Release your inner vamp!

Overview

Saint Ceri is set in a fictional (presumably) Welsh setting where we are placed as MC Ceridwen, a former land labourer who has been chosen by her god Tristin for sainthood, taken by the church to be canonized, and now finds herself persistently buried in religious duties bestowed upon her by a self-serving clergy; giving blessings to the poor for money, in order to unintentionally fund their greedy, lazy lifestyle.

As an Englishwoman, I love that the story is given a Welsh setting, including the names. This is SO refreshing in a visual novel, and for those who have come across the Welsh language in passing and are immediately apprehensive at the prospect – don’t panic! It’s merely 3 character names affected, (along with the base location which you can read as seen, even though a native would either be amused or appalled, but, hey, reading in the privacy of your own space, right?) of which the MC’s is the most difficult – and even that is shortened to Ceri which can be pronounced “Kerry”.

Story

The actual story of Saint Ceri is pretty straightforward: ordinary woman put into extraordinary situation. Ceri is revered as a holy icon by the public and used by the clergy for their convenience. As a long-since widowed former serf, her unmarried status is anomalous to the beliefs of the elder priests who view an unmarried woman – especially one of her position – as sacrilegious, and are keen to marry her off to someone “suitable” as quickly as possible, preferably before the spring festival to be held in a mere two weeks’ time.

Their choice is the disciplined, obedient, repressed and innocent junior priest Kyros (there you go Welsh worriers, there’s a Greek named fella, too!) who is very fond of Ceri on the quiet, but does not have the guts to openly tell her as much. Joining Kyros as potential love interests are her paladin protector Bryn, a more outgoing, confident individual who is utterly devoted in his duties to Ceri.. and maybe not only his duties; and the supposedly debauched Duchess Eira, another widow who is areligious and distinctly broad minded.

Strictly following the basic story, Ceri’s job is to bring hope to the masses through her blessings from their Goddess; and her ultimate aim to change the way the clergy does not work into one that works for the greater good – but have no doubts that this is an adult otome aimed directly at a feminine audience largely starved of female gaze, spicy visual novels. The underlying story is merely a support for the player’s real aim – to develop a relationship with one, two, or all three of the available love interests, and to reap the pay-off of a graphic and textually detailed intimacy scene or two along the way.

Graphics, Sounds & U/I

Backdrop styles seem to differ. Some, like the opening church scene and Eira’s garden (below) boast exceptional detail and brilliant use of lighting, whilst others are simpler and give the impression of having been hand created using brush strokes; although they are still perfectly functional.

Sprites are large and front-facing. They have different expressions and animated eyes, including blinking – although this could do with being made more intermittent, it does feel a little like everybody has something in their eyes that they desperately need to blink out. The guys look positively cherubic – perhaps too young in the face; yet all characters look better in CGs when they are drawn at non-straight-ahead angles.

The supporting music is subdued and quite easy to forget that it’s even there, so it certainly doesn’t act as a distraction; and though it is not an interest-gaining feature in its own right, it does somehow fit the old world religious setting of the church quite well.

The U/I acts as a reminder that the game has been developed using Unity, as some regular Ren’py features aren’t present. The text box, though slightly opaque, cannot be hidden and does restrict the view of what’s behind it.
There is no backstep, although the log is excellent and does open at the bottom with the most recent caption, as it should be.

The quick access menu sits at the far right of the screen, half on and half hanging over the edge of the text bar. The text for this is in yellow, as are some of the background details, so sometimes it can be hard to read the command you’re looking for. Hopefully the dev will jump on this and either move that menu a few characters to the left, or extend the text bar right across the screen. Either action would resolve this issue.
The basic settings menu, although not in the quick access one, can be accessed directly from the log, and therefore does not require exiting to the main menu from story mode. However, when saving the game at the end of a session, your settings for text speed and sound volume are not remembered, so you will need to reset these on each new visit, even when continuing a run.

The SKIP button is not highlighted in the quick access menu when at some previously-read text, and clicking on it when before some unread text does not move the story on, you have to click in the main area or press the spacebar in this situation.

There is a gallery for all general story CGs, plus additional ones for both SFW and NSFW modes. I did notice an oddity here – for the “intimate” galleries, page 1 remains empty until you visit page 2 and then click back to page 1, at which point any found ones will appear.

These quirks and shortfalls within the U/I, whilst noticeable, are all quite small things and can probably be resolved by the dev without too much trouble. They are not experience-destroying, and should not be considered as deal breakers.

Verdict

Let’s be honest here girls, Saint Ceri is not a visual novel that you are going to play for the base story, despite it being a respectable premise and holding up as a tale in its own right. Although there is a SFW mode, which can be switched on or off at will at any point in the game, the intimacy scenes which your progress will lead you to in the majority of runs, play through in an identical text fashion, with only the visuals being carefully toned down.

There is nothing extreme and no weird fetishes contained within, but details are not glossed over when the MC and however many love interests involved are getting intimate. Among the many possibilities for Ceri are an assortment of polyamorous sexual engagements along with straightforward one-to-one unions, and it’s worth noting that ALL of these focus on the pleasure for the MC.

I’m not going to avoid the obvious question here: yes, the above does mean that every single intimate conclusion to the story is stimulating for the reader. They are described well enough without resorting to excessive detail in either text or visuals (though in the NSFW version, you can expect to see genitals being caressed) that player arousal is a highly probable result.

So if you’ve been looking for a rather hot and spicy true otome to scratch a certain itch without it giving you another itch that you definitely don’t want, Saint Ceri might just be the game that should be on your wishlist.

Otome Lovers wishes to thank Maneki-Mushi for providing a free review copy of this game.

Review also posted on Steam ➞

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*It should be noted that at time of typing this review, one day before release, there were still a small number of low importance typos and graphic glitches, which may have been resolved by the time you read this.