Recent reviews by Kattlarv

In short: Great game, HORRIBLY advertised. (I’ve played 50+ hours, just not on steam.)
I'll start with: I AM doing a TL:DR at the start, so you can find out if this game is for you. And then delve into the details as to the "why". (Dry sarcasm warning)

Secondly: I struggled with whether or not to recommend this game. But in the end: I had to give it a negative score as it just keeps being misleadingly advertised, dropping the ball and not stepping up with promised content.

Is this game for you?
Do NOT get this game if you are expecting the following:
- Lesbian content
- Being rewarded for hard work
- A wide variety of females
- Romance
- Femdom
- Varied gameplay
- Playing a female protagonist
- Cohesive story

DO get the game if you are expecting the following:
- Maledom
- Females being raped
- Females being abused
- Females being humiliated
- Penis worship
- Hyper penises (larger than an arm)
- Inflation (semen)
- A wide variety of males
- Playing as faceless males in many scenes
- All "paths" leading to one of the above
- Porn logic
- "Trainer" games
- "Lady of the night-ification"


With that out of the way: It IS a really great game if you are after what I listed.
I just keep seeing people on a weekly basis, be shocked/surprised that the game isn't about lesbians. Or how "It's actually really good, ignore how it looks.". So, I wanted to help itemize a list for it. So people can simply get an impression of if this game is anything for them.

I'll start with explaining why the first points: This game currently is close to 200 scenes. 4 of them are lesbian. 1 of those are finished. (There ARE also several single pictures. But those aren’t exactly “scenes”, especially as nearly every single scene with a male is fully finished.) This is *despite* lesbian content being teased and advertised everywhere.

The comment about “hard work” refers to how the highest “difficulty setting” of this game. (and the “canon path”, that is the “pure” route.) This path is just... frankly insulting. You get more content from STARTING the game, than playing 5+ hours of this route. Atop that: There’s currently no plans from the devs, to include content for this path. And, for being an adult game: That is just, double insulting. Especially as the game basically constantly punishes and insults you for not “giving in” and pleasuring men, ie: the “easy path”. And: If you try to do anything “empowering”, the game kinda tries to spit on you. You CAN do it. But: You only get punished for it. (Like: A boss battle, lesbian reward has less content than a random beggar in town.)

Variety wise: Most of the females are copy pasted. (As in: Physique.) Whereas the males get unique body models. Which does suck, since with the line-up: You’d expect some interesting designs. Yet: They put more time and effort into random, floating penises, than the NAMED female characters. They apparently have to share genitals. Whereas all of the named males have unique, hand-crafted genitals.

Similarly, any romance and femdom is basically swept under the rug. They hint at it, only to snatch it away and borderline mock you for attempting it. For example: More than once do you have a scene that starts with the option to use femdom, solely to be interrupted by a dude basically going “Step aside! This is a job for a MAN!”. And if you decline, you get no porn. But if you agree: The dude takes over and pushes you aside.

As for “female protagonist”. You DO play one. But in many of the minigames and scenes: You take control of some random dude. Or a random dude pushes the PC aside to take over. The females are likewise basically ignored. None of them really has self-regards, needs or a sex drive. They only really react if there’s men to pleasure. The PC is eager to pleasure 10 men for nothing in return. And story wise: It goes a bit all over the place. It DOES have some really good story beats. Buuut: Then it basically backtracks and does something completely different. The story uses A LOT of special pleading fallacy. (Like the: “All women are sex slaves for men to use... except those who are not.”)


On the flip side, let me address the other points: This game relishes in the maledom and “penis superiority” mentality. It IS a porn game. So I don’t fault it for that. But: You HAVE to be aware that this game focuses solely on that. This isn’t a game where you play “the hero”. You play an ex-hero, who is supposed to be broken down and used as a sex toy for men’s enjoyment with no regard for her wants or needs. And the game does a *fantastic* job at that. I am simply emphasizing this, so you know what you are getting into.

And as noted: EVERYTHING about this game is about the penises. They are *the* main focus. You’ll come across dozens of different designs, sizes and models. Up to and including hyper. (Ie: Beyond humanly possible proportions.) Most of the males in game are genetically enhanced to ludicrous sizes because... “story”. This also leads into heavy fetish areas such as inflation. (Basically treating the body as rubber)

You also as said get a lot of different males. Including “non-human” ones and overall genetically altered ones that have signature penises. And you can get to play several of these males in game. Either in battle or in sex minigames. You quite often control a random male instead of the PC, in order to have a “sexier” sex scene. And: Currently: All in game paths lead to this type of content. There’s no “lesbian path” or etc. It’s just “Do you want to be a prostitute for males, A B or C?” all the same thing, but different flavours. (Which would be fine. If we actually got some paths to make up for it. Variety wise.)

Porn logic is as said VERY prevalent. It makes no attempts to be realistic so... don’t expect it to. It has a lot in common with “trainer games” for those that familiar. And, as I can’t specify: The PC is supposed to turn more and more into a living sex toy for men, with none of her own autonomy. That’s basically the “goal” of the game. Ignore your GF, let women be enslaved. In rough terms. I am being blunt and generalizing a few things. But it still applies. You CAN choose to not do that. But... there's 0 reason or reward for it.


Let’s break down the steam adverts for an example of this. (There’s a lot more elsewhere, but I’ll stick to steam for now)
The trailer shows “you have to save your gf!” This is the canon plotline. But the game aggressively insults you if you try to follow it, and withholds ALL adult content. So the whole “choose how you play” is pretty disingenuous. The rest of it does accurately only show straight sex. (and spoils a plotpoint that a char isn’t actually female.) Of the screencaps showing sex, we see an equal 50-50 split of straight and lesbian. This is grossly misrepresenting the actual ~95-5 split.

“Explicit sexual visuals+”
This is *technically* correct. It does gloss over a lot of the heavily specific fetishes. And completely leaves out the rape, along with heavy drug and alcohol use.

“Whether she gives in to the bliss+”
This is a trick question. As you are not "allowed" to do one without the other. In addition to as said: You are punished and withheld all content if you don’t.

“As you play through+”
This is mostly fake. Out of the 8 characters, 6 are female. YOU as the PC, are not really allowed to have sex with them. But you can WATCH as random men do. A reasonable assumptions, would have been to think that: “Ah, I can have lesbian sex with 6/8 of these characters.” but no.

The "not-penis" content is mainly... poorly made with little effort. Which as said: Is VERY noticeable when we have just, stellar quality animations for the “real” scenes. They honestly feel forced into the game. A bit like: But “she has a girlfriend in the original script, so...”. And they’re just kinda... awkwardly shoehorned into the game.

I think that’s everything regarding “Is this a game for me?”. Let me know if I forgot anything.

What cut the game short for me was pretty simple. I thought it would be a very Metal Slug-esque game. But it having contact damage on enemies, so they don't actually have to hit you to do damage pretty much ruined it for me.
Granted, I can't recall if it says it tries to be like Metal Slug... but it's how I recall seeing it. So it can be entierly on my side.

Can be a silly complaint. I don't mind it on the melee enemies, but it just took me out of it to die by landing on a enemy sniper.
If you don't mind that type of gameplay, this game seems to have quite a lot going for it. Controls are pretty okay, and mission options are decent. But yeah, I just totally flopped on the game with the contact damage. Otherwise it seems pretty solid. But it is doing a bit much out of what it needs to. There's a lot to nitpick on, but also a lot to enjoy. But to me, the "meh" outweighed the good."

On times like these I wouldn't mind if there was a "maybe" option on the recomend box.

Will say, it is a overall really solid game. Mixes a lot of the classic playstyles, with some newer touches like VA and plentyful powerups. (that granted, you will have 0 idea what most of them actually does) So yeah, it's a great mix of old and new. It also attemps to tell a more mature story, both for good and bad. As it has some characers and moves that feels more at home in a more "casual" story. Yet, it does said story rather well. So it's a give and take. It doesn't always manage to flip-flop between "srs bsns" and "roflmao" tones. I could probably have worded that better, but eh... I did love some of the running gags, but as said. It was hard to get a decent emotional shift in.

As for the gameplay, it's a healthy mix of "gotta go fast" and faffing about exploring. Certain characters pander more to certain styles. So there sould be something for everyone. (that are into platforming ofc) There are some bugs and glitches, but it's mostly clipping errors. I've yet to find anything that forced a restart or anything like that.

So it's very solid in it's structure. Something I would say is the weak parts of the game, is that it heavily relies exclusively on memorization. And I know some like that, but to me, that's just a crutch to pad out gameplay. Especially at some parts with incredibly cheap traps. Or bosses with bs, 3 hit moves, that can only be dodged by using your special attack, as it makes you momentarily invurnable. So it is impossible to kinda stroll in and clear several of the bosses on your first try. As you can't without having done them before, due to said prior attacks. You need to know them beforehand, else you just get instantly killed by the unavoidable attacks, that has to be negated with a timed invurnability. Might not be a problem to some, but I found it to be one of the frustrations in the game. Even if some of the bosses are literally just unfair, (and that can be a good thing) they are unfair in a bad way, so to speak. Both due to as said that you gotta memorize the moves, but some moves are just a tad bit too cheap (and often off screen). So be prepared to have some cheap part of a level, or a boss rack up a number of kills, or K:O's on you.

Graphics are a nice retro mix. Though even there it has some contracitory tones. Like, one of the characters has to me, one of the most hilarious "hanging" animations in any pixel game to date. Which, to me at least, felt a little off in the more serious sections of the game. If there's something I think could have been a nice touch (and might be in FP2) is if the character you played got "roughed up" so to speak. Like, at low health, they looked a bit battered and bruised. As, again; with the tone. It just feels a bit odd aestetics wise when the character has 0 hp left, and stands around as if nothing is wrong. Would also have loved if you could on rare ocassions trigger a sort of "last stand" to use a cliché term. Like, instead of dying (either by slumping over, or exploding in a ball off fluff. Have to just say I love how they chose to do the two death animations in this game xP I've missed the cartoony aspects of this style of games) get a timer like the one where you are drowning. Maybe tint/dim the screen a bit, and possibly slow down the character some, and give a chance to grab a health item before the timer runs out, and the character faints. (or it could be a 100 % thing to happen for a specific character. Kinda like the character from Metal Slug that can take 2 shots before dying) I dunno, I think it'd really fit the whole "against all odds" the game is going with. Just feel it'd be neat with some "shiz just got real" indicator. Right now all that happens is that the health bar blinks a little.

Though, I know such thing would add a lot extra sprites. But yeah, would at least imo be a really worthwhile addition. I haven't finished the game with all character on all difficulties yet, but even with just one character, I pretty much got my money's worth. One thing I was a bit "eh..." towards is how the replayability is handled. In that it's mostly "multi-path", so if you make one wrong turn, or at times: one of the two turns, you cannot go back. So, again: it relies on you memorizing. Which as said: To me ruins some of the whole "adventure" feel. You can't get everything in one run, you can't beat bosses the first time around. You succeed only thanks to being a magical time traveler. While I could be sorta okay with having to re-run, or at least grab the stuff with other characters, (that's totally acceptable) I do greatly dislike how I can't charge in, hypotetical guns blazing to a boss, and outwit and beat them through skill. Rather having to do a tideious grind in order to figure out their pattern and moveset.

Still, I really like the game. It's solid, has good character and gameplay. It's what you expect, with some twists and turns.

I can say, will do a bit of a quick review. So won't get too much into detail, but will cover the basics.
It is a overall quite neat game. Taking the classic dungeoncrawl approach and spicing it up a little. While the graphic are notably ripped from heroes 6, I don't mind at all. After all, why waste assets when they have them? And they work well within the world so.

That said, the game has some MASSIVE flaws, and some small annoyances.
Can start with the small ones: For starters, there are too few lines of spoken dialog in this. Even with a diverse group, basically 70 % of all lines are identitcal between characters. Not that many, but heck, it's not far from it. They seriously cheaped out on that. The dialog that exist is pretty well done. But yeah, it incredibly fast gets repetitive the 482'th time. Sometimes you can hear the same line 12+ times per minute. Depending on the situation.
Secondly it's that, while more of a "read up on it, scrub" thing, your "talent tree" is something you heavily need to invest in, and plan ahead. You're not allowed to just pick it as you go, it became clear to me a bit in that I would have needed to plan my build from the start. As some skills are just far too vital not to have. Like how you literally can't complete certain dungeons without having certain spells and/or immunities.

And while mostly a aestetic thing. It feels a bit dumb how you start as this "kinda pro adventuring party" with basically 0 equipment or skills. I get that you have to build your way up, but it's kinda derp how you're these supposedly bad-ass "Raiders", and you have some rusty, duct taped gear and barely know how to slap someone xP Not to mention: The game ocassionally forgets your UI, and resests some buttons to the "default" potion combination. Not a big annoyance, but can be a nuisance. Atop that, it seems some of the DLC content is bugged. I cashed in a reward for the deluxe edition package, but the item for it was never delivered, yet it claimed it had been cashed in.


Now, for the massive flaws of this game in no particular order: (I was debating a bit wheter or not I would recommend this game, but in the end, it is a nice game. Yes, it will frustrate you a lot. But it has enough enjoyable moments to mostly weigh it up)
1: The loading times are far too long. It's not to bad in the start. But later in the game, these become a massive bother. ESPECIALLY as the game refuse to load if you are tabbed out. So you can't enter a dungeon or the like, then tab out, check a few things and tab back in during the up to 30+ second long loadingscreens. This becomes ESPECIALLY annoying due to the next in this list, which will force you to repeatedly re-load over and over and over and over and over. It's just a really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ way to pad on extra hours of gameplay.

2: The RNG creep. I could be that I had a bad party combo. But some enemies just get plain stupid with this. Most of the undead are a great example of this. With one lucky hit, and many enemies seem to have 20-40 % crit chance, they can, and will 1-shot any non-tank party member. Just like that. Poof. And there's nothing you can do about it aside from spam protective spells. Which, makes you unable to attack. While they normally hit for like, 41 damage, when they crit, it can be anywhere from 180-260 damage if they feel like it. And when a ex: magic hero at that level has around 100 hp, they're just toast. So at many places, you just have to save, enter combat, hope RNG doesn't screw you over, if so, load and rinse and repeat. You're not being challanged the least, your patience is just being tested.

3: Broken skills and events. Some abilities don't work on enemies, or are outright broken. Like how if you stun an enemy, they can still retaliate, block and all that. While you aren't allowed to do so if stunned as a character. And there's dozens of design flaws like that around. And some events break when you save at a particular palce or time. Like, one event in a crow temple, an entire encouter crashes and vanishes if you save after you talk to a spirit. Which mind you, is a place with the issue in 2 mentioned. So you have to save before you talk to them. Talk to them, enter fight and hope each turn you don't have the ~5-10 % chance of getting instantly killed and be force to load, while you try to take down 6 enemies at both sides of you with like, 1500 hp each. Each one of these capable to 1 shot your non-tanks. Currently at that fight as I am writing this, and have been for around 2 hours, 1 of which has just been pure loading time.

For a game so heavily reliant on QS and QL, this type of droll padding just isn't acceptable. I'd at most expet 5-10 second loading time, at most. Many parts of this game is pure trial and error via RNG. Atop that, you only get experience for enemies if a hero is alive, and without and negative condition on them. Like what? My mage didn't learn anything at all from figthing a dragon, just becuase she got backhanded by said dragon and stunned, and her magical boots managed to kill the dragon? She had to be fully aware and witness as the dragon died, or else the entire fight was just some dull pasttime she couldn't learn anything from?

4: No ability to flee. For a game that places it's level 20 monsters next to it's level 1 obligatory giant rats. This is such a huge design flaw I don't even know what to say... It's like removing/not including a dodge or block manouver in a fighting game... like, the actual murloc? This ties heavily in with the save/load issue. As, every time you find something new or a new area, you are forced to save to know if you even are allowed to be there, before you head on in. Your entire party got 1-shotted by a magically farting spider? Welp, you better load then, possinly after being forced through a game over screen, to then be made to wait a total of 1 minute before you are allowed back in. It's just not acceptable as said with the massive amounts of lazy padding this game has. It's like... it's a great game in here, why was so much bad descisions stuffed into it? Despite this being a late, patched version of the game. I really fear how terrible it must have been at launch. There's seriusly a good game in here. It's just brutally hampered by multiple poor choices and design errors.

I think this wraps up most of it... but yeah. I'd perhaps give a 6.5 out of ten? Nice game, but far too often just plain frustrating. Just knowing that "Oh, I see my tactic and team was irrelevant here, I just wans't lucky enough with the dice rolls to progress... better spend a mintute reloading the... not saying RNG is always bad. But when it becomes a major part of the game itself... it's just frustarting. Adding numbers or making the AI cheat just to upp the difficulty is just poor design. Yes, I know it's sort of "needed"sometimes, but it's very tacky regardless. There's just far too many areas where you're simply not allowed to do anything to affect the outcome of things. Or would have had to play the game prior to know which things to bring where.

While I can say it's overall a really neat concept with a 2d MOBA, this game has a bit more focus on slightly more casual play. Along with quite a bit of humour thrown in there. This would seem like a quite ideal time sink if you want to play between 15+ minutes to whenever really.

It is however dragged down quite a lot with it's peer to peer and ranking system... as some games are literally unplayable due to the lag. For example: One character has the ability to make a forward dash, and become immune to damage for a split second. This can be used to counter other characters abilites, such as nukes, mines or even direct hits if you trigger it right. So in other terms: Something that required timing and skill. With the latency, skill doesn't matter. As you can stand next to a mine, just out of reach. Dash clean through it, end up out of reach, then 1-2 seconds later die, because "you touche a mine, we totes swear.". This lag also can cause no-clips, teleportation or a very common thing: making a blatant miss to hit, whether you dodged it, or are way out of reach. Because you either were in range according to the other player, or you were stuck outside for the others in a "loading" state. I don't know much about programming, but it feels like... having a system that checked "where is character x at 15:42:6 in the game? Back in their base healing? Where did character y's nuke hit at 15:42:6? at the other side of the map? When then it missed." instead of the current "Hey y, did you hit on your screen? Well then, you died x. Kktnxbye!" So yeah, could definately see some improvements in that sytstem.

Otherwise, it is somewhat balanced game. Mechanic wise, they really ought to fix the recovery issues though. The currency loss on death is just pointless, and only is a punishment on a penalty. Only really promoting hostility towards teammates, and making it literally impossible for certain players to catch up, or get a fair chance. As their enemies will have x2-x4 their health, deal about tripple damage, and have plenty more sustain and support. Sorta encouraging "bullying", as a team can get a huge advantage by picking out a player in the opposite team, and solely focusing all effort on killing them. As then it's basically a 3v2 game, with one team just being way better than the other. Because they have all the currency. It's not helped that "try-hards" or the professional players are in the same bracket. I know this is due to limited amount of players. Especially at certain times. But it utterly ruins the game if you have a casual intent, and run into a maximum cheese, on teamspeak cordinated game, where their team is soelly build to win within 5 mintues, along with making it literally impossible to for your team to do anything about it, as if you even get close to your turret, you die. It doesn't help that cheap, "I win" button tactics exist with certain characer combinations.

That said, the game is only somewhat balanced as said. As you really have a "rock, papper, scissor" system for their characters at times. As some games you can just start, and tell from just looking at what characters both teams have, and conclude that "yeah, we lost/won". As regardless of skill, (unless it's waaay much difference, or unless lag is in your favour) those matches will play out like expected. As there's nothing you can do.

I know most games got imbalance or issues in one way or another. But Awesomenauts could really do with some sort of handicap, or balancing thing. Along with some better way of dealing with the hosting and PtP. As of now, it's really annoying to see a character use an ability towards you, you clearly dodge it, and then you die, becuse it hit you where you were 1-2 seconds ago. Or when you pick up healing, get the +hp, then die, because according to the other person, you haden't healed for them yet, so their damage was fatal on their side, so the game orders your character to die anyway. This is especially not helped by that many people are either gloating, or rude about this. Always claiming it's "skill" when it's positive to them, but suddenly when it's negative for them, it's hax, luck or lag. Becase you know, what's hypocrisy?

Know it's mayhaps been a bit seemingly negative view. But I do really like the game. It just has some glaring issues that could do with being addressed. Also wouldn't hurt to impliment the "Official, unofficial, gg qualifications" as an actual thing. I know some are against it, but overall, it promotes a fun/good game, and demotes cheap tactics. For those that don't know of it: It's basically that everyone gets at least one kill, one death, and one turret down for both sides. While it can be a bit tricky to pull of "authentically". I'd want to suggest making it an archivement to have like, 50-100 games like that, that might could have negative effects... so I can't suggest a good fix to encourage it. But so far, the only good, and really great matches have had these statistics. That, and no gloaters xD Those that had lag in them, at least had the people acknowledge it.

But yeah, overall, good game. But comes with a lot of issues.