Soulspire

Gonna be real, this has a quality to it that is good, unique characters and models, solid world building, etc. But good god this is a slogggg. Starters: The UI is horrible for starters, you have to basically click every menu option twice, because it doesnt register the first time, I'm guessing due to the tied "interactable" character motions that happen when you hover the choice. There is only 2 characters so far + the MC, both are LI's from what I can tell. There is 3 options per part of the day and the game is setting up to be a management simulator of sorts. Which generally is a genre I tend to be really good with and enjoy. However it has absolutely zero of those functions thus far. You can gather, you can manage corruption, level a stat, etc. But it relatively means nothing because theres no real reason to do it. The systems arent finished that were meant to be there yet. So essentially you have a bare bones game with almost 0 function, thus leading me to my next part, Dawn. I want to like Dawn but lord she is Queen Tsundere levels of insufferable. Bratty as hell, irrational as humanly possible, just pulls random crap out of thin air and attacks MC over it, from the very first second of the game. She might genuinely be one of the most unlikeable characters I've ever seen written. She's the kind of character that just sucks your soul out. The fact that MC even puts up with her, pulls his entire character into question because she barely has a single good quality outside being the most powerful young sorceress alive.... HOWEVER dev didn't give us a taste of literally anything to support it. It's just all word of mouth. Theres no action, no conflict, no build up. It throws you straight into the world, with an established friendship (or basically a crush that wont admit it) that then stumbles on the other LI in a demon summoning circle, who MC saves, and gets thrown into a tower that they are magically locked inside of. The second LI is possessed so she's fighting off a demon, they manage to keep the demon at bay but it brings the second LI a lot of unfortunate perverse situations due to the corruption. Which Dawn absolutely hates and is ruthlessly possessive of her non-relationship friendzoned MC. This game utterly lacks a hook, Dawn lacks any reason for the player to actually like her other than her being an attractive red headed elf, and its just alot of repetitive gameplay patterns of essentially fetch quests with no repercussions or changes to anything because they arent yet there. Everything talked about is just lore, or relative to the circumstance you find youself in, the possession, or childhood stories/recent stories we have no bare witnessing of. Not even flashbacks. The amount of changes that could make this an excellent title, just even flashbacks OUTSIDE of the spire would be such a incredibly huge jump in quality. Instead of just spamming us with text about Dawn burning something down. Show it to us. Show us who the second LI is, her life before meeting MC and Dawn, show us something . I'm not gonna lie I'm a bit frustrated that I was putting myself into a sleep state (even making this review I'm struggling to stay awake after finishing the current release) trying to progress this just bored to all hell, to see where it ended because I thought maybe there would be some kind of pay off. A development in a relationship, a sexual encounter, a conflict, a motion forward with the spire, anything at all. I dont know how old this title is, and how many updates its received, but it says v4.0 so I feel like its had to been atleast a little bit, even if only a few updates. Game basically could use the "no sexual content" tag considering you only really see some boobs and butt. It doesn't actually cross into an actual point of erotica yet. Then theres the total lack of sound, music, etc. I honestly wouldnt have released it in this state to even patrons. I was just sitting here desperately hoping something would happen but it feels like that meme with the stick. So I'm sorry, but I have to hit this with a 2 because even though it has good world building and is constructing its environment and everything.... it just has literally nothing else. Even though I primarily read these for a story focus, I genuinely couldn't get into it because there was nothing visual about it for me. I'm just told who these people are, what they do, and what their accomplishments are but other than MC tackling a mf into a table, nothing else genuinely happened. It's just lacking too much engagement, content and the main LI is just way too insufferable, all I can really say. WIsh the dev luck but would strongly advise to atleast add something to hook people with, its like starting the lord of the rings on the third book at a random chapter as a new reader. What truly blew my mind is its the writer of Price of Power which was excellent in almost every regard. It did have some pacing issues but these feel like incredibly amateur mistakes for said dev to make with a new story. Also sorry for constantly reiterating myself and making my own review a slog but im genuinely half asleep after reading all that, I was fighting to stake awake. So quick TL;DR: It just lacks interest or engagement for the reader, Im fine with a novel being slow but it should still have something to pull the reader in, like said even just a flashback or two. Showcase who Dawn is, showcase who Stella is, Showcase who MC is. Show us who were working with. Instead of feeling as isolated as the people stuck in the tower.

Really enjoying this game so far. The writing and world building to set up all the lore and backstory is really well done. And then to also have it exposed to the player in ways that make sense without feeling like boring lore dumps is much appreciated. The girls are both very well modelled and have interesting and unique personalities (who doesn't love a fiery redheaded childhood friend). The game mechanics are intuitive and flow well to advance the story, they are not super grindy yet anyways. Looking forward to seeing this progress as we get to know the two characters better and getting into the thick of things

VERSION: V4.0 SUMMARY: Not bad, but seriously lacks fundamentals RATINGS: (out of 5): ⭐⭐⭐ NOTE: The following categories and scoring method are my own criteria and may require more context. Additionally , scoring is based on the state, and what is in the current version and not what may or may not be introduced at a later point. Character (Model) Visuals......... : ⭐⭐⭐⭐ General (World) Visuals........... : ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Animation Quality................. : ⭐⭐⭐ Character Personality(Persona).... : ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Story & Dialogue.................. : ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Writing & Grammar................. : ⭐⭐⭐⭐ UX/UI, Game Type & Mechanics.......: ⭐⭐ Playtime & Pacing..................: ⭐⭐⭐ Music & Sounds.....................: ⭐ Adult Content & Fetishes.......... : ⭐⭐⭐ Average: X of 50 possible points giving a X% rating i.e. X stars. PROS: - See my opinions section for details. Good looking models, LIs in particular, good proportions Writing is good, structured and reads well. Dialogue is also decent, has good flow and thoughtful Few animations that are there, short and simple are nicely done, fluid and good quality. Lore and story and simple yet interesting enough, but more importantly detailed in terms of the world crafting. CONS: - See my opinions section for details. Lack of ANY audio is a major negative to me UI/UX is poor, mostly due to non-functional features like opacity and also interface does not clearly show enabled or disabled feature, or if this is even working in the current game state... MC model is not really good looking, his Spock, pisspot haircut and the fact that he is ginger (at least thats how I view it) is not the most flattering...pity...we can only hope we don't see too much of him I am not a fan of the sandbox elements, though they are not horrible for what they are and the grind isn't too tedious, at least dialogue does progress with it and its not an infinite rinse and repeat. OPINIONS, SUGGESTIONS & FINAL REMARKS: NOTE: The following remarks are my personal opinions and thoughts, which may provide more context and could be useful to the developer. (Read them or don't) If the previous game (unrelated) is anything to go by, this will be a very dialogue intensive and longwinded AVN. While the previous (Price of Power) was good in story and dialogue rich, it was slow and had very few adult, lewd scenes and even less kinks. Pregnancy was a feature and I can only hope its one here, but if anything it would be nice if there a little more adult in the Adult Visual Novel and less novel i.e. more balanced content. TLDR: So far its not a bad AVN, its not great either and feels like it lack polish in some areas like some areas were completely omitted like audio. Its not a 5 star AVN and I doubt it ever will be for me, best case is 4 stars but as mentioned there is some work that needs to be done first.