What a ride!
Once Ever After's review
Developer: Sierra Lee
Genre: JRPG
Reviewed version: 0.62
Censored: No
Patch Needed: No
OS: Windows
Language: English
Once Ever After is Sierra Lee's latest work and one of the games I was looking forward to playing—and reviewing—the most. Of course, I couldn't help but expect a lot from this game, but it turned out to be much better than I imagined.
Pros
Excellent story
Solid gameplay
Pretty art
Nice soundtrack
Neutral
H-Scenes aren’t very frequent, and the gallery is available once you beat the game.
Cons
It sometimes takes a bit “long” to load when moving between maps or before a battle
Story
The game puts the player in the shoes of Ingrid, a Red Riding Hood-like girl who runs some long and hard errands here and there. It isn't until the mayor asks her to help the Order of Tales with a task that she discovers there are different tales with different versions of herself. This throws her into an existential crisis and, to make things worse, the Order is now dead set on vanishing her world since her discovery altered the flow of the story. She now has to hop from tale to tale to reach a safe place where she can stay and get strong enough to stop the Order from destroying her world.
I expected it to be a porn parody of Red Riding Hood full of double entendres and silly moments, but it was way more than that. It quickly becomes a coming-of-age story where the protagonist goes from being a brainless bimbo to becoming intelligent and strong enough to change her fate. Needless to say, I loved every second of it. It even reminded me of Princess Tutu at times, though I can’t explain why because it’d be spoilers.
Gameplay
The combat is fun, and the overall gameplay is solid, but I liked the game mechanics outside of it the most. Each character has different archetypes you can change anytime and get new ones by progressing in the story or paying some NPCs to teach them. Moreover, you can equip any skills you learn to your character, though there's a limit on how many skills they can have. Now that I mention it, it'd have been nice if there was a skill tree for each archetype. It's not a deal-breaker, but it'd have made it easier to know how to unlock some specific skills.
I liked the inclusion of quest logs and how it helps you keep track of what you need to do if Real Life gets in the way and you stop playing for a while. Moreover, some quests have hidden stats that increase according to how close you follow its instructions, and on some occasions, you are rewarded for doing the exact opposite of what it asks, like in the Good Girls quest.
To no one’s surprise, it runs fine on every PC unless you're trying to run it on a computer so old it might as well be a relic. That said, you might want to install it on an SDD because it sometimes takes a few seconds too long to load when moving between maps and before battles, regardless of how powerful your PC is.
Audiovisuals
Any porn game worth its salt has some eye-catching art, and this one is no exception. The custom sprites of the characters and backgrounds are very well done, and the characters' portraits (and, by extension, the H-scenes) are great; I love their design. Moreover, there's a good chunk of manservice too. There are no bland-looking guys or ugly bastards here. Instead, it features dangerously hot dudes, DILFs, or guys so burly and endowed you're glad the world they are in sometimes operates on porn logic.
That said, this game doesn't bombard you with sex scenes every 15 minutes as other "plot"-oriented games do. They only appear when it makes sense storywise, so there are no GOR scenes and the like. Moreover, you better be patient if revisiting old H-scenes is your thing because the gallery is unlocked once you defeat the final boss.
As for the soundtrack, I'd be lying if I said I didn't like it; it's fantastic. Each of the songs is nice to listen to and fits well with the level they play in and its atmosphere. There's a quiet and atmospheric song for the forest level, a gloomy one for the darker tales, high-paced tracks for the battles, etc. Furthermore, some tracks are remixed or slowed down when you move from one part of a level to another to fit the mood. Take the forest's track, for example. It's much slower when you get to the deepest part of the forest, and a gloomier version of it plays when you reach the deforested map.
Verdict: Masterpiece
I don't tend to overly praise games, but Once Ever After is so good I'd make any hater of RPG Maker games play it to change their mind. I even enjoyed it so much that I wished it'd never end, and I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being the best game I played this year. Don't miss it if you're looking for well-written JRPGs; you'll enjoy it.