Nutaku asked us to take a look at this game, and here's our opinion.
Ahem, my friends, it’s been a little minute since my last typical review. With all this e-sport hype I was busy training to win the prize money and never have to write another article again, but alas, dreams are just hopes that haven’t died yet. “DuN bE sO eDGy dUdE” Yeah yeah, I know. Listen, this game was the hardest shit I’ve had to review in a while. It pushes and pulls me constantly in different directions, and even as I write this I’m not certain how I should word my feelings on it. But fuck it, we’re going to dive into this review anyway.
Let’s start with the easy stuff. Devious is a visual novel game with action adventure elements. Eh, though it could be considered vice versa. Top Hat Studios, the creators of Karmasutra, developed this game and it debuted on Nutaku on July 26, 2018. (Ay your boi actually caught a game close to its release, you like that?) The game features over forty levels of classic Doom-style action and graphics. You can play as four different characters, each one possessing their own skill set and combat style. Knowing that the visual novel crowd might differ from the action-oriented crowd, the developers placed options in the menu to turn off either the VN or action levels entirely, which I believe to be a smart move.
Art
I liked the art a fair bit, everybody was hot.
Yep. I'd fuck either one.
Gameplay/Audio
I won’t lie, the idea of retro-inspired gaming infused with a porn visual novel definitely got me excited to try out this game, and I was not disappointed. I had plans to try out each character to get a feel for the different battle styles before picking a main, but I enjoyed the caster (Lyss) so much that I never switched away from her. The different enemy types and environments also lured me further into the game, which made me unwilling to waste time substituting out to the other options. I really thought the retro-vibez were captured and brought life, even though I wasn’t even a gamer when these types of games were originally introduced into the industry. On top of that, the soundtrack was absolutely popping. Seriously, whoever did the audio tracks for the dungeon crawling portions the game deserves a raise. The music was an excellent addition to the atmosphere and made a big difference during some backtracking portions of the dungeons that would have otherwise been utterly tedious.
The only complaint I have for this section would be that I could see the levels growing very repetitive quickly if played back to back. Spacing them out more over the stories’s progression with fewer levels that were denser would have been a nice alternative.
Ahhh yes, nostalgia that doesn't actually apply to me, but lets me feel like a hipster.
(Where the fuck is) The Sex
Sit down. Let’s have a little chat. You know I just don’t get… how you could fuck something up so badly. We shouldn’t be having this talk. But somebody, somewhere, has to know that an injustice was done to this fucking category. The scene I witnessed in this game managed to screw itself on every single one of my criterias. The first problem was the timing. When I launch a porn game, I’m probably about to jerk myself off. Makes sense, right? So when I launch a porn game, I’m expecting a solid twenty minutes or less until I’m the first scene (recall that once you give the player ONE good scene, their tolerance for time between future scenes will increase). Do you know how long I played this game before there was a scene? No, you don’t. That’s my bad, let me tell you. 2 hours and 3 minutes. I spent a collective 2 hours and 3 minutes playing the game until my first scene. For a porn game, that’s a tragedy. HOWEVER, I did play through a bunch of the action levels before turning them off, so perhaps it’s my fault. Maybe they designed the game with the intention that if you wanted porn and wanted it fast, you could easily turn off the action part and get to it quickly. I’d argue in that case, it would have been better to have made the levels fewer and harder where each level or two unlocks a scene so I know what I’m working for in those segments. But I digress. I would of simply said “maybe I’m retarded” and moved on from this portion of the review, but the fuck up train continues. My second key grading criteria, the length of the scene, failed miserably as well. I’d say it lasted around four minutes or less and contained no voice acting. In this growing competitive market of porn games, that’s pretty pathetic, especially considering that Quest Failed’s opening sex scene lasted a respectable ten minutes and was fully voiced. So I spent two hours getting to the scene only to have it last four minutes. Now that’s a yikes. But keep in mind that it could of still been salvaged. You see, theme is the most vital element to a great h-scene. Even if it was short and took half my lifespan to reach, the theme could of saved the scene. Don’t get hyped though, because it didn’t. The first scene clearly established a domination theme, but then did nothing to act on or support it. The descriptions were detailed, but typically had nothing to do with domination outside of the body positioning and initial flirting between the two girls. The dialogue was A) few and far between and B) the most generic garbage I’ve seen since Love Witches, as displayed in the picture below. Which took me by surprise, because the dialogue was fine leading up to this! Fuck me, there was a time where two characters didn’t even fuck, they just threatened to kill one another with high amounts of sexual tension, and that segment had way more emotion than this ACTUAL h-scene!
Quick, somebody hand this bitch an Oscar!
This game SHOULD of been an instant 4/5 despite the lack of voice acting due to the unique and fun action adventure elements. You don’t see much of that classic style as it is, and that goes triple for the porn game market. But holy christ the sex scene I encountered was so awful, so boring, and what hurts the most is that the sex should be the primary focus of a PORN game. I think that’s the biggest problem here. This project feels like an action adventure game focused on world building and character interaction that had sex thrown in as an afterthought. Maybe I simply got unlucky and saw the worst scene the game had to offer due to my character choice, but that’s a fault of the game design. Your first h-scene needs to impress and capture your players so they’ll continue to play to unlock future adult scenarios. In any case, based on what I saw I will never be returning to this game for the sex, but I might put in a little more time in the dungeon crawling to try the other characters.
Fuck it, I enjoyed the gameplay so much and hated the sex so much that this game is gonna get two ratings.
As an experience: 3/5
As a porn game: 2/5
“Two ratings? Isn’t that kind of a cop out, you little bitch?” You’re absolutely right, but I can’t in good reason give those shitty sex scenes a 3/5, and neither can I give the action a 2/5. So there you have it.
Will you be trying out this game for the gameplay? Have something on Nutaku you want checked out? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
