Anthesis (currently ver. 1.11)
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STORY
STORY:
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ORIGINALITY: The originality of the story is nearly the same in comparison. JK being corrupted has been done to death but I will admit that there is still some potential within this trope and it is a very broad trope at that. Though the story seems unique enough for me not to lump it with those types of games. I think this game deserves a relatively high rating because it's extremely rare to not only find a game where the MC doesn't corrupt herself, but she is forced into the corruption. It's even rarer to find that some sort of religion is involved, which is only amplified by the fact that this is in a modern world. 0.2 stars.
GAMEPLAY
DIFFICULTY: The gameplay in terms of difficulty, albeit being really boring, is actually not that hard. Depending on what route you attempt to go through, it'll either be easy going or pretty medium in toughness. Even if you lose or go too far into a route you'll still get an ending, though it could be one that you don't desire. What I would wish for though is for is a bit more time and energy in-game to harvest more dpt and magic power to be able to unlock more H-scenes instead of having to rely on cheats/freeplay mode so that you can even get to playing these H-scenes. Overall, the difficulty isn't too hard but for the type of engagement this game offers it definitely should be easier. 0.15 stars.ENGAGEMENT: The engagement of this game is very basic yet horrific in execution. All I need to prove this fact is two words: Time limit. Time limits in H-games have to be one of the most despised in western forums from what I see, and for good reason. Having to crunch and neglect aspects of the game just to be able to achieve the ending you want is so tiring and boring. It doesn't help that time limits in this game are used the way that they're used. You have a twenty day time limit and ten energy daily (though it can be expanded by eating, bathing and unlocking certain flowers) to work for money, do H-scenes, grind lewdness/dpt and magic power. You won't be able to use these to their fullest extent in playthroughs of this game, especially in some routes. This game is also a scene collector. Time limits mixed with scene collectors always go bad, and it's not hard to see why, especially if there's no freeplay. It essentially forces you to grind your ass off for scenes to get lewdness and stats for the ending that you desire. In my opinion H-games with time limits only go with puzzle H-games. And it should be like an actual timer instead of a limiter on how much you can do a day. Like we get it, in the real world a gal isn't gonna spend her whole day being tirelessly molested, fucked and commented on and still be fine with staying outside, but c'mon, this is a H-game for fucks sake! Who cares about the real world when we're pretty much playing a fap sim! Stopping the rant about limits, I want to talk about the scene collector gameplay. It's a scene collector. Nothing too special. To elaborate, you run around and do H-scenes for dpt, lewdness and certain stats that let you do even more H-scenes for even more dpt, lewdness and boosts in certain stats. Dpt lets you inch closer to your goal in a separate world, and in that separate world you obtain magic power. Magic power lets you manipulate Natsu's which leads to blooming flowers. And before I continue, I want to comment on the name of the game. The game is called Anthesis, which means that a flower is has fully bloomed and is fully sexually developed and ready to reproduce. I think the association with the flowers in-game and in the title is cool. Going back to the game, flowers let you unlock scenes, sources of income, more lewdness and dpt harvested to help beat the game. That also means you get lewder faster though, which makes it harder to get certain endings. In my opinion this system is intriguing, because you can either play carelessly and not bloom any flowers, which will make playing the game harder and grindier, with a short range of endings or you can bloom flowers which help you finish the game, get a wider range of endings and get them faster but with more risk for others. It's a weird system because it's like a shortcut for the grind, but for a game like this a skip for grinding is very appreciated. All in all, this game is honestly pretty disappointing with the engagement. There are definitely way better ways this game could have been pulled off. If you don't like time limits, download a save close to beating the game so you can get the ending you want and skip the grind to play with no time limit after beating the game. Be warned, there will still be an energy system limiting what you can do in a day. 0 stars. It's probably best if you download a save as mentioned before.
OVERWORLD: Unlike the engagement, I half-enjoyed the overworld. It's mediocre in size but from what I see all NPCs have their own little speech instead of being like "Hey how are you doing?" and just moving on. Other than that there's nothing unique about the overworld. The overworld in this game would be basic in a classic HRPG, but for a scene collector like this game it's very non-descriptive and not really intriguing. There's rain, daytime and nighttime which affect the NPCs and Natsu's clothing, leading to potentially more events and convos. If you think, the overworld very closely relies on NPCs and certain aspects of the gameplay to extend downtime so that it doesn't feel like you're just getting to one scene to another. Every location has some important mechanical use to play the game or to unlock H-scenes. None of it is designed to be something fun to discover while outside of scenes and engagement. The closest thing I would consider to an easter egg would be after you complete the game, you can unlock the gallery. But that's something typically expected and too miniscule to consider bumping the rating. Because of the type of game this is and the content it offers in the overworld, I wouldn't say it's too far-fetched to be 0.05 stars. It's just too baseline to actually enjoy.
LENGTH: Now it's getting better. The overall length of this game is great! Depending on your route, time spent exploring, and how much you desire to unlock, you could be playing at a minimum of 3-5 hours for one route, but it can go way higher if you're trying to 100% the game. From slutty to innocent, a route in this game has an optimal amount of H-scenes. This means respective to content it's the perfect amount of time to be playing this game for, no matter the grindiness (because we don't talk about that here). I honestly believe that this category deserves a 0.25 star rating.
PERFORMANCE: I don't have much to comment on for the performance. I couldn't find any bugs which is nice. The size of the game is very low compared to similar and most other RPGM games. Lastly the game runs nicely with good fps and minimal loading times. 0.25 stars.
CG
ART QUALITY: The art of this game is above average. If you're an enthusiast of other Shimobashira Workshop games you'll notice that the art quality isn't as refined compared to all the games that came after it. I noticed that lots of scenes look kinda plasticy or don't have the best lighting, which makes it look like a barbie doll photoshoot with the flash accidentally turned on. The game doesn't look too flat or like a blender model, it's pretty closely in the middle. I don't really have much else to say except that nearly all problems in this game regarding the art quality was heavily revised and fixed in later projects by Shimobashira Workshop. 0.45 stars.SCENE QUALITY: Scene quality wise, it's not hard to notice that this game is heavily tailored towards quantity over quality. There are no animations, a small amount of individual images within each scene, also images are re-used in a lot of scenes or even different ones with the only difference being dialogue and sometimes backgrounds which seems to be a pretty common trait in all Shimobashira Workshop games. Last thing I should mention is that some sound effects are triggered by dialogue, instead of being played in a loop over and over as it should. Notable examples would be plap plaps when the MC is getting ran through. Overall I think it should be 0.1 stars for the scene quality.
VARIETY: The game seems to be "normal" when it comes to the range of kinks. By normal I mean abnormal, because you have to be abnormal to enjoy any form of hentai, which is every single social reject on this website, including me. There are lots of forms of sex, including multi penetration, con & non-con, and internal view in some scenes. Now there's a big leap in amount of scenes. In the middle tier is exhibition (non-con) and sexual harassment. Up last is tentacles and aphrodisiacs. There really isn't a large variety of scenes in this game, and it doesn't attempt to branch into anything less popular. In fact, the least popular you'll get is non-con exhibition, which is still very well looked into. This lack of anything that unique isn't a good thing, because there's not anything kinky or niche to offer. It's mainly tailored towards everyone instead of a specific group. Most tags are properly represented except for tentacles, since there's only one scene with them. Overall, there's pretty good representation and everyone can enjoy it, but there's no niche for a specific group to enjoy, which I don't think is much of a good thing. 0.3 stars.
DIALOGUE/TRANSLATION
DIALOGUE: There is some nifty, funny and witty dialogue, but usually it's more like "I'm a normal girl, of course being sexually harassed is normal. I'm not perverted. I'm not perverted." This time though, instead of being some stupid trope it makes sense, as delving into Natsu's mind you can see that she's actually more perverse than she lets on. Probably one of the best explanations on why she doesn't resist as much as she should, mostly because it's some unexplained mystery in the first place, because devs hate explanations apparently. As for the amount of dialogue, I feel like the game doesn't skimp out too much but also doesn't try to just talk for the sake of talking, monologues are pretty minimal and is mostly just narration, which is good imo. 0.25 stars. Perfect balance of dialogue, monologue, information and messing around.TRANSLATION: The game has good translation. Nothing else to say. 0.25 stars.
VOICE ACTING: No voice acting. 0 stars. ; (
If we combine all these ratings together, we get...
2.95 STARS*
*F95zone only allows whole numbers for rating, so this is if it wasn't rounded to the nearest integer.
GAME CLASSIFICATION:
Average, Stereotypical H-Game
2.95 STARS*
*F95zone only allows whole numbers for rating, so this is if it wasn't rounded to the nearest integer.
GAME CLASSIFICATION:
Average, Stereotypical H-Game