Romancelvania Review: How Do You Want Me to Love You?

Very sexy monsters and monsters await us in this new proposal from The Deep End Games. The premise is a mix of genres: a combination of action and platforming a la metroidvania with dating sim. Will be able?

Romancelvania is available on PC, Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.

MONSTER LOVES

In this adventure we take the role of Drac, a vampire (we can choose once the tutorial is completed) who after 100 years of rest decides to wake up and go back to his old ways. Having spent so long without doing any activity doesn’t come cheap, since Grimm (the grim reaper in this game) decides as punishment (?) to make him participate in a reality show. It doesn’t have to be a serious story or make much sense, the tone is always pretty absurd. In this program, 12 loving suitors await us, all of them very different, of different shapes and colors. For all tastes and fetishes above all.

With these we can form romances, make friends and even get along badly, that depends on us, our tastes and decisions. “The program” is actually an excuse to let ourselves go for a walk around the castle and its surroundings looking for our suitors. The game “works” like a metroidvania, we will be able to explore the castle, level up, get better equipment, etc. In the middle we are going to gradually meet the characters with whom we can have romance.

Our potential lovers are going to ask us for things, give us quests and challenges to do in the castle and gain their trust. As we get to know them better, we will be able to ask them out and go on dates. The dialogue system is quite simple, similar to what was implemented for fallout 4 (and which was criticized for a good reason too), where we can only choose the tone or type of response, without knowing what exactly Drac is going to end up saying. This makes what happens to us sometimes be roulette, unless we learn the dialogues by reloading the save, since it is not always easy to predict how our suitors will react.

All of our potential lovers are a sexy version of some classic monster or mythological being. They have their different tastes and personalities, each one will react very differently to our advances, so it’s up to us to get to know them little by little and learn what each one likes to conquer them. The Cast (as the game itself refers to them) is very diverse and colorful, several follow classic stereotypes of the genre, but the result is very varied and inclusive.

A MISERABLE LITTLE PILE OF SECRETS

Not everything is love, happiness and joking, romancevania It has too many technical problems. Not even know where to start. In my personal experience I have to say that hopefully the game… works. It took me at least 20 minutes to get the pad working, which works flawlessly with any other game.

When I start it, I am surprised that the game doesn’t run well at all, despite the fact that my specs should cover it perfectly. If at some point it reached 30 fps, you had to say thank you and pray that the performance doesn’t drop. Touching the provided settings failed to make it work any better.

Then there are several things that go quite wrong mechanically, if we jump on an enemy, 80% of the time Drac will be suspended / a in the air. Many times it hangs in that state forever, with the only solution being to close the game, which causes us to lose a lot of progress. The game also has physics that work in ways that are beyond human comprehension (this would explain the theme that they are all monsters), sometimes hitting an enemy will send them flying with a force that is noticeable to the eye which is something that should not happen , among other similar interactions.

Even if the game runs without crashing, the action part isn’t very brilliant. Enemies generally don’t do much more than stand still and move to touch us for damage. The combat doesn’t do much to make the game enjoyable either. Although we have several weapons, the movesets are limited, many times the movement does not look good with the low framerate and the effects that they chose to use. Drac’s movement is not very comfortable either, the jump feels very strange and on some maps it moves the camera too much, not allowing us to calculate distances well.

The game doesn’t look very good. I personally notice an inconsistency in the art direction of the designs. I really like the artwork of this game, but this doesn’t translate well to the 3D models, which sometimes look quite uncanny. Our new castle and its exteriors, where we are going to spend almost the entire adventure, almost completely lack lighting, which is why shortly after starting we are given a bat that helps us illuminate. With one hand on the heart, stop doing this. Put on lights, the darkness doesn’t help at all, apart from that I’m going to raise the brightness to the handle because I WANT TO SEE WHAT’S THERE.

Another criticism that I think is quite important to mention is that despite this game working as a metroidvania, we do not have a map of each area and its rooms, something normal and almost necessary for the genre. We have a general map of the castle and its surroundings, but we can’t use it to get our bearings. In this sense, it doesn’t feel so much like a metroidvania, even though its name partially sells it that way.

The humor and dialogue of this game is something that can be very hit or miss, there is always a joking and exciting atmosphere, so it requires a very specific mentality to enjoy it, not all of us are for that, or not always. The idea is also that everything be a comedy. There were many times that I laughed out loud, but many times that I cringed a bit. An example of this is how the game ABUSES the well-known “airhorn” sound effect for…basically everything that happens. Do we give our sidekick bat? AIRHORN Did the dialogue get spicy? AIRHORN Do we go from one tutorial menu to another? AIRHORN I personally feel that with a lot of support from the devs and a few patches, romancevania it could end up being a good experience, and being a much better game. But at the time of publication of this note, it is not in good condition.