VN - Ren'Py - A Foreign World [Ep.8] [HighbornTiger]

Played through AFW (Ep 5) in about 6 hours tonight, and while the story is definitely interesting, the game as a whole is let down by several shortcomings.

++ VERY unique characters and LIs - almost everyone is easily memorable
+ Good renders throughout
+ Music for different parts of the game, but no sounds
++ Good premise and situational world building to set the stage
+ Story keeps moving at a steady pace (though very slowly)
+ Interesting use of science & magic
+ Some scenes are animated (gets better as it progresses)

--- Almost no choices that are relevant are presented to the player. Those that are only seem to affect whether or not we see sex scenes.
--- The MC is a complete idiot. Women basically throwing themselves at him, and he says no more times than I can count. And what for? Keeping hope alive that his fiance (who left him without saying why) will come back. Huge facepalm moment here.
--- Quite a few sex scenes aren't real, they are daydreams for the MC. Which to me just cheapens the experience by taking away any LI progression that could have happened in their place, and using up that much more development time.
-- Not one creampie in the entire game as of Ep 5 - it's all just cum shots on their backs/bellies.
--- Very few real sex scenes overall, for the ~6 or so hours I played. Handjobs don't count, oral doesn't count, daydreams don't count, flashbacks don't count.
--- There's an apocalyptic event on the way in 40 days in-game, and the MC and girls run around on dates, or go bowling, or something else frivolous. What they should be focusing on is training up the MC, which seems to only take half of their time.
--- Some pretty stupid decisions on the part of the MC (and the girls) throughout.
----- We (playing as the MC) have zero choice on how to respond to the MC's fiance (who left him without saying why weeks earlier in the plot). He keeps telling the girls no to sex, while hoping she'll come back (yeah, he's an idiot). Personally I would have kicked the bitch to the curb at the earliest opportunity for what she did. It's a serious letdown in something we should have been given the choice over.
-- Many of the sex scenes in the game don't show actual penetration, it's skewed more in favor of Rated X (soft porn) than it is XXX. As an AVN, that's rather disappointing.

As a result, the game gets a 3.0 (okay) rating from me. Might be worth a playthrough if you're having trouble finding other good stuff to play at the moment. But it also needs a lot of work, and I'd recommend to the dev that they allow us more freedom of choice in how the game unfolds. Right now it's more kinetic novel than a game.

Because of the points I listed above, I'd recommend a re-write and re-render of several points of the game, along with adding in more choice. Further recommendations below.

Things to improve:
- Sex scenes need to be more explicit, hot, involved, lengthy, and give players more and better camera options
- Choice needs to be given to the player on all LIs, and on major plot points
- Allow the player occasional free-roam time, so that he can get busy with an LI of their choosing (i.e. current sex in the game isn't sufficient)
- Creampies. For the love of all things sexy, give us the choice of creampies. Girls don't always get pregnant the instant you cum inside of them. "Money shots" are lame to begin with.
- Oral, Anal, Deepthroat, Threesomes... there need to be more varied sex scenarios, and kinks. There's precious little of that in the game right now, which made it almost boring for me.

I played through episode 5 of this urban-fantasy in a few evenings.

I rarely give five-star reviews, reserving that distinction for games that really stand out; but I found this so engaging—despite some minor flaws—that I found I could give it no less.

The excellent:
• The world-building—of the foreign world—while still somewhat sparse, lays the foundation for the growing harem.
• The game looks great: the graphics in general and the character models.
• The girls have unique and believable personalities (excepting the earth girl).
• The game takes itself seriously.
• It has potential to become a battle-harem, though it is not clear if it will go in that direction.

The good:
• The musical tracks are well-selected.

The average:
• The story feels a little too much like something from a light-novel.
• The MC does too much soul-searching for someone who is supposed to be a super-duper secret agent. This is well written-enough that I never felt the urge to skip it, but it got a little annoying after a while.

I am glad to have discovered this game, and look forward to seeing where it goes.

The plot is a reverse fish out of the water, you harbor a bunch of girls from another world with super powers. The narrative relies heavily on the nonsensical antagonist as a world ending threat far into the game's future.

Pros:
- Good renders, prose, erotic content and music.
- The girls are well characterized, each being unique and having a somewhat interesting backstory.

Cons:
- The plot barely moves after the initial setup, there's basically nothing that happens between chapter 1 and chapter 6 besides relationship talk and the occasional sex scene. This is a soap.
- The game's magic system sucks.

Thoroughly enjoyed this and look forward to seeing where this goes.
Personally I found the author very capable of giving distinct personalities to the various characters. I stayed engaged from start to finish. Superb!

Excellent AVN. Depending on your taste, it could even be in the top 3. Narrative-wise it is incredibly well written, the inner monologues of the MC are really well constructed and give him a depth not typical for these games. Not only that, but even though they are numerous, they don't feel overdone to the reader, at least not to me.

As for the LIs, I really like the personalities and looks of all of them (Fiona and Tracy are the top lookers for me).

Highly recommended.

this game is great, story driven, the protagonist is highly capable and that makes it interesting, the girls are beautiful and all the cg is immaculate.
The dynamics are interesting, the reverse isekai is a classic, but also nice is the blending of the two worlds. It doesn't feel like the magical world overrides the regular world too much.

All in all very good, if story heavy, game.

Short summary:


The author tries to do too much with a story and isn’t a good enough writer to pull it off. The premise is intriguing, but the story is a mess, and the characters behave inconsistently. There is some potential here.



Good Things

• Some girls are very sexy
• Renders, especially later on are good
• Animations are nice and sexy
• Unusual fantasy mixed into the real world

Bad points

• Story fails
• Out-of-character things, like a reserved “shy” girl asking to become your cum slut etc
• Too many girls with barely any attention to most of them

I almost passed on this. I am emotionally scarred by the flood of samey, poorly written harem games and I really don't have the patience for yet another version of Alpha-male-has-women-like-objects-swoon-for-him.

BUT along came this wonderful game. Goes to show how much great writing can elevate an idea. You have interesting, diverse, living women with their own feelings and emotions and you have a male MC that is actually interesting to get to know. I didn't think that combination existed in this type of game.

It is slow, but also incredibly interesting. The story and world building is deep and competent. I am looking forward to see where it goes.

Thank you. You have restored some faith in me.

Early on I thought this game was going to be amazing but it is turning out to be very disappointing. The story is stringing along a bit and not plausible, meh, but I can't understand the dev's decision to make this a softcore game.

Are people really that ashamed of vaginas and sex? The human body and sex are natural and it can be a beautiful thing. Puritanical views that sex is dirty and 'bad' have caused immense emotional suffering IMO. I find it disturbing that many people are more accepting of graphic violence, torture and killing than they are of nudity and sex.

I'm also not a fan of showing women with hair all over their bodies. All the renders I've seen just don't turn out right.

Story 2/5
Great story that got me hooked pretty fast, its about a bunch of girls coming from another universe where men apprently treats girls like shit, all the girls are a form of supergirl with diffrent kind of powers and the men from their universe is apprently much stronger then any girls even combined.
MC takes in those girls and help them out, while a man from their universe has given MC 40 days to become strong enough to fight him and MC got a power from him to copy the girls power to become stronge enough to atleast be a challenge for the dude.

You might think "oh another game of gaining power by fucking girls" atleast i thought that would be the case since that seems like the standard with games of this type, but no you dont need to do that and no one is forced on you either, you can stay faitfull to your soon to be wife or you can fuck em all, which was a great supprise to me.

What did annoy me is how they act like whores trowing them selfs at MC one after the other, they known him for 2 mins and ask him to fuck them and thats an on going thing trying to push him into fucking them, it dident really make sense to me that they keep trying to have sex with MC and i really wish they would explain that since it seems almost like a competition for the girls to see who gets him first or that its importen in some way for them to do it, they even repport back to one another when they fail and got turned down, but the reason for it is never really explained, i guess it could be so MC would let them stay with him or to give him a reason to train harder, but it just feels like there is more to it but who knows since its not really explained and only Sue makes sense doing it but not the others.

One small unimporten thing that annoyed me is why the Foxgirl goes bowling? i mean she never shown her self once to MC and now she goes to a bowling center where there are plenty of men? it just makes no sense even if they go as a group, odds are one or more male would come by to a group of females and if they got close to the Foxgirl she would turn into a fox in a second for all to see, its an insane risk which story takes 0 regards to and it feels a bit stupid since the Foxgirl couldent even show her self to MC inside their home with all the girls present but she can visit a place with multiple men? it just dosent fit the story or her character.

There are a few things like this that should be explained better like the blind girl did she just accept to become blind which it sounds like or did she resist, the reason given is a bit idiotic and you wish for it to be better explained like so many other things in the story.

The thing i found most stupid is MCs wife telling MC that she is just fine with him being with other girls, it just makes no sense at all considering shes not from the other world but the "normal" world and playing the 100% faithfull route and hear that from the wife feels a little idiotic to say the least.

But what truely kills the game is how dev 100% ignores all the choices you made doing the game, i turned down every LI every single time and yet im given No choice to say i dont want anyone else and MC tells her he wants to be with other womans as well and this is on a faithfull route which feels brainless and dosent match with all of the choices you made and why would MC say yes to wanting others when you play a 100% faithfull route?
Dev dropped the ball so badly on this part, its even worse then the fox girl and for those that want to reject the wife for leaving MC for idiotic reasons arent allowed to do that either, so dev couldent have fucked up this in any worse way.

As for virgin/deflower fans theres nothing to come for, when MC fucks a virgin it goes to black screen? then comes back and you see MC fucking her, i guess they where to lazzy to add blood and apprently dident care about pain in dialogs either, so its just a 100% normal sex scene with absolutly no virgin vibe to it what so ever.

Girls 3/5
I wish i could rate them higher but there is close to no diversity in builds, all has very close to the same body size which does make it a bit boring, also some looks more ugly then hot to me but that comes down to personal taste, foxgirl might be nice but you barely ever see her and MC has 0 interaction with her.

Animations 3/5
They are decent but pretty short and really not much action.

Music 3/5
Standard background stuff nothing special but nice to have and it dosent get annoying to listen to.

Choices 5/5
When it comes to relationships you can freely pick who to have sex with or not to have sex with, i tried a faithfull run and it worked perfectly.

Had to lower it to 3 stars even though i had it at 4 for a long time, but i just cant accept the forced harem type games and this is apprently going to be just that, there will be no faithfull route with the wife which is the most idiotic move from devs side when making a game with a wife....

Next problem will be that if you dont play it as full harem story might not make sense at times which is really bad as well, devs own words in the fourm and it makes you wonder how few or who might mess up story bits if not picking them and such issues can ruin the hole story, personaly i would want to play faithfull route first and foremost and even if i play harem i would still only pick maybe 3 or 4 of the girls since i would hate to be forced to do the ones i just dont like.

Story also feels quite a bit off when MCs wife tells him shes fine wth him being with other girls and i dident like that, even more so since MC should be against it since he has been against it from day 1 so why would he change it dosent really make any sense and its just poor porn logic which lowers story value by alot, MC goes from not wanting to be with other womans to "yes i want to be with other woman" out of absoutly nowhere, even if you play 100% faithfull saying no to everything doing the hole game, MC change in a second and its just to idiotic for me, even more so since game has been about choices all the way to this point and that was not a choice.

From that point on story goes to shit and porn logic and lack of choices takes over, like when a girl ask if MC is going to build a harem, now that hes wife is ok with it, MC tells her proberly again NOT the players choice..MCs hole personalty changes from faithfull good guy to "i want a harem now" just dosent suit the story or MC.

The renders are the best I've seen in any game,
but that's the only reason I kept playing for so long.

On day one, the women will throw themselves at MC, and at that point maybe it's understandable he'd be hesitant.

But over and over again the MC rejects them, you have no choice in the matter. The dev apperantly thought having the MC dream the situation later in a sexy way makes up for it, but he's missing the point here.

Not only would no man on Earth act like this, but this being a porn game makes it even more stupid.

The story itself, other than the MC, who's supposed to be a competent person, acting like he's in no rush to save the world and instead focusing on habilitating the girls, which he should do after those 40 days are up, which I understand can't be done because the game would pace too fast, is actually interesting.

My main problem was the constant blue-balling, and the MC acting like he's on a moral high ground. This direction of writing is just wrong for the Erotic Novel genre.

It's good, but overrated. How this can get 5 stars is personally beyond me, but it's undoubtedly a quality product.

In the beginning, I enjoyed the fact that the MC was written as almost clinically logical. It made him distinct from the usual losers or Mary Stus often shown on the site. However, as time goes on, you get a sense that the writer just enjoys waffle. There's a lot of times in the story where there is just an intense level of needless dialogue. While initially it was done well, showing the MC's thought processes, by Friday or Saturday in-game it gets to the point where he's essentially just repeating himself, stating the same thing 3 different ways as if it makes him more intelligent the more he says it. Not only that, but sometimes his explanations just make zero sense. Perhaps it was due to the strength of the first couple days, the fact literally every other character says he's right, or a combination of the two, but I just cannot see how people just glide past some of his ridiculous comments.

If it was only that one issue in the writing then I'd probably give this 4 stars, but for some inexplicable reason, this issue then bleeds out into the OTHER characters. Amber, Tracy, even Cecilia and Esther on occassion, begin to adopt his robotic mannerisms, and even bring around the nonsensical explanations from newer updates. I'll provide an example (mild spoiler):
Amber, a hyper-intelligent woman, sits Sue down in front of a computer, and begins explaining to her pornography. When explaining a new concept to someone, generally speaking, you provide a rough description of what it is.
For some inexplicable reason, this genius defines it as "some people on this Earth apparently film themself doing naughty things and upload it onto the internet." This extremely simple (and grammatically incorrect) explanation should set the groundwork for the rest of the conversation, insinuating she is easing Sue in. She then says that the women in the videos aren't usually dating the men they're with. Sue asks if it's because they're undesirable. Amber then immediately takes a 180, and starts spouting some absolute nonsense about how it may be because men share their wives because there are so many women? Not only was it hard to read because of the nonsensical use of words like "phenomena" (which was also used improperly), but also for a woman who is meant to be hyper-intelligent, she doesn't seem to understand the concept of women being single. Despite having access to the internet.
Suddenly, Sue inexplicably asks "is this television?", at which point Amber says that television is "a website where you can watch videos". Not only does she not know what a website or television is, but she's now poorly explaining what a video is to a person who clearly doesn't understand it (but apparently had no questions when they were first mentioned), and then we see that Sue doesn't understand how a screen can show things. So Amber decided instead of explaining how Sue can use a computer, she should know about video pornography first. Then they just watch some porn and the scene ends

There are so SO many examples like this where scenes end up not only being effectively pointless, but also entirely nonsensical. They are further stretched out by theses needless attempts to sound intelligent, because apparently intellect is just rambling now. Any REAL intellect can tell you that intelligence is not just knowing something, it's being able to explain something SIMPLY, which happens less and less the longer the AVN goes on. Having characters not only be needlessly technical, but also INCORRECT, is so intensely annoying to read.

However, the developer certainly deserves praise for the visuals. While I find the sexual scenes lacking, every woman looks great. Each model is distinct and identifiable, the visuals are well done, lighting is good, and most errors you only see if you're actively looking for them (e.g. minor clipping of clothes, objects being in different positions when shots change).

Honestly, there are really only a few things that need to change to make the AVN worthy of 5-stars:
- removing the need to try and force technical language and jargon, and improving dialogue as the AVN goes on to make it more fluid and logical.
- by reducing the need to write so much dialogue, more time can be spent improving the sex scenes, so the space between them is not only shortened, but the pay off is greater.

TL;DR 6/10, great models and engaging story, but lacklustre sex scenes and bloated and unneccessary dialogue hold it back

This is VERY good. I am only an hour or so into it but am impressed with the story telling. Professional writing, interesting plot, and beautiful, realistic renders. There is magic here (not only from the creator ) and I am definitely not into superstition, finding even religion silly. But the plot is so rich and clever here that I don't mind the least. And for the nerds with an interest in anthropology or evolutionary psychology: The story seems to explore the possible psychological conflict between not only aliens and humans (same old story, yes) but also which conflicts might arise from men and women from a pair-bonding and a tournament species/culture coming together. Love it. I have to get some sleep now. Will continue first thing in the morning .

Questionable taste and pretty decent execution. No eroticism that works for me, so I can't give it more than 3/5.

MC is a non-person who hides behind a plot-armor veneer of mysterious-secret-agent, always-correct deductive overthinking, and frustratingly tangential dialogue. This works in-game because everyone else is sufficiently predictable, but in real life nobody communicates this way because it's so much easier just to say what you mean and assume the other person will mostly do the same.

The girls are mirrors for the MC to see how awesome he is; they don't serve any purpose other than showing the player that MC is indescribably intelligent, strong, virtuous, etc. This is anime dressed up with nicer renders. Actually some anime is better and I hate anime.

Clearly a lot of love went into this game, and while it's technically well-written I just can't get past the fact that MC has no perceivable humanity (he's the idea of a human, but pushed so far towards what the author thought was perfect that he just doesn't make sense) and the girls are, more than average for the genre, just props with purely superficial traits.

This game is kinda fun and actually very well-narrated, but the characters are honestly terrible, there's no emotional substance, not much sex, and no eroticism in those scenes. Download it if you like to jerk off to MC being awesome, because there's a lot of that. If you're into non-infantilized girls, though, I'd give it a miss; there's nothing here.

It's good. Really really good. Might even be one of the best one's I've read, the writing is really good and you can see the effort put in the renders and animations. It has the potential to be one of my all-time favourites in fact.

So why only 4 stars despite all that huge praise? Because Jesus Christ this game has almost no choices at all. I'm not talking meaningless choices. Trust me I actually tend to prefer those type of games that are ultimately linear so I don't always have to look up walkthroughs and stuff. But this one doesn't even give you the illusion of choice. It's just text upon text, story upon story with little to no choice. It might as well be a kinetic novel (a very good one, might I add. Like I said everything else is really good.)
Another minor nitpick, but this is more of a personal ick than a huge critique, is how games with the premise of "there are no more/barely any men left" tend to be so heteronormative that they can't even consider that the women in those worlds might develop feelings for each other. They've all existed in a female majority society for ages but somehow they all have desperately been waiting their whole life for men lmao. But well, that's simply just a thought that crossed my mind and not a critique of the game.

Really good overall (Cecilia best girl)

well at 1st i thought this was the usual shitty uber epic super secret mega epic agent crap was about to turn it off when i realised the dev just did a double disract ... i was like .. WTF ... so i started again and read everything ..
this is the second best writing i have ever seen on here . reminded me of a brendon sanderson book i read ... yes the fap fap is far and few between but tbh who cares when the writing is this good ..the char development is second to none .. i just cant recomend this one enough

I'm glad I continued following this one, even though I was getting frustrated by the MC's insistence on being faithful to the fiancee who left him. The storytelling in this VN is exceptionally good, unfolding in ways that feel totally natural within the structure of the narrative, with enough tension and unknowns to hold my attention. The graphics are impressive and the models look great, but the characterization and story progression are what really impress me.

The story so far has been entertaining, the characters are not all well displayed as they could be, but on the whole the depiction is good. The main person in the story has a dark background, although it seems he is a righteous person, the girls are a mixed bag, but the writer seems to know what he is doing. On the whole a great story and I hope it continues to keep me entertained. Great work.

Wow! Great story with just enough visual context to make it REALLY work. It's a novel storyline, and socially relevant... these days. I was absorbed in gameplay from the moment I launched until "end of 3.5. Kudos!

Excellent renders, but I'm really tired of the trope where at the start of the game the MC is the most superest awesome secret agent/mercenary/whatever in the world (and retired, natch). And this time, he not only starts that way but is apparently going to become even more incredibly powerful. Like, if that power fantasy fits your tastes, enjoy, but personally it doesn't work for me.

On top of that, throw in the idea that apparently, in the other world, it is the nature of physics that women are inferior to men, and it seems just too edgelord-y and reactionary to me. Again, maybe you'll enjoy that, but I just couldn't get into it.