Village healer-come-goddess tries to run home life, heal villagers and save mankind while being wooed by 4 amorous gods.

Within the first five minutes of starting Gods Of Love I had been propositioned by a moderately attractive fella informing me that I should go with him to his place so that he could have his way with me. Naturally, my reaction to this was a less polite version of “on yer bike matey”. That was certainly the only thing he stood any chance of riding after that introduction.

However, did this have the effect of putting me off the game? No. By then (and bear in mind that this was literally a few minutes in) I had already been charmed by the delightful graphics, a simple and clear UI that offered every function that I have come to expect from a good visual novel, and an MC who appeared to have enough about her personality that it was going to be easy to self-insert without feeling affronted by any imposed character naivete.

Story

In a time of rampant disease when people across the world are dying in droves, Thalia is in great demand. For she is not merely a skilled healer, but a miraculous one. Our story begins with her visiting her “secret place” to collect herbs which she uses to create fake tinctures to cure the sick. “Fake” because she uses them as a visual diversion away from the truth – that she has been granted magical healing powers but is not permitted to reveal this to anyone.

Whilst there she is visited upon by an old man claiming to be seriously ill, and she sets about curing him. However, the old man then drops his disguise to reveal himself as none other than Lysander, the God Of Love, who recognises her deceit and challenges her on it; learning of her secret in the process. As gods go, Lysander is a gossip; and cannot resist revealing the truth of Thalia’s powers to his three brothers, all of whom see this as a sign that she is a new goddess, and all therefore want to woo her without delay.

Throughout the following period, Thalia learns that the brothers are 100 years beyond the conclusion of a war between two of them which involved all four; and which has left a simmering hatred between them. Such open strife between the gods has now spilled out into the mortal world, causing the spread of fatal disease among the humans. Caught between healing a never-ending stream of patients in her village, bringing up her younger sister and dealing with the amorous advances of four immortal gods; can Thalia also find a way to bring about cessation of hostility between them and therefore save the otherwise certain demise of mankind?

Gameplay Experience

Initially I was delighted by the game. It is easy to see where the budget went. The artwork is outstanding, probably the best I have seen in a Ren’py created visual novel. Consistency between the appearance of sprites and their CGs is both excellent and a rare treat in itself. I have seen some damning comments about re-use of CGs, but honestly I cannot see the problem. Not only are they a delight to view, but nobody ever complains about backgrounds being used repeatedly in any VN and they are often not as good as these. I firmly support the concept here of fair use.

The UI is simple, cleanly presented and responds quickly. I was particularly pleased to find a backstep option available (by pressing PgUp) after playing a run of novels without this most basic of functions. There is no history log, but when you can jump back so swiftly, the need for one is all but eradicated. A 5 page gallery is also included (with 30 scenes to fill) and an assistive voice function (which I confess to not trying out).

I thoroughly enjoyed my first route through the game, despite not being too pleased with the only initial romance response options being effectively “Yes” or “Not sure”. Thalia generally knows her mind better than this, I felt that was a bit of a cop-out. The story does fail in a couple of places in that you are going to get shoehorned into a romance with one of the gods whether you want it or not. True, you can ultimately withdraw from a commitment, but you cannot live your life through the story without becoming forcibly involved in a liaison along the way; effectively giving Thalia restricted free will.

Subsequent plays through were a little less enjoyable, partially because most of the story had already revealed itself (although there are plenty of unique branches to enjoy; some of the passages are repeated within each route but are treated as being different so you cannot skip them) and partly because even when on an alternate route, you were being told the same thing from a different character perspective, which just wasn’t enough to make it feel fresh.

The other story failing is a bit of a strange one. What we have is an enjoyable tale, on the whole; and yet it is like a book with some pages torn out. There are a number of places where we have suddenly changed locations and moved on and whilst there is no information hole as a result; it nonetheless leaves a feeling of having “missed a bit”.

Text quality generally is excellent. The font choice is clear and very easy to read. It took a while to find any typos or grammatical mistakes at all, so much so that it became something of a personal minigame to spot them. Whilst ultimately there are some, they are so few and far between that you stand an equal chance of finding a politician who would give you a straight answer to a question. Sadly there was one horrible language error (repeated three times) which may not bother you but which annoyed me intensely and made the characters responsible appear stupid to me, like they did not understand themselves what they were saying.

Verdict

Whilst I did leave Gods Of Love running on a couple of occasions when I wasn’t there, my active game time would have still hit double figures even if I hadn’t, which is a respectable return on investment for this genre. Pricing is mid-range and as mentioned, it’s clearly the visuals which have used the budget and you do get good value from them. Despite the enforcement of romantic engagement at the front end of the game, the MC is likeable, strong and intelligent, which always helps. The passages that you should be able to skip but can’t are not too painful due to the very swift responsiveness of the UI. It’s easy to fast-click through them without overrunning. Those for whom story depth and involvement is everything are likely to feel dissatisfied that they have not been given enough to really get their teeth into for their money, but as an overall package I do feel that this isn’t too far away from being at fair value.

If you can catch it on sale at something like 20% off, then I believe that this would be enough to fully justify the price tag and give you a few evenings of reasonably enjoyable entertainment.

Otome Lovers wishes to thank Y Press Otomes for providing a free review copy of this game.

Review also posted on Steam ➞