Ren'Py - Echoes Of Mythria [v0.1] [Zesty]

Very fun. Great potential.

The story so far let me chuckle quite a few times. And the included card game is quite engaging. Can't wait for the next update.

The imagery is very alluring. So far there is not a lot of NSFW content, but it is very promising. Especially a certain secretary.

I'll say first off that this had less than an hour's worth of content, but I'm rating it essentially as a preview, a taste of what the game could be. This is far more than a tech demo, there's a lot of story already written, and a lot of infrastructure already established (including a fully developed card battler game), which leaves me hopeful that this won't be one of those 0.1 uploads here that never go any further.

My initial perception of this just from the page here was that it seemed very similar to Echoes of Destiny. It has a similar AI art-style, a card game that you the real person play, but it's also a card game that exists (and has massive societal impact) within the world of the VN. And it's literally called "Echoes of [Blank]." So yeah, it probably drew some pretty heavy inspiration from Echoes of Destiny. But one thing I definitely like better about this is the actual card game. Echoes of Destiny just had that tired old "Triple Triad" game which has already been reused by other adult games before. That game, to me, seems to be mostly about just having better cards than your opponent. And hey, it certainly helps in this game too (as it should, or else there would be no point in trying to obtain better cards), but it feels like you still have a meaningful chance of winning just by out-thinking your opponent. Of course, out-thinking your opponent is easy when it's just a dumb bot, I don't exactly feel proud of beating the first two opponents on my first try. But I'm not a power gamer, so it's not about pride. It's about fun, and this game was a lot more fun for me than the one in Echoes of Destiny. I hope to see more.

I'm looking forward to seeing this progress. The artwork is stunning, the characters are at least moderately interesting, the plot and dialogue seem competently written, and the card game mechanics are simple but enjoyable. Not much here just yet (in v0.1), but I'll definitely check back on this one.

(v.0.1 Review)

There's some solid bones here, but as expected from such an early version there's a lot of improvements that could be made. Also, my typical "AI Art" disclaimer applies here; it passes my initial sniff check, but if AI art offends your sensibilities then best to move right along.

The core card-playing system is nothing new, but is certainly entertaining. It follows a winning strategy of keeping the core mechanics extremely simple, with layers of complexity being added within the cards themselves. New key-words and interactions introduced with new cards encountered serve to show rather than tell in building the potential depth. That being said, there was at least once where one of my unit's attack 'missed' with no explanation that I could find.

My biggest wish for the future of this game is to translate this concept of story-telling by action rather than exposition into all areas of the game - something that is currently lacking. Let's face it, many porn games are going to be pretty poorly written and I would say that Echos of Mythria is mediocre at best. What's interesting to me, however, is that there are glimmers of hope that peek through.

The author clearly knows how to lay out a plot, introduce interesting interactions, and set up the basic hook and breadcrumb story-telling. While the plot so far is nothing revolutionary, I would be lying if I said there weren't times when I was genuinely interested in seeing how things unfold. What really suffers here is the writing, the dialogue specifically.

The dialogue is not offensively bad, but definitely reads like it was written by someone who is a non-native, albeit proficient, speaker. Certain phrasing is jarring and unnatural sounding, especially when framed from an American setting. It wouldn't be such a distraction if the game's dialogue also wasn't overwritten.

There are far too many internal expositions in-between character dialogue that are unnecessary or uninteresting. It's almost as if the author doesn't have the confidence in the audience's ability to make sense of any of the MC's interactions and needs to spoon-feed you their interpretation everything. And I mean every-little-thing. It's this combination of being overwritten by someone who doesn't quite have the grasp of the language's nuances that made me stop playing early, despite being interested in the game overall. It became too immersion-breaking for me to really get into it.

The good news it, that it seems like the creator actually has the right ideas and generally knows how to execute them. Nobody is perfect at everything and if the dialogue could be massaged by someone better equipped to express these same ideas in a more compelling way (and isn't afraid to delete bland exposition) then I see a lot of potential here!