Pact of the Ancients - 3D Bara Survivors

This might be the only time I’ve ever regretted supporting a small dev. I don’t know what happened here but it feels like someone had a gun to the back of a solo devs head and gave them two days to make a game. The modeling is awful, the gameplay *barely* functions, the regularity of major crash bugs screams in your face that they didn’t even test this game that they’re charging 4x anything else in the genre for. Not recommended *at all*, especially if you want to support beefy gay stuff— this is NOT what we want

I tried to like it, I really did. This game was originally something I was somewhat excited for as it was planned as a diablo style action rpg, but to see it become so much less than what was in the old test build is sad. It is now just a poorly made Vampire Survivor type game, and not worth purchase as it is. Graphics are lazy and runescape-esque, sound design is bland and forgettable, gameplay is slow and tedious without much difficulty to be found. What should have been a fun bara action rpg is now just a hastily thrown together project like something a first time wannabe game dev threw together for one of those 24-hour game dev contests.

Game freezes whenever I get the first chest with the gladiator.

Premise This review reflects my personal experience with the game. While I aim to write thoughtfully and as fairly as possible, my reviews are subjective in nature and should not be used as objective metrics to assess/critique a game. I also curate a steam group which focusses on reviewing BL/Bara/MxM VNs. Feel free to join if you would like to see more reviews! :) [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/46061383-Gay-Games-Vault] Gay Games Vault[/url] [code] SECTION | SCORE --------------------|------- Writing & Story | ★★☆☆☆ Gameplay | ★★★☆☆ Representation | ★★☆☆☆ Art & Direction | ★★☆☆☆ Replayability | ★★★★☆ Recommendation | ★★★☆☆ [/code] Writing & Story — ★★☆☆☆ In Pact of the Ancients, you play as different heroes fighting through areas filled with corruption and throughout runs, you can unlock short scenes (usually once you reach level 30) that reveal more about the characters and their romantic relationships. I honestly liked the idea behind this. The unlockable scenes help give the roster a bit more personality and make progression feel more connected to the characters themselves rather than purely mechanical upgrades. Tha…

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this game, it just does not run well. There are tons of bugs, glitches, and game breaking sections that completely lock or crash the game. It was fun in the beginning, but then it become pure frustration to just try and finish it.

This is so buggy. Every now and then I get stuck at the level up screen, just hangs up (cannot move, cannot pick up xp gems, no enemy spawn, and some of the CG scenes become a black screen (not even ESC works). It shouldn't be my pc since I could play some of resource heavy games (AC Odyssey, Cyberpunk 2077) and they work just fin on Medium-High settings. The gameplay is ok, but not fulfilling. Progression compared to other similar games seem to be on the lighter side.