Recent reviews by Zerith Farron

Litterally why are controllers not remappable...?

Not only that half of my matches are with hostile allies actively sabotaging the round in the enemy's favour.

This game is viciously toxic already. Move on or wait for the for the inevitable overhaul.

If you ever wanted to step into the Souls-Like geanre for the first time and/or wanted some high difficulty action for your friends to Jolly Co-operate with little set-up or hastle then you've come to the right place.

This game basically gives you the oportunity to speed-run an entire souls campaign crammed into a bitesized 20 minute session. The character modding and the soft builds you can develop are satisfyingly meaningfull and the traditional personal skill development helping you shave minutes off runs or allowing for more insane gambles of skill and time management feel as infinitly gratifying as ever.

Look, when you staple Armored Core For Answer and Cybertroopers Virtual On Oratorio Tangram together it does things to my libido.

The arena mode has the bones to be one of the greatest high-speed mech fighters of all time able to dethrone even half of the pantheon members.

I can not with a healthy human conscience recommend this game simply because there is no figment of respect for morality in the studio that designed this game.

all the things wrong with Mobile game UX and the nastiest tumor of a mistake in MTX stuck to it plague on what could have been an immaculate piece of marble justifiably a $100 one and done eternal purchase.

This is a martyr of a game with rotting tendrils pulling it from heaven into hell.

It's no Sonic Riders Zero Gravity but this is about as close as any racing game ever created could be to matching it's perfection.

My 1 big complaint is the music album system is a total flop.
Your songs are trapped in a shuffle playlist that you can't set per stage and has the potential to play the same song indefinitely.
I do love the White Cave remix but it played 7 times in a row (including crossworld laps) despite having 19 songs in my playlist.
I do hope they rework it to a per-stage set up so I can have the stages I like keep their track or if it detects the song matching that stage it'll use its original.

Custom Cups would be nice as well if I just want to cycle through my favourite tracks

Very solid bones here but I want to see what the grind and monetisation look like before I commit long term

I absolutely recommend giving this a try if you at all like mech fighters like Armored Core, HAWKEN or Virtual On.

I will say as a controller main using X-Input, while the game feels very smooth the default control scheme is a nightmare. Be ready to remap your controls

The Extraction game mode needs to cook a bit more but it's not bad.

Mechanical customisation is mostly just small 1% - 20% modifiers to your mech's base kit performance under the hood to keep them mostly in line with their general identity making this closer to something like a hero shooter.

As a person that has been waiting for a new high speed mech fighter ever since Armored Core For Answer shut down this is somehow scratching that itch.

There are some big red flags with a lot of the game mechanics around investment and power being locked behind massive grind walls that might incentivise paying actual money.

I really hope the devs don't mess this up, there is something really special here and being too stingy or uncaring for player sentiment could kill this almoste awesome game out of the gate.

Content 4 hours in is pretty average for a fantasy action-adventure game.
Nothing impressive or notable so far.

[EDIT]
No new progress since last post. since Loading issues are still preventing me from continuing.

Wait for additional patches before trying.

Before I get to the personal feedback and review proper, I just want to step forward and say this is an incredible achievement and win for the Eroge and Adult Indie scene as any win like this raises the over all quality bar and makes this side of the industry more credible as an artistic choice rather than a solely pandering one. Excellent work MomoGames and Critical Bliss for making a solid core experience that isn't over shadowed by it's horny.

Now let's get to the cream of this pie sized review (or skip to the bottom for TLDR),

= Art Direction/Aesthetic (Great!)=
Right off the bat, this game has an incredible aesthetic that hearkens back to turn-of-century anime early digital art pallet mixed with GameBoy Advance/Nintendo DS in-game visuals. I actually several times caught myself referring to MapleStory's general atmosphere in the three-way hybridising of cute-n-colourful characters, weirdly modern architecture and more stylised fantasy. Very tasteful Rule-of-Cool if you will which I'm quite addicted to as a creator.

= Animation/Sprite Work (Great!)=
Speaking of art, I know the team took some last minute time to crunch and Plus-Up some of their animations and it was an absolutely respectable and correct call. Particles and VFX are all on point and the sprite work is mostly superb. I will say on some of the animations in the game particularly on certain character sprites' idles, Squash-n-Stretch and posing is a little over emphasised into the odd/silly side. That's largely nit-picking though. The over all quality of in-play standard NPC and character animations are very good.

Now for those horny Cutscenes, there are lots of them split between full screen Cutscenes found in quests (or Death Animations) and a sort of Sprite for animated Figurines that you collect in game. The over all quality of the FS Cutscenes averages to pretty solid with the bulk of them being several looped frames that progress through a few different keys. The Sprites on the collectable Figurines is fine, all get a pass but some of the selection gets quite repeatable with only a few that are unique or exceptionally saucy.

= Audio (Good)=
The general SFX mixing is fine for the most part but I have one glaring complaint for the sound direction and that is some of the more wet or 'splat' noises in the game being mega emphasised in particularly the Slime Citadel. As someone who has difficulty processing ASMR content the aggressive prominence of those sticky sounds relative to other sounds like melee hits and star pew-pews got me feeling ill after about 10 minutes of being in the zone. I recommend having the EQ normalised a bit more in favour of key player sounds.

Music on the other hand is great and I ultimately waited to get my review out until the OST release so I could re-review it's contents divorced from game-play. It has a respectable mix of genre, instrumentation and even matches the locales and bosses aesthetics quite well. As stated in the art section I several times I was reminded of MapleStory's breadth of locales, particularly Dark Alley reminding me of Kerning City and Tengoku reminding me of Orbis (I really wonder if the ques were coincidence or inspired motifs...?)

= Combat/Character Feel (Fine)=
For seasoned action platformer veterans, Shantae is an apt comparison. This game at first is a little odd to get use to but it has some good anim-cancelling to give a little more depth for it's admittedly shallow comboability. The game effectively only has a Three-Hit melee combo and a wand that pew-pews at it's core gameplay both of which you upgrade the damage on over the game by finding all the horny cutscenes. Where the combat depth lies is the suite of abilities, passive mods and tools you find throughout the game through quests, optional hidden merchants and chests. I'd largely say that the main character's suite of utility is largely fine. Not bad but it's not going to wow anyone.

= Boss Fights (Decent)=
All main boss fights are against giant big boobed naked monster girls. That alone probably sold you on this game but for a more discerning player how do these baddies stack up (heh.) gameplay wise? Core bosses have a relatively flat curve in complexity of on average 4 attack sequences which only leaves the devs with the levers of increase things to dodge in each sequence or increase damage to make it harder with more often than not choosing the latter. I must admit as much as I absolutely loved their staging and visuals they felt a little dry mechanically with a couple of exceptions in Goblin Queen being an absurdly boring health sponge and Angel being very ingenious on the Heal and Hurt sides leading to more cautious play. I will say that I was quite underwhelmed with the Final Boss lacking as many particles as I wanted.

The Sub Bosses are actually pretty good. Difficulty is on point as they sometimes have more platforming and they're only long enough fights that their main gimmicks and mechanics are fresh and don't overstay their welcome.

= World Map/Pacing (Great)=
The map is actually a fairly healthy size and is impressively open to sequence breaking. For people like myself that like mixing up post-first playthroughs mid-run this is a god-send. I actually got a couple bosses in reverse order accidentally on my first run even so it's not like it's something you need to go out of your way to do. As for getting around the game there is a fast travel system but I largely felt comfortable running on foot as once you get a couple mobility upgrades you can zoom pretty fast alternating dodge-rolls and air dashes.

= Collectables/Side-Content (Good)=
There is no other mode of play outside of the main game but that does beg the question, "what can I 'whiff' around for"?

As stated in Art there are a suite of horny figurines that are animated that you get in various gatcha machines around the world. These gatcha machines use Silver coins that are scattered around the world in anything from secret rooms to platforming and combat challenges.

There are side-quests that can be done that require a relevant costume from either gender of protagonist equiped to prompt or complete. quests range from collectible hunts, kill quests, mail delivery, power-up Lock-n-Key and simply just wearing a particular costume. They honestly mix it up enough and the NPCs are goofy enough that they never get stale and I found myself aggressively aiming to complete any newly available quests before continuing.

Lastly, while it usually is a result of a quest completion you get your primary upgrades by collecting all the horny Cutscenes. Every few you find will lead to an upgrade being unlocked from your mentor. It's sort of just a parallel result but it is a mechanical incentive at least to go bang all the kingdom's citizens.

= Closing and Final Thoughts =

FlipWitch - Forbidden Sex Hex gets my 8/10

While Flip Witch can't compare mechanically to some of the apex indie games in the Metroidvania genre like Hollow Knight or Rabi-Ribi it never the less comes in swinging with a strong design focus and feels to have an impressively high average polish for the erotic games market that is rarely seen. It serves as a shining example that breaks to the surface surpassing the overall ocean of mediocrity in the room.

The solid goofy erotic comedy and strong aesthetic has me recommending this game to any one who needs a hornier Shante or Castlevania experience. It may be a tiny bit of a slog in it's first hour or two but it really does warm up considerably after Goblin boss (boss 2). As it is a bit of a shorter game, I'm genuinely hoping a couple more content patches or DLC flesh out some more interesting mechanical diversity to the game's solid foundation to take this to a higher grade.

Thanks for this lovely new gem Momo Games and Critical Bliss, keep up the solid work!

A faithful recreation and updated version of the original Harvest Moon Friends of Mineral Town from the Game Boy Advance.
If you at all enjoyed that game you'll enjoy this one as it features all of the old content polished to modern standards plus some additional romances, animal breeds and events.

And for anyone wondering, this is the first entry in the franchise that contains same gender romance if that's your cup of tea.

Soulcalibur V's near perfect balance meets Soulcalibur II's Nostalgia and campaign. Throw in solid graphics and some new twists to the move lists. What more could a fan ask for?

Fluid class systems, gorgeous aesthetic lovable characters and Couch Co-op make this a solid must-have for any fantasy RPG lover.