This game is definitely more punishing at the start than it should be, though after the first couple levels it becomes trivially easy. A fair number of community guides are simply for starting the game.
I haven't tried the sequel yet, so I couldn't say how it compares, but you definitely don't need to play this one first. As this is Mav's first game and that is his third game it should be significantly improved in many ways.
While not being able to exploit the instant completion of the first guild quest makes the start considerably more difficult, nothing critical to starting the game is dependent on the sex of slaves so besides being a bit tedious it's not a significant problem. Even with passing up the exploit It should only take an hour or so to get 3000+ gold and level 5, which can even be achieved on the first day if you prefer the low day count challenge.
???????????????????????????????????????
Are we playing the same game? I did not understand a single thing you just said.
As far as I can gather, the entire game as far as progression is quests and combat. If there's anything else that can be done, I haven't found it. So perhaps the issue is not that I can't play the game, but that I don't even know what genre of game this is...
Strive is basically a monster-girl slave harem power fantasy.
The biggest challenge for most players is the lack of gold at the start of the game to buy proper armor, weapons, and bandages for combat. The game gives you 250 gold in story mode but a bit less than 1000 gold is needed for equipment for both the player character and the starting slave, so players have created guides identifying the fastest ways to get that money so that the player can get to playing the rest of the game how they want.
The first guild quest exploit (which relies on default sex ratios) is buying a cheap(less than 100 gold) female slave from the slave guild to complete the quest which provides 250 gold as a reward. This provides enough money to buy the main character good weapon and armor, which can be used to free victims from bandits for rewards of gold and equipment. Without the exploit, the player can only afford good armor and the default weapon. Bandages are used to heal up after battle. When you get enough money to buy good equipment for the start slave, then you can use them to actually defeat enemies rather than relying on them running away. This isn't a required way to play, but it is the fastest way to get the game started.
I would absolutely not in a million years ever consider buying equipment at the start of a money management game before I have earned any money. But who knows, maybe I unknowingly play most games on hard mode, and that just isn't viable in this game.
Although now I'm thinking perhaps it actually isn't a money management game, but just an RPG, and you just start out a small amount money, like you do in money management games...?
I wouldn't consider Strive a money management game, simply because that is the weakest part of the game. For the beginning, maybe the first hour or two, money is critical and lacking; the player starts with a slave with no stats to make money from jobs and combat is by far the best way of getting money and stats. After you reach mid-game, maybe after 4 to 6 hours, money becomes easier to get from both combat and jobs with it becoming entirely trivial after you catch or buy multiple slaves.
It probably does better as an RPG, but honestly the difficulty follows a similar difficulty curve as the money management. So that works as long as you aren't expecting a challenge outside of early game.
I'm also still confused by the concept of a power fantasy management game or a power fantasy RPG.
I'm really starting to get the impression I have just never in my life played a game of this genre and therefore have no idea what the goal is, and it just feels badly made because I'm trying to compare it to genres I have played, and it's both all and none of those...
I'd say that you are not at all wrong with that description. I've heard it described as a jack of many trades but master of none in terms of game genre. It's a mashup of several genre, so it can be better to describe the game in terms of it's core appeal rather than all the little additional game mechanics.
The simple matter is that the game is badly made(edit: Mav was just starting to learn to program when he made it) though it has a strange intrigue to it that make people want much more from it. It's by no means the worst game or unplayable, but it was poorly conceived at the start, evolved many times to suit user requests, and did not end on a overall strong point (many systems were never finished or fleshed out). Some of the disjoint quality of parts of the game comes from the evolution process, and some of it comes from me choosing limited sections of the game to polish up.
If you really want to do the first quest then what you can do before even leaving town is talk to the urchin (will always be girl) in the redlight district give her food and have her come home with you then you can spend 50 gold to buy a beauty mixture use it on emily to get her beauty to the required stat then give her to the mage (you may need to interact with her in the mansion to raise obedience) this will end her sidequest line but that wont matter if you only care about males, same with the rest of the sidequests since they are all girls in them.
well you said u didnt care for female slaves the sidequests reward you with female slaves and sex scenes with those slaves thus it wouldn't matter to you since you want a game with all male, as a sidenote the side quests dont give money or exp, the main quests also dont give xp but do give u some money but not much compared to what you can get using other methods. Quests in this game are more story based and the sidequests are not required to complete the main story.
its an indie adult fantasy game, the game itself is a mix of visual novel, people management, rpgs and adventure games, and as with many games you get levels by gaining exp by defeating enemies. Examples of these games that handle leveling this way are Rpgs like fire emblem and dragon quest to name a few.
I have not played any Fire Emblem or Dragon Quest games, but it doesn't appear that those games even have quests, so... of course the quests don't give experience because they don't exist. I guess maybe Sandbox Mode (which made no sense at all to me initially, because I figured the game was already sandbox, being purportedly a management game) is more like those non-quest-based games. If that's the case though, it's really poorly tagged, and the Story Mode is incredibly poorly conceived. Should just be under RPG, not Management, and shouldn't even have a Story Mode.
There can be value in playing the game for its own pleasure rather than worrying about its categorization.
How can you find this game hard? Without main quest you won't be able to get any spells for main character, but it doesn't stop you from progressing. You can easily manage your money/food situation if you use your starting slaves correctly. It is a "management" game after all. Buy workers, make some of them earn you money or forage food, pay attention to their mood. After some hard work they will level up and you will be able to safely exit your city and hunt for slaves. I am dumb, but even I've figured out how to manage slaves in my first run, without any major issues or a need for a guide.
Quests are mainly story oriented, and tbh you can just play leveling/getting-money simulator without completing any of them (although you miss out on some nice text blocks). Game itself is pretty much a sandbox, without any real goal to accomplish. Just do whatever you like the most and enjoy it. Also all of the game's tags are fine. This is a game about managing your slave-girls(/boys), upgrading your mansion and creating biological killing machines. Story is just a nice touch, which is completely skippable, if you choose sandbox game mode.
"Without main quest you won't be able to do literally the thing your character is designed to do, but it doesn't stop you from doing the thing your character is designed to do" - you somehow
"buy workers with money you don't have and magically cause them to do something that isn't even in the game, pay attention to a stat that isn't listed anywhere" - you somehow
"after some hard work they will do the thing that isn't affected by hard work" - you somehow
"you will be able to safely exit your city and hunt for the thing that you presumably already have by this point if anything you said is remotely true" - you somehow
100% guaranteed we did NOT play the same game.
I didn't try sandbox mode, but if it's that different from story mode, and story mode does not at all match the game's categories but sandbox does, story mode absolutely should not be an option.
Or maybe my download was corrupted somehow but still managed to run at less than maximum capacity, I dunno. But I can say for sure none of what you said exists in the game I played.
Reinstalled and tried sandbox mode, and found some of the things you mentioned. Either they don't exist in story mode or they need to be unlocked. Still didn't find everything. The things I did find are also completely pointless at the start because they have requirements that you can't possibly meet when you first start the game, in either mode.
1) As far as I remember, the only major thing blocked by main quest is spell shop for your character and branding of captured slaves (I am not really sure about this one, as I never really cared about quests). I guess if you want to be a mage, then yes - you are fucked. But you can still fight, unlock abilities for warrior-like character, lvl up, travel, etc. I don't really know what more do you need.
2) You get 250 at start. Leave mansion, go to the slaver's guild and buy someone in range of 50-150 (>120 only if they are actually good). Go home and click on their names. You can choose their occupation with the middle-left button and you can see slave's stats/mood on the top. You can go to main mansion screen (Q) and click on interact button for mood stabilization.
3) On the stat list mentioned before you can see HP bar, Stamina bar and EXP bar. When it fills, you can talk to them for a lvl up. After day of work you can see that the meter fills up.
4) I don't really get this one. Buy ropes from market, exit city and hunt for more slaves. More slaves = more workers = more money.
And just because you can't play the story, because on your own self-imposed rules, doesn't mean it should not exist. Set ration lower, get the girl, give it away and put ratio back to 100:0.
Well, you said you are dumb and figured it out... I'm thinking the reason this game makes any sense to you is specifically that you are dumb and the game is dumb. This game makes no fucking sense. There is no logic in how any of it works. Only someone not using logic would think any of that is a good idea.
Think about it. Slaver role gives you a bonus to selling slaves. There is no option to sell slaves. That should immediately tell you it's a horrifically designed game.
There are 3 ways to sell slaves which benefit from the Slaver specialization.
Edit: added 3rd way
"Offer your servants" is offered unconditionally at all slave guilds, usually as the second button (it can move down if options for side quests are listed above). It is unaffected by game mode or slave count; you can sell the starting slave, though that's generally not a good idea.
Do you have any mods installed? That is the only thing I can think of which would cause that to change as it has been that way for several years.
The game is quite stable, but now and again we see unique problems with specific computers. In the appdata is a folder for logs (on Windows, %appdata%/Strive/logs)(Edit: if you installed through the itch.io app, it may be in a weird location and be easiest to open it in-game through the mod menu's "Open Mod Folder"). The godot file should list any errors that occurred (edit: updated when program closes), though the last 8 lines will be normal errors related to closing the game. However, as of version 1.0d the game no longer runs in debug mode and most errors end up crashing the game instantly, so I have doubts that it will show anything useful. Especially since it is very unlikely that only that button would missing, rather if there was a problem the slave guild would either not show up or behave as a softlock.
Well there shouldn't be anything there now since I've uninstalled it, twice now. Never had any mods.
(Edit: Apparently there is still a log there despite having uninstalled it, but the log only has Godot warnings, no game errors.)
Quite frankly though, if a game has mods, chances are there's something un-fun or problematic about the base game.
Well it seems that the actual problem is on your end. Just in case, you can compare your game to these screenshots. They were taken at the places, where you seem to have a problems: slave menu and stat list, slavery guild and all the buttons. Also, I completely disagree about your statement about mods. There is no perfect game, but mods can help you to customize your experience, making gameplay exactly as you want it to be. For example "Gigastructural Engineering" mod for Stellaris adds tons of fun staff to play around with, but it is quite unbalanced and would be a bad idea to include in a vanilla. There are also tons of mods for different games that tend to overhaul them completely, so you could enjoy your old games with a new spark of interest. Anyway, here are your screenshots, hope you will be able to identify your problems and fix them:
