If you play games to have fun and enjoy yourself, then only play this game if you're a hardcore masochist who loves suffering and abuse. I swear, most people who gave this game a 5 star have Stockholm syndrome and are just trying to make excuses for their abuser.
I played through to Chapter 2-1 and as much as I want to like this game I cannot because it has so many bullshit mechanics that sap away any enjoyment I almost got to have.
A few examples of things I disliked:
1. The story is almost creative and engaging, if it wasn't constantly throwing some of the worst "but it's OK because they don't really mean it or were born that way" logic in your face AND expect you to fully buy into that to continue the game.
The demons in this game voluntarily kill people and steal their souls away so that they can't even have an afterlife, which is a real place that you frequently go to in this game.
So they are objectively evil, right? Wrong. They're actually good girls who are just misunderstood and you should love them for who they are.
How dare you insinuate that the mass murders should be punished for their crimes in any way, you disgusting excuse for a human.
Feel free to look around other reviews and posts for all the nonsense the Dev did for the Genocide run. It's a wild read.
Essentially, it's a requirement to let all of the demons go if you don't want a bad ending.
2. The game almost has innovative game mechanics.
Demons affect the character's "soul", so it has this neat little mechanic where even if you close the game right before losing a fight, or if you lose a fight, you get a stacking debuff when fighting against that opponent until you are able to beat them. This carries between saves as well.
In theory, cool concept. However, this can literally lead to soft-locking you from being able to progress the game and having to delete all of your saves and another file (I note it below) because the fights are unwinnable and you cannot continue past them.
The game also has a "Mercy" / "Harm" after each fight where you decide if you want to let the demon go free or if you want to banish it from your world (not kill it). Neat idea as well, Bioshock and Undertale both do this. Except, you get half rewards for a mercy run, which is requried for any decent ending from what I've read, and you get 0 xp for mercy. So you cannot level up in a game where fighting is a requirement and the fights are stacked against you. You get some skill points for "safe fucking" demon friends a bit later, but it is small fractions of what you'd get from harming them.
It saves every loss or cop out you take (such as assistance points) in the PublicData.rvdata2 file. Taking assistance points, by the way, which can be your only lifeline sometimes, apparently means you get a worse ending. I wouldn't know, I don't have an interest in subjecting myself to more of the game.
3. The game is absurdly unfair, even on the easiest difficulty. People might claim "skill issue" here for some of it, but RNG can dictate the win/loss of a fight too much for my taste. Especially when losses can have permenant consequences. Without a guide it is impossible to know how to win most of the fights without trial and error, which involves losing if you don't get lucky and guess correctly. And if you lose too much, you cannot beat the fight.
4. The game is a grind. I like the concept of the battle system, but having to fight random encounters, forced encounters, random extra debuff encounters, and forced loss encounters really takes away from the novelty and quickly turns it into tedium when a battle can turn into: Get tied up -> Struggle free -> Get tied up differently -> Struggle free differently -> Get tied up -> struggle free -> Take a turn to recover -> Get tempted -> Make sure you don't select the wrong option depending on how high your lust is -> actually get to attack ONCE -> repeat.
Additionally, some fights require a LOT of exactly correct choices in the exactly correct order without getting too unlucky with RNG to win.
And the game will give you incorrect info or no info for how to win these fights. With Mother Rabbit, where I gave up playing because the game actually broke and softlocked me into a loss scene that went on infinitely, there is a very specific thing you have to do 8 times to win that is not explained at all, and asking the gave for advice WILL TELL YOU THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU NEED TO DO. So yeah, fuck that.
5. This is really what sealed the deal for me, as I was considering cheating to win, but the game isn't even finished. You can't 100% it.
I played through to Chapter 2-1 and as much as I want to like this game I cannot because it has so many bullshit mechanics that sap away any enjoyment I almost got to have.
A few examples of things I disliked:
1. The story is almost creative and engaging, if it wasn't constantly throwing some of the worst "but it's OK because they don't really mean it or were born that way" logic in your face AND expect you to fully buy into that to continue the game.
The demons in this game voluntarily kill people and steal their souls away so that they can't even have an afterlife, which is a real place that you frequently go to in this game.
So they are objectively evil, right? Wrong. They're actually good girls who are just misunderstood and you should love them for who they are.
How dare you insinuate that the mass murders should be punished for their crimes in any way, you disgusting excuse for a human.
Feel free to look around other reviews and posts for all the nonsense the Dev did for the Genocide run. It's a wild read.
Essentially, it's a requirement to let all of the demons go if you don't want a bad ending.
2. The game almost has innovative game mechanics.
Demons affect the character's "soul", so it has this neat little mechanic where even if you close the game right before losing a fight, or if you lose a fight, you get a stacking debuff when fighting against that opponent until you are able to beat them. This carries between saves as well.
In theory, cool concept. However, this can literally lead to soft-locking you from being able to progress the game and having to delete all of your saves and another file (I note it below) because the fights are unwinnable and you cannot continue past them.
The game also has a "Mercy" / "Harm" after each fight where you decide if you want to let the demon go free or if you want to banish it from your world (not kill it). Neat idea as well, Bioshock and Undertale both do this. Except, you get half rewards for a mercy run, which is requried for any decent ending from what I've read, and you get 0 xp for mercy. So you cannot level up in a game where fighting is a requirement and the fights are stacked against you. You get some skill points for "safe fucking" demon friends a bit later, but it is small fractions of what you'd get from harming them.
It saves every loss or cop out you take (such as assistance points) in the PublicData.rvdata2 file. Taking assistance points, by the way, which can be your only lifeline sometimes, apparently means you get a worse ending. I wouldn't know, I don't have an interest in subjecting myself to more of the game.
3. The game is absurdly unfair, even on the easiest difficulty. People might claim "skill issue" here for some of it, but RNG can dictate the win/loss of a fight too much for my taste. Especially when losses can have permenant consequences. Without a guide it is impossible to know how to win most of the fights without trial and error, which involves losing if you don't get lucky and guess correctly. And if you lose too much, you cannot beat the fight.
4. The game is a grind. I like the concept of the battle system, but having to fight random encounters, forced encounters, random extra debuff encounters, and forced loss encounters really takes away from the novelty and quickly turns it into tedium when a battle can turn into: Get tied up -> Struggle free -> Get tied up differently -> Struggle free differently -> Get tied up -> struggle free -> Take a turn to recover -> Get tempted -> Make sure you don't select the wrong option depending on how high your lust is -> actually get to attack ONCE -> repeat.
Additionally, some fights require a LOT of exactly correct choices in the exactly correct order without getting too unlucky with RNG to win.
And the game will give you incorrect info or no info for how to win these fights. With Mother Rabbit, where I gave up playing because the game actually broke and softlocked me into a loss scene that went on infinitely, there is a very specific thing you have to do 8 times to win that is not explained at all, and asking the gave for advice WILL TELL YOU THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU NEED TO DO. So yeah, fuck that.
5. This is really what sealed the deal for me, as I was considering cheating to win, but the game isn't even finished. You can't 100% it.