It really pains me to see a game like this. You can see the amount of effort the devs put into it compared to the multitude of adult games out there. The artstyle is stellar and sometimes even animated, and the story is filled with so many cool ideas that could have lead to interesting plots and development arcs for the characters. But in the end, the package just doesn't come together at all.
The first issue you'll come across quite early is that the gameplay just boils down to a few minigames, similar to what you would see on a mobile game; a ninja-fruit like style mini-game, another one where you have to hit the targets in the right order at the right time and whatnot. But this is a PC game and not a mobile game, and those mini-games are very uninspired and tedious to complete with a mouse, especially after you completed them for the billionth time with barely any variance between the numerous sessions.
On a technical standpoint, I found the game to be surprisingly buggy for that kind of game; not to the point of being unplayable, but there quite a few visual artefacts that keep cropping up from time to time, like some windows not properly opening or closing when you click on a button, or a fade to black not fading in back to the scene, or the skip button being stuck, making you loose massive swathes of dialogues. It's been a while since I last played this game, so my memories are a bit fuzzy, but I distincly recall these bugs forcing me at times to reload the game to get rid of them. I guess this can be attributed to the fact that in Unity, there is no built-in way to implement a VN or those kind of minigames, and so the devs had to implement everything themselves, but I've personally dabbled in those kind of mechanics in Unity, and there isn't really any excuse I can give them, considering they're charging a (quite hefty) price for this product.
For the actual adult content, there is absolutely none. The most you'll see is panty shots or nude variants of some poses for certain girls, and the actual sex "scenes" are just cuts to black with sex sounds in the background to actually imply the sex rather than animating it. From what I've gathered by searching through the game's thread, it seems the devs were opposed to the idea of adding sex in their game, thinking that people would be satisfied with just pinup illustrations and flock to their patreon just for that. I still don't understand why on earth that decision sounded true in their minds, because as soon as they saw the money wasn't coming, they immediately made a new game with actual sex and now they're sitting on a modest monthly sum of money; at least its certainly bigger than what it was when Faulty Apprentice was released. Which is a shame it took them this game to realize it, because when I say the artstyle in this game is stellar, it really is stellar. Although, it kind of suffers from the "mobile game" aesthetic many western VNs have (especially the backgrounds and the UI), and also the fact that most girls in this game have that "bimbo doll" face I'm personnally not a fan of at all.
But the story has to be the biggest dissapointment, as it was pretty heavily marketed to their audience. And on a base level, I really like what the story is going for; it has all the right ideas and notes necessary to tell a really good story: The young, clumsy apprentice going through training to become the hero in times of need; the old, wise but kinda pervy wizard à la Merlin who sets the hero off to his path of adventure; the young but glacial princess with a troubled past and heavy responsabilities that keep her off warming up to others; the dark elf doubting the evil guy's intentions and going through a redemption arc culminating in her betrayal of her old master and joining the good guys, et cetera. On paper, these ideas are really cool and prime material for a sweet fantasy world to be immersed into.
But that's all they stay in this game: Ideas. While the overall story goes through many of that kind of ideas, none of them are given enough time to be properly developed. All characters boil down to a single stereotype and never stray off their intended personality; the bitchy elf is bitchy, the impulsive tomboyish swordswoman is impulsive, and the MC never goes trough any kind of character development in any of the routes you can unlock. All relationships with other characters boil down to a love meter you build up by answering correctly to the questions they propose you, and that's it. You can see they tried to make things darker by the middle of the story with what happens with the goblins and all that, but they clearly either didn't have the time or the skill, or both, to actually properly deliver on that front.
In short, no meaningful gameplay to progress through an immature story to unlock an inexistant adult content. The ideas are there but barely developed, the character desgins are eye-candy but nothing naughty is done with them, and they gameplay might as well not be there and the game would be better; and I know that for sure, because the game lets you disable the minigames at the start of the game, which is telling of how little confidence they had in their game design, which is really sad to see.
That's why it pains me to see the game in this state. It's not horrendous at all to go through, but you see how much they try and fail at conveying their ideas effectively and you're left with a mess of potential that will probably never be fulfilled. It seems the devs are not done with this game's universe, so maybe in the future they will learn from their mistakes and either improve or remove the gameplay altogether to make a straightforward VN, which I think would work much better for the kind of setting they were going for.
Overall, I don't recommend it, but if the artstyle caught your attention and still want to give it a short, feel free to do so, it wasn't a miserable experience. Just don't expect anything special.
The first issue you'll come across quite early is that the gameplay just boils down to a few minigames, similar to what you would see on a mobile game; a ninja-fruit like style mini-game, another one where you have to hit the targets in the right order at the right time and whatnot. But this is a PC game and not a mobile game, and those mini-games are very uninspired and tedious to complete with a mouse, especially after you completed them for the billionth time with barely any variance between the numerous sessions.
On a technical standpoint, I found the game to be surprisingly buggy for that kind of game; not to the point of being unplayable, but there quite a few visual artefacts that keep cropping up from time to time, like some windows not properly opening or closing when you click on a button, or a fade to black not fading in back to the scene, or the skip button being stuck, making you loose massive swathes of dialogues. It's been a while since I last played this game, so my memories are a bit fuzzy, but I distincly recall these bugs forcing me at times to reload the game to get rid of them. I guess this can be attributed to the fact that in Unity, there is no built-in way to implement a VN or those kind of minigames, and so the devs had to implement everything themselves, but I've personally dabbled in those kind of mechanics in Unity, and there isn't really any excuse I can give them, considering they're charging a (quite hefty) price for this product.
For the actual adult content, there is absolutely none. The most you'll see is panty shots or nude variants of some poses for certain girls, and the actual sex "scenes" are just cuts to black with sex sounds in the background to actually imply the sex rather than animating it. From what I've gathered by searching through the game's thread, it seems the devs were opposed to the idea of adding sex in their game, thinking that people would be satisfied with just pinup illustrations and flock to their patreon just for that. I still don't understand why on earth that decision sounded true in their minds, because as soon as they saw the money wasn't coming, they immediately made a new game with actual sex and now they're sitting on a modest monthly sum of money; at least its certainly bigger than what it was when Faulty Apprentice was released. Which is a shame it took them this game to realize it, because when I say the artstyle in this game is stellar, it really is stellar. Although, it kind of suffers from the "mobile game" aesthetic many western VNs have (especially the backgrounds and the UI), and also the fact that most girls in this game have that "bimbo doll" face I'm personnally not a fan of at all.
But the story has to be the biggest dissapointment, as it was pretty heavily marketed to their audience. And on a base level, I really like what the story is going for; it has all the right ideas and notes necessary to tell a really good story: The young, clumsy apprentice going through training to become the hero in times of need; the old, wise but kinda pervy wizard à la Merlin who sets the hero off to his path of adventure; the young but glacial princess with a troubled past and heavy responsabilities that keep her off warming up to others; the dark elf doubting the evil guy's intentions and going through a redemption arc culminating in her betrayal of her old master and joining the good guys, et cetera. On paper, these ideas are really cool and prime material for a sweet fantasy world to be immersed into.
But that's all they stay in this game: Ideas. While the overall story goes through many of that kind of ideas, none of them are given enough time to be properly developed. All characters boil down to a single stereotype and never stray off their intended personality; the bitchy elf is bitchy, the impulsive tomboyish swordswoman is impulsive, and the MC never goes trough any kind of character development in any of the routes you can unlock. All relationships with other characters boil down to a love meter you build up by answering correctly to the questions they propose you, and that's it. You can see they tried to make things darker by the middle of the story with what happens with the goblins and all that, but they clearly either didn't have the time or the skill, or both, to actually properly deliver on that front.
In short, no meaningful gameplay to progress through an immature story to unlock an inexistant adult content. The ideas are there but barely developed, the character desgins are eye-candy but nothing naughty is done with them, and they gameplay might as well not be there and the game would be better; and I know that for sure, because the game lets you disable the minigames at the start of the game, which is telling of how little confidence they had in their game design, which is really sad to see.
That's why it pains me to see the game in this state. It's not horrendous at all to go through, but you see how much they try and fail at conveying their ideas effectively and you're left with a mess of potential that will probably never be fulfilled. It seems the devs are not done with this game's universe, so maybe in the future they will learn from their mistakes and either improve or remove the gameplay altogether to make a straightforward VN, which I think would work much better for the kind of setting they were going for.
Overall, I don't recommend it, but if the artstyle caught your attention and still want to give it a short, feel free to do so, it wasn't a miserable experience. Just don't expect anything special.
