Loren the Amazon Princess

« Although its visual novel/dating sim nature may put off those who prefer a little more exploration in their RPGs, Loren is an enjoyable high-fantasy epic with some great artwork, memorable characters and a fun, if at times cliched story. »

« For visual novel and turn-based RPG lovers. »

« Brave amazon princess relinquished her wealth, prestige and title and set off to find her missing mother. Unfortunately no one drowned her in the swamp and she arrived on Steam. [05/2014, p.67] »

« Loren does a great job of mixing turn based combat with a typical visual novel. In fact I would say that out of all of the visual novels I have played where they tried to add in some form of game play Loren did it far better than any other. It was actually well thought out and fun. It’s simple to get used to but has lots of options when you look at the RPG mechanics as well. You have lots of different attacks you can learn for the various characters that will suit a lot of different play styles. The visual novel mechanics were solid as well. Instead of reading lots of different dialogue responses and picking the one you want you pick one of three themes between joking; forceful and friendly. Once you pick one then it will go into the full response. It reminded a bit of the Mass Effect games where you were given an idea on what your response would be without spelling out each option beforehand. I do wish that dialogue options branched the story more, as it is I only spotted a few choices you run into. Those were who you romanced, who you were friendly towards; and a couple options later in game. Overall though for all the conversations you partake in there isn’t much to alter story wise. That being said the story was very good as were the characters. There were a good amount of settings and races and the pacing was good. The visuals were well done with a good style and use of colour. There was a mention of voice acting on various sites but I never noticed any in my play through. One thing I will say is that near the end of the game there were events that could dictate the death of certain characters and while I won’t spoil anything I will say that I really don’t understand how it was handled. It seemed almost random and not really mentioned after the fact. I also noticed not every side quest got added to the quest log. I played Loren on Linux. It never crashed and I didn’t notice any spelling errors. You can manually save whenever you want and there were forty eight save slots. You can’t change the difficulty once you start the game which is a shame seeing as the only thing that would effect is the combat and you don’t start getting into that until maybe twenty minutes into it and won’t see harder combat until well after that. Not being able mid game could waste valuable time of the player as they adjust to which one suits them and start over each time. Game Engine: Ren’Py 6.99.10.1227 Graphics API: OpenGL Game Version Played: 1.3.4 GPU Usage: 0-23 % VRAM Usage: 588-758 MB CPU Usage: 4-16 % RAM Usage: 2.9-4.4 GB I have played several games from Winter Wolves and I would call Loren their magnum opus. It hits all the notes **** visual novel while incorporating a great turn based combat system as well as great RPG progression skills for each character. While not perfect it is as close as it can get and nothing that was a negative came anywhere close to harming my enjoyment of it. I finished the game in seven hours and forty eight minutes. The current price tag of $27.99 CAD for the deluxe version is well worth it. My Score: 9.5/10 My System: Intel i7-6700 | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | XFX RX 590 8GB Fat Boy | Mesa 22.2.3 | Garuda | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 6.0.10-zen1-zen »

« A good VN/RPG/Dating sim, and any fan of one of those genres should try it out »

« The game that made me realize that not all visual novels are absolute garbage that only weebs play. It's surprising, because other games Winter Wolves have made (looking at you, Planet Stronghold) are absolute trash. Lots of choices, neat and simple combat, and the point and choose options are spread out with the combat enough so that it doesn't just feel like a choose your own adventure novel. Very satisfying. I'd give it a 10, but I couldn't romance the hot succubus and that still angers me. »

« Like a 2d version of dragon age, but better written, with more developed and interesting characters, a sense of humour, and less overblown. The only criticism i would have is that i think the team could have ditched the sub-Tolkien fantasy memes that the game retains (orcs, elves etc). I think they definitely have the imagination to come up with a world completely of their own. »

« A nice little indie game with a decent storyline and some charming Anime style graphics. If you like ogling scantily clad Anime characters, this will be right up your alley. Unfortunately the game is rather short (it probably took me around 20 - 25 hours or so to finish), there are no animated graphics or proper cut scenes in it and there is little in the way of exploration. You get a quest, you go straight to the relevant destination on your map, it shows you a graphic of the room you are currently in, you have a couple of fights, and that's it - quest done. This is basically an interactive story with a few turn-based fights, a bit of shopping at merchants for new gear, a lot of text to read and that's about it. The quality of the writing is not bad but the text is a bit infantile in places and there are a number of grammatical errors. I also found the interface a bit tedious when shopping at merchants and comparing what they had in stock with what my characters were carrying when I wanted to upgrade their gear. All characters have 2 sets of skills which can be raised through 4 levels. For mage characters, the skills are very similar and could have been more varied - only the damage type varies (eg. 300% x your normal damage to one enemy but with fire or ice or earth etc). MINOR SPOILER - if you have the Castle of N'Mar expansion, you can get a companion named Chambara who is a necromancer with the ability to change her form (when you meet her), but nowhere is this ability reflected in any of her skill trees! Weird. You can also have in-game straight or gay romances (a la Bioware) and the nice thing is, when you finish the game, it gives you the option to replay using a cheat mode, so you can quickly get through the story if you want to experience alternative outcomes. All achievements are tracked and logged via nicely illustrated cards which appear on your achievements list. I agree though with the other reviewer that the game would have merited a higher score had it been pitched more at the budget end of the market. »

« A story full of surprises, of love, betrayal ad death. Usually not a fan of visual novels, this game made me change the way I view them. And a very strong ending. BioWare beware. »

« This is a very nice little game. It's very story heavy (which I enjoyed) and the battle system is fairly decent. I would have given the game a higher score, but for $24.99 I expected more from this game. For $14.99 or so, I would have given it an 8 or a 9. Wait for a sale and you'll definitely get your money's worth. »