Serment - Contract with a Devil

[h1]Serment - Contract with a Devil o Cómo Aprender a Gestionar tu Tiempo con un Demonio Respirando en tu Cuello[/h1] [h2]Resumen[/h2] ¡Prepárate para el lío! \Serment - Contract with a Devil\ parece otro simpático juego de rol hasta que te das cuenta de que básicamente estás firmando tu alma a cambio de una serie de tareas diarias, que sospechosamente se parecen mucho a las tareas que mi madre me dejaba en la nevera. Pero hey, ¡hay magia y monstruos involucrados! [h2]Aspectos Importantes e Interesantes[/h2] Lo primero que salta al ojo es el estilo visual: es como un anime que bebió demasiados refrescos con gas y decidió volverse un videojuego. Los personajes son coloridos y tienen esas grandes emociones estilo anime que te hacen saber exactamente cómo se sienten sin necesidad de sutilezas. El sistema de combate es interesante: mezcla elementos de turnos con decisiones estratégicas que pueden hacerte sentir como un genio táctico o como si estuvieras jugando a piedra, papel o tijera con un niño de cinco años. Hay magia, hay monstruos, hay mazmorras... y sí, si te equivocas, tu alma podría tener que pagar el precio. [h2]Aspectos por Mejorar[/h2] Vamos a ser honestos, la historia tiene más agujeros que los calcetines de mi adolescente. A veces los personajes saltan de una situación a otra con poco sentido, como si el guionista estuviera bajo la influencia de demasiado café. Además, hay veces que la IA te hace sentir que podrías negociar un mejor contrato con ese diablo usando solo un saco de patatas. [h2]Puntuaciones a la Serment[/h2] [table] [tr][th]Categoría[/th][th]Puntaje /10[/th][th]Comentarios[/th][/tr] [tr][td]Jugabilidad[/td][td]7[/td][td]Dinámica pero repite más que cebolla.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Dificultad / IA[/td][td]6[/td][td]A veces es brillante, otras, bueno, solo está ahí.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Contenido[/td][td]6[/td][td]Tienes suficiente para mantenerte ocupado, pero no esperes milagros.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Video / Gráficos[/td][td]8[/td][td]Bonito como un anime en su temporada estrella.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Historia[/td][td]5[/td][td]Si te gustan las historias con sentido, te va a doler.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Ambientación[/dd][td]7[/td][th]Ideal para fans de anime.[/td]/tr] [tr][td]Efectos[/td][td]7[/td][td]Chispas y luces por todos lados. Festivo.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Música[/td][td]8[/td][th]Casi me hace olvidar la trama.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Voces[/td][td]6[/td][td]A veces inspiran, otras veces dan ganas de silenciar.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Diversidad[/td][td]7[/td][td]Un collage multicultural de clichés.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Total[/td][td]67/100[/td][td]Ni malo ni bueno, camina por el filo de la navaja.[/td][/tr] [/table] [h2]Veredicto Final[/h2] Si la puntuación total es 67, entonces... [b]¡Cómpralo con descuento![/b] Como diría un buen demonio de negocios: siempre espera al mejor trato por tu alma... o al menos por tu billetera.

An awkward and derivative dungeon crawler/sim/visual novel hybrid that does some things decently, some poorly, and none particularly well. The combat is cribbed from Labyrinth of Touhou and the time management plays out like a simplified Recettear, complete with weekly debts to pay off. Unfortunately, they don't fit together at all: the dungeon gives you more gold than you need to pay off your debts, buy all the items you want, and purchase a hefty helping of stat boosts (another thing cribbed from LoT) besides; meanwhile, the Stamina system, which is supposed to kick characters out of your party after they fight a certain number of battles, is rendered irrelevant by the clock, which advances with every battle and (once your characters have a few levels under their belts) kicks you out of the dungeon before any of them can leave. Also somewhat clunky and buggy, possibly because it was made in Ren'Py. I had important hotkeys fail to work, menus lag, and a waypoint fail to be added to the teleportation menu. Alternating between the keyboard for dungeon navigation and the mouse for everything else sucks. Also, the skill menu displays only a few skills at a time and can only be scrolled by dragging the mouse wheel, which is highly obnoxious if you're playing the Freelancer, who acquires approximately one trillion skills. The dungeon design is surprisingly decent, even if it doesn't do the things I usually look for in a DRPG. There's no sense of exploration or atmosphere; instead, most of the floors ask you to gather orbs and keys to unlock doors. A couple of puzzles use quirks of the system in really interesting ways. Weirdly, the side characters all have very professional-looking portraits but the main characters are amateurish. Not sure what was going on there. I found the story yawnworthy and have nothing to say about it. It took me a bit under seven hours to complete the story, fully explore the dungeon, and defeat the superboss, which is a pleasant length that fits the price. I'd like to play more short DRPGs like this.

A short, but decent Ren'Py visual novel + dungeon crawler. On the downside, some time limited rewards may catch you off guard and lead to annoying money hoarding meta, but if you skim the game guides before playing, that can be mitigated.

Great game, its fun.

cool,

The game is very cute and very gay, I recommend it to anyone who wants a casual RPG with yuri moments.

!

I'm very mixed about this one score. RPG part is very mediocre. But for the fact that I did not dropped it halfway so [b]I will give it 6/10, barely passed.[/b] [h1]GOOD[/h1] [list] [*]Cute art and heart warming-ish story. [*]RPG/combat is merciful and not punishing. HP is refilled every battle. You just lose some G from getting party wiped. etc. Only the last boss battle that is tricky and need best planning. [*]Deadline objectives are very relaxed/merciful, So no crazy/serious optimization play required, good for casuals. At mid game, game only ask for 10,000G deadline at the end of the week, while I can make up to 100,000G alone per day. [*]But as some review pointed out, if you beat the game and got NG+ the game let you skip the gold grinding, which is good QoL for getting all endings. [/list] [h1]BAD[/h1] [list] [*]Weird eco design: bringing friend into dungeon will cut your money pay. But in the end it is you who will pay money for their stat upgrade. So most of the time you will want to solo the dungeon to grind for money. Only bring friends when you want to fight boss, etc. [*]Cooking has no practical usage, it uses your precious time (to grind for money at dungeon) to make one. I can defeat floor 7 last boss without using any cooking. [*]More pointless system: Fishing, why waiting for pointless animation to fish? just subtract the time and give me the reward, or have on/off option to do so. And as fishing is a way to find ingredient for cooking (which is already pointless) it makes this whole system pointless. [*]The game being made in Renpy (Python VN engine) is not very responsive, esp in RPG part, sometimes tapping 5 times and character move only 4. Very annoying in floor with lots of corners where you have to move/turn/move/turn repeatedly. [/list]

For a game that focuses so much on dungeon crawling, the actual dungeons are awful. I have a decent rig, and I get about.... 4 FPS when moving around in a dungeon. I'm not sure if it's just laggy on my machine, or if it's pre-rendered at such low framerates. Then there's the combat. Even when there's trivial enemies, you need to move your mouse a lot to "spam attack", to the point that encounters are painful. Bottom line: my first hour of the game was SO MISERABLE because of this dungeon system that I don't care enough to look further.

I want to open up with "I like this game, I had fun and I recommend it to anyone considering it" because I suspect the following review will focus on the negatives. But, none of the negatives ruined the game... but they hurt what could have been an amazing experience. While I'm not generally an engine guy, it's worth mentioning that this is probably hacked in a VN engine such as Ren'Py rather than a custom game engine. The reason it needs to be said is that it directly impacts the gameplay and feel of the product. You can only save during conversations, the sound will randomly stop as an attack loads, input may not immediately register, and I had to disable the dungeon animations because it was making me physically uncomfortable. Once I got past the tech, I got to see a genuinely good, ultra-casual dungeon crawl. The dungeoneering aspect of the game was absolutely fantastic. With exactly one exception, I found every floor of the dungeon to be engaging and the puzzles to be clever. It doesn't utilize the traditional teleporter mazes and one way doors, but leans heavily into single use keys and the ability to reset the floor. I've not seen anything quite like this before and I found it to be exceptionally engaging and the exploration to be a high point here. The battles are engaging as well, though I'd argue the store description of anything resembling depth. It's a fairly traditional ATB system from the final fantasy game. When you fill your action meter you perform a chosen attack. There's a little bit of elemental bonuses, status effects and raising attributes, but its all pretty tame. The combat works, but for a veteran dungeon crawler it was harder not to break the game and become OP than it was to beat the game. It's fun but its exploitable. The other major problem I had with the game was the "Dating Sim Time Simulation" parts of the game. There are a dozen systems in place all intended to create a feeling of time pressure and looming weekly debt collections... but I'd argue they all failed. You have 12 hours of daylight time and walking to the dungeon alone takes up about 2-3 hours of it. This means that going to the pub, shopping, fishing, cooking... these are all wastes of valuable time. There's not enough meaningful events to justify wasting 2 hours on a trip to a store and I found myself avoiding this entire part of the game. I'd say that the Fishing, Cooking, Crafting, and most of the NPCs are rendered useless by the strict time management. I'd really argue that the romance, the story, the "Detailed dating sim" and the minigames aren't meaningful enough to be selling points on the store page. Cute slice of life anime girls, absolutely... but this is a cutesy lite dungeon crawl and little more than that. If that's what you're looking for, its well worth the price... especially on sale. *Technically, I haven't beat the game yet but that's because I've got it in my head to beat the optional super-boss in a 1v1 duel at a far lower level than I should be. But I've fully explored the dungeon, I can pay off my entire debt 10 times over and I can trigger the ending by skipping the next week. My opinion of this game is informed enough that I don't expect anything to change it.*