Army of Tentacles: (Not) A Cthulhu Dating Sim

Ten minutes in and the complete disconnection between the background and foreground art, the absolute lack of any real notible interactivity, and the frankly horrendous clash between everything else being voice acted except the protagonist. For a game that is desperately attempting to be practically "lol I am so random", it hardly merits consideration let alone the fact that someone purchased this for me for FIVE DOLLARS USD. A fast food cheeseburger is a more satisfying experience. Tastes better too, and is cheaper on average.

[h1]Review with accompanying screenshots and video at Sinical Network[/h1] https://www.sinicalanimenetwork.com/post/2020/06/01/army-of-tentacles-not-a-cthulhu-dating-sim-review I received this game for free as a curator connect offer for my group Visual novel, JRPG, Anime, and bought the DLCs with my own money. [i]Army of Tentacles: (Not) A Cthulhu Dating Sim[/i] is a supernatural parody visual novel with RPG elements by Stegalosaurus Game Development. It features a female or male protagonist by the name of Perry Hollycraft who is tasked to lead the Deep Ones (subterranean dwellers living in a remote volcanic island) to conquer the inhabitants of Innsmouth, a small coastal town in New England. The New Game+ DLC features romance and dating sim elements. In this expansion, Perry Hollycraft is in a dream where he/she enrolled in Miskatonic University during summer. Perry gets to know a cast of characters, some of which are variations of characters from the main game. Perry will complete quests for some of these characters and can also start a relationship with one of nine possible characters (Baldur, Cthulhu, Hamlet, Hamlet's Ghost, Hollywood, Keziah, Riley, Thatcher and V. Raptor) across three semesters. Although the title of this game suggests it is a weird game catering to a certain fetish for tentacles, this game is a spoof of the Cthulhu mythos with plenty of parodies on various pop and geek culture for teenage audiences and above. Sadly, a lot of the jokes and humour are in the game's battle system where the protagonist has to choose one out of four possible dialogue choices to counter an opponent's remark or insult. Some of them are good trivia which challenge the player's knowledge on the subject, but most of the time, I ended up guessing through trial and error. This caused me to load up the game many times because it is very easy to get defeated and return to title screen after about two to three wrong answers in a battle. Rather than attempting to memorize the answer to the dozens of correct dialogue choices for every battle segment, I decided to rely on the Cheat Mode DLC that allows Perry to skip and automatically win every battle after a while. The New Game+ DLC has considerably fewer battles, although there are also a few instances which require guesswork, trying out different answers and having to load from a save after being defeated. Thankfully, only one of them is hard. Although the artwork in the game is cartoony, they are cute and sometimes funny especially for the characters in the New Game+ DLC. In terms of the voice acting, some are okay, some are comical, and some are slightly jarring. It is a mixed bag. There are also a few cons for this game. First, there are instances where the game time and menu is hidden and it is not possible to toggle it to check the date and time in the game, bring up the menu to save/load game, or to check on Perry's list of allies and armies. Second, there are instances where dialogue options for certain characters are not available for some reason. This can affect the storyline, ending, and some Steam achievements in the game. Third, I find that some DLCs are close to being superfluous. The Charity Pack DLC only gives one stat point and doesn't add anything else. The Halloween DLC and San Diego Comic Con DLC offers in-game weapons and armour. Unfortunately, the game doesn't feature Perry holding that weapon or wearing that outfit to render them as cosmetic DLC items. These DLC items are also needed for some Steam achievements and 100% completion, and the item stats in the DLC to confer any advantage in battles are redundant. Especially when the Cheat Mode DLC is also needed for a Steam achievement and cheat mode enables the player to simply skip every battle as long as cheat mode is turned on. After reading the text (including every battle and their possible answers), listening to the voiced dialogue and obtaining every achievement in 10 hours, I can recommend this game with the New Game+ and Cheat Mode DLC when they are discounted at an attractive bundle offer. For achievement hunters who want to collect all achievements for this game, the Halloween and San Diego Comic Con DLC are required for a few achievements. As a supernatural parody with humorous scriptwriting and dialogue, [i]Army of Tentacles[/i] is funny in some parts with a cute cast of characters. The game's battles, dialogue options, comical artwork, large variety of romance options in New Game+, and the developer's responsiveness to bug reports means that I can forgive the faults in the game and recommend this game with the listed DLC when they are in an attractive bundle offer. [h1]Visual novel, JRPG, Anime Steam group - Join the group and consider following the group's curator list for more reviews or funny games[/h1] http://steamcommunity.com/groups/vnislife

Do you like Lovecraft? Do you hate the 4th wall and wish it were dead? Want something that doesn't take itself seriously? Or maybe you just want some hand-drawn achievements? If so, this game is for you. This is a very silly game. It's the kind of game they'd be playing at Camelot. It's basically a visual novel with (VERY) light "RPG" elements. There's battling that is mostly conversation based and really revolves around picking the right thing to say, like being able to pick rhyming lyrics against an enemy who likes music, or making a holy man question his faith. As a side bonus (??) there is a lot of gender confusion in this game if you choose the male option! There's a Tentakul LivePlay of the game here if you want to see how it plays: https://youtu.be/EnRi9CtWC0o

First impression: What a silly concept. are you sure it isn't a dating sim? okay, thats fine. .... "nobody wants to play a Visual Novel based on a book" i enjoy the humor that the devs have put into the game, and i appreciate the self awareness. like [SPOILERS] a character name Baldur, who guards a gate. it's the little things that are always great. in a game that is so text heavy, having good humor is what matters to me and music. music is also good, if you are in the market for a small RPG of some unknown genre with a premise that shouldn't work but kinda does, you would do well to pick up This (old) one

I bought this VN as soon as it was released. In my opinion, it’s not for everyone since everything’s so silly and the game itself is aware of that. Some people enjoy that, others don’t. Being honest, I liked this game. It was fun and I enjoyed the battle system. The story has a lot of possibilities, and that caught my attention. You just really need to save your playthrough a lot, to avoid problems. The only thing that I found annoying was the VA. It was supposed to be bad (at least I think that), but it got somewhat over the edge here. It started to bother me after a while, so I turned the sound off. Overall, it was a fun ride! 6/10.

Short (took me 99 minutes from start to finish, rest of the time is just waiting on card drops). Fun visual novel; making fun of itself throughout...not drop on the floor funny, but made me smile at times. RPG elements are there, although I don't really know if they do much of anything. "Fights" occur throughout, which are basically puzzles related conversation replies; most fairly simple once you know what the correct trend is in each fight. You can die during these battles and be sent to the Game Over screen; so you may want to save periodically so as not to have to backtrack too far. A fun diversion for what it is. I wouldn't play it again but would pick up DLC if it was a new story (or continuing story). For Achievement seekers, I would think you could at least double the play time as there does seem like there were more areas to explore before the game forced the ending sequence.

I'm a huge Mythos fan and as such I feel myself implored to own everything there is, even remotely connected to it. But this game... I never thought the mere presence of a virtual product can make me that angry! Chance is, the developer thought it to be funny, this "game" that is, but all it does to a Lovecraft fan at heart is insult every inch of my psyche... All in all, this is one of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ things I've ever seen concerning the Mythos (and I played a lot of Mobile Apps). If you want a reason to kill yourself, just buy this game and play the Intro - you are welcome

Don't buy this unfunny, poorly made garbage. Simple as that

In a word, what an odd game. There might be a little spoiler ahead. The structure or system of this game are all mysteries to me: 1.Exp. & Equi.: It seems it introduces Exp. and Equi. systems, or at least it tries to. But it barely makes any difference as one answer wrong, boooo~you gotta start from ever beginning. So not quite sure about the point why Exp. and Equi. system even exist. You might change your Equi., but as there is no inventory system, you'd better try to remember where to find every item——once changed, you have to go back to get it again if you wanna change back. 2.Battles: Basically, if you wanna win a battle fluently, better pray you have a sound knowledge span from how to greet your opponents' mother properly to what Shakespeare said in his famous books. Not even a challenge for a good Googler, I guess. And there are also many other points make me feel like I just waste too much time on this. Among them, the block of save/load function in conversation and the lack of logic in arranging answers annoyed me most. I suppose this game is built on renpy and I belive renpy could do much more and better than this. So guess there still has a lot to do before it could really worth your money and time on this game.

0/10