Love ritual Reviews

I got this on sale for $2.39. Overall, I liked it. It was definitely worth the sale price, so I'd recommend waiting for a sale. Pros: - Sweetie boi LI - Music was nice - It's real spicy ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) - Fun plot twist I genuinely did not see coming Cons: - English translation was pretty rough in places and it was kind of hard to understand - I don't really like the Live2D animation style, it makes characters look like they're made of Goo. I'd prefer static portraits. - One of the two LI's is a B hole - Bugs (but I could get around them) - Very short - Full price would be kind of expensive for what this is. Wishlist it and get it on sale.

I really wanted to like this game as it has beautiful art (animated sprites AND backgrounds!) and a fun story with the promise of cool gameplay. But after I spent 5 minutes trying to get a damn cauldron up during the first puzzle, I had to return the game. If you have the patience to deal with the weird laggy gameplay, good for you. I unfortunately didn't, even though I wish I could have continued with this game.

I want to be able to write a good review for this game but... I can't. The story seems like it would be interesting and I adore the artwork! However, I have hit a game breaking bug in the first investigation scene that put me into a continuous text loop that I can't seem to break. I've tried everything I can think to fix the problem. I've posted in the forum, hoping for help but, none seems forthcoming. And, looking back, it looks like there are a lot of bugs that aren't being addressed. If the bugs are fixed and I can actually play the game, I'll come back and give it a real review. But, in the meantime, I'd avoid it just because you may find that you can't even play it.

I enjoyed this game. It's funny, it's sexy, it's interesting, and it's beautiful. There are some frustrating bugs, including 1 game-breaking bug that occurred once during my 3 playthroughs (DISCLAIMER: this MAY have been patched since my last playthrough), but I wouldn't consider them enough to warrant passing on the game. That said, there is at least 1 community guide to get you passed these bugs, so I may have just gotten lucky. The story is unique enough that it made me want to get to the bottom of the mystery. The relationship between the characters are funny to watch, particularly when funny situations are animated out (e.g., the men shuffling around the crack of the door after the "nose" incident). I also like that the MC is not a simpering daisy, but a more realistic-feeling adult woman. Speaking of adult, nudity and adult content are optional and can be toggled on/off directly from the in-game options/settings menu -- an improvement IMO from the usual "download adult patch from a separate website and merge it into your game files" method. All in all, it definitely needs some polish, but I would definitely recommend it for anyone looking for a sexy, supernatural ADV-VN game.

The art and backgrounds in this game are absolutely stunning with the exception of a few anatomy issues. However the writing, translation and pacing are total garbage. Half the time I wasn't sure exactly what was going on. The romance is lackluster and I'm not sure how anyone even fell in love considering the fact that they mostly only had a few work related conversations. The game is also very short. I managed to finish both routes (good endings) in 6 hours, that includes leaving the game running while I made food or wandered off to do something actually interesting. Im not a fan of point and click but if the devs were going with that mechanic as gameplay I feel like it should have been used more. The idea and premise is interesting but the execution is just terrible and I cant recommend this game at all.

[h1] Love ritual is an “interactive” Visual Novel [/h1] [b] [u] To the Story: [/u] [/b] You are Riilai a young Women who is an expert with Rituals. You got invited to solve a case but as that isn’t already enough you also need to handle two lawyers, whose clients are one of the few under investigation. Will you solve this Case, fall in Love or even find out something you doesn’t want? The Choice is up to you! [b] [u] To the Gameplay: [/u] [/b] You have the normal Visual Novel, while you also have puzzles and clickable objects. This plus a few choices you can make, who really have an impact on the Story. Gives the Visual Novel overall a great feeling and experience. [b] [u] General Info: [/u] [/b] The Game takes around 3-7 hours if you finish one ending, you may have around 15 hours if you go for all Achievements but it also highly depends on your own reading speed. There are still a few bugs, like if you skip it can happen that your game doesn’t change the scene, Achievements are currently not work and so on. These are little bugs who will be fixed and aren’t really game breaking. To the Sexual Content I may say its not much but that what is in it, fits the story perfectly. (You can choose if you want it to be Censored or Uncensored) I can fully recommend the Game, its i would say a good story driven Game. [b] [9/10] Points [/b]

PROS Good art Good story Fun gameplay Good characters and romance CONS Many bugs One of the puzzles is difficult The game stops working a lot It's a good game but I never finished the good endings and watched the endings on youtube because of all the bugs and stuff.

This game does have a few bugs, primarily with the saving and loading features (Don't overwrite your save!!). But ya'll this game is so worth it! I've been so excited for Love ritual since I stumbled across it and immediately fell in love with the beautiful animation style. It is worth your time 100%!

I would have really loved to be able to recommend this game but I just can't. It has some great aspects; the story is enjoyable, the art is lovely and the 2D animations bring a sense of life to the game as well as being unique, however, the translation/proofreading is terrible. There are constant mistakes in the text throughout the game such as added words, missing words and at one-point, repeated text. It was extremely immersive breaking. These errors became far more frequent as the story went on. Considering the nature of these ‘games’ I believe far more care should have been taken in this department. I’ve played free otome/visual novels that were far more polished than this one. The other huge issue for me was that the “skip text” option just wouldn’t work properly. I could only skip all text; changing the option to only skip “seem text” would cause the game to act as if I hadn’t read anything prior in 95% of cases. That or the game would glitch and no text would show at all forcing me to have to restart from a prior save. Another minor nuisance (and I can’t say for a fact that it was a problem with the game and not steam itself) but I unlocked achievements in game but received none on Steam, despite having a legit copy of and verifying the game. Bit annoying for an achievement hunter. Overall, I’d say if you were interested in this game, wait for it to be on sale at least!

Well this was underwhelming and disappointing. Not that I expected something outstanding, but the game looked quite enticing at first glance. It has excellent visuals and is a 18+ otome, which is so rare that attracts attention. After playing the game, I can say gorgeous visuals are the only thing it has going for it. I had more fun captioning and commenting my screenshots than actually playing it. Story is the weakest part, world building non-existent. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t expect some deep elaborate story, but at least something more engaging. The plot is fairly simple, when you strip it down, but it looks convoluted by confusing and boring magic technobabble. Yes, that’s right, this game makes magic boring. I don’t know if it’s full of plot holes, probably. I was long dead from boredom to pay attention to such details. It is also repetitive. There is no variation in the two route story/plot wise. Everything happens in the same way, just with a different guy as a bystander. This is not the problem of translation. The language itself is easy to follow and more or less natural (to my ears). There are some grammatical errors but nothing that would make it hard to read. The problem is deeper, the writing itself. This visual novel attempts to incorporate adventure/puzzle gameplay into it’s structure, which is interesting, I guess. It feels more like HOG in that aspect (although hidden object scenes are more challenging) You have a few scenes where you ‘perform’ a ritual, but that’s actually just clicking on hotspots. You may or may not listen to her technobabble (thank god, ugh) So this puzzle gameplay is severely watered down and doesn’t really make the game more engaging, only more buggy. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2091090097 So ok, it’s not a good story (or puzzle game), but who cares, it’s a 18+ otome. Surely I can enjoy it as a trashy romance novel at least. I wish! When the story and especially world building are weak then characters don’t have the ground to stand on resulting in pretty thin characterisation and consequently romance. Although I’ve known quite a few fictional works with so-so stories but interesting and engaging characters. That’s not the case here. I don’t even have much to say about them. Generic western MC: likes to technobabble and info dump..........has nice bo*obs. Two love interests are supposed to be polar opposites. Shanrae, the Druid, the half-naked flowerboy is sort of naive, nice, young..........has a six-pack. Can’t quite think of more. He’s definitely a more striking eye-candy, abs on display and all. Seth, the Necromancer, is more interesting, but very tropey. He’s confident, cocky, blunt. The most entertaining thing in the whole game are his drunken rants. It’s like the writer had limited access to personality clay and used it all on Seth, forgetting to leave some for Shanrae. With a story and characters like these it’s no wonder that romance suffers. It’s very rushed and unconvincing, there’s barely any tension. It follows the same pattern for both guys: [olist] [*]one initial interaction (at that point the vn still showed promise) [*]the obligatory ‘caught you naked’ scene (a source of much entertainment for my screenshots) [*]then you choose one of the guys to stay with you (for iffy reasons) [*]another romantic scene (where you suddenly realise you like the guy-what, when?) [*]sex (which you can nope out of...but why) [/olist] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2150042558 So ok, it’s not a good story (or puzzle game) or romance, but who cares, it has sex, in otome. All those other things are just a setting, an excuse for smut anyway, right? Wrong! I’ve read way better smut in fanfiction. But ff has the benefit of already established characters and worlds, all of which are sorely lacking here. Here, the smut is mechanical, bland, unexciting, especially in Shanrae’s route. It’s not even especially bad so that I can at least laugh (like in Dogenzaka games) It’s just..... It’s a bit better in Seth’s route just because he’s more interesting anyway and there’s some tension in the romantic scene building up to it. But then it just goes into SM territory out of the blue. [spoiler]Just because the guy is cocky doesn’t mean he’s automatically into bondage and wants to be called Master (geez)[/spoiler] So ok, who cares (actually at this point, everyone), it looks absolutely gorgeous. Yes that’s right, visuals are top-notch, from backgrounds and attractive sprites to amazing cgs full of vibrant colours. Sprites are also moving and have animated faces, especially eyes. Although the latter can be quite hilarious in the way rolling eyes makes them look doll-like. Seth especially was rolling his eyes so hard he probably saw his brain. Music is ok too with some memorable tracks and goes nicely with the visuals. Ok that’s enough for positives. Sadly! There’s one more negative thing that can be a problem for a lot of people. The game is buggy. Maybe less than before, but I encountered unresponsive or laggy mouse click especially in puzzle scenes and after skipping. Also there were sometimes long black outs between scenes. Steam overlay doesn’t work so you can’t take screenshots through steam client. Achievements still don’t work. Usually the lack of achievements and trading cards doesn’t influence the way I rate the game. But here, that’s one more thing to add on the pile of things that should be working, but don’t. Maybe if the game worked smoothly it would be easier for some to overlook other shortcomings, especially on a good discount. [u][b]To summarise[/b][/u]: there's 3 [b]pros[/b] - visuals, music, Seth's drunken rants...ok and Shanrae’s chest and abs (I’m feeling generous); and a lot of [b]cons[/b] with greater weight - story and plot, world building, characters, romance, smut, no achievements where they should be, no steam overlay, buggy. You do the math. Also that saying ‘all flash no substance’ (which is often misused) can be correctly applied here. I know we are starved for good adult otome, but that doesn’t mean we have to settle for poorly written romance and smut. This review and many like it are not here to discourage indie developers (I hope they don’t have that power), but to show that we just want better. [h3][quote][b]Join [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40848670-Drugoja-In-The-Dreaming/]Drugoja In The Dreaming[/url] on a lookout for better otome smut[/b][/quote][/h3]