Recent reviews by JTDC

Between EA making it a pain to actually play the game, mediocre control, bad UI choices, and just plan atrocious "anti player all the time" AI, I refuse to touch this game again

I know I'm in the minority here, but, quite frankly, the game is not for me. Too much of the annoying and hated parts of Dungeons and Dragons were put in for some reason or another, to the point where I absolutely refuse to continue playing past the early part of the game. Too many damn traps that are a massive danger if you don't know they're there but pointless if you do; too many fights that can be characterized as "made by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥"; a need to animate every single die roll out of combat for some reason, which got old far faster than the devs must have thought would happen; and a load of just annoyances in the gameplay that were put in out of a faithfulness to the system more than anything else.

I'm sure the story is fun and engaging. Unfortunately, the encounters and gameplay are not. If your selling point is the story, sell me a book, not a game.

Worth getting!

I had a fun 40 hours; however, the game does have a significant drop in fun after the midpoint. It's definitely related to having been in early access,, as the resource use relative to your ability to gather it spikes dramatically. If you had been playing during EA, you very likely would have already had a significant stash of some of those resources, so the leap would not have been as onerous. However, starting off now, the leap is significant.

The plot is pretty small, and the few NPC interactions are small, but that's not really a huge problem.

And, finally, some of the things you have to do are really, really, really grindy. The fun gets used up from some of these activities long before your need to finish them ends. This sort of made the completion building feel like an unending chore.

Overall, enjoyable, and probably will be refined a bit in future updates.

Remember 90s DOOM? You like 90s DOOM?

Congratulations, here's 90s DOOM with a 40k skin! Nothing to not like!

They have significantly improved this from release; it runs better than the original now, and it has fewer annoyances in the way the AI behaves.

Honestly? It gets very old, very quickly. You frequently get locked into long scenes that get longer, and longer, and even though there's way more nominally exciting sex, it's just more and more boring.

It's a nice, very relaxing game. There's no "winning" or "point" other than to just make a thing that makes you smile. And you know what? That's more than enough! That's justifiable! Just select a color, click, and poof! More building! And if you can't find joy in just making a pretty city without worrying about any of the practicalities, I feel very sad for you because sometimes that stuff is great, but other times? Just make a pretty city!

I have mostly enjoyed my time playing this game, so I'm going to give this game a net recommend, but I will discuss it so you can have a better understanding of your choice.

First, this is a game made by a single person. This is neither good nor bad, in itself, but you should base your expectations for updates, bugfixes, etc on this reality. The dev does seem to be responsive to comments and questions in the discussions page, so you can expect them to at least note your concerns and help you to the best of their ability.

It also isn't entirely finished. Some minor questlines have placeholders in them, or lines saying "future content will be added." It's still playable, and an endgame does exist (I have not yet gone to it, but I have the option). The dev does post roadmaps and update goals, so you can reasonably expect progress here.

Those are just "here's what you can expect over time" bits, and if I'm unfair about this, please tell me why and I'll update my review.

So, for the pros:

The story is engaging. It's not what I expected at all, but there's a good amount of background that kind of just oozes through as you play. It also does present interesting choices for you to make and that does impact how your party feels about you.

Sex scenes: That is a big reason why you're getting this, right? For the style of graphics, they're pretty good overall. They're also fairly well written, so you can definitely enjoy them for what they are. If you don't want to experience them, you can 100% just not do them. They're not mandatory to view to progress the game. Good on the dev for that!

Management aspects: Actually pretty nice! It's not super in-depth, but it is worth engaging in and it certainly fleshes things out. Also, it is necessary to use to get through at least one faction questline.

Cons:

The combat is weirdly balanced. I've had several combats where an enemy just one-shots one or more of my party at the onset, before they get a chance to act. I still handily win, even down 2 people before I get to go. I could have upgraded my defenses a bit, but I'm not convinced that would have made them that much more likely to survive a couple rounds. But, as I mentioned, it didn't seem to matter much. I just had my main character hang back and do huge range damage, and I ground them down. Combat also is, more or less, at your choice--you can easily avoid lots of it except for the main quests. But, you can do it whenever you want in an upgrade, or you can go to the overworld and just fight random groups you see. But it isn't engaging enough, for my tastes, to seek it out to grind my people up to avoid those situations I mentioned.

Dialogue and event texts also are a bit of a problem for me. It can be easy to accidentally push through a choice in the tree because of the way the text/choices interact. It's not a huge deal, but it is a bit annoying. I'm not sure if this is something the dev can fix, or it's based on the engine it runs on. This could also just be being a bit more impatient than I should be, so take this with a grain of salt.

The in-game economy is also weirdly balanced. Like, you could just let the timer run while you read a book or something, and then upgrade your brothel for income as you get enough cash, and keep that up until you can buy whatever gear you want. Gear really, really gives you a huge bonus in combat, and you can passively get the Good Stuff without too much effort, so it's a bit weird for me. Also, the contract system can get you a lot of cash, and improve your income, with relatively little effort or time on your part as well. As a result, this sort of was not engaging for me after a short period of time. You may enjoy it; you may not enjoy it.

Overall, I do enjoy the game. Even though combat is weirdly balanced, I don't hate it. It's tactical, and you can get a lot of tactical options to use, so you can find a lot of cool stuff to do. You can customize your team a fair degree as well, so you can keep it fresh. The storylines are engaging. I like most of the characters, and think they're decently characterized.

Overall, I do recommend it.

So, I'm not recommending this game, but I don't think it's a *bad* game. it just...well, it falls short. You have very little control over anything, and there's a lot of RNG in the sacraments. I have literally lost one sacrament in the first round, without doing anything at all, because I lost all initiatives, and their disciples all crit their attacks on all of my disciples. Just one-shotted them. Whee. Maybe dreams could have helped? Or not? Hard to say, because it's a lot of RNG and you have zero direct control over anything.

So that can be frustrating. It's not a challenge when it's entirely beyond your control; it's just unfun. There's no satisfaction when winning after that. You didn't learn or figure anything out; you just had terrible luck. That's it. Bad luck. And that's not fun. When you have a great bit of luck, and win almost instantly, it doesn't feel good. It's basically the same as if you won after a full battle instead of a quick one. No additional benefits, and even if you did get them, it was purely random.

There's just so little satisfaction in the sacraments, and it's about half the game.

Maybe you'll enjoy it. I don't.