VN - Ren'Py - Completed - A Moment of Bliss [v5.0.1 Final] [Lockheart]

A fantastic sequel to A Petal among Thorns.
Animation: Good quality and wide variety of models
Story: Some very kinky moments, and a strange story is coming together
Scripting: Loves the characters and the scenes, they're interesting with good pacing

Review of v5.0.1 Final

Overall, A Moment of Bliss was a very good experience. The art style is a little unusual but you get used to it soon enough, the sex scenes are pretty hot, the plot is actually good, the characters are developed well, and the writing is just generally strong. If that was it I would give it 5 stars. However it does a number of problems which bring it down to 4.

• At the start we're told you needn't have played the previous game to enjoy A Moment of Bliss, but this is patently false.
• Apparently the mc, age late 30s, doesn't know that women often like to cuddle and bond after sex. In general, most of the time I could overlook the mc's flaws and found him likable, but there were occasions when he came across as unbelievably stupid.
• The sex talk is very hot, but it never materialises into anything real. If a girl repeatedly asks you to treat her like a fucktoy and take her whenever you want, then do it! I mean, isn't that exactly the type of fantasy AVNs are ideal to provide?
• Spoiler: Minor spoiler

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• Spoiler: Major spoiler for the end of the game

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I felt the need to list all those criticisms to get them out of my system, but please don't let them turn you off playing this game (after you've played the previous one). The pros definitely outweigh the cons.

The perfect second installment to this line of games. The art and animation looked a bit more cleaner this time. Between Bliss and Petal...i think Bliss is more my kinda girl. Had an absolute blast finally getting the partner involved in this chaos. Keep up the good work dev.

I think it's a great game overall. Girls are super cute, enjoyed the plot (admittedly, it's my kind of thing, may not be yours) felt it was overall a nice optimistic game and sequel to the previous game. Looking forward to its sequel.

Note: While it isn't necessary to have played Lockheart's 'A Petal Among Thorns' (APAT), this game canonically follows it. I highly suggest playing through APAT first if you haven't already.
In this playthrough, I followed the transhumanist path. The year the game happens in is 2032.
This game allows us to define the roles and titles of the different characters, I decided to play it as a family.


Where APAT regularly presented choices to the player, AMoB does this less. However, it adds several single-screen freeroam events where objects (usually only one) can be clicked on the screen to progress the story. It's my impression that these 'events' were created to give the player a tactile experience, but for me, this missed its mark. From Chapter 3, this mechanic is done away with. There was one instance where this mechanic replaced a typical choice menu, namely while examining a concept art for a story the MC is working on. I thought this was a great use for it.
A few choices that AMoB offers do have a larger impact. The first being a choice between the transhumanist or naturalist path, which will change the explanation and circumstances of the MC's unique family dynamic. The other choice affects an event near the end of the game.
These choices will also carry over into the next game in the series: 'Over the Moon'.

AMoB is very much a kinetic experience, which I usually try to avoid. However, Lockheart is skilled at characterization and framing of events. I was swept up in the story to such an extent that I didn't miss getting to influence the story through choices. I'd even say that having less choices than APAT was a good thing because the choices in that game often felt fake, eventually leading to the same result. (I believe there was one exception where it changed how a sex scene ended.)


Adult:
'A Moment of Bliss' (AMoB) contains plenty of adult content. Besides the 13 erotic/sexual scenes, the game deals with adult/advanced topics. If you're so inclined, you could spend hours musing on the different philosophies offered by its story. What does AI mean? What do you think of an AI influencing society from the outside? Any opinion about genetic manipulation, or the role and responsibilities of corporations in society?

Visual:
Like APAT, the renders are detailed, well lit and fit the environment and story.
Animations are masterful. Body physics seems realistic, hair moves, parts jiggle, and positions feel natural and realistic. Occasionally, it feels like actions are a little slow/too fluid for the effect that's shown.
Many animations feature a zoom effect, which I found distracting/dizzying. I think it would work better if the zoom effect was stretched across multiple loops of the animation.

Novel:
Text size is on the larger end and can be adjusted using Ren'Py's SHIFT+A menu. The game includes a configurable textbox, which I always appreciate.
'A Moment of Bliss' immediately picks up where 'A Petal Among Thorns' left us. The MC arrives home and reunites with Rose (his ex partner) and Bliss (middle daughter), while bringing along Petal (his youngest).

The story delves deeper into the origins of the MC's unique family dynamic, and lets us discover how an AI, and a phone company insert themselves in the MC's life.

Sound:
Music and sound are unintrusive, and add to the general experience. They don't stand out, or distract from the core AVN experience, which is perfect in my book. There are little sound effects now and then, they aren't overdone and add to the atmosphere of what's going on.
Unlike APAT, AMoB also has sex sounds. These also fit the mood and atmosphere, but the sounds don't always align with what happens in the animation. (For instance, the actions during a blowjob don't line up with the sound that accompanies it.)


Spoilers below!


Characters (+ evolution since APAT):

This game dosnt feel as "real" as first game because of harem but who cares, Bliss is amazing and story good enough to care about just more than sex and I find character models amazing . It gives edge to storytelling when almost all the time you look character face in the game .

Jeez, this AVN is absolutely awful.

I can't recall ever experiencing an AVN where every single primary character has absolutely no outside life or interests and is completely so up their own ass about themselves, their sex lives and their clearly obsessive attraction to each other and in particular the wimp of a failed clown (literally) of a father.

This narrative is almost identical in structure and, though far less accomplished in its characterization, still every bit as dire, interminably drawn out and intensely annoying as that of "SIngle Again".

It is totally abject and boring as hell.

If you want to see how it can be done and excellently too, check out "Christmas Eve" by Jonesy. This is absolutely not a cross-promotion, it's to add comparative context and thus, in my opinion, fair justification for what may seem to some to be excessively harsh criticism of this creation.

A masterpiece, a story that everyone should get to know.
10/10 And will support the developers for future releases and especially for the completion of this story.
This story needs a grand finale.
This game works in perfection as a trilogy and the first one has its role as an introduction to the story about the characters. If you would like the first one then you 200% would like sequel and no doubts the epilogue.

Bravo, this was even better than Petal's story.

The characters are so well written and believable, the emotion is there in spades.

Cant wait for Over the Moon, Im invested in Suzi now as well as the family and I need to see how it all turns out.

Well-crafted story that isnt dripping with cynicism even in the drama moments.

The writing of the game is quite engrossing and each character have some depth and personality in them. The inner turmoil of MC, him questioning whether what he's doing is right or wrong gives him real personality. Each girls don't just jump at his dick, although showing that they had some level of crush on him even before the story began may be easy writing but it is justified well enough. Would definitely recommend to try once.

Just a fair warning first of all, this is NOT a complete game and it has NO ending, its the 2nd game in a series of 3 and this one stops in the middle of nowhere with just a cliffhanger, this should have been explained on page 1 but it says nothing about it and it dosent even show the other games, i was prertty temted to drop this game to 2 stars just from this fact alone.

Well i am somewhat split on he story, i like the daughters/mother/dad part but did find it a bit weird how Bliss went all dom to presure Nixie into doing sexual stuff since Bliss her self has 0 experince with any thing sexual other then what she has been reading.

Also not really a fan of Bliss going after other womans all the time like Nixie and Sin, shes starting to feel more like a whore then a sweet daughter, and of cause the pussywhiped MC goes along with it and gives Sin permission to be with Bliss which again feels like MC is fine with turning hes daughter into a whore, this is why i am not a fan of kinetic novels with MC being like this.

And the going from a story about a loving familie with its problems, to sci-fi AI dident really fit in with the rest.

Also the story MC writes as hes job, dident really see a point in following that part at all and i think the time spend on doing that would could have been put to better use for the main story about the familie.

I am not really a fan of the virgin scenes either, no blood or option for it and for a girl like Bliss that never put anything into her because she was waiting for MC to have no blod and close to no pain and she cums which is very rare for a girls first time all just makes it unbelievable and feels nothing like a virgin scene, next virgin is even worse MC just slams it stright in and she has absolutly no pain and ofc no blood just pure pleasure and she cums 2-3 times i mean gimme a break, makes you wonder why they made the girls virgins at all.

And the constant creampies gets boring, theres 0 risk of pregnancy which the game should have had, without it and MCs none stop talk about hes seed being in girls is stupid and pointless, its a kinetic story so its not hard to put in pregnancy but for some weird reason its left out even though they talk about it multipletimes....

The worst part and this is one that really annoys me and made me go to 3 stars insted of 4, it has some big spoilers.


Story 3/5
Its not the worst story but it fails in alot of ways with Petal and MC being stupid and to trusting to an AI that could share hes info with Nixies mother that could get him trown in jail for years.

Graphics 4/5
Game looks good overall.

Animations 4/5
They are pretty decent but ive also seen alot better in other games, but they are still above avereage.

Music 3/5
I dident feel like the music really sets a mood its more a general music but thats still good, but ive also heard alot better in other games.

It is so refreshing to see a good-looking and well-rounded protagonist! The change to third person view here is a massive step up from Petal. The idea some devs have of what's "immersive" is often jarringly twisted. I mean, it's fiction, it's escapism, for fuck's sake stop doing MCs that are just emasculated good-for-nothing-boys with zero redeeming qualities and an ugly small corpse looking cock, I just don't get who would want to see that in their protagonist, how the hell is that immersive?

I absolutely love the MC in Bliss tough, his face, eyes, physique, hair, cock, all of it. Him alone is worth a 4 stars. That's just how starved I was for a decent protagonist. Looking at the reviews before playing I see why some people didn't like it even though their criticism was often nitpicky, but some just won't be into a change from solo male/female to harem, and that's understandable. I'm guessing it would be the same way I feel when going through a female protag novel just to find out she's a cock hungry slut, I can't even enjoy the renders. Naturally, this will be different for each and every person.

Since the dev is not constricted by first-person pov this time, scenes are more fleshed out, though still not nearly enough kissing and licking for my taste. The fact MC did not run his mouth on Petal's tummy, back and collar bone in their teasing phase is a goddamn sacrilege, and not even going down on her is a crime in itself. I thought this would change in Bliss but it didn't, and I would really like to know what is the dev's problem with it. The plot does make you believe he is going for a Dom path, but it never even comes close to happening.

Overall, sex scenes could have been more erotic, some are underwhelming and others just felt off, I can't put my finger on it, but I know something more raw is missing, or maybe I'm just not that much into incest as I thought I was, since anything with Nixie was way better, or the fact Nixie is goddess material. On top of that, dialogue is distracting rather than spicy, not that I expected sex talk to be the writer's forte, but it does get cringe sometimes. I would prefer a more neutral narration of events mixed with some sexy banter and their thoughts, rather than them describing to each other in detail everything that's happening. I can only imagine how big of a turn off this would be like. Or not. *shrug*

The dynamic of the plot is sorta unique, some odd decisions here and there, pacing felt good until halfway when they decided to throw a wrench at the plot and rush everything. The soundtrack is excellent and well-placed, each scene kept things interesting for the majority of it. Suzi was a nice surprise in this regard since she served as a sort of transition for every step instead of just having inner monologues all the time, and I very much enjoyed the time had with her. That is, again, until the halfway point, when Suzi interactions becomes an afterthought as does consistency and pacing. By then, you get the clear impression they just wanted to be done with it.

I do hope Lockheart takes a step back before going ahead with Moon to refine their work, between the lacking repetitive sex and scenes being far more vanilla than they have any right to be, there's a lot of room for improvement. Regardless, I do believe they did well here, and I'll check out their future projects. Scoring this 5/5 doesn't mean I think it's perfect but reflects how much I enjoyed it compared to the average experience.

The plot twists are great. I loved this one more than Petal. I cannot wait until Moon drops. Nixie and Rose are very hot it will be interesting to see what the family gets up to once Moon is reconciled with.

a fun read. yes, there are some issues, as other reviews enumerate. however, comparatively, this is one of the best novels on this site. if you like the tags, it's definitely worth the time investment.

This just to resay what been said countless times, but I feel deserves less then the "3" (oddly many seem to give 4 even when they say they giving it more a 3 or not really worth a 4...) so can be skipped from reading.

But ya after absolute high tier Petals, then this l becoming more the typical from the needless waisted philosophy - downgraded choices - trying to force a weird sci fi narrative thing etc... for their special relationships (which absolute destroys all the philosophy and teachings and feelings of Petals... which is large part why its -1 from a 3) I just can't with this one there far too many other VNs, but Petals was terrific.

A Moment of Bliss is somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. It definitely isn't average, but a full 4 stars is too strong of an endorsement.

As the second game in the trilogy, I found AMB to be weaker than its predecessor A Pedal Among Thorns (APAT). Just like APAT, A Moment of Bliss starts off strong and gradually gets weaker. The attempt at telling a convincing story begins to feel like a real drag, and the introduction of sentient AIs really put the game over the edge. While I do appreciate a good story in my games, and I'm not looking for a mindless fuck-fest, AMB suffered at times from a ponderous plot. Scenes drag, and the constant need to explain the nature of AI and of the family's sexual attraction I think took away from the game. At times it felt gross to see the hoops that were jumped through to explain story elements. I think the story would have been stronger if such a focus wasn't placed on this, and instead the game's story were focused on the MC's job and writing.

I also felt like there were too many side characters that the MC could get involved with. I'm in favor of branching a game out, and when all the characters are LIs and there's only three of them I think games can get pretty stale. But characters like Sin felt superfluous and as a LI totally unnecessary. These were the times where the game really fell into a bad rut of over explaining everything while also being a fuck-fest.

And when the end comes...it comes FAST. The final chapter felt really fast to me, and was pretty abrupt. It wasn't bad, but it also didn't feel very satisfying. Obviously that's partly because there's a third game on the horizon, but I still wasn't in love with it.

All that said; there's a lot to like. The game is gorgeous, it's well made, a ton of effort went into the writing, and it was completed! I can have some complaints around the edges, and the game wasn't for me, but when compared to the rest of the industry, A Moment of Bliss is easily above average.

A great second game in the trilogy and I can't wait for the third one. LH always does incredibly well with writing and rendering, unique story and pieced together wonderfully. Can't wait to see how the story with Moon goes and where the harem ends up in the final game of the trilogy

tl;dr: kinetic novel with pretty models, some D/s flavor and a optional backstory about AI/transhumanism/robots.

Pros:

• Pretty models with realistic measurements, no giant tits or asses here, which is much appreciated by this player. Nixie is a goddess. Rose is very pretty. Moon is fine as well, Petal and Bliss look a bit more bland in my opinion.
• Sex scenes are better than average in renders, text and animations. Dirty talk and cumshots are nice, but I would have liked to lean much more into the D/s stuff and have more variations in positions and content of dirty talk.
• MC's wish to have a more fulfilling sex life and his feelings of guilt over wanting better sex or being a demanding dom are very relatable for me and constitue a believable reason for the changes in his life.

Cons:

• There is no mechanism to change the names of LIs, and I am not a fan of the names Bliss or Petal. I changed them using Unren and Notepad++, but I would not advise any dev to use hardcoded names unless they have a very good reason. The names of the games and a few puns are not a very good reason.
• While I do think the background story about AIs and transhumanism is better than the usual AVN background story, being somewhat knowledgeable about software engineering and human behaviour, I did not agree with most of the points being made. I actually got quite annoyed, sighing and facepalming every few seconds at my desk. The AI in the game is almost omniscient, being able to access every digital device connected to the web. She is controlled by a private company who keeps her secret and at the same time she, the AI, is already circumventing restrictions imposed on her. Neither MC nor the game seems to be troubled about that. The AI tells us it isn't malevolent, and we're naively taking her by her word and also believe that she is correct in her plans to bring "future prosperity for humankind". I could go on and on how much of the stuff presented here is illogical or just plain wrong.
• MC is ignorant. He doesn't know about basic sex stuff and needs his adolescent virgin daughter to educate him. This could have been a sexy dynamic if she was just helping him fulfill his desires. The way it is now, it feels implausible that Bliss would see MC as this larger than life man, her hero, the man she adores, when in reality she has to educate this man 19 years her senior about basic stuff. Apart from that, MC also doesn't know shit about computers and how a microwave works is magic for him.
• Spoiler

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• The game doesn't have any choices, and yet you are sometimes forced to klick on an arrow to get to the next screen. Why?? This adds absolutely nothing, it just makes you click on a specific region instead of just click anywhere. WHY???
• MC's dick would be slightly above average in the real world, in the porn world he's rather small. Personally, I prefer big cocks in porn, especially if the girls keep refering to how big it is, which just sounds ridiculous here.
• As noted on the pro list, I do like the quality of what is there in the sex scenes, but there are quite some things I'm missing. In general, the scenes are much too short, they end when I start getting into them. I'd say they should have double the length they have now. I'm not really happy with the text either - the dirty talk is servicable, and either way highly subjective. But when real humans have sex, there's usually a lot of moaning, grunts, a lot of "Yes!", "Oh god...!", "Fuck!" and so on. This is almost completely missing here, instead the characters narrate their feelings in a way that feels very clinical und dispassionate. In most of the scenes there's no indication that the girls came, but afterwards they will exclaim "Wow, that was so hot, I came like what, three or four times?!?". They also describe MC cumming as being filled up with the force of a firehose, until they're full and the cum is forced out around the cock. I actually love stuff like this, but here it does not fit at all to the tone of the game, which makes it immersion-breaking. Again, MC does not have a monster cock or magical cock by any definition, but the girls act like he does, which just feels dishonest.
• If, like me, you haven't played A Petal Amongst Thorns, you're left guessing about the relationships at the start of the game.
• Too much time spent on the story MC is writing in the game (Madds something, a cheap comic version of Medusa). It's too little to make you care about that story or its characters, but so much that you are bored to death.
• Out of dozens of puns and attempts at humour, there were two I found amusing, the rest was cringe. This might be on me though, I find most attempts at humour in AVNs atrocious.
• "Feel the wrath of my cum-dragon!" "Your potent man-snake penetrates not just my pussy, but my soul!" Those are actual quotes out of sex scenes.
• Non-optional lesbian content.
• Very minor: I've only played around in Daz for a few minutes, so I do not know if there's a reason for this, because I have seen it in several games: The scaling of the models is not consistent. Bliss is supposed to be much more petite and shorter than Petal, and most renders show this, but then there's at least one render where they're standing right next to each other and they're the same height.

Just finished the completed game, and was a great ride! Characters were fun and believable without being too over the top. The scenes at the pool were superbly done, and anyone who's ever played the "how far will this situation go" type game like that may have some pleasant memories recalled. I know I did.

Bliss was a great catalyst for the group dynamic, and really was sorely needed to step in and puch things where everyone really wanted them to go but stopped themselves prematurely. The sex scenes were well done and the only 'complaint' was that story ended right when the almost full group dynamic finally was true to itself. Here's hoping we see Nixie (good lord she was hot AF) and how she joined the family (if she did) in the last installment of the game set. Really can't wait to see Rose, Nixie, Bliss and Petal interacting.. That would be so much heat it would melt the renders, lol.

Some may complain that the story included *any* non-family members, but they added a nice dynamic and weren't too unbelievable. Some may scoff about the daughters 'sudden;y' being bi-curious, but really, they are already down for 'family' antics due to the story, so why would that suddenly exclude them being attracted to other women?? Same with the 'seperation' for the main couple, in seperations it's usually one or both former partners seeing if there is enough left to maybe start over or move on, that's how seperation works. It's not meant to be some sort of exclusionary "we're still really together just messing around" because frankly, more people split after seperation than reconnect, that's just how it goes.

Overall tremendoubly enjoyed the game, having not played the first one. It was well written enough to keep my up overnight when work called the next morning. Very tired but the missing sleep was for a great cause! Absolutely loved Suzi, can't wait to see how that plays out. Really makes me wish there were an AI like that, because I think many people would prefer that over some poor human options.

Only negatives, and they are minor.. As with most of these games, the ages of the older characters and overall story timeline. So MC was 39, assume Rose was approx too, married for 20 years. So married at 19, having kids one after another, and then the 'situation' popped up from 29-39? Not sure of the story from the first game, but assume no one went to college? In the US at least most people aren't getting married that young, much less having lkids. A more realistic age for the older characters would probably be 42-45, assuming they were in the middle of or just finished college when they got hitched and had kids. That might play hell on the physical part tho because it's harder to look early 30's (*cough* Rose) when you're 10-15 years older than that. It can be done with good diet, exercise and taking care of yourserlf, just not as common as some would portray.

In any event, overall a solid A game. If you're going into this expecting a "let me have my 50,000 choices and finely tune the game to my tastes" experience, you won't get that. You will get a pretty good story, as far as AVN's go, with the typical "male MC has women dropping panties for him when he walks in the room" but these are all fantasies, so it's par for the course in a good way. Well worth the time, and looking forward to seeing how things go in the last chapter.

I really wanted to get through this VN without having to turn on the skip unseen text but at some point the dialogue becomes so insufferably banal it becomes a chore to read through. All the girls lack any real sense of individual personality, all of them act the same. If the writer could focus more attention on giving the girls individual personalities this could otherwise be a really good writing. The author could also get rid of so many needless clicking.