Once Ever After

Absolutely superb game.

Just in terms of gameplay alone, I love class systems where every party member can learn multiple classes and then synergize and mix and match different skills between the classes they've learned. It creates a great sense of constant progression. I also love that I never felt there was one particular party member that completely overshadowed the others, or was useless except for their "role." Specifically what comes to mind is I immediately compared Wilhelm to Hilstara from TLS. Both are "tanks", but where I feel like Hilstara never achieves the damage potential to match her other party members, Wilhelm can easily match or even exceed the other "DPS" party members, especially once he gets some late game skills and gear.  And this goes for the other party members too. There are obviously some roles better suited for each character, but it always felt natural and I never felt locked into a particular class.

And the writing is great. It starts a little rough as Sierra Lee really likes to grind into the themes she's parodying, but once you leave the initial starting area, the game opens waaaaay up. 

I was also really glad to see the story balance so many themes so well. As someone that is a little prudish in my personal life but still enjoys erotic games, I really appreciate how well this game handled the paradoxical nature of wanting sex but also seeking personal growth as an individual and the two don't need to be mutually exclusive. Ingrid's growth beyond her role as a sex object, but also embracing and not being ashamed of her sexiness is the honestly the best portrayal of these themes coming together I've ever seen.

And going back to my personal prudishness, I have to give great praise to how well handled the character Wilhelm is in this story. In NSFW games, it's typically the trend to only escalate the sex as much as possible. And although Wilhelm does experiment from time to time, he makes it very clear that he's not entirely comfortable with the promiscuity of the other characters. He stays grounded and the other characters respect his boundaries when he draws them. It's such a superb juggling of what I had always seen as conflicting themes. Truly master class writing. 

Overall, I can't recommend this game enough. Whether you're there for the NSFW content, the writing, or looking for an actual RPG with great mechanics, Once Ever After manages to do all of it and blend it into a cohesive experience. I'm so glad I got to experience this.

Hmm. So this game REALLY does not want to work with my controller. I'm using a pretty standard logitech PC controller, works with every other RPGmaker game I've tried, but not this one. 

EDIT: Well, Joy2Key works with it just fine, so no biggie I guess. 

Anyway, played an earlier version of this and have been waiting for the full version to land for awhile. Very excited to play it in full, I love twists on fairy tales and the writing and art are both wonderful~

hi! Im really enjoying this game so far!!! I want to ask how i can put on the cloaks i was given in the beginning, that make me very strong so i can focus on the story? i somehow cant use any of the items in the armor list