review of v0.8b1
It's hard for me to definitively say that this is a good game. There are quite a few things about it that just rub me the wrong way, and there are a few quality of life features that would be very nice to have before it becomes truly amazing. So before we talk about why I still give it a high score, I want to mention things that I don't like about it.
First of all, your choices barely matter, if at all. The story is linear, so is the character progression. And the worst offender is the quirk system. You keep telling the girl to stop behaving a certain way, but month after month she still ignores you and keeps doing it. And those quirks are REALLY hard to ignore, they are not subtle, they are incredibly on the nose, and they may straight up make or break the girl for hours. I think by the end of the year they actually finally stop, but going through three seasons of telling Jean to stop calling you "little bro" is infuriating.
Second is the wardrobe. There are a lot of issues with it.
Girls ignore the rules you say in the setting about no talking, so get used to Laura asking if you like her boobs every time you take off a piece that hides them, having to interrupt what you're doing to answer her, and then proceed.
There is no proper zoom. You either turn off any kind of zoom completely or have the game zoom on the part you're editing. You can't have a middle ground, and it's insanely frustrating.
Finally, their stats are capped, and the clothes values make almost no sense. You can buy a lot of sexy things in the shops, only for the girl to completely refuse to wear them when maxed out. Jean may refuse to wear a dress that covers her whole body without panties, but be perfectly fine with walking around in just her underwear. This system needs a lot of tweaking, right now it causes nothing but confusion and frustration.
The art may be a hit or miss too. The style is obviously a matter of preference, and I think it's, for the most part, pretty great, but there are a few things that stick out, like feet in the wardrobe, for example, look small and chubby, and it's not like the artist can't draw them, in sex scenes I have no questions, I don't know what happened in the wardrobe... must be an early draft or something.
Finally, the game is both grindy and a little random. The stats you need are... well... a lot... and the stats you gain aren't. Just as an example, you may need about 650 trust in the first season, and you're gaining... 5-10 per interaction. Do your math for 3 girls. It's plain stupid.
The randomness comes in when you need to trigger the events, but they just don't happen until they want to. Meh. Generally you don't have to wait too long, but it's still pointless waiting, just let me trigger the events when I want to.
Anyway, with all that said...
What this game does best is giving you the feeling of those good old X-Men. The ones from the 90s cartoon or even earlier comics. And don't get me wrong, I love the more modern stuff too, I loved Evolution cartoon, I loved the 2003 New X-Men run or alternative stuff like Exiles, but nothing can ever replace that warm feeling of nostalgia, and this game tugs on its strings very well. The writing isn't bad, the story is good, the characters are... well... they would be more tolerable if, like I said, they didn't focus on their quirks so much. But it's still its own game with its own unique feeling, and I can't help but appreciate it. Appreciate it enough to look past all the shortcomings, of which there are plenty, and say that I'm very much looking forward to this game's growth.
I think it's also worth mentioning that I haven't been following the development of this too intimately, but from what I've seen, I really appreciate that the dev seems to be pretty transparent with what and when to expect. There isn't much prominent overpromising, underdelivering and stretching the deadlines. They may straight up say "hey, the next update isn't coming for a while", but I'll take it over a dozen of "next week" posts other devs tend to make. But again, like I said, I wasn't following the development too closely, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong and this actually happened, it's just what I personally seemed to notice.
It's hard for me to definitively say that this is a good game. There are quite a few things about it that just rub me the wrong way, and there are a few quality of life features that would be very nice to have before it becomes truly amazing. So before we talk about why I still give it a high score, I want to mention things that I don't like about it.
First of all, your choices barely matter, if at all. The story is linear, so is the character progression. And the worst offender is the quirk system. You keep telling the girl to stop behaving a certain way, but month after month she still ignores you and keeps doing it. And those quirks are REALLY hard to ignore, they are not subtle, they are incredibly on the nose, and they may straight up make or break the girl for hours. I think by the end of the year they actually finally stop, but going through three seasons of telling Jean to stop calling you "little bro" is infuriating.
Second is the wardrobe. There are a lot of issues with it.
Girls ignore the rules you say in the setting about no talking, so get used to Laura asking if you like her boobs every time you take off a piece that hides them, having to interrupt what you're doing to answer her, and then proceed.
There is no proper zoom. You either turn off any kind of zoom completely or have the game zoom on the part you're editing. You can't have a middle ground, and it's insanely frustrating.
Finally, their stats are capped, and the clothes values make almost no sense. You can buy a lot of sexy things in the shops, only for the girl to completely refuse to wear them when maxed out. Jean may refuse to wear a dress that covers her whole body without panties, but be perfectly fine with walking around in just her underwear. This system needs a lot of tweaking, right now it causes nothing but confusion and frustration.
The art may be a hit or miss too. The style is obviously a matter of preference, and I think it's, for the most part, pretty great, but there are a few things that stick out, like feet in the wardrobe, for example, look small and chubby, and it's not like the artist can't draw them, in sex scenes I have no questions, I don't know what happened in the wardrobe... must be an early draft or something.
Finally, the game is both grindy and a little random. The stats you need are... well... a lot... and the stats you gain aren't. Just as an example, you may need about 650 trust in the first season, and you're gaining... 5-10 per interaction. Do your math for 3 girls. It's plain stupid.
The randomness comes in when you need to trigger the events, but they just don't happen until they want to. Meh. Generally you don't have to wait too long, but it's still pointless waiting, just let me trigger the events when I want to.
Anyway, with all that said...
What this game does best is giving you the feeling of those good old X-Men. The ones from the 90s cartoon or even earlier comics. And don't get me wrong, I love the more modern stuff too, I loved Evolution cartoon, I loved the 2003 New X-Men run or alternative stuff like Exiles, but nothing can ever replace that warm feeling of nostalgia, and this game tugs on its strings very well. The writing isn't bad, the story is good, the characters are... well... they would be more tolerable if, like I said, they didn't focus on their quirks so much. But it's still its own game with its own unique feeling, and I can't help but appreciate it. Appreciate it enough to look past all the shortcomings, of which there are plenty, and say that I'm very much looking forward to this game's growth.
I think it's also worth mentioning that I haven't been following the development of this too intimately, but from what I've seen, I really appreciate that the dev seems to be pretty transparent with what and when to expect. There isn't much prominent overpromising, underdelivering and stretching the deadlines. They may straight up say "hey, the next update isn't coming for a while", but I'll take it over a dozen of "next week" posts other devs tend to make. But again, like I said, I wasn't following the development too closely, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong and this actually happened, it's just what I personally seemed to notice.
![\[Y]/](/data/avatars/s/8017/8017141.jpg?1736890914){kind=avatar}
I'd play this game even if it didn't have any H content, because its just a good videogame (noo, I probably wouldn't, but you get my point).
