ONEONE1 might develop this system further in future games to create more meaningful choices.
Most of the usual story beats that ONEONE1 likes show up though:
- Evil Government/King? Check.
- Ending up in sluts-ville if losing a specific battle? Check.
- FMC ending up in a situation where she can kill or capture just about everyone she cares about? Check.
- Wannabe Epic Battle against the Big Bad at the very end of things regardless of route? Check.
- FMC has some sort of super-power? Check. Though I suppose it's worth noting that the implementation in Witch of Eclipse is more wonky on account of the fact that the way it works is different between routes, and unlike the last two games, there's no good explanation for it.
Honestly, I'm genuinely disappointed that there isn't an ending where Liz accepts to marry the Demon King. It would have been something genuinely new in a ONEONE1 game that I haven't seen done in any of their games so far.
The story isn't terrible or anything... it's does its job to make things happen and get Liz all over the place to allow the player to lewd her, but it's weaker than SV and even more so than Ideology from where I'm sitting. It's still decent for an H-game story, but it suffers from the fact that ONEONE1 has hit plenty of these story moments before and did so in better ways.
Basically, Witch of Eclipse is not really worth it for its story either, especially when it leaves some major question marks about who the setting's "God" is and what the heck they're up too and why the Demon King and the Eclipse Witch don't just team up together to kick its ass. It's serviceable, you'll see plenty worse stories out there, but it's nothing amazing, and in particular, it's weak even by ONEONE1 standards.
What this game IS for is definitely the smut. There's a lot of it and if you're into ONEONE1's usual shenanigans, you'll have plenty to enjoy. The main thing I spend my time with was the H-scenes. While I did a virgin playthrough too just for the lulz, it wasn't interesting and I sped through it much faster than I did in previous ONEONE1 titles.
All in all, Witch of Eclipse is a decent H-game by general H-game standards. If your priority is the smut, you can even consider it an amazing game. However, for the most part, it's a relatively weak ONEONE1 game, though to be fair, that was at least somewhat inevitable with the nature of the project. Still, probably worth picking up when it's on sale or something if one wants to support the devs. Hopefully, the next one takes the things they experimented with in this one a lot further.
