Super Lesbian Animal RPG Review

I've finally finished all my assignments for the semester meaning I can finish Super Lesbian Animal RPG(SLARPG)!!! It a cute little game I picked up a few months ago even though I've barley played RPG games before, the themes, story and queer representation sounded interesting. Additionally I had heard that it was a good RPG for beginner players like me.

Difficulty

I felt the difficulty of the game was really good, the difficulty curve used in the game felt like it aligned pretty well with my natural progression, so while there were designated monster dens designed for letting you grind XP and level up, I never needed to use them and the game never forced me to grind in order to be strong enough for fights.

As I progressed into the later acts, the battles became more interesting and creative, sometimes they kind of felt like a puzzle where you could "solve" the fight and figure out a good strategy depending on the situation.

In total I game-overed 5 times, its a bit frustrating when you lose since you have to wait through a little sequence and get kicked back to the main menu each time, especially because all 5 of those losses were all from the same particularly difficult fight, but overall, the game wasn't too punishing so this didn't happen often

The game has a little additional guidance feature that can be switched on and off from the pause menu, I had it on when I started the game but turned it off because the first time I actually saw it being used was when it just spoiled the solution to a puzzle before I even had a chance to solve it myself. While I appreciate they have the feature so players don't get stuck, I would personally recommend leaving it off and switching it on if you get stuck rather than having it on from the beginning like I did

Linux Issues

When I started playing, I was using Kubuntu (An experience ive detailed in my post about linux) and playing the game through Proton on Steam. Unfortunately I found a couple of annoying but ultimately insignificant bugs:

1. The texture filtering on Linux became blurry when the window was scaled to any size other than 1x, this issue is not present on windows where the pixels scale cleanly and sharply, there's no way to fix this on Linux as far as I could find
2. The sounds played as characters speak text into text boxes causes significant lag in Linux, the only solution i found is to... turn of text sound 🤷‍♀️ I'm not really sure why this issues occurred but my best theory is that it could have something to do with the underlying usage of RPG Maker VX

Game Engine Choice

As a game developer, I do wonder if RPG Maker held this game back in a couple of other areas too: specifically things like the lack of being able to use the mouse to navigate menus and the clunky system of having to manually equip a spellbook before having to go back out to the characters skill menu to check what the spellbooks' spells are. However I do understand if this decision was made to allow more people to be able to contribute to the game.

Other Minor Frustrations

There were quite a few times were I found myself lost and wasn't sure what to do or where to go next. The quest system helped resolve this a little bit but I found navigating the world though maps that had to be manually opened and analyzed to be a bit annoying, though perhaps that more a general RPG thing that other players enjoy? I'm not super sure. Likewise the fast travel system employed by the game did come in handy a few times but was limited by the fact that I found it difficult to remember where the fast travel points were placed as they were generally tucked away out of view

In some areas the visual clarity was quite rough, To be fair, These were some of the most visually interesting/artistic areas in the game but they could also be tricky to navigate and a bit hard on the eyes. An accessibility option to simplify these areas and/or reduce animations would be appreciated

Occasionally the music got a bit repetitive for the bigger dungeons that I spent more time in but this wasn't too much of an issue since most of the games soundtrack is really good~

Sometimes I found combat could become painfully slow due to having to watch slow attack and ability animations play out, this was especially noticeable when attacks affected multiple enemies and the game individually pauses on each target to play the animation and show how much health they lose

I did have to look up a guide once for the game, near the end as there was no indication of how to get past a certain hurdle. I wont say here because spoilers! but if you're playing it and get really stuck, here's the walkthrough I found written by the developer: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973544581, hope it helps!

Cool Things + Tips & Tricks

Gold is given out very generously, don't be afraid to spend it trying out new gear and spellbooks! Likewise, you get a ton of items for healing and mana regeneration, resist the urge to hoard all your items! you don't need to save them up for the final boss! (and its pretty cheap to buy more if you find you do need them later)

The game uses a neat "Star Power" system for the main characters where you charge SP when you do actions relevant to each characters archetype, I think this is a nice way to encourage the player to use each character to their strengths since the SP can then be used for super powerful abilities and attacks!

The pacing of the game generally felt really good, In the earlier Acts, new abilities are handed out at a nice consistent rate so you always had new stuff to play with and just as things started to get slightly dull at the end of Act 3, Act 4 started and introduced a lot of new ideas to keep things fresh and fun!

Cuteness and Story!

The story for the game is really sweet and a large part of what kept me interested the whole way though, there's so many cute little touches and adorable scenes where the characters interact, as well as more emotional parts that more deeply explore the characters and their weaknesses.

I don't want to spoil too much of the story and cute things hidden in the game but as a teaser I will tell you that the art thought the game is great, even for the enemies, and you can kiss your allies during battles which provides buffs and gets tracked as a counter on your save file :3

Overall Thoughts

Overall I had a really fun time playing SLARPG and while I did have to pause my playthorugh due to the busyness of the uni semester, I was easily able to pick it back up at the end and not feel too lost in where I was up to in the story. I believe my playtime of the game was about 10 hours after subtracting the time(s) I accidently left the game running and I think that's just the right amount that allows the game create an engaging world and story without feeling dragged out. All in all, I highly recommend the game to anyone who thinks it sounds interesting~ hope you enjoy! nya!

Side note: I'm on Bluesky!

I've just started using it recently and so far it feels like a really nice place compared to the other social media options available at the moment, plus i can filter it to just show me cat pictures!

If you want to, Feel free to follow me on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/tabbycat.dev! I don't have a comments system on my website yet so if you want to leave one there, or send me a message, go for it!

I'll probably just be posting random stuff like announcements for new posts here on my website and reposting stuff from friends I find funny. Maybe even some cat photos too!