Ashes of War

Before you purchase this game, you need to know this is a STORY FIRST and adult scenes second. I would say it's 85% reading, 10% tactical game, 5% adult scenes. All of the adult scenes are unlocked in the CG animation gallery. I must have chosen some wrong dialogue choices because I didn't see one adult scene with Eva during my main playthrough. The story is entertaining and the writing is pretty good. There's SO MUCH FLIRTING. There's a lot of "read between the lines" type of writing. The way each of the characters speak is unique and you can see their personalities shine through. You'll need to actually read the words, because there's so much banter between each character, you'll have to re-read what they just said to understand what's going on. (Scroll up on the mouse wheel to go back a sentence) The tactical game is fine. I wish there was an "undo" button because I've mis-clicked the wrong tile. I've also been off by one tile for certain abilities, so I got frustrated a bit on certain parts. Overall, this is a great adult game if you like reading and enjoy mature sci-fi combat stories. The main character isn't as horny as the Captain in Subverse or Stellar Dream. Don't expect him to have sex with every character or every day, despite being surrounded by women who clearly want him physically.

[h1]Ashes of War[/h1] [b] [h3]Game Introduction[/h3] Game Background and Overview： Players will take on the role of a deserter interstellar captain, leading their crew to escape the oppressive Federation and enter a treacherous underworld filled with hostile forces and complex relationships. The game's plot is based on a rich choice-based system; every decision the player makes will affect the story's direction, character relationships, and the final ending. The game's art style blends seamlessly with its science fiction setting, employing a combination of 2D and 3D graphics to create a highly immersive experience. Plot and Character Development： The game's most compelling aspect is its profound storyline and nuanced character development. The captain, as the player, faces a dual dilemma of morality and responsibility: on one hand, he must protect his crew and find hope for survival; on the other hand, his decisions will directly impact the course of the war and relationships with various factions. The characters in the game are very deep, each possessing a unique backstory and personality. For example, Aidan is the captain's trusted aide, his caution contrasting sharply with the captain's boldness; Nora, as a cool-headed pilot, is outwardly aloof but inwardly full of emotion; Rachel is a reliable engineer, somewhat reckless but unwaveringly loyal to the protagonist. Each character has their own needs and weaknesses, and players need to manage these complex interpersonal relationships while maintaining the survival and development of the crew. [h3]Gameplay[/h3] 1. A Fusion of Visual Novel and Strategy： Ashes of War blends traditional visual novel elements with strategic decision-making mechanics, giving it a unique gameplay appeal. Much of the game's narrative unfolds through engaging dialogue and choices, influencing not only the story's direction but also the relationships between characters. Strategic elements are embodied in the turn-based combat system and fleet management mechanics. Players must deploy their fleets based on the battle situation, choosing different weapons and skills to engage in combat. While the combat itself is relatively simple, it incorporates interesting tactical decisions, such as selecting different ship deployments and utilizing ship skills strategically, making the battles highly strategic. While the combat has a certain depth, the game also offers the option to skip battles, a welcome feature for players who prefer a more relaxed approach. This allows players to focus more on the story and character interactions without being bogged down by combat. 2. The Significance and Consequences of Decisions： In Ashes of War, every choice a player makes has profound consequences. These choices not only affect the final outcome of the war but also directly determine the fate of the characters. Deciding whether to betray the alliance or choose to establish a romantic relationship with a character will affect subsequent plot developments. This depth and complexity of decision-making increases the game's replayability and provides players with significant replay value. With game updates, more branches and choices may be added, further enhancing the game's depth and diversity. [h3]R18 section[/h3] Regarding R18 content, this game includes over 20 animated CGs. Most CGs are produced using Live2D animation, with moderate playback lengths. Unfortunately, there is no voice acting. The character illustrations and models adopt a Japanese manga style, presenting an excellent overall visual effect. The game's R18 tags include: large breasts, oral sex, breast games, cowgirl, internal ejaculation, and pure love. No additional patches are needed; all CGs are the full version. In short, this game boasts abundant R18 content, with excellent voice acting and character art. For players who enjoy extreme content, large breasts, and mature women, the game's erotic content is undoubtedly its biggest highlight. Furthermore, the game's visual design is exquisite, especially in the visual novel genre where graphics quality is often a crucial aspect of the player experience. The game combines 2D static character portraits with 3D dynamic CG animations, creating a highly sci-fi visual effect. The backgrounds showcase magnificent galactic landscapes, and the battle scenes and character interaction scenes are also very detailed. Each character's portrait is exquisite, especially in the CG animations, which are rich in detail, with lifelike expressions and movements. [h3]Advantages and disadvantages analysis[/h3] 1.Advantages: ✔️Deeply woven plot and well-developed characters: The game features a compelling storyline, vividly portrayed characters, and every player decision has tangible consequences. ✔️Stunning visuals and animations: The game boasts exceptional visual design, combining 2D and 3D art styles to create an unforgettable sci-fi world. ✔️Diverse gameplay mechanics: Blending visual novel elements with strategic combat, the game offers a wealth of choices and tactical decisions, enhancing its replayability and depth. 2.Disadvantages: ❌Addressing Technical Issues: the game has some minor technical issues, such as spelling and grammar errors, and occasional inconsistencies in sound effects. We hope these issues will be resolved in future updates. ❌Enhancing Immersion: Although the game currently lacks voice acting, adding voice acting for the characters, especially during important dialogues and story sequences, would greatly improve player immersion. ❌Richening Character Postures and Movements: Currently, most characters have limited posture variation, particularly in facial expressions. Adding more dynamic movements will further enhance the characters' liveliness. [h3]summarize[/h3] This is a promising science fiction visual novel. Although currently in Early Access, it already showcases a high level of production quality and creativity. Its rich storyline, nuanced character development, and strategic gameplay are sure to attract players who enjoy deep narratives and complex character interactions. While some minor flaws exist, future updates are expected to further enhance the game's quality and depth. For fans of science fiction and visual novels, this game is undoubtedly worth a try.[/b] [h2]Game recommendation rating:8.5/10❤️[/h2] [quote] [b]If you want to see more interesting and useful reviews, please join us[/b]👉[url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/R18GMER]R18 Recommender[/url],[b]If you like this review, please give it a thumbs up so more people can see it.[/b] [/quote]

I want to like this, I really do. The characters are decent, the art is pretty good, the animations are good enough, the combat minigame is skippable. But the writing is so boring... The MC just had a 'chat' with Eva, no cut scenes, no movement, no nothing, taking over a hundred clicks through endless dialogue that said absolutely nothing of value. Nothing we didn't know or couldn't guess about her, nothing about him we care about. Just endless meaningless drivel. And it didn't even have the pay off of a sex scene at the end. 80 percent of the dialogue needs to be straight up cut from this game, just to reduce the strain on your fingers.

At full price or a sale the game is worth it. The story is interesting and the romance interests as well as side characters are fun enough to interact with. Warning: Very linear and combat is more for flavor than actual difficulty.

Pleasantly surprised by how much I've enjoyed this game (I'm only 4.5 hours in but I've loved it thus far). Engaging story, good writing, well written characters, and the turn based tactical space combat is simple but does a good job at breaking up the time spent reading. The H scenes are basic but good enough. I'm really looking forward to whatever the dev works on next, and would happily pay for any DLC for this game as well.

Really well written, refreshingly so. Characters have a lot going on and don't feel shallow. Lots of cute and touching moments that develop your relationship instead of meet someone and five minutes later you bone. I will keep an eye out for this studio's next project.

Came for the girls, stayed for the story.

« Nous sommes des pirates, je ne le nie pas, mais.. ce vaisseau est notre maison autant que notre forteresse. Et lorsqu’on est chez soi, on somnole, on dort, on boit, on fait la fête. C’est naturel, n’est-ce pas ? On ne peut pas rester au garde-a-vous en permanence. » Ashes of War est un copieux Visual Novel nous mettant dans la peau de Lancer, un capitaine de l’Union à bout de patience. Commandé par un contre-amiral incapable et engagé dans une bataille perdue d’avance contre une flotte du Royaume, il décide d’appliquer son plan de secours : déserter en emmenant avec lui non seulement son croiseur, mais également plusieurs corvettes et escadrons de chasseurs. Ayant trouvé un refuge temporaire dans la région de l’Oeil de Sarin en bordure de l’espace connu, il est cependant hors de question pour lui comme pour ses hommes de céder à l’appel de la piraterie. Il va donc falloir trouver des solutions, nouer des alliances douteuses et parfois jouer des muscles pour survivre tout en gardant un cap moral… d’autant plus que les pillages sont nombreux dans le coin et qu’une flotte complète d’ex-compatriotes rôde en menant des activités obscures. Encore heureux que l’équipage est fidèle. L’univers d’AoW est riche. On y trouve pêle-mêle des humains génétiquement modifiés ou non, une espèce alien humanoïde, plusieurs empires plus ou moins corrompus, des contrebandiers, des corporations aux intentions nébuleuses, une civilisation disparue dont les ruines mystérieuses dérivent dans l’espace… bref, tout ce qu’il faut pour du bon space opera moins les abordages au sabre laser. Tout est crédible car l’auteur prend le temps d’établir les personnages, l’univers, mais surtout des enjeux à la fois simples et marquants. Notre protagoniste n’est pas un chevalier blanc en croisade mais un ex-officier qui essaye de faire survivre tous ceux qui ont placé leur confiance en lui, ce qui l’amène à parfois prendre des choix difficiles ou à craquer sous la pression. En dehors des situations de crise et le ton est aussi badin que l’on peut l’imaginer lorsqu’on parle de membres d’équipages vivant ensemble dans une boite de conserve ou une petite station spatiale pendant des mois. Ça picole, ça joue aux cartes, ça fait de la muscu ou des soirées cinéma… et surtout ça drague sérieusement. Notre capitaine n’est d’ailleurs pas en reste, la faute à une jeunesse que lui-même juge dissolue et à une réputation de Casanova, ce qui va attirer sur lui l’attention d’un pseudo-harem : entre Rachel la mécano amie d’enfance, Nora la pilote d’exception vantarde, Eva la « femme d’affaire » de poche ou Camilla la scientifique bodybuildée, le flirt n’est jamais loin… et c’est sans compter les rencontres d’un soir ou les excursions sur des planètes exotiques. Il faut néanmoins remarquer que l’on peut refuser (ou accepter) toutes les avances si on le souhaite sans que ça nuise au scénario, que ces dames ont leurs démons intérieurs ainsi que leurs points forts et que c’est un plaisir de voir des idylles se former entre plusieurs personnages secondaires. Un des aspects les plus intéressants de Ashes of War réside dans le fait qu’on sent très bien sous sa surface l’ossature d’un projet plus ambitieux étranglé faute de moyens. Par exemple les différentes factions sont suffisamment distinctes pour imaginer qu’un système de réputation était prévu et surtout nous avons droit régulièrement à des batailles spatiales tactiques au tour par tour. Elles sont courtes et pas spécialement ardues mais elles sont clairement le fruit d’une réflexion poussée : les unités sont très différentes, divisées en trois catégories selon un système de pierre/papier/ciseaux, peuvent être achetées avec une ressource donnée par le scénario (ou débloquées selon votre progression) et sujettes à une limite de déploiement. Les cartes quant à elles ont des obstacles, des objectifs variés et des embuscade mises en scène. Pas étonnant que les phases ennemis et alliées donnent lieu à des magnifiques ballets de feux d’artifice. Que dire de plus sinon que le contenu boulesque est aussi vanilla que somptueux, que les musiques ne vont pas vous rester longtemps dans la tête, qu’il y a des petites cutscenes spatiales ça et là, qu’il y a clairement eu deux chara-designers à l’œuvre mais que cela ne choque pas trop et que tout cela se conclue en treize heures sans compter les variations de dialogues selon les choix. Il n’y a cependant pas de « route » alternative et je trouve qu’un détail du scénario est vraiment balayé vite sous le tapis. Vous l’aurez compris, c’est une franche recommandation de ma part, surtout vu son prix très raisonnable. J’ai hâte de voir le développeur sur des projets plus ambitieux. Le Ciel vous tienne en joie.

A space-opera visual novel with turn-based tactical battles and erotic content. I have backed this game in crowdfunding campaign. Most of the game is a classical visual novel with static 2D graphics. There are some animated 3D sections and top-down 2D space battles. The quality of graphics is good and consistent. There is no voice acting. The most of the game is spent reading the (well-written) dialogues and occationally making a decision. There are several turn-based battles with simple fleet management (selecting deployed ships). Battle mechanics are pretty well developed, with multiple weapon systems and ship abilities. Difficulty slowly scales up. All battles are skippable (without story consequences). The story is very good, somewhat reminiscent of Legend of Galactic Heroes. Instead of taking an epic geopolitical view, it is more tight and focused on a small fleet deserting their faction locked in a forever war. The struggle to survive and earn a living in the shadow of two warring hyperpowers and rampant megacorporations was quite interesting. Characters have a well developed, if occationally extreme, personalities. The erotic content is well made and generally elective, depending on choices made in the story. Contrary to what Steam page says, the game is currently in a complete state.

In Final Fantasy XII, I wanted to like the story. Please note that the only time I finished FFXII was the original North American PS2 version. The story was probably very likable in that game. I feel like most people remember the game for being superficially similar to Star Wars. FFXII is not, in fact, Star Wars. Why do so many people remember it that way, then? I played the game (again, the PS2 version) for over a hundred hours. My more completion hungry friends in those days had play times twice as long. I think that the primary reason that FFXII's story lost me was that I would see a cutscene, lose tens of hours to crawling through dungeons and grinding, and then be surprised that there was still a plot when the next cutscene happened. Ultimately, I like FFXII. I still think it suffered from giving the player too much. I get a similar feeling from Ashes of War. The story never fully lost me. That's probably because the game is mostly story. It's easy to retain the broad strokes. It's harder to retain the details. I can tell that the writer has a love for worldbuilding. The setting feels very lived in. They might love worldbuilding a little too much. The writing seemed desperate to share as much detail as possible about the mundanities of life in the space war. There are long passages about food and life support and booze and the media that the crew enjoys. I found myself using the log function more in this visual novel than I ever have just to make sure I understood things. I can also tell that the writer has an affinity for flirtatious banter. There's a lot of it. Don't get me wrong. This is the perfect kind of game for a writer to indulge in that sort of thing. As with the worldbuilding exposition, I feel like these long dialogues verge on excessive. Why should you kill your darlings? They're your darlings for a reason. It's baffling that, in a game that already offers so much story, there are also space navy battles. They are turn based. They happen on a hex grid. There's a rock-paper-scissors system that offers some types of ships advantages over others. Relative to the rest of the game, there are not many of these battles. A couple of the missions were fun and interesting. I'm not an SRPG guy. I found most of these missions kind of boring. The game offers you the opportunity to skip these combat missions without consequences, so this part of the game isn't intrusive. Of course, none of this would be worth mentioning if I didn't like this game enough to recommend it. My favorite things about this game are the characters. Having good characters is an easy way to earn my admiration. The characters in this game engage you with their personalities. They have narrative throughlines. They have goals and desires. That's more than you get from most erotic games. The story is mostly static, but getting to know these characters is a lot of fun. Normally, I might prefer having the opportunity to focus on characters I find the most appealing. Ashes of War let me sit with characters I didn't initially like and let them grow on me. I like that approach. Some of the art, especially some of the background art, made me squint and scrutinize. There were a few art assets that sent my mind to an uncomfortable uncanny valley. Thankfully, I really enjoyed most of the art in this game. Most of the characters benefit from an appealing visual design. I'm not necessarily even talking about sex appeal. The colors are good. The uniforms make sense in the context of the setting. The characters who aren't in uniform wouldn't look out of place in a beloved JRPG. To be clear: the sex appeal is definitely there. If you like looking at cartoon women, this game probably has you covered. If you have a taste for this kind of game, I would recommend Ashes of War. If you happen to like hard sci-fi technobabble and turn-based SRPG battles, you might even like it more than I did. If you're looking for quick titillation, there are many other games that better provide that. Those other games often struggle to provide thoughtful plotlines and interesting characters, which Ashes of War has in spades.