VN - Ren'Py - Completed - The Book of Bondmaids [v1.87c + DLCs] [Kamti Games Studios]

one of the best games, i've ever played.
I already forgot - how it is- to read the novel with amazing drawings. And this creation reminded me old times, when i was watching/reading comic books, without breathing, enjoyng by drawings and the story same time . And this novel withdrew me like then.
Great game. Amazing artworks, amazing story. Spent 6-7 hours reading it and playing over and over. And still under deep and strong impression after. Thank You very much for sharing possibility to try it!

Excellent game. I hope we get more from this developer and I hope that the negativity of the easily triggered snowflakes who just want to read politics and their personnel sense of victimhood into everything doesn't distract them or drag them down.

Amazing game, love the theme of playing the sadistic mercenary. Adult scenes include bdsm, corruption and being a bad mfucker all around. Great writing and hot scenes like hetero sex, threesomes, orgies, rough sex, and loving sex if you want it

Game simply feels unfinished. Book of Bondmaids and it's lady looks just like a placeholder in demo. Whole artifact plotline and princess character itself seems pointless, she barely has content on good side, and none on damnation.

Most of sexual content (and there's not much of it) here in general is voyeurism, despite a lot of opportunities to add actual sex without influencing flow fo the story, which is a shame. I did 2 playthroughs and ended up with around 6 scenes total where MC cock get's used, one of them missing art for sex with evil witch on damantion path (whole reason I even bothered re-playing).
As far as gamepaly go - it's short and linear VN. Arrest mechanic sucks, since all you do there is blindly guessing, you just rollback until you get the right combination, and all it influences is how much gold you end up with. You choose between 2 linear paths at start (and they just converge into one later on anyway) , and in terms of sexual content their difference is around 2 scenes. While game technically has an end - unsatisfying is the best thing one can say about it.

That said - I would still recommend trying it, to check out the art at least, just lower your expectations to an adequately made demo.

I have been searching and playing the 2d art games that the site has to offer and this seemed like a good prospect, A mediaval setting (Fricking love this time age in games) good near excellent artwork and a decent writing at the start of the game. I went for the redemtion path right of the bat but it seems that why I at least expected couldn't be far for what i got. MC got maimed, lost his career and got banished ( Trying to pass this as a reward was a stupid and bad joke that ended with me feeling kinda pissed). Now I know there are two paths left to discover but I simple don't want to follow the history and get shamed for being a man, you have to be blind to not see the feminist aspect of the game in the writing and some scenes of the game. I have not feel like this since the Cyberpunk 2077 endings which are totally garbage to me.

I downloaded the game with hope of having a good submersion on the story and the gameplay. I left with a bitter taste and kinda feeling like s%&t.

Game came out only a few days ago, and although it's not some sort of gaming revelation, not even by visual novel standards, it honestly surprised me. Why, you'll ask. Because it's way more competent than I expected for what could be considered a lewd game. And I don't usually play lewd games, but this is something like 2/3 serious game and 1/3 lewd game. In my opinion better than other "serious"/non-lewd visual novels with big publishers such as Vampire The Masquerade: Coteries of New York - for multiple reasons which I'll explain further in the review. Keep in mind that this is a review of someone who doesn't usually play such games, which might be part of why I like it.

SYNOPSIS

You "play" a foreign greedy assassin/thug who accidentally saved a rich-looking girl in the woods in hope of obtaining a reward afterwards. You discovered that she's actually the princess of the kingdom you're currently in. You're declared hero of the kingdom, but being the greedy mercenary you are, this is not enough for you. You started doing side-jobs for a lich to line up your pockets, a dangerous undead wizard wishing to conquer the kingdom. With the help of the small jobs you do for him, he manages to become the de facto ruler of the kingdom You start the game as some sort of lackey of his, but you might be able to change the course of the kingdom's destiny.
It's actually some sort of sequel for another game called Three Kingdoms Story: Conussia, but you don't have to play that, the intro will tell you absolutely everything you need to know. And this one has way higher production values, if you ask me, but you're free to do as you wish.

PROs

• Decent story for what it is. A lot of violence, cynicism, political intrigue, battle and strategies are described in detail, especially towards the ending. It's not a porn parody game where the plot revolves around sex, it's the other way around, it takes itself relatively serious when not porny and sex is really not as gratuitous or frequent as it could be. That being said, it has many scenes of explicit sex and orgies, they're by no means rare.
• Beautiful art, the best 2D art in a lewd visual novel if you ask me. Better and more realistic than Summertime Saga or What A Legend! because it doesn't exaggerate proportions and doesn't oversexualizes the look of characters (humongous tits, extremely skimpy clothing etc). My only complaint is the lack of body types, all girls seem to fit the "skinny-fit" body type with not many variations, which some of you might not like. Some frames are drawn like they've been taken straight out of some D&D guidebook which is a big plus for me as an RPG fan. I suspect this are drawn over real life porn pictures, but it's neither noticeable nor distracting. Besides, the SFW frames look handrawn, so I give them the benefit of doubt. Personally, it doesn't matter for me, the final result is beautiful no matter what technique they used.
• Dialogue isn't atrocious or permanently sexual and is relatively palatable in multiple parts. It's not porny or especially cringey when it's supposed to be serious.
• Multiple endings/paths which are actually fairly different . You can die a lot and also fail quests without game over. For example, there are missions where your success or survivability is decided by the equipment or the companion you pick.
• Sounds and music are decent, they fit the atmosphere
• You can save at absolutely any point and go back to undo your changes and experiment, if you wish

CONs

• Not everything that's being described has art, sometimes another thing will be described but a black screen will happen or you'll be stuck to the same picture. A budget problem more than anything else but it's neither super distracting nor frequent. Saw this in visual novels with way more higher budget.
• Art is beautiful but is not really consistent, some would say. Dynamic scenes are drawn in more of a sketchy/comic book like style (as you'll see in the gallery of images) while static scenes are usually painting-like and more detailed. Not really a huge problem for me and artistically it makes sense sometimes. Budget/time-wise too, as I'm sure these are very time consuming to draw.
• Music is limited and it sometimes stops, more ambient music would have been nice
• Multiple endings are fairly different, but they're decided by 3 big visible stats represented by icons (A glass of wine - depraved reputation, A ship with full sails - neutral reputation/mercenary reputation, A halo over your head - good reputation). These are of course influenced by how you react in dialogue and most of the time it's fairly easy to predict which is which.
• Ultimately it's a pretty bare-bones visual novel, with not much gameplay, but it has a secret ending and several multiple endings which increases replay value. Path variety and choices are still way more complex then many other mainstream visual novels with bigger budgets and big publishers

All in all, this is a fairly unique game that you cannot really compare with any other adult game. And I'm talking about art + story + combinations of themes. Therefore I rate it 5/5. It's not perfect and it could be improved, it doesn't deserve 5/5, but in my opinion, there are few games that do. No major bugs encountered, it's a pretty stable game.

This game has some very good points with some extreme shortfalls. It's a mixed bag that could be worth your time, especially if you like story-driven content and erotic writing. I'm giving it 4 stars because I think it deserves more attention, but there are some pretty big shortcomings. The biggest shortcoming is that there just isn't enough art. Let me break it down:

- There are 3 main paths through the game, so far as I can tell. There are three "stats" that you accumulate as you progress. I believe they are Salvation, Damnation, and Mercenary but they could easily be Paragon, Renegade, Synthesis, Good, Bad, and Ugly, or just Red, Yellow, and Green.

-The 3 main paths give different romantic endings

-There are parts o the game that act something like a "trainer" such as purchasing gifts for the princess.

-There are parts of the game that act something like a procure and collect sandbox (the Bondmaids).

-The gameplay has two main aspects: Outfitting for "arrests" and obtaining gold.

So, why is it a mixed bag? The writing, concept, and design are pretty good. The arrest system with choice-based combat is not a bad idea, but the dev didn't follow through particularly well. You have no idea going into an arrest whether you should bring the Sorceress or the Infantry, and you have no idea which armor/weapon combos to choose. This leaves the only option of choosing whatever, then playing through, failing maybe, and resuming from a previous save to try other options.

Furthermore, the arrests are the only way to earn gold, and it is extremely difficult to earn all the necessary gold in a single playthrough (you get 300 gold for your next playthrough by beating the game).

I'd like to see the game have 10-20x more illustrations, including finished versions of the sketches. The illustrations are really good when they are finished, however there just aren't very many of them. Even with all the other shortcomings if there were 10x as many finished illustrations I think most people would rate this 4-5 stars even though the gameplay can be clunky and unpolished.

Overall, I'd say it's worth playing through if you enjoy reading. If you just want to click through a game and jack off then this is probably not for you.

I got very mixed feelings about this game. Overall i wanted to like it. I like the setting, i like the art, i mostly like the characters. I really hoped for a great gaming experience, but i think i'm deluded by it.

I don't know if it's me, but i found the gameplay very confusing.

I did two attempts to it. The first time i gave up close to the ending because i assumed i had screwed up my mixed decision and sendbox progression through the game. So i restarted for a redempion path, forcusing very much on the side events with the princess and the book girl and... it went pretty much the same, just with Sparrow missions instead of Lich missions.

Which would rather be ok if that implied like ANY rauch scene. I mean, there are some, but you kinda get them regardless of the path, with a few exceptions. And, you know, if there was ANY PAYOFF at the end of the story. But there ins't any. Maybe i screwed my choices again, which is weird, since i got a full redemption point and i was rather consistent with the beavior with the ladies. And yet the story just ends at some point and what you get is a small scene that say: "Meh, m'kay... You save the day. Bye bye". It doesn't even imply that you got any of the girls, seems really not.

Now. I might have botched some major choice, could be. But it gets us to the main problem of this game: It's way to difficult and confusing.

Apparently any random choice at some point of the game could derail your whole playthrough. Too much, too hard to spot. Give also that you are not commited to any of the ladies and none of them, sure, is committed to you, they fuck around like rabbits and good for them.

Other choices are totally negated, like "will you do the thing? Yes! - Good boy.. Nay! Wrong, you will do the thing". Other are way too harsh. Like "will you do A or B? A! Good, you'll advance one step. B! Game Over" like a million times. And since there is no roll back you literally need to save before you click anything which is thiresome and kills the fluidity of the game play, and God forbids that you forget to do it and you click a wrong option after a while that you where playing.

Honestly, this game feels frustrating and after you played it you feel like probably it was better not to.

At least this is my experience whith the Book of Bondmaids. Too bad because there was some smart interesting idea behind of it.

This game is a substantial step up from the previous game in the series. You've got mature writing that doesn't rely on cliches, decision-driven "gameplay", and well-developed characters and setting. Improvements from the previous game include the removal of repetitive exploration elements, a better sense of what you need to do next to progress the story, and a translation that is completely fluent. This is everything the first game should've been with a hefty coat of polish. While this is a sequel that is supposed to continue from the earlier game, I'd recommend skipping that and starting with this due to that game's glaring flaws.

great visuals for half, ok visuals for some transition dialogue images which is understandable, a matter of getting used to tho
on point music
ui is an upgrade from the first game
the story is interesting
referenced characters aren't mere references but actually appear later on as "surprise" characters.

Good drawings, pretentious writing.

A few good drawings, and a lot of sketches, and a boring, pretentious writing. A guy that has an amazing (in his head) story and knows (in his head) how to write it, hired a good cartoonist to do a "game".

Postmodern politically corrected clichés (no, BDSM or other kinks are not something politically incorrect in XXI. "50 shadows" prove it), a lame, unattractive to play as, male MC, dominated by women (not real women, obviously, cliché women with magic superpowers) and long, boring dialogues and situations. And most of the time the player doesn´t even know what he´s doing since there are no clues what is going to happen is he adopts a decision or another.

The drawn art style is great, it's complete, it's got plenty of sex content, it probably doesn't make my top tier of games, sandbox elements meh, you have to do those really well or it's a star off, but it definitely is a Good game with some good fets. Solid 4 stars.

The best thing that can be said about this VN which can also be said for what i think is it's prequel. That is the gorgeus art. The writing while interesting enough and is a huge improvement since it is understandable with some minor exceptions. I liked the setup and it seemed like a decent dark fantasy world but at the same time i never got the feeling i had much choice. Most choices felt superficial or fluff with some exceptions.

While i was interested enough to see it through, even went through all 3 routes. The reward is some supposed reveal but once i got it i didn't understand it seeing how i speedrun thru the other 2 routes i didn't get first time around. And what decides which ending you get? The points in the top left corner.

Money may seem important but from my playing it seems only there to give you access to some scenes most of which is not sex scenes but some light nudity or such. It feels more of you being a wiever rather than participant in most sex scenes.

All in all the only great thing is the art. Had it not been for that i probably wouldn't have tried this one. But playing this one leaves me dissappointed for almost all sex scenes and scenarios left me feeling dissatisfied. Some prep choices also feel obfuscating and others feel as if it doesnt matter what you do the end result is the same.

All in all great art, writing that caught my interest but leaves me dissappointed for it caught my interest but what ended up happening made me go bleh. Can't comment much on the music for i muted it as soon as i heard it.

The feeling i get from having played this and reactions i have seen for the prequel and what little i could play from it when i tried quite awhile ago. It seems an artist or artists decided to give it a go making VN's. This one is a huge improvement but i wish it was better and more suited to my taste. You may enjoy it but be forewarned that this is not a power trip.

Excellent game. Great writing, gripping (if somewhat grim) story, interesting (if not always likeable) LIs and MC, the art is - well, not quite according to my taste, but it is original and interesting.

On the negative side: The sandbox element introduces some slight inconsistencies that are typical for sandbox (if tasks are not done in the order the author envisaged). In a few places the story seems confusing. Sometimes, there are too few choices, or choices seem not meaningful enough.

Excellent game. Artwork is topnotch, I think this is the biggest selling point of this game. That being said story is nothing to sneeze at, it's interesting once you get into it. Music and sound design are good also.

5/5