Faulty Apprentice

Half the fun of these social sim games is just seeing the obviously bad dialogue choices that nobody sane would choose. Either that or they made it easy to skip through the text, uh, not that I did that or anything.

At first glance, you may think that this is some mobile game. However, it actually a pretty classic date-sim with a solid story, good characters, and challenging mini-game on later stages. You must carefully calculate your actions and save frequently to progress in dialogues. The answers aren't always obvious and sometimes absolutely in contrast with the character you're seeking, but if you are fond of date-sims, you know it is always trial and error. The art style is good, and you quickly get used to it. Overall, it was a very pleasant surprise and experience.

A well-done and satisfying RPG with optional mini-games. Great settings options and clear dialogue. It can be repetitive, but I enjoyed completing the various choice branches. The only minus I would give is that the gallery/pin-up artwork was not exactly in the same style as the rest of the game graphics, and I preferred the more CGI style to the painted artwork aesthetic. Still a top-notch game.

Immerse yourself in a captivating story- with charming art, unique characters, and a very well-done plot- when you pick up Faulty Apprentice. I’ll be completely honest, I’ve never entirely been hooked on Virtual Novels. But Faulty Apprentice sets itself apart from many with its high-quality work. Coupled with fantastic fantasy-style music along with a setting that’s sure to get you dreaming of dragons, magic, and lucky panty shots, and you got yourself a wonderful game. The game itself has a very nice plot; the castle, Stars Reach, is readying itself to defend against forces of darkness, and you, the one who has earned the lucky title of “Main Character”, are employed as an Apprentice to assist around the place, wherever needed. From mundane jobs to even training in swordsmanship, every day for you will be quite eventful. Theres quite a cast of characters, as well; your work life will revolve around helping (or hurting) the various guards and inhabitants of Stars Reach. From a gorgeous ghost to a sleepy ewe, or even a sweet unicorn gal telling you to “stay happy and magical”, you will not forget these folks, I assure you. And those are some of only the minor characters! The main cast are just as interesting, just as unique, and just as colorful and filled with story as the background cast. You’ll find yourself bolstering the morale of many, and perhaps even winning the affection of someone among the main folks. Perhaps the icy commander? Or mayhaps the sweet-as-sugar bunny guard? Its your call! And to add to it, the game also comes with extra story in DLC’s, shedding spotlight on some characters and providing a little extra bit of goodies! All in all, you’ll be sure to have a ball when you check out the phenomenal storytelling of Faulty Apprentice! Decide your fate! Will you become a willing servant to the shadows? Or will you stand with your allies and keep Stars Reach stronger than ever? It all falls on you, Apprentice! 👍

[h1]Gameplay: 4/10[/h1] [h1]Graphics & Sound: 7/10[/h1] [h1]Narration: 6/10[/h1] ✔️ Pretty visuals, nice music. ✔️ The narration can get pretty fun, the character cast is somewhat diverse (though the female characters do lack some body type diversity). ✔️ Nice narrative rhytm, not many opportunities to be bored. ✔️ Gay romance options! 💭 Not really a "porn game" in my opinion - the erotic scenes are few and pretty tame. But they are also too present to not be a focus. The game sits in a weird place where it's a porn-adjacent game trying to make fun of harem stories while still pandering to the male gaze, mostly. 💭 The +1/0/-1 dialogue model doesn't offer a lot of space for personal exploration - essentially if you're playing a "good" playthrough or an "evil" playthrough you only ever have one "valid" answer. I mean you can deviate from that but it can have negative impact on the result you're going for... I wish we had a bit more granularity in character endings as well as the impact each answer had on the story. Having some dialogues that have several positive or negative answers with a different mood could have been fun for instance. ❌ The minigames just aren't good. Good thing you can skip them. Swordfight is the only one that can actually be fun to play through (it's some kind of cheap Fruit Ninja rip-off). ❌ Learning spells is just Latin translation? It doesn't even rely on any in-game information, it's just straight up translation. The only case where a game should be doing that is if it's actually a didactic game to learn Latin, which is not the case here. ❌ The UX isn't great. It gets pretty tedious to navigate given the amount of clicks you need to do to check your current stats, calendar, or to change your equipment. Fun enough to play through, tried replaying it for various outcomes, that doesn't bring much honestly. Not a fine gem, but entertaining enough.

it good.

The art is amazing but the game is such a grind. Idk if it was to pad playtime, or just to be annoying. At some points it made me not want to play, even for the lols xD

Good VN for it's price 👍

just finished my first play-through, thank god for the skip and auto-dialogue so i could finish this and review it within a day, this game is like if Gaia and Adventure Quest made a baby and it was a story game, coming to the end of the story was a bit sad seeing i hadn't gotten all the scenes for even a single character but i really enjoyed all the times i spent with each character, I love the decision making in this game and implore you to play it as neutral as it comes to you for your first play-through and i bet you really enjoy it! Audio is absolutely Repetitive! each character has about 3-6 lines they say throughout the entire game, some don't even match up with the right demeanor as you gain and lower relationship and morality with them. only downside i think aside from getting boring in the last 3-4 days of the month. such a killer ending though!

Whew!!! That was a trip and a half. Ok first things first, if you are here for the lewd aspect then there ain't much of that and what is there is not very explicit. But the characters are so charismatic that in the end the lewd aspect became secondary. What drew me in was the art style though and on that department I can't get enough of it, alongside a good story that made me laugh and as care about what was going on, made it a complete package for me. And I'm thankful for that because in the gameplay aspect this left a lot to be desired, the exploration of the map in order to interact with other characters was painfully slow and also to get an ending that isn't just the regular one you have to be extremely thorough with the characters and there are like 20 of them so it sincerely gets grating after a while despite the fact that I was indeed interested in what they had to say. There's also the minigames that can land you on a game over and on a game with no auto saves and only one place on the map where you can manualy do so, you can end up losing a LOT of progres, there are 3 minigames: a fruit ninja like (sword), simon says (bow) and recognising words (magic), the bow and magic posed no problem really, I finished a playthrough with each without losing once but the sword was another story entirely I was constantly losing with that one, the final battle alone took me like 15 tries with that one. But as a compromise you are allowed to turn off the minigames. And despite all that, I think this game is very worth a casual look over, don't be like me trying to get a 100% completion on a single save file, take it slow, allow the characters to talk and take breaks from it, you'll probably get more than enough form this game out of a casual playtrough where you are actually just looking at what you like. On an ending note if you like evil paths on games this one allows you to be a ripe bastard no aquestions asked so there is that. I'm a bit Faulty apprenticed out for now since I went for all achievements and it took me 5 playthroughs (If you are really smart about it you can do it in 2) but I'll probably come back for the DLCs that are mostly free another time but now I really need to let this game rest. UPDATE: Ok, so I've played the DLC now and I'm dissapointed actually, I was hoping for a continuation on the story and some continuity and that's what I got on the DLCs that were about the instructors but the other three were pretty much endings to other love interests that closed the story completely, if you liked those love interests (the harpy, the bunny girl and the princess) then it is their wrap up but I enjoyed the other two more. And I talked about going for a casual playthrough better in my review but if you want to play all the DLCs your best bet is to go for that golden playthrough, you need a file with the MC in a relationship with the Love interest of the DLC to go for it. Now I haven't test it since I do have a file where I could just start a relationship with any of the LIs save and then start the DLC from there, so it could be only tied to the sex scenes that are a thing in the DLCs... and I will admit they were very good. Also, the images from the princess DLC don't appear in the gallery, what's up with that? Is it a problem on my end? Anyways I loved the base game and the DLC for as much as I didn't like it, it also didn't sour my view on it, and the DLCs with the instructors were what I was hoping for so, it's all right.