Treasure Hunter Claire - In-Depth Review -

[Bombyxさん]

Treasue Hunter Claire is a Ero Jrpg game made by Acerola and translated/localized by Kagura Games.

THC follow the adventure of a moneyhungered " Heroine" named Claire ( she's basically a dumb version of Nami from One piece),the premise of the game is as simple as our simpleminded protagonist, At the start of the game We find Claire walking through Sylmania, lamenting on how she's bored of exploring it, all of the sudden she overhears two men talking about rumors about a Magical treasure that should be able to grant any wish to whomever finds it, so she decides to Immediatly pack her Bags and journey to Alstroemeria in search of it,

What does she wants to wish for, you ask? More money ofc.

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The goods



❤Yukino

❤ The artstyle : It is really complex for me to give a precise judgement on this one, It's good but it's not Fallen/Meltys Quest quality levels, Though it has alot of really good scenes, it has some fluctuating peaks in quality ( you have some average Claire scenes, but the art style really peaks during Yukino's (9/10), Millith and Jessica's scenes, those are almost, able to top off Fallen's ones in quality. Probably this is due the fact that Claire is a bigger and ambitious game than Meltys and fallen, so it's understandable for scene's quality to be a bit more "spread out", Don't get me wrong though, Acerola got some solid art style that will easily keep you hard for the entire duration of most scenes ( Yukino's ones are the best ones literally all of them are 9/10 good, then you have Millith's ones which are able to look cute and hot at the same time ,even while knowing very well that she's a sick nympho, then Jessica's which got a couple of really good ones, too the one in the orc village is her best one and the only one that matters though )

❤ The soundtrack: This is one of those things that really surprised me, granted these are probably only stock assets from Wolf Rpg, but i do really appreciate the soundtrack of this game, what really surprised me is that some tracks are really reminescent of more triple A iconic games, you can actually hear a pinch of some iconic franchises like Dragon quest, Bravery Default, Final fantasy etc.. The soundtrack feels really good and it perfectly sets the mood for whatever situation you're in, from the dire conflict to some funky jams and some catchy desert samba, the soundtrack of Claire never tires or feels out of place,

❤ Good Spritework,visual effects and enviromental effects: I must say, Claire got some solid spritework, You get the usual small character sprite plust a a bigger version of it in the status menu ( plus your usual hand drawn avatar in the far right) the sprites feel really easy on the eyes and they are able to handle dress changes and even different layers/ combinations of underwears and dresses, which will be actually displayed on the sprite model, so long Rpg maker's onesies. Not only the world of Claire feels beautiful and more alive than anything you've ever seen before on a rpg maker sprite game, but all of this is accompanied by some good environmental effects, from Leaves rustling and flying around whenever you walk on grass, the shimmering of crystals in a cave, sweat clouds in a fire cave, footprint in the sand ( that actually ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slowly fade out and don't just pop out of existence) to beautiful floating Bubbles in the heavens, fused with a beautifully crafted enviroment these effects really immerse the player into this fantasy world, also you get some fancy out of battle animations during events.


❤ Fun gameplay/ero: Guild's quests and adventuring is nothing new or elaborate, though i must admit, you get some different types of quests and scenes tied to it, it's the usual stuff, but it's implemented in a way that never feels boring or annoying, but here's the kick, remeber how i was complaining of lack of ero gameplay in both Meltys and Fallen? Well in this case is quite the opposite, Ero is a BIG part of Thc's gameplay, you've got alot of different ( Animated!) sex techniques you can perform during battles and this time, they're really effective, basically how it works is that Mana points ( Mp) are tied to lewdness, so when you use sex techs you actually drain enemies mana away, this will make them enjoy the "afterglow" and effectivly give you a gigantic window to unleash as many attacks as you need to finish the job, you also get additional ♥♥♥ that you can use to raise your stats and become stronger. You also get Sprite sex, to do that just propose to anyone after you've reach an high lewdness level and you've beaten your shyness to a pulp ( 0), i mean, really when is the last time we had Sprite sex? do any of you actually remembers? it's not great for its intended purpose but it's really amusing/different to watch, Thc also reintroduced this interesting Affinity mechanic, affinity to partners can be raised with Affinity quests and will result, almost always, in some " interesting consequences", the story is kinda good but Claire's personality/gimmick feels like an overused plot device during the entirety of the game Claire's character got some giant cow tits but at the same time her personality is really brainless and flat, ( as milly would say) though i must admit, Claire's dumb goldigging personality actually makes the other character's own personalities shine throughout the game, another problem with the story is that you can easily guess what the final plot twist will be, though i'm saying this, i did actually enjoy playing it and i never really got bored.



❤ Lots of H-scenes and longevity: One of the biggest pros of Claire is it's being longevous whitout ever falling into staleness/boredom, ( even when rushing for the true ending you've got to spend at least 2 hours to get through) the game also constantly tries to keep things fresh and different throughout the entirety of the gameplay, Longevity in these types of games usually means lots of ero content, in this case most of it is good, some of it mediocre ( Claire ) and sometimes it can feel a bit repetitive ( Claire scenes), but i don't remember ever feeling really bored while playing so , to be fair,it feels barely noticiable, It's rare to find a longevous game that always tries to keep things fresh and exciting, there are some replayed scenes and variations, yes, but when you're playing you do actually appreciate how much the game is trying to keep things fresh despite how long it is,. The game is long,. Claire's scenes actually are the only ones that eventually fall into mediocrity/repetiion, outside of that you got some solid secondary character ero scenes anyway, so considering the quality and the longevity of this game, you're going to probably get alot of mileage out of this one.

❤ Dressup system: far fewer than Meltys quest though ( 10 dresses + selection of underwear and some basic headgear).

❤ C*m collecting Upgrades

❤ Innovative Corruption system: Out of the norm top tier corruption system which consist in different types of " lewd stats", respectively : Desire ( measures how horny Claire is and it's necessary to begin some secondary h-scenes) Shyness ( measures the level of shyness of the characters, which will directly influence their behaviour and their ability to equip dresses) Dom/Sub( these will change the actual behaviour of the selected character, having more sub will make said character act more submissive and Dom will make it more domineering)

❤ Beautiful Hud/Interface: A real breath of fresh air opposed to the old, busted rpg maker's one

❤ Translation/localization: i found few to none grammatical errors/mistakes after release, Hats off to Kagura games for another well delievered translation.

❤ Fully voiced scenes: All of Claire's H scenes are fully voiced, the dub it's actually nice and it never falls into annoying repetitions ( aside for spritesex scenes), you also some bonus dub during some interactions and a completely voiced startup menu where the announcing voice randomly switches into one of the 6 playable characters every thime you restart the game.

❤ 6 playable characters: ( not counting Claire) you can have only 2 in your team and you can control them. 6 in total with 5 affection quests available and You get 3 more crossover characters if you defeat them after the true ending in the demon's lord castle

❤ Affordable: it's fairly priced: Thc is on a middle ground between Meltys and Fallen, if you were to ask me if i would buy the game full priced today i would answer " hell yeah" the offered content is definitely worthy of your money, and i'd would happily pay the full price just to be able to support both Acerola's remarkable work and Kagura Games for the great translation/localization, it's thanks to them that we were finally able to get these games finally translated and localized, so i think it's important to support them so they can keep delivering some more ero-masterpieces to us.

( though i'd advise you wait for a sale if you're on short/ broke)



( Review continues below)

[Bombyxさん]

The bads


💔 Bugs: some bugs got past betatesting, i'm going to list them in order from the major ones to the less severes ones ( also i will promptly remove them from this review once they get properly fixed):

-Screenshot overlay animation bug +Lag ( this happens every time you take a screenshot while using the f12 steam overlay screenshot function, it bugs out and creates an infinite animated loop of screenshot boxes in the lower right side of the screen, this wouldn't be that great of an issue by itself, but the infinite loop actually harms your fps and making your consideringly lag, you can't even stick to the stamp function because this bug apparently triggers on notifications, witch means every steam notification could easily set it on.


- "Flashing" default skin: small visual bug that happens whenever you propose to "nothing", Claire's default dress used to flash over whatever dress you were using at the moment, it has been partially fixed ( you can still notice some sprite stuttering)



💔 Lazy game design: even in a well done game like Claire, where you can clearly notice all the time, budget, effort and passion that has been put in it, you still end up having some lazy dev practices here and there, here some prime examples of that:


- Missing (Visual) weapon skins: What i mean by this is that All the characters have only their default weapon equipped on at all times, for example, Claire will always visually have a knife equipped, even if she's actually wielding a sword, flail or Greataxes, same things is for all the other characters, which in that case would actually be acceptable since they can only use one type of weapons, though i was expecting, at least, one skin variation per weapon type also in the secret dungeon, before fighting the crossover characters, the succubus has a drawn avatar that's clearly supposed to be holding some kind of weapon, but strangely it isn't diplayed, i wonder why they decided to remove it though, it really makes no sense , that is something so simple, yet so annoying.


- Misplaced/ wrong enemy silhouettes: during the ero gameplay, in battle, you'll something find T-rexes having a Wolf silhouette, or monsters having human silhouettes, as the missing weapon visuals thing, is something so simple yet annoying that kinda takes you aback from immersion and feels overall lazy,


- Default/stale sex techs animations: similar at things i've previously mentioned, techs always have a standard animation, no matter the enemy you will always get the animation for the human ones,also another example of this issue is when you get Claire and Leon in a party togheter, if you use the paizure tech only the animation that will be displayed portrays Claire's and Milliths, always, even if she's not even in the party, and since you've got Leon in your party it will look like he's giving them the "flatjob" when, in this case you could have simply cut the animation you already had into single pieces and make them trigger when necessary definitely funny but also quite depressing.


- Sprite intercourse short voiceclip repetition: again, something that would have been so easy to fix, but it's stll there for some reason, sprite intercourse voiceclips are really short and looped, whitch is really a shame because they actually use a good variety of voice clips in all the normal H-scenes, i really have no clue on why they chose to put a short looped moan on this ones.


- Characters indifference/memory loss: It's quite silly actually, characters don't seem to be bothered by the hero going around naked all the time or fucking right in front of them, they will also completely lose all memory of any intercourse with you and both npcs and main characters will act as everything is completely normal and nothing happened, This doesn't only happens during small talk, but even during story/quest related scenes, the ssame thing happens also with claire herself, she can become the biggest goldigger/slut ever but she will still act bashful and timd during some quest's scenes, when it really shouldnt, normally you should have the dom/sub stats modifying her behaviour in during intercourse but in some scenes it's just not there and she reverts to a state where she's completely oblivious about her own past behaviour.


💔 Nudity is broken and it entirely defeats the purpose of having a dressup game mechanic: Nudity actually makes you insanely strong in this game, and it's really easy to achieve, you can literallty propose at level 1 after the prologue to people in the village and quickly kick your Shyness to the curb, then just get naked and bam, you get a gigantic Zenkai boost that makes every single dress in the game completely useless from the get go, what i initally though about this is that they put this mechanic as an " easy mode", i can understand that, but why would they tie that to nudity? why not offer a choice like, a level up shop ( as you have in fallen) or some final gear/weapon? the problem is, when you offer something like that to people you're effectively tempting them to abuse it, and that, sadly, makes all the dresses completely useless from the get go, this mechanic literally breaks that feature in its entirety, i still tried to use some dresses because they looked cool, but, even when fully upgraded they don't come close to the boost you get from being naked, so in the end, what is actually the point of doing that in the first place?


💔 Claire's Character: As Millith herself said " you're just a dumb cowtitted freak." Claire's character is basically set on "dumb golddigger", don't get me wrong, i get why they chose her to have this particular personality, it's nothing new in eroge games, but they really overused this gimmick of her to lazily justify every single idiotic decision/plot driven point in the entire game, I didn't really like her character and her behaviour started to feel really annoying after awhile, though i have to admit, her annoying personality made the other character's personality really shine by comparison Yukino & Millith best girls


💔 a bit lacking on fetishes: You will mainly get some vanilla scenes and some GB personal note > it's really annoying when you have the main protagonist get creampied in every single scene, but for some miracolous/ mysterious reason she never actually get preggo, during the entirety of the game


💔 No steam achievements: Kagura Games announced that they had some issues while trying to implement achievements in this particular game, i'm guessing compatibility issues with the engine ( don't quote me on that one though)


💔 Censored cards & backgrounds ( no Yukino backgrounds, apparently they couldn't add it into steam because Steam's review system refused her gigantic melons...)



Verdict

Treasure Hunter Claire has been full of many pleasant surprises, since the first hour of gameplay it becomes immediatly clear that Acerola has put alot of effort, work,budget and passion to mold this game into something special, they also managed, despite the extended longevity, to keep things fresh during the entire duration of the game ( "proposition" cgs and spritesex are the only two things that get old really fast though) . Likewise, Kagura Games was able to came through, again, with a solid human translation & localization,

Granted, the game has some minor issues ( listed above),and the art style might not be always consistent / on the same level of Fallen or Meltys quest but it's definitely almost there and it is still really good, you can also really see they focused particularly on Yukino's scenes, probably to promote their next game " President Yukino", (although there are alot of quality art/scenes, mostly Yukino's , Millith and Jessica's)

Boners don't lie, and THC was able to keep my diamond unbreakable during the entirety of every single scene


The characters, the artstyle, the gameplay, the H-content, the soundtrack, the fun Jrpg gameplay, the engine, the remarkable english translation...

Thc has been a real breath of fresh air and it was definitely able to cement itself and take
its rightfully earned place among the top tier eroge games's heaven, here on steam.

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Definitely recommended