Ah yes, Alien Quest: EVE. Possibly one of the most popular H-game ever... I don't know why. This metroidvania is honestly one of the most broken mess I've ever played, and it shouldn't be. The idea, concept and execution was there, but it all goes down hill as you play the game.
+=+Pros: This game has its fair share of good points, but it is no where near saving itself from all of the cons.
-Art and animations: This game has one of the best animations, art and aesthetic out there. The environment is super good, fitting for a metroidvania sci-fi theme game. The animations is super smooth and well-animated. The atmosphere is great, all of the lightings give lots of life (or lack of it) in certain areas. Grimhelm's artstyle is here too, and it's fantastic, much like their previous works.
-H-content: Along with the good work in the art, the H-scenes are plenty and each is very good. I admit, I don't like aliens stuff a lot, but this one is very good for anyone who likes that thing. Heck, this game almost convince me to like alien sex. The number of H-scenes is great too, lots and lots of them, not just with your character but also female enemies too. Seeing the enemy fuck each other from time to time do help with the "world-building" in here. Only real problem I have with Alien Quest: EVE is that there's no real mechanic that ties the gameplay with the sex part of the game. Sex gives no advantages or disadvantages, and is more of a way to implement sex scenes in the game. Still, the amount and quality of H-scenes make up for that.
-Sounds: This game choice of sounds is very good actually. All of the effects really pops out and is really good to listen to. The enemy dying sounds is good, the level up sound creates a feeling of accomplishment, the special attack sounds, etc. All of them are very high quality. The game also doesn't feature any sort of music, it has ambient drones instead, which really helps elevate the atmosphere of the game.
-=-Cons: So the game does a lot of good things, and is a great upgrade from Grimhelm's previous works, so it's good right? WRONG.
-Gameplay: This. Game. Features. The WORST gameplay decisions I've ever seen from an H-game.
--Movement: The game's movement is okay, at least. It features your standard things like sliding, super jump, double jump (which acts as a spinning attack). There's also speed up and a pretty smart drill attack thing that drains your MP but lets you zoom through a room really fast. But the flaws comes from lack of usage during battle. These things can't really be used during a battle, something like a roll, or a backdash. "But wait, no, this game do have a backdash", yeah, but it doesn't work in battle because you can't cancel it from your attacks, making it functions exactly as if you faced the other way and slide, aka backdash is useless. Speaking about combat.
--Offense: Is brainless and badly executed. There's barely any combat mechanics that you can use to strategize. There's a 4-hit standard attack, works both air and ground, but your crouching and down-air/diagonal-down-air attack is only one hit. You also have a ranged attack that consumes MP, and at first, that's all you get, but as you go through the game, you unlock more special abilities that uses MP. But guess what? Grimhelm thought it was a good idea to NOT make these special weapons scale with your stats. This means that as soon as you unlock a new special weapon, the old one because completely useless and continue to be so up until the end of the game. Even then, it's also a no-brainer to use these weapons, as it's very powerful. Heck, there's a special ability that you unlock that gives a shield, aka, invincibility for almost 3 whole seconds. Even you want to be "fair" and not use them, the problem will soon emerges as you notice
--Enemy: This is one of the worst part of the game. Enemy design and boss design is complete dogwater. This isn't always the case, if you pick this game up for 1 hour and then get a save with all of the gallery and not proceed to the later areas of the game. At the beginning, this game clearly was going on a good path. Enemies are rather simple but effective, fair but still pose enough threats to you. As you progress, things get a bit... worse. Hard enemies that functions kinda like mini-bosses suddenly become common enemies, and most, if not ALL of the enemies later on requires some sort of way to "cheese" it. These enemies have super annoying AI and attacks that forces you to not have fun whatsoever. There's no direct combat or skills that is required to get max reward from each encounter, you'll have to use in any way available completely avoid or cheap-out the battle. Remember what I said about it being a no-brainer to use special abilities? Well, it's even worse than that, because most encounters REQUIRE those skills you obtain if you want to have a chance at beating them. At the endgame, this problem ascends to the point that if you don't use said abilities you are guaranteed to have absolutely ZERO chance at surviving any room if you don't want to run away. Enemies here now have attack with super fast speed and are near undodgeable and/or unreactable that completely forces you to use Shield. Even so, there are the freeze beams, which not only removes shield, but also completely freezes you while you're IN THE AIR (and this isn't the only way). So means no jumping, always spam shield, put the enemy in a corner and spam your normal attack on them. Does that sounds fun? NO. And this applies to the bosses as well, the first ones are pretty ok but the final boss is literally a cheese battle, where you legit can't win without using shield and drill attack on her. Either Grimhelm got lazy and didn't playtest the game, or they have absolutely ZERO idea on difficulty scaling or scaling in general.
--Consumables: So other than special abilities that are enforced, you know what else are? Healing and MP potions. They drop at a very low rate at first, but later on, a "common" enemy almost always drop 1-3 potions. This is very relevant because it shows that not only Grimhelm's scaling is terrible, they ACTIVELY don't care to fix it and feed you a bunch of potions for you to spam and not die/speed through the bosses and enemies instead.
-Overall gameplay: Absolutely terrible, Grimhelm did not bother to create a good and balanced experience half-way into the game, and now it's the most unfair, void of fun, brainless gameplay I've ever seen. This demolishes any form of appreciation I had about this game, not even the sex scenes and art can save it, at all.
-Misc.: There's also some small things I don't like about this game. Well, the game still have some bugs. For example: double jumping next to a wall and pressing two horizontal buttons can let us you briefly touch the wall as if it's the ground, giving you two more jumps. This lets me skip the game at a few part and although it is fun, it's still a bug regardless. Next thing is how not transparent the game is at one part. See, if you pick the first "Augment", aka the thing that changes your type of standard attacks to things like poison, ice, etc. That "Augment", which in this case, a star that makes your weapon's hitbox bigger, is automatically equipped. But the later ones aren't, so you have to manually change it. This caused confusion to me, as I didn't know Augments can be changed (or how it works in the beginning at all) and makes my character really weak even in later areas (this doesn't matter at all because like I said, special abilities is busted and enforced to be used). Finally... the game's save. So when the game start, it defaults to the "New Game" button. And guess what, the game will override your save as soon as you pick it and even BEFORE the game starts (aka the first cutscene), the save is already overridden. Not to mention, you can't save your progress into your very limited 3 save slots, and is basically forced to play that one save throughout the game. This save feature is completely bullfeces, but it's not the worst (still would have wish it's better).
_=In conclusion: Alien Quest: EVE has SO MUCH potential to be an amazing H-game, but it flops at the gameplay so hard, that I seriously do not enjoy it at all. This may be an H-game, but if you're gonna make me go through it to see the gallery, make the gameplay GOOD. If you want to, sure, play for 30 minutes and then ask for a full save online, but if you have intentions to play the game start to finish, either prepare to scream in agony or DO NOT play it at all. Do not recommend, 4.5/10.
