VN - Ren'Py - Completed - A Petal Among Thorns [v6.0.2-RE] [Lockheart]

then -- it's not one of my favorite games. I still call them games because everybody calls them games but they're much much more than that. Anyway, it didn't engage me 100 percent. The visual novel is a psychological journey through the minds of the main characters. I can't stand visual novels where the mailman comes in and.... who are you? the mailman? what a big dick you have. Please stick it up my ass.
Instead, this is a good story with a lot of psychology in the dialogues. I liked it 75%. The author paid so much attention to the dialogues that were fundamental to the story, and those were really satisfying. Unfortunately, in the transitions between important moments he fell into such a high level of banality that it made you want to stop playing.
I understand that to do everything right you can't finish a game in two years. That left the story as a diamond in the rough, though. Some moments were of tremendous intensity. Moving. A punch in the gut. But others.... ridiculous, approximate, boring, trivial.
That said for me the author deserves a 5 if not a 6 or 7. He should be more thorough, though. What lies in between important moments should be up to par. The way I see it better a game released in an extra year but without trivial and stupid moments.

Decent game but the whole plot of the ex wife is terrible. MC is a total cuck loser in that. Honestly made the game unplayable, it just made no sense in the story and killed any positive feelings for this game. Would be 5 stars if it wasn't for that.

the dialogue is weird, the comedy is bad (one-liners spam), and the story is campy. the renders are very high quality so they basically carry the game. i'd give this a worse rating if i wasn't treating it as a forgettable intro game to the sequel.

I love daddy/daughter incest, so i want so much to like this game... but it's SO boring!
Too much (and cringe) text and a plot that pretends to be slow burn, but it's only excuse to nothing happens for a long time.
I'm not masoquist enought to finish this game, but i'm pretty sure the sex is gonna be endgame.
I don't know why a lot o devs do this. If you don't actually have a story to tell, don't pretend, you aren't fooling anyone.

That said: the daughter model is perfect. She is beautiful. But that's all lol

Amazing. The art is great and Petal is an incredible mix of assertive and submissive.

Includes some fetishes, but keeps them light and accessible enough that they may appeal regardless if they're fetishes of yours already.

"A Petal Among Thorns" seemed to revolve around a romantic story between a mature man and a young girl (father&daughter), but it turned out to be disappointing. It is challenging to provide an objective review due to the focus on teasing, sex denial, roleplay (puppy girl - master), mild BDSM and similar themes. While these elements are not personally appealing, I will share my impressions of the experience.

The characters engage in excessive dialogue. While I enjoy reading, their conversations often feel artificial, unrealistic, and trivial. They discuss random topics, like when they are sitting on the sofa to watch a movie on TV that is unrelated to the story. I found it challenging to endure the lengthy and tedious dialogues about nonsensical matters. Additionally, the MC, who attempts to be a comedian, consistently makes poor, cheesy jokes that are cringeworthy and unpleasant to read. Despite the technically well-written nature of the dialogues, they lack colloquial language and instead resemble two literature scholars conversing due to the abundance of adjectives used.

Petal is a visually attractive character, beautifully rendered. She exhibits a strong sexual obsession with the MC, resembling a complex akin to Electra or other psychological themes. Petal's sexual advances towards the main character are thwarted by him. He is depicted as having a high libido masked by moral righteousness, establishing rules and boundaries to manage Petal's sexual urges in a methodical manner. This ultimately results in an uncomfortable and cringe-inducing scenario. Additionally, the nonchalant attitude towards BDSM activities, including Petal's desire of being deflowered while handcuffed (WTF!), feels totally out of place and weird. The absence of intimate moments, such as kissing (they never make out) and foreplay, kill the romance and further detracts from the narrative.

There are a few choices to make in the game, but they appear to be inconsequential as there are no alternate paths; the story follows a linear progression. The renderings are of acceptable quality, and the brief yet hot erotic scenes leave one wanting more, playing into the theme of "denial". The moaning sound effects during sex scenes add eroticism, but they are limited in number. The background music serves its purpose in complementing the dull dialogues, with its soothing tones even causing drowsiness on a couple of occasions.

In summary, the story is overly dense with lengthy dialogues filled with unnecessary details and nonsensical elements that do not contribute to the plot but rather induce boredom. The MC lacks charisma and even Petal, with her psychological peculiarities, fails to captivate. This visual novel progresses at a slow pace, offering an average number of erotic scenes (12, by my count). If you enjoy tease and denial, mild BDSM, and roleplay, then this VN may be suited to your preferences.

Review of v6.0.2-RE

A Petal Among Thorns is a the definition of a 3.5 for me. It does everything it's trying to do well, but what it's trying to do is often frustrating.

The game is about an adult girl seducing her father in a week. Despite this obviously being a fantastical premise, Lockheart chooses to tell it in a down to earth manner, and Lockheart does this successfully. The mc doesn't have substantial romantic or sexual feelings towards his daughter at the start of the week, whereas she does, and so he takes a lot of convincing. This ties into his insecurities about sex which we learn about; that storyline is told convincingly.

Throughout the entire playtime we hear his inner thoughts increasingly desiring sex, while outwardly he is timid and constantly trying to slow things down. Meanwhile his daughter is constantly asking him to dominate her, but he never does. That makes sense in the story, but it can be very frustrating for horny players. Even worse, during their sexual interactions both characters start to engage in some very hot dirty talk - "I'm your fucktoy" this, "I'll fuck you anywhere I want" that - but none of it materialises into anything real. And while the dirty talk is mostly high quality, we still get some typical AVN awful comedy. "Scrambling eggs" has to be one of the worst terms for sex ever coined. Lockheart was clever in giving the mc a backstory as a failed comedian, but can we please keep the jokes out of the sex scenes?

Visually, A Petal Among Thorns is a delight. Petal's model is excellent, all the renders look great, and the animations are smooth and actually look like sex rather than lego pieces being pushed together. The sex scenes are hot but not quite hot enough for me, partially because everything is so vanilla.

The real reason to play this is because it leads into A Moment of Bliss, which is like this game but better in every way. I had to struggle through quite a few moments in this game, but it was definitely worth it for the sequel.

TL;DR Chuck is the mvp.

This might be one of the best build up games of all time. The renders and character models were fantastic.
The ending was perfectly worked to match the energy of the next game. Good job Dev and keep working for us please.

Note: This is the first game of Lockheart's 'The Rose Garden Trilogy'. 'A Petal Among Thorns' (APAT) has recently been remastered with some changes to the story and narrative, and an updated look for Petal.
Having downloaded APAT a few months back, I only realized after finishing Chapter 1 that I was on an outdated version. For completeness, I restarted the game on 6.0.2.

TL;DR: If you like strong storytelling and characterization, and don't mind incest, then I'd suggest you play this game. There's a lot of teasing and edging happening, which puts this it in the erotic category. If you're just playing for the porn, you'll be frustrated.

General:
Text size is on the larger end, if it's too large, it can be resized using SHIFT+A. The game includes a configurable textbox, something I always appreciate.
The upside of the larger font, is that it's clear when it's italicized when showing the MC's inner thoughts. The game also includes a gallery for players to revisit the quality sex/erotic scenes.

By default, the MC is named 'Chester', and he'll be the 'Guardian' of his 'Ward', Petal, who is 18. Petal will call Rose her Keeper.
Because the genre includes father/daughter and incest in its list, I decided to change these default to be more in-line with an incestuous relationship after the game prompted for it.
Petal's age can't be changed, which, I think, is a good thing for continuity and coherence of the story.

Visually, the game is very appealing. The cabin is a great setting, providing a fully furnished environment for the story to take place.
Animations are well done, but aren't flawless. Some will suffer from the typical 'sliding into each other'-movement, while others (mostly in the latter chapters) will overuse the camera's zoom function.

The main draw for me for this game is its story, atmosphere, and writing.
The MC and Petal engage in actual conversations about their escalating relationship, they talk about boundaries and their likes/dislikes. All of these conversations also serve their purpose in the greater overarching story, of the MC and Petal growing closer and more intimate.

A main theme of APAT is black and white-thinking. Both Petal and the MC fall into this trap. Petal has very black and white views that align with a naive young adult's. People are good or evil, things are good or bad. The MC adopts this extreme way of thinking when it concerns his past and current trouble, with him blaming himself for it all. He wants to be a good provider, but he doesn't step up.

Spoilers below!

Characters:


Background:

It feels like this characters actually has a chemistry and relationship and dialog between them fun to read even they are sometimes awkward and this game has a lot of edging if you want fast fap this isnt for you story take times develop.

I am not sure how this is so well liked, as I am not able to get through this. Almost every sentence reads awkwardly. Most are overwritten, the daughter and dad basically sound the same, and the comedy is just not really funny. And no, that was not an appropriate usage of touché.

For an example of the writing: Dad: "Ugh. I feel like the life has been sapped out of me. I can barely move.", when the dad is feeling a bit ill.
Daughter/Petal: "Here you go, daddy. It's a cool, moist cloth for your head. It should help."

No one talks like this. It's a strange mixture of descriptive text to set the scene, mixed in with actual dialogue. It's jarring.

I give up.

Very well presented problem of incest. Without oversimplification and without overlooking the often disastrous psychological consequences.

The build-up of desire itself and the fact that taking consent to fulfill a daughter's dream is not a simple matter for a father is also realistically portrayed.

Probably the sweetest VN porno experience out there; simple, relaxing and just pulled my heartstrings; can't wait for the rest of the trilogy.
Top notch pacing with the reverse corruption/temptation theme.
If you are going to focus on just 1 girl in a game, this is the way to do it.
You know a game is good if others are trying to copy his style.

4.3/5 (rounded up)

Really high tier and great, game has beyond more then enough fleshed out reviews so just dropping a quickie as a thanks and unfortunate sequel I recommend skipping.

4.1/5
Sequel -.4 (because the sequel is very almost needed and is again imo best skipped)

-.3
Could have used a bit less of the teasing of characters to come (which again unfortunately the sequel should be skipped which makes this worse)

-.1
Not the highest end thing in any category but for sure high compared to vast majority in most of them

-.1
All other minor things

Excellent game.

Petal is a great character for an H-game. I know it says she's 18... but she acts more like a teen who isn't jaded or pissed off at the world. It's a joy to interact with her.

The main protag can be a bit cringe. They covered this with this "career" as a comedian... but even then he's a bit repetitive and strange. At some points the immersion is ruined a little by some of the weird stuff he says.

That's a minor nitpick though, graphics and BG music are top notch. Game is beautiful. Don't let the minor issues with the main protag dissuade you from trying this.

5/5!

It's a good game, Petal certainly is an interesting and well drawn character, but I think the protagonist could me more mature and less repetitive. The story itself has potential, but could be more objective and with choices that really impact on the gameplay, otherwise might seen more like a novel than a game.

Really nice and linear game. The models were great and the story was captivating. The game did feel like it was teasing the player with actual vaginal sex happening at the end of the game, but that was according to the plot so kudos for actually sticking with it. The game opens up with its sequel perfectly. Looking forward to his next one. 10/10.

loved this game, actually has story as well as great renders , happy to hear it will be continued in a moment of bliss as well as the 3rd part. hope the auther has a promising future with the VN's as this collection will be one i await each update with excitment just for the story progression

Excellent VN in its finest details! quality content! quality dialogue! very structured storyline and events like all content provided by Lockheart . I advise you to support and check its other contents like : A Moment of Bliss and Avalon

This is a very good game! The renders and animations are good, as well as the sounds. I also like the story and character development. Petal is a nice and adorable character. Father-daughter theme might sound strange at first, but it is explained in the sequel. Five stars.