To begin, an introduction. Claire's Quest is more-or less the closest thing to an actual competent "game" that i have found in a sea of slop. The writing is decent, the gameplay is enjoyable, and most of the annoyances and frustrations common to adult games are absent. While this game is made in RPGMaker, I would not call it an "RPGMaker Game", as it differs enough in basic structure and gameplay from those games that it warrants differentiation. In Claire's Quest, you do not play as a sorcerer-queen or an anime protagonist, but rather as a simple village girl torn away from hearth and home by a demonic invasion of her kingdom. As a result, you are not, and will never be, a badass warrior, but instead must rely on your (and Claire's) wit and wisdom to survive in what is often a very hostile world. There is, in fact, not even a combat system! Some encounters can be "won" depending on claire's stats, but the clunky and frankly painful combat of RPGMaker is nowhere to be found in this game. What is to be found, however , is a great many very impactful choices. I'll get into this in it's own section, but suffice to say it does player agency and consequence better than most games. It is of course an H-game, and due to the variety of scenes it has something for more-or-less everyone (though you will of course enjoy it most if you are into ALL the content involved). Most of the content can be avoided with careful player choice, especially by doing or not doing certain questlines. Overall the content that you will likely struggle to avoid the most is terratophilia (monster-fucking, it is the most common game-over method), though there are certain male-dom scenes that you will need to be careful about. The game overall does seem to push the player towards lesbian content more than male content, which i appreciate. The artwork is good, and overall there is a decent balance between "game" and "porn".


[Cont.]

Pros:
+++ Player Choice
Claire's Quest has no shortage of player choice, and in fact, I would go so far as to say it is the core gameplay "loop" as it were. While most games and even modern RPGs railroad the player into the one path the writers want to tell, Claire's decisions have an incredible impact over her story. While playing Claire's Quest, it is best to assume that every choice you make has potentially dire consequences, because they often do. For example, one way to end the prologue ends with Claire deciding how to get off the continent and to safety in the Isles. If she (I.E. the player) chooses poorly, then you end up in a corrupted slum of a port city, heavily in debt to organized crime (against your will, might I add), and unable to leave the walls of the city until you pay it off (which may be impossible without becoming a prostitute, not sure I just cheated in the money after I couldn't find any other way). If, however, you make a different decision, then you are safely conveyed to a location of your choosing. This particular set of decisions has more consequences than most, but decisions made by the player have more impact than can be seen in a single playthrough. While a clever player is usually able to avoid bad outcome through intuition, reason, and frankly basic common sense, he will eventually slip up (as I did on a few occasions) and get an unwanted outcome. This means, of course, that the writing is subtle enough to create actual danger for the player. 10/10, beats anything Todd howard has made by a landslide.

{cont.}

>>3812282 (OP)
++ H-Art and scenes
The art in Claire's Quest is high-quality and varied. It is western-style (like the rest of the game), and appealing. The scenes include les-dom and male-dom, straight and lesbian vanilla sex, a hint of futa, a LOT of monsters, and some beastiality. Oh, and tons of rape, and probably in the future incest. I'd say the human content "leans" lesbian, in that the game gently pushes the player towards more lesbian scenes than otherwise, though this might just be my preference. Also, most of the scenes tied to major storlines are lesbian. There is a gallery to view past scenes and some scenes you missed as well. The scenes seem well-integrated into the world in a more-or-less seemless way, I don't get the whiff of hentai-bullshittery (suspension of disbelief is, of course, required to some extent sometimes, but not quite to "I'm not at the beach this is a bathtub" levels). I'd like to note, purely because i found it funny, another review called the main character "obese", which is frankly hilariously stupid. She's a shapely white woman in good child-bearing health, that reviewer is probably just mad she doesn't have the build of a 13 year old asian girl.
++ Writing {cont.}

>>3812282 (OP)
++ Writing
The writing in this game is very good for the genre. The dialogue is seemingly written by a competent english speaker, and is absent of both chingrish AND anime tropes. The story is competent, and actually manages to elicit genuine emotion at times that isn't hornyness. The writing is very good for the genre. For the genre. Compared to other games, it holds up far worse, but still scrapes by without getting into "bad" territory. It's probably amateurish, but not actively hard to read. It's like a 7/10 fanfiction, not great, not terrible. While certain story beats hit hard emotionally, others frankly fall quite flat. In the Rangers' questline, for example, a certain character dies. Everyone is sad about it, except the player, because the game either failed to or did not realize they *had* to make an effort to build up the player's affection for the character. The writing does a good job justifying the H-scenes, making them "make sense" without oversexualizing the world. Why are the monsters all horny for human women? They are not natural creatures, but alchemical monstrosities created by demonic princes to conquer and control humanity. Most of the other H-scenes are justified by them being actual things that happen or could plausibly happen in the real world. The rest are mostly magical in nature. While the writing is mostly free of anime tropes, there are still a number of recognizable tropes/references. It is clear that the writer had genuine passion for the world and non-pornographic aspects of the story. As I said, 7/10 fanfiction.
+ Art

most of the choice evaporates after the opening section, which is pretty impressive. choosing which order to do content in is not agency

>>3812282 (OP)
+ Art
The non-porn art direction is quite good. Different areas have markedly different feels, and those feels are appropriate to the context of the location. Rathpike island feels like a dusty, hostile place. Valos island feels like a much safer one. Rathpike city instantly feels like a corrupt, dangerous slum, whereas Valos city feels like a prosperous port city of relative safety. The Badlands feels like a hostile desert, the Wash and Narfu village feel like dusty western waterin' holes on the edge of civilization, and the Brugginwood feels like a dark, dangerous forest. Overall, not much to say, no complaints, competent and coherent art.
+ Gameplay
The gameplay is decent, insofar as it exists. The gameplay is mostly about making choices, so check out that section for the core of the game. There is a decent amount of stealth content, which is mostly sneaking around trying not to get caught. There are no major minigames (puzzles, combat, fishing, etc.), which would probably just get in the way anyways to be honest. The gameplay serves it's purpose, is decently enjoyable, and doesn't get in the way.


Neutral:
=There is a LOT of male-dom, and no way to turn it "off". It can mostly be avoided in game-but I personally would prefer an option to turn it off, or better yet, replace it with futa or something. Big ask and ultimately a matter of personal preference, but remember: Like with all porn games, you are fundamentally at the mercy of the creator's fetishes.
=Engine. This game gets avoids most of the worst problems with the RPGMaker engine, but it is still an old, clunky piece of shit. I can deal with that fine, but only because I like the game overall.


Cons: (saving the worst for last, because oh boy is it a dealbreaker)
-No content toggles for most things.

{cont}

>>3812282 (OP)
---- GAME WILL NEVER BE COMPLETED
This game has been in active development for 8 years or more, yet is still on version 0.28.2. The developer is planning to release a new update quite soon, if it hasn't happened already, but it has been 4 months since the last one and the new update only adds 2 new scenes. This is no more than a day or two's worth of work, but it has taken this long because the creator has a TERRIBLE work ethic, and recently came back from a month and a half long beach vacation with her family, which is apparently a common occurance. I get it, people have lives, but REALLY? The way the game handles the unfinished content is a big part of the problem. The creator starts a new major questline, (which may be say, 20 "scenes" [both pornographic and not] long) then chips away at it one quest at a time over the course of YEARS. There are maybe half a dozen major questlines, and only the ranger questline is done (I assume, not actually sure as I haven't started what feels like the final quest). Perhaps the most egregious example is when, at one point in the main quest, a demonic book fixates itself Claire. You realize that it is probably the start of an interesting quest or main quest path only to check your quest log and see "W.I.P. WORK IN PROGRESS CHECK BACK ON QUEST IN FUTURE". The devs literally added an item to the game which seemingly has no purpose aside from hinting at future content which will definitely exist in the future, pinky promise.
The only reason that this actually bothers me and others is because what *does* exist is so good! Imagine if CDPR released The Witcher 3 fully developed, but only up to the point just before/after finding out where dandelion is. Oh, and you get the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine dlcs for free, but only the first 2/3 of the story B&W and halfway through Hearts of Stone. That's basically what the developers are doing with Claire's Quest.

{cont.}

>>3812291
({{cont. from above}}}

It makes it feel more like an advertisement for the devs patreon than an actual attempt to make a completed game. The game is set chiefly on 4 islands, Rathpike, Valos, Sorraine, and Trissengrad. Valos feels about 80% done, while rathpike is perhaps generously about 1/3 completed. Neither of the other islands has even been started. This game is 8 years into active development BTW. Oh, and the devs seem to have plans for content on the mainland, too. The main story is MAYBE completed up to the end of the first act, but honesly I don't think it's even gotten that far yet. If the devs want to finish this game, they probably need to sign on with a publisher.


All in all, for what it is, it is a good game, probably one of the best if not the best adult games out there at the moment, but I cannot recommend buying it due to the above mentioned crucial flaw. *What exists* is great, but it leaves the player ultimately feeling unfulfilled because of the woefully and blatantly unfinished state of the game. If you are interested, feel free to sail the seven seas, but I wouldn't condone giving the dev a dime.

>>3812288
sorry, but as a zoomer who grew up on toddslop, this is the best I have ever seen. Also I dispute that the only choice is the order in which to do content. You get a decent amount of leeway in how you do the content, though I will say that the most impressive aspects of agency are hidden. I found the sandworm encounter on a high-level character, and wanted to go back and try it on a low-level one. Things went completely differently, on a much deeper level than i was expecting. Granted, all those differences were down to my lower stats (which i cheated to see the different ways the quest could proceed), but i think that one minor quest (closer to a random encounter desu) had like 6 or seven different paths that I discovered. I think that's pretty impressive by the standards of the modern game industry desu.

>>3812298
I'm being trolled by the jannies. Every time I type "tee bee haich" it comes out as "desu"

>>3812298
maybe I missed some choices, but most of the time it seemed to boil down to
>view H scene
>skip H scene
Have you tried overgrowth genesis? much more linear but still pretty cool. a bit heavy on the mechanics for something meant to be played with one hand though

porn games dont go here

>>3812407
tell that to the black souls threads

>>3812289
>or better yet, replace it with futa
All opinions on anything, ever, disregarded.