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(2 edits)

The story is indeed 303, Ceres my beloved.

I made the earlier review in a bit of a rush, so here's a more thorough review.

Camp actions are awesome, despite seemingly low in depth, as you go through the game you slowly start to get spells that reward you for spending time on research, and spells that can be cast during camp time, and then comes the mind control/hypnosis aspect, which feels really well done, especially how the skill ties well into desires, drives, along with curses influencing those two heavily, which can make accepting or rejecting a curse have impact instead of a slider you change at a whim.


I would gush more about camp actions, all I'll say is that it is very easy to glance over it in your first few runs.


Skills, are minute, especially those commonly found in skill scrolls in chests, early on you want to use skill points to branch to the important ones, then slowly trim the fat with skill scrolls, the stat/skill choice in the dungeons are also impactful, as some skills have a lower limit set for stats.

It is neat how a lot of the things in this game are interwoven, taking skill points in the dungeon leads to curses, curses affect drive and desire, which might allow or disallow skills, stats early on are decidingly important, but until you get shrines, permanent corruption is not a good idea when you can avoid it.


On the topic of corruptions, the 4 negative stats, 3 main negative ones you find that raise and drop during the dungeon, and temporary/permanent corruption, stats deteriorate heavily when any of these 3 go past the 50 range, mild effects at 30-40, I recommend resting whenever you can, as the corruption waves increasing curse progression is not much in the long run.

The way how this game is designed makes me extremely hopeful for what's to come, but let's talk sound effects, visuals and music.

I am probably biased on the music department, despite the limited soundtracks I enjoy listening to it on loop, never feeling what I'm hearing is getting repetitive.

Visuals, focusing on the character tokens, are great, they jump around, jitter, their movements and actions, even during trap disarms are emotive, it makes them feel alive as they traverse through the dungeon, I played the game with music/effects off and it's pretty good.

This game is pretty charming with it's visuals despite the simplistic design, one of the better points of the game in my opinion.

The status effects also are well animated, and don't look out of place at all floating around the characters, especially effects that are for a lack of a better term 'Active' dizzy, scatterbrained, addled, charmed, drugged, it heavily adds to the game's charm.

Attacking and trap disarming are a bit basic but I think that's a good point instead of a bad one, especially when the characters spend doing both all the time, though I know some think otherwise.


Sound effects.. well, not much to say here, they're a bit bland and could've gone well with how active the characters are in their actions, really not much to write home about except how much sound effects are re-used, and little pet peeve of mine is the curse sound effect; the one used during decreasing/raising a curse, is prevalent later on in the dungeon, constantly triggered and played. 

Attacking sounds fine, defeating enemies sometimes have a impactful effect to them (Maybe it's them defeating a stronger enemy) It's something at least..

Otherwise, this game is crazy for how interwoven things are gameplay wise, I personally don't really care about the other parts of the game lacking good sound design or visual effects.


Uhh.. at this point of this unsolicited review I was going to avoid talking about combat as I thought it was talked much before here with past reviews (It's not, only some feedback.)

Combat is brutal, at first you think you're breezing through, but the dangerous part is that whole mentality in the first place, rest often, do NOT let any of the 4 (technically 5) bad stats go up if you can help it, focus on skills that actively treat or lower Exhaustion, Lust, Injury, Corruption, your stats will tank, leaving them fighting like a wet noodle.

Traps, Similarly are brutal- but in a more Insidious way, pay attention to what your characters are dealing with, the attractive painting, Tea set, Pyre, though the Pyre is hard to cascade unless you're unlucky, the painting is deranged and will make your character get stunlocked to doom.

The painting itself is highly dangerous, constantly putting your characters in long turn trances while inflicting lust, leaving them unattended is dire, the other two respectively target exhaustion and lust, pyre targeting injury.

Always rest, keep an eye on your stats, curses are benign at most, but all tie together when your bad stats raise up, cascading into chain corruption breaks.

And now, the reason why I wanted to avoid reviewing the spells part (Until I realized I'm the only reviewer)

Spells, are quite bullshit, ranging from, giving -30 to all negative stats excluding corruption on corruption breaks (There's a skill to force a corruption break while keeping the perma gained corruption to 1.) Allowing dodging on researched rearmed traps (Prevents trap loops, VERY good.) To consuming all charge stacks, which heals 5 of non corruptive bad stats per stack, which if ignoring the multiple charge skills, we still have: on scry ally, give 1 charge.

And along with another spell that makes waking up from sleep happen by ANY negative stat rise, AND gives 1 clarity on wakeup no matter what.

To quality of life effects/minute effects you have to go out of your way to activate, like an ally with thorns will automatically stop charm and berserk when hit by afflicted party member, spending a scry on an ally that makes their cooldown on their unique skill drop by -2 if they use it after the scry, or you automatically know where the exit is/where is the strongest enemy on the floor.

TLDR: A charming difficult(?)(Depends on the player really.) game with a highly interwoven gameplay, and nice music...

I am not reviewing the lewds.

There's probably a lot I could but don't necessarily NEED to comment on here. It's good stuff to see in any case. I will say that a lot of spells, especially the ones that were created earlier, had their cost set somewhat arbitrarily and within a context where getting specific spells/more maximum mana was considerably harder. Due to the mechanics around them changing over time, spells could probably use a look balance-wise.

Also for what it's worth, I DO still want to write more 303, I just keep struggling with time management and putting it off when this game is taking up my focus. I definitely have things that I set up and still want to get to in 303, even if I don't actually completely finish the story (which is kind of a tall order considering how much detail I've already put into only the first week).

Oh, don't worry about 303 it was a enjoyable read, and looks like it was written (Hopefully) while enjoying the story itself, definitely wouldn't sit right with me if you were pressured into it

As for the magic, I suppose that explains many of the minute spells and major spells in the context of harder resource management. I personally enjoy Wired, where you can spam out research and ignore lack of sleep at the cost of scry capability.


And if I starve for Ceres lewds, I can simply shape reality and write them myself.