good
LORD
i am conflicted with this game. the sum of my thoughts are, as a hentai game, its a 8/10. as a video game, its a 5/10. it goes above and beyond for the status quo of adult games of its kind, but if you examine it with the standards of most video games, as i tend to do with these types of games, it falls flat on its face. if you'd ask me if i recommend it or not, then here's my takeaway: if you want shantae with an X rating, then here you go, this should last you a week or so. if you're not a fan of the genre, you're not missing out on much here.

THE PRELUDE
i'm transgender. this is a game where the general mechanic is swapping your gender at the push of a button. i immediately purchased it as soon as i saw it, it's a match made in heaven. even removing my gender identity from the mix, the idea of being able to flip genders, on paper, sounds like a really cool mechanic: you could have 2 differing skill trees based on the gender, you could set how you want to interact with a character based on the gender you choose, i had alot of really cool ideas going into this game, really wanting to see where they go with it all. even though i’m not a fan of cisgender women, i still was excited to see where the game goes, even if i don’t intend to use it as, uh, material. here’s what came out of the ~11 hours i spent getting almost 100% completion.

THE GOOD
this is a game made by people who genuinely care about making an experience worthy than just a nut or two. for it’s kind, 11 hours is a LONG time for a game many people will consider as fap material and then move on without giving it a second thought. with a large overworld consisting of 7 dungeons, there is content galore to explore and find as you play. yes, this includes the material, which is ascertained from game overs and completing quests. as a gay, im happy to say that the content consists of wlw, as well as mlw, in a variety of differing kinks. there’s a total of 40 scenes to find in all, and i’d imagine a cisgender heterosexual male would find it all very useful. another point i want to make a note of here in the good is the music. you can think it’s hilarious the news for this game consists of the devs asking for a best soundtrack steam award nomination. it’s not going to win because it’s an adult game, but i'm voting for it anyway. the music in this game is way above average, and wayyyyy above the hentai game status quo, and deserves to be mentioned here. additionally, i want to shout out the healing mechanic. this game takes a dark souls estus flask approach. that being, you get a healing item that you get charges of. these charges reset when you visit a save, and by completing quests, you can level up how many charges you can have at a time and how much it heals. it’s a really unique approach to healing in a metroidvania, rather than just consumable items (which this game doesn’t have at all, actually).

THE MEDIAN
boss design. all of them are naked ladies as you might expect. it’s a mixed bag all in all, which is why it’s in this median spot, but some of these bosses have some excellent game design. the bosses in mind have some sort of central gimmick to them, that you can ascertain from offhand comments made throughout the dungeon or from the boss’s fight start dialogue. whether it’s aiming for the nose, waiting for a personality change, or making like Ikaruga and matching projectile colors with the pink/blue of gender defined colors, a handful of bosses in this game are a real treat to enjoy. some of them however, are just plain ol damage sponges, and can be a total slog to get through, or mindlessly boring if you can find a cheesing spot, ultimately why this point goes in the middle here.

THE BAD
2 words .…..damage scaling. the second half of this game, if you don’t go out of your way to get the healing/wand upgrades from completing sidequests, or exploring for max hp ups, you will be two shot. over and over again. the enemies in the second half do so much damage it’s absurd. for reference, the max health in this game is 130, and the enemies are occasionally doing about 40-60 damage per hit. if you don’t play mega safe, you will be crushed repeatedly by failing to miss a single attack as it does over half your health in one shot. and unfortunately, towards the end of the game, i had the problem flip on its head. i went out of my way to do all the sidequests and see all the game’s sex scenes, allowing me to get the max level of healing and max damage, and i absolutely steamrolled the final dungeon of the game. the challenge was virtually gone, when i have 12 peaches that restore 60 of my 130hp, that get restocked every time i hit a save. i beat the final boss of this game on my first try, it’s that ridiculous. this game has an “easy mode,” but in my playthrough of switching on and off it just to see what it did, i couldn’t actually figure out what it does, as i still took the same grueling amount of damage from enemies. it made the 3rd quarter of this game a real slog, to the point where i almost flat out stopped playing to wait for an update that would rebalance things. speaking of updates, bugs! i know this game came out less than a week ago, but enemies being able to hit me after they’re defeated, those hits doing 60 damage, and me dying because of it is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.(update: this got fixed!! good job lads :) givin me a little more confidence this game will get more content it needs) this game was very much not tested before release, and the bugs and game imbalance is proof of it. the true killer of this game is the underutilisation of its core mechanic. it’s used for platforming challenges and activating some quests with one gender over the other. that’s it. the male counterpart is treated as a literal pallet swap, which was massively disappointing and leads to my overall decision to not recommend this game. when you underutilize the literal game’s selling point, you can’t really fix that with an update.

THE END
do i recommend this game? probably not. i wanted to go into this game expecting it to become my favorite hentai game to date. it has a character that changes gender at the push of a button AND is tagged with lgbtq+, it should be a slam dunk. however, as delightful and polished as this game is with the care put into it, it has flaws that heavily affected my experience towards the end. combined with the real lack of an ending, besides maybe 3 sentences before dropping you back in the game, and it feels like the end of this game isn’t finished. for ♥♥♥♥♥ sake, even the credits is (currently) bugged and doesn’t even show up! this game was very clearly rushed towards the end. if this were a normal indie game, i’d see it hopefully get some updates to address it as time goes on, but this is a hentai game, the devs may only get a month to make this game better before having to move onto something else to remain financially stable. i hope critical bliss lets momogames get the time they need to flesh out this game more. i’d love to see more lore behind this game, why are flipwitches so controversial, who is the statue the character saves at, does the male version of the character have autonomy regardless of the female counterpart, do they even have NAMES??? it feels like so much of the worldbuilding is missing in exchange for an approximately 75% complete gameplay experience. and while this gameplay experience was solid for a hentai game, it’s lackluster being judged as a regular video game. i’d recommend this game to fans of the genre looking for some unique fetish/fap material, but that’s really about it.