Gore Plays Adult Game: Daughter of Essence (version 0.108)

[Gore17]

Hello and welcome to my new(and first) series: Gore Plays Adult Games! Where I do text and picture-based Let's Plays on carefully selected Adult Games.

Now, why am I doing this? Ultimately, it's because the games I select are ones I think are good, or at least decent, gameplay and story-wise, and thus I want to spread awareness of them. Because in an internet/market saturated in low-effort, low-quality porn "games", quality deserves to recognized and rewarded. If only to encourage more to be made.

And so I start of with my first game/series: Daughter of Essence.


I've played it before, and quite enjoyed it. It's not perfect, nowhere near close, but I definitely think it deserves more attention then it's getting. What's more, it doesn't have that much sex, to my recollection anyway, and I don't really remember anything that objectionable. There is some stuff that I'm iffy about, but I'll be skipping/avoiding that anyway, so there should be no issue, making this a safe first pick.

One final thing: you may be wondering why I'm doing a text-based LP. A few reasons, such as a lack of microphone, but really it's because I suffer from a bad speech impediment. A video-based LP's where I talk would be uncomfortable for me physically, and difficult for people to understand.

Edit: considering the number of images, I've taken to putting any time there's more then one image in-between text into spoiler tags. If that's still insufficient, I'll move to spoiling most/all of the images.

 

[Gore17]

And so, with this, I begin my grand experiment.

...Oh fucking hell, the nerves, they hurt so much.


Right from the beginning we get this, our first choice. There's nothing particularly game vital/important at the beginning that I can remember, and this would save a lot of time, but I'm not going for it. Mainly because this is a Let's Play.


Excellent question!


Well, that's a golden canine with horns and a serpent scarf. Nothing odd here!

Mercy tries to address it, but it/they just wander off deeper in.


Sure. Right after I check out all the stuff right next to you. (Nothing interesting)


You really like rhetorical questions don't you?

Spoiler: Freaky sequence

...Well, that's not good. Pack it up everybody, protagonist is dead.


Oh, wait, no, it was just a dream. False alarm.

Mercy here muses that she'd dreamed of the "Golden Creature" before, but the man was new, and the "terrible, blinding light" was "familiar, somehow".

Naturally, this will turn out to be an important vision of some sort, because that's just how these things go.

Spoiler: Boy watching

Well, that was fast. The stable-boy, Elijah according to Mercy, is apparently a hard worker.


Yay, our first skill/tutorial!

And with that, the literal first 2 minutes of the game is done! Hahahaha... Oh what the fuck did I get myself into.

Excuse me while I go have a panic attack. Part's 2 & 3 should be up later today hopefully.

 

[Gore17]

Part 2 is here!

In this, I'll be providing an overview of how character progression works in this. It's nothing revolutionary, but it's worth going over so people understand.

So, to start off with, this is an RPG Maker MV game, so we have the standard equipment:

and stat/level up system:


However, in this game, level up's are not common. Being level 30 by the end of the current end of the game is hard, and since the game is nearing completion of development, I don't expect reaching higher then that to be practical. This is because this enemies in this game generally has a hard limit on how you can fight/kill before they disappear, and the enemies you can see on the map don't respawn (with a notable exception I'll bring up if/when we get to it). And even when it doesn't limit how many you can kill, the game does not provide much EXP.

No, the main way to grow is through this:

In the advancement screen, you can spend SP in batches of 100 to increase individual stats.

For those curious, 100 SP grants:
HP: +20
MP: +4
Everything Else: +1

You generally earn around 30 SP, +/-5 per enemy, and you can also earn SP through another mechanism I'll be mentioning below and showing off in the next part.

As for skills, this is indeed a system where you can have many different skills but only a few equipped at a time, but getting them will be difficult/expensive. I'll go over that more when it becomes relevant, but here's the overview:

Skills are divided into two categories, Essence Magic and "skills". Skills, with the exception of Plunder, are tied to specific weapon types, while Essence Magic is, well, Magic. Both, with only a few exceptions such as Plunder, and the upcoming "Sense Essence" and ...something(I forget it's name), all must be purchased with specific resources. Rare resources at that.

As for those weapon type I mentioned?

Yep, there's a progression system for them as well. The more you attack with them, the more proficient Mercy become. The more proficient Mercy is, the higher her accuracy and crit rate with that weapon is.

Combined with skills being tied to specific weapons, and the fact that the main way for Mercy to grow is through the raising of individual stats, this is a system that encourages specialisation.

But, of course, being too specialized isn't that great of an idea either. To paraphrase the creator(this information is also given in-game, if a little more abstractly):

ATK increases attack and weapon skill damages and allows you to move heavier objects.

DEF reduces incoming damage from attacks and physical-based skills. It's a scaling formula, not a flat reduction. It also allows you to open trapped & buried chests.

AGI increases the rate at which your ATB bar fills, increasing the amount of actions you can perform relative to other battlers. It also allows you to slip into difficult to reach places on the map.

SPI increases the efficacy of damage or healing spells and has some affects on on-map actions reliant on intelligence or perception. Medicine-related events, a couple of different conversations, and finding some hidden items.

RES reduces incoming damage from all non-physical spells and attacks. Same scale as DEF. It also increases the amount of SP you get from resisting the essence during the story.

LUK increases your chances of stealing, increases the rate of negative status effects being inflicted on your enemies, reduces the chance of negative status effects being inflicted on yourself, slightly increases Critical chance and also increases the maximum amount of gold that can be found on the map.

Click to shrink...

As you can see, they all have uses outside of combat.

For those curious, DEF and RES max out for damage mitigation purposes at 207, which provides ~80% reduction. And since then, LUK has become more important for fishing, which is something I'll cover when we get to that. Spoiler: Fishing is a big thing in this game.

Anyway, I do believe that's everything for this post. If I turn out to have forgotten something important with regards to this, I'll come back and edit in, while making a note in the relevant part.

Never mind, just remembered a very important function: Mercy's Limit Gauge, or as this game calls it, Trance, which is a super mode Mercy enters for a limited amount of time.

This is something unique to Mercy in this game, and as you can see there are four different ways of gaining it. IIRC it's mentioned each method results in Trance being different, but I don't know what's different. However, Trance always results in all skills becoming free, and at least for my preferred setting on my previous playthrough, Trance granted double-hit and multiplied experience gains by 1.5, though only if the battle ended while in the Trance state. I exploited the shit out of that.

Mind, Trance progress doesn't carry over between battles, so it takes a while to build up. I have found that it's temporarily still active in the next battle you fight if the last one ended with Trance active, but it disappears fast. You'll be lucky to get a single free skill/double-attack off with it.

Now, we shall return to the story in Part 3.

 

[Gore17]

Sorry for the delay, my mother decided I was going shopping with her, and hours later when it was all done I was too tired to continue. Anyway, onwards!

So, we left off with Mercy having woken up from a crazy dream and begun stalking the stableboy. You may notice a book right below Mercy. It's her brothers old journal, which she feel asleep reading.

Spoiler: Brother detail and the journal

So, right off the bat, we a few details:
1) Mercy's brother is a military man.
2) He joined a nation called "Oldlight".
3) Mercy does not consider herself and/or her home part of Oldlight.
4) Being a tradesman or hunter would have been acceptable jobs for him.
5) Something called "Essence" which appears to determine a persons capabilities. Or it might be superstition! Yeah, probably not, judging by the title.
6) His little sister, presumably Mercy, can apparently "train" these untrainable attributes. This is likely the in-character mechanism behind SP expenditure. Yay, gameplay and story integration!

As Mercy enters the stables, we cut to what appears to be a married couple, the female brooding.

Looks like they were watching Mercy. And they appear to be nobles. Now, why are they keeping an eye on her? I mean, there's a pretty obvious answer, but maybe it'll throw a curveball at us?


You seem very sure about that, something her husband comments on.


Yep, her parents. And lady, that is terrible reasoning.

Spoiler: Marriage?

So, Oldlight soldiers have apparently be around, Mercy's aunt is a religious woman(and one Oldlight is dubious of), Lady Albath wants to marry Mercy off before she's "discovered", and when her husbands points out Mercy will likely flee, this Lady proclaims Mercy can't escape her.

So, family dynamics is emerging: a self-assured mother who thinks she knows everything, including what's best; a passive father who bows to his wife's pressure and a rebellious daughter they're trying to protect from something by ignoring her desires. What fun!

And so we cut back to Mercy, who immediately contradicts her mothers absolute assurance that she's having an affair with the stableboy by thinking she just wants a peek at his Essence. And that's not a metaphor:

Ah, so that's what that "light" was! ...Jesus, that's terrifying.

And so Mercy and Elijah talk a bit, with Mercy encouraging Elijah to take up sailing because:

Which is.. yeah, not exactly the best statement, but fuck it, there's been worse in fiction.

And apparently, the ability to see this "light"/destiny is inherited, because:

Interesting. Since the story was from her father, the obvious implication is that's her paternal grandmother. Which, minor spoiler, it is/was.

Interestingly, Mercy states that the light can "devour" a person, but even worse it can go out, leaving the person an "empty shell." Whether that's metaphorical or literal, I still don't have a clue.

But Elijah demures, saying this is all above him.

So, we have one case of someone mentioning that Mercy is a nice person. Take note of that.

And then....

Well, that was quick, looks like we have our first sexual encounter!

However, before the sexy-times, we have an option:

Remember that alternate way of getting SP? Here it is: not having sex. Instead, Mercy resists her urge to fuck/take the essence of someone, and gains SP.

Yielding, in contrast, provides a sex scene and an amount of "Unrefined Essence" of a particular type. In this case, with Elijah, Mercy would give him a blowjob, and received 5 Unrefined Essence of the Sea. In my experience, Essence of the Sea is easily the most plentiful, but that might just have been how I was playing the first time.

For this playthrough, I'll be resisting every time. You want to see Mercy Yield? Play it yourself.

Anyway, for Resisting, Mercy gains 150 SP. There's no way to get more currently, but later on a higher Resistance stat will grant more SP once you hit certain milestones.

Anyway, turns out resisting prevented a very awkward situation, as a guard comes in to fetch Mercy:

Say hello to Marlan, one of the most important characters in the game, both backstory and story-wise. We'll be dealing with him more later.

Anyway, besides telling Mercy to visit her dad, he also advises her to visit her aunt afterwards, who had sent a sister to fetch her, though Mercy's mother turned her back.

Anyway, Marlan leaves, and Elijah worries while Mercy is brooding:

So, looks like Mercy regularly suffers from headaches. I can relate.

Anyway, stopping here because how long this post is in the post creator.