Finished the game yesterday, here are my thoughts:
Pros: -Pretty good design of the girls, make them stand out separately.
- Party system inspired from Paradox is a nice mechanic. Makes the game more interesting.
- The character art is magnificent. Kain really knows his strengths.
- Effort is put into each girl's personality.
- I liked the design of the map and especially the inclusion of extra dungeons.
- Rear view of the girls in battle is a nice extra.
- Improvements in the combat system when compared to SC.
Personal cons: - The grind when entering a new zone is too tedious. Each fight might take minimum 5 minutes spamming "attack" if you don't have a counter element to the bot you're fighting against. Also, if you went and recruited bots after their appearance and they're fire bots for example, good luck beating the water based trainer.
- Maybe I didn't pay attention, but fleshing out the whole element system and what they're strong and weak against might help out to shorten the fights and help the player progress. Also, giving a hint that each zone's color on the map is representative of a certain element is a must.
- The art of the scenes was pretty average, except for the Summer bot. The angles were mostly the same and the positions were pretty much cowgirl and doggy. No disrespect to Kain, but Devil-V is mile ahead on this one (can't wait for SC Ch5)
- The dialogue of the scenes should have been the piece of resistance, since this game is not story focused. However, it's the same old "you can't handle my pussy" sort of stuff talk from the girl and the generic "AHH" from the protagonist. H-scenes should be more fleshed out, narrating things from the protagonist's perspective on sensations and what he's going through. Japanese VNs and RPGs do this, especially the MGQ and VH series are good points of references, since they're part of the same niche. I assume this was because of the large number of scenes and dialogue for each girl, but it would be a game changer in writing for SC.
