VN - Ren'Py - Completed - A Promise Best Left Unkept [Bonus S2 Ep 9-11] [Hangover Cat]

I'm indifferent about the whole ntr genre it doesn't add or subtract from the game for me, I'm just here for the corruption. It started off quite well, I do like the art style although the animation quality was very minimalistic. Over time the writing has gone quite stale, the art has seen some improvement but is inconsistent, and the animations haven't really improved at all.

Having played most of the top titles on this site I now have a much better perspective on what other developers/writers/artists in this field are capable of. Unfortunately, this game is still a ways off in overall quality before it can be compared with them.

First of all, i'm pretty generous with star ratings so this doesn't mean I think it's a perfect game. It has things I dislike, but the ones I enjoyed far outweighed those.

Cons:
- Too much tropey ntr stuff. Weird fixation with condoms filled with semen that look like water balloons. Cliche scenes with the girl fucking her lover while talking on the phone to her boyfriend, or even right in front of him, being covered by some curtain.
- Unsatisfactory endings. Plus some characters tend to lose their aim as the game advances. Specially Laura, who at some point starts losing her shit and sort of becomes fuckmeat.
- I don't really like blackmailing, I prefer when the cheating starts more out of desire and lust. But that's personal preference IG.

Pros:
- Well thought of, patiently developed ntr. The girl doesn't instantly transform from a naive lady to a sex crazed animalistic bitch (tho she does end there).
- Not a lot of gamey filler stuff. No grinding, no minigames, (almost) no arbitrarily locked out content. Yes, there's not a lot of hugely influential decisions either, but there's enough to customize your experience a little bit, and I'm ok with that as long as the content we get is plentysome and good quality. Which in this case it is.
- Long, kinky, intense scenes, with very good art.
- A bit cliche, but at least characters have kind of a distinct personality. Not award winning material, but not the same old generic characters either. MC is a bit crappy tho. But that's not that bad, I don't really play these games to watch the cuckolded dude lol, i'm more interested in the other parties involved.

All in all, excellent game. While nothing hugely creative or groundbreaking, it's very easy and enjoyable to get absorbed in the game. I considered giving it 4 stars, but in the end, it was a wholly enjoyable experience and overall one of my favorite games in here, 5 stars it is.

Rating is based on the content up to the hotel.

The game so far seems very good.

Characters:

Laura - An actually well executed character, who does not fall into the first trap and immediately give up. Looks for solutions and has her inner fights and all the stupid cliches from the usual NTR games have an explanation from her POV, which make it more believable.

MC - Yes, perhaps a bit stupid and naive as others have said but far better than the completely faceless MCs we usually get. That little bit of extra for Harry is already enough to make me feel bad for him, which I usually don't feel for the MCs in this genre.

Lucas - The biggest surprise for me. I expected a very boring character, who approaches things (laying traps) in a very one dimensional way and would then corrupt the character in predictable way. But the way he has executed the things to get where he wants to has been an enjoyable ride so far.

Aya - While I do not have many words for her character, she is an extremely enjoyable one and can make you really laugh.

Since I already commented on how plot is executed partly through the characters, I would just like to add that the way the story flows is good. It had a good build up that did not overstay its welcome. It did initial corruption in believable way and I really liked the game that goes between Lucas and Laura with the rules. I would say that addition alone already makes the scenes and situation a lot more exciting.

I like some of the other works by this game Dev, I thought I would actually enjoy this but I simply cant relate to harry, he is an idiot the choices simply dont matter. I don't usually comment or review, but Choices need to matter, until they do I will make the simple Choice to give it a 1 star.

The only reason I'm giving this 2 stars is because of the art even though the dev doesn't make it himself and instead commissions 3 different artists to make it for him. I tried to give this VN a chance, I really did but at this point it's safe to say that I'm over it.

TL/DR: If you are looking for mindless fapping with nice art but a mediocre story then this is for you. If you're looking for a good branching story with ntr elements where your choices actually matter then don't waste your time.

IN-DEPTH REVIEW

I'm have played this game since the day it been released so let I make this straight. This is a visual novel game so I care more about the VISUAL and the STORY. Beside the fantastic visual, it's disappointed.

At the begining and the middle of the story, they gave us a glimpse of hope that we can actually do SOMETHINGS. And that is the main reason why I chose to play it because almost NTR games neither give no fucking shit about your choices and lead the story to NTR route nor they let you play as a nice guy then end the game (basically forcing you to play the NTR route which lead to the previous statement).

The game (at the first and the middle of the game) let us acknowledge the cheating but still gave us ways to make things right. But then we slowly realise that we aren't. Your choices will be meaningless by the end. Every choices you had made will lead to shitty outcomes.

I know there are 1 route, 1 FUCKING route can be consider a GOOD ENDING, but i don't thing make your partner's life miserable and go ape shit with the big dick guy is a FUCKING GOOD ENDING.

I hate the game for giving me the glimpse of hope, hope that we can change the outcome, that we can have a happy ending and then throw them out the window.

The worse part is if you focus in the story, you know that we can hardly have a good ending in future updates.

In the end, i'm disappointed because this game has the potential to be different from there kinds, and it was if you play it from the first release. Now this a game is about a woman deprave herself into sex. It don't let you save her or anythings so just download a gallery unlock to fap. It have FANTASTIC art though. (sorry about my gramma, english is not my mother language)

And i'm still DISAPPOINTED for being trick :<

The inconsistent art style and predictable plot is one thing, but the main reason I'm giving it three stars is because its the classic case of a protagonist I cannot respect. Once the game is completed it'll be easier to stomach as I can glide past cringe moments but seriously; Protag must be braindead or something. The writing takes things so seriously even though the setup is such a cliche. I don't begrudge the people who like this, but its simply not my cup of tea.

It's at the moment the best overall game I've played here.
The art is awesome, expressions, animations, I like everything.
The story is perfect for me (yep, NTR enjoyer), all of the routes are very interesting and different, can't wait for new ones.
The sound can end up repetitive, but it's so good I don't mind at all.
It's a VN with few choices, in some games I care about choices, here tbh I don't, it's a bit random how the story develops with a couple different phrases but again, it's a VN, it's normal.
Top notch overall, this is a must for NTR enjoyers

One of the best in his category. That's what NTR actually is.

The visuals are great, the story is super well written, the characters are well developed. Everything is there for the perfect immersion.

I can't wait to try again once it's finished.

The art in this game is just amazing! Great captivating story with interesting plot points. I suggest playing the game from the MC's perspective if its your first time playing. Its really exciting with the mystery and the MC not knowing whats going on. I feel bad for the MC though since he's the victim.

Review of version 0.6.6. Very good if you like classic NTR story and kinetic novels, not so good otherwise.

Although I was hesitant to download this short story for a long time (just because I don't like short stories), but once I did, I didn't regret it.
And I recommend you to pay attention to it. Even if you don't like the NTR tag, this novella is worthy of a story that could have happened in life, characters that are well written and believable and a lot of both text and visual content with great drawing.

A Promise Best Left Unkept has some good ideas for the plot and so on, but also some bad ones that end up making the story too plain and boring. Obviously its NTR which I like but there is no game to it, it's a kinetic novel. Then the story advances and sets up an interesting relation in which the FMC is strong and hard to break and the blonde girl becomes part of the problem... and then it doesn't matter, seeing as the other side can't break the FMC it resorts to random blackmail and that's done. And since the MC is an idiot, no other way to go about it, the result is that it all loses interest quickly.

Join that with a low number of different images for the characters and poor sex scenes and you get a problem. Sound doesn't improve the equation either with just some sound effects and boring music.

So, in the end, I decided to dump the game and move on to others that may be more interesting.

If u are looking for NTR, this is the right place. The rules function is really kinky too where both parties challenge each other and add rules for their own benefits, it can get really hot, props to the author for implementing it.

4.5/5

Great VN so far.
The previous work Edge Of was solid but imo suffered from the characters being a bit unlikeable and one-dimensional.
In Promise, the characters have been improved on and have me actually feeling sorry for the MC, something that doesn't happen very often.
In addition, the art is great and the writing of the scenes is superb.

VERSION 0.9.3

I heard a lot of good things about this game so I was excited to play it. But sadly I cannot really see why this game is so well rated.

Pros
+ The art is decent
+ The sex scenes are really hot
+ Multiple paths

Cons
- generic and mediocre NTR story
- walls of text
- barely any real choices
- MC is unlikeable (completely clueless, naive dumbass)
- Antagonist is obnoxious
- The girlfriend is corrupted to the absurd level

Overall, not very enjoyable experience. 2/5

VERSION 0.6.0

I really wanted to give this game 5 stars...
But it's just disappointment after disappointment for me.

On the cover, we see two chicks and a guy. It seems that these two girls will have an important place in the game.

Well, after 11 releases, this is still not the case. Only the first one (Laura) has scenes and it looks like she is the only heroine in the game (the other one, Aya, is really in Laura's shadow). I thought Laura's endings were supposed to be reached after 8 months? Is it a mistake on my part?

Anyway, here are my pros and cons of this game:

PROS:

+The best art I've ever seen in an adult game. It is truly breathtaking. Hats off to the artists

+Really hot scenes and sexy heroines.

+The "rules" are a good idea and we can see them in the user interface.

+Lots of corruption and lots of fantasies explored.

+Animated scenes.

+The developer does not hesitate to invest in his game.

+Quick updates (1/month) and the amount of content is quite good.

CONS:

-The artists are always hidden by this developer. I think it's really unfair for them. They deserve to be known for their incredible work.

-This is the biggest drawback for me, it literally ruins the game, which is sad (I would have given this game 5 stars if it was not for this peculiar thing):

It was supposed to be a game with two heroines, and it feels like there is only one actually.
It's really frustrating.

-I feel like the story is missing something. The story is not bad, but not that good either. I'm not so "surprised" by the way things are going.

This game novel flopped for me for two big reasons.

First reason, I dislike three characters out of four, and the forth one, I don't care about. APBLU offered me a little epiphany about what I don't like about these setups. In essence, it's a violation of "show, don't tell" rule. The story tells me that Laura and Harry are a couple, yadda yadda. And I don't buy it, I just can't. If I don't get to see the story how their romance grew, I fail to see the chemistry between them and care about the relationship that's going to be ruined in this story. On top of that I really did not like the introductory scene. So I don't like brain-dead protag Harry, Aya is a little annoying shit, Luca is a stereotypical shit, and Laura is meh at best. Eight Deadly Words (I don't care what happens to these people) apply here pretty well.

Second reason, the game offers me extremely little choice, and only when the situation is way beyond salvaging (and the very first choice has the second answer disabled because it's not implemented yet, another slap in the face). It really knocks any impact out of the choices. Yeah, I get that's what unavoidable in unavoidable NTR stands for. Well, I don't like unavoidable things in games. Why would you want lack of interactivity in an interactive medium?

Oh, and about those Rules that everyone's talking about. It's not a mechanic, it's a story element. Difference being, a mechanic is something a player controls or directly interacts with (spoiler alert, these rules are exactly not that). It's a fun —but hardly unique in dom-sub setups— story element, and its almost sole function is to drive the logic, flow, and sometimes kinks of porn scenes. On the flipside Laura is absolutely dogshit at using rules to her advantage which means what? She's either dumb, or is not really trying to win; either way, this makes it really hard to care about her.

On the technical side of things, the game is nicely animated and directed (by which I mean the use of camera movements, transitions, and character sprite movements). Unfortunately, art quality is quite inconsistent. Some of the commissioned artists are good, and some don't know the basics of human anatomy (watch some porn, for the reference ffs). Worse, sometimes art doesn't match the text. Which is especially egregious when it doesn't match the rules gimmick. So you've just introduced a rule about raising arms on demand —and even had a long fierce argument to underscore its importance— and then you show a CG with arms not raised? Come on.

TL;DR. Art quality is inconsistent. I failed to like and therefore sympathize with most characters of this story. The "mystery" POV has very little porn and doesn't offer enough choices to make it worth. The "omniscient" POV has decent porn, but offers no extra choices while probably tripling word count, and therefore feels almost like a kinetic novel. Let me watch this from Laura-centric perspective, and you have a chance to get 3 stars, a rating I normally give to a good kinetic novel.

I did not really want to rate this before a good time of play, but, after some time playing, I just deleted this game.

I cannot really say it's bad in story. Just some average setting, a little weird with the timepoint of mc-gurls relation, but okay I guess.

I cannot say it's bad about graphics/scenes. Saw 2 so far, they were nice (though nothing our of ordinary). They just also a little off focus, funtime is filled with a lot of chit-chat which gets you off the mood a little.

And so on.

So, I cannot say I have some shapely certain complaints about this game. It just feels strangely off, like on paper it has all you need to enjoy this kind of game, but on field you just don't get into the right mood to play, Maybe it's non-stop story/chit-chat which fills the game more than needed, maybe it's an unpleasant point of story start where you'd rather play from the side of that criminal antagonist since it feels like the gurls which are with you are to be corrupted by him and that does not make it enjoyable.

So I'd say this game is worth trying, just be aware that this game may be giving you not what you expect from this type of games, even if it looks pretty well on the cover.

3*, for pretty solid but average everything, and not working it as a whole for me to increase the opinion to rate higher.

It looks great.
I like the story.
I also liked the previous game "The Edge of" by Hangover Cat.
Although this game has some choices, it is mostly a kinetic novel.
That being said, the story is well paced, and as a kinetic novel, the story is simple and straight-forward.

Rated 4.5/5