This game showed a lot of promise but is ultimately undermined by poor execution.
Update: Consider this a 2-star review now. Apparently, the Dev has chosen to take this story in the overused mechanic of blackmail, and in this case, unrealistic blackmail. Sigh! The game had such promise. Now the only real realistic corruption is the Lesbian route. Yes, I really believe that an uber powerful family would be able to threaten her when her sister's husband is equally powerful. Will she ask him for help. Of course not.
She'll comply b/c for some reason, men can only corrupt women with threats, blackmail, and manipulation. Women can offer her something more, something she desires and is not getting from her husband, such as sex. But, men can't offer her anything. It's so irritating, b/c an absentee husband provides all the needed set-up for corruption with other men, but instead, she stays true to the cheating jack-ass until she's blackmailed or raped.
The good:
--Beautiful renders
-- the narrative is often an interesting and slow build, and the main character is given the ability to craft some relationships over time.
-- written to feel like the circumstances could happen in real life, a part of the game I find quite appealing. (That was the case, until the recent update)
--Some scenes are quite expertly written. I want to love this game and I'm still pulling for it.
The bad:
--Being filthy doesn't change the dialogue or the outcome of scenes. It adds scenes, but being filthy has no real consequence on how scenes play out, destroying replayability. Except for new scenes you can access with filthy, you end up having to go through the same dialogue you saw previously. For me, that meant quickly clicking through dialogue I've already read. It also creates discontinuities.
For instance, if you pursue the filthy path with movers you can play it so that the wife has no problem with the movers flirting with her and the scuzzy Ivan is even able to mack on her daughter in front of her. Then later MC is uncomfortable undressing in front of her sister (I had a 17 filthy at that point) and is irritated by the more attractive, respectable gym guys checking her out. Huh?? Reason? Gym scene was written to be compatible with Good wife and Nasty wife playthroughs with no changes to the dialogue. The game doesn't adjust the content to account for changes in the filthy metric. Lame.
Also, the wife is portrayed very inconsistently. One moment part of a well-written guitar scene; the next minute the Sports teacher, who played on a championship college team for 2 years doesn't know the rules of fouling in basketball. Huh?
She also has the ability to internally and externally call bullshit one moment, then is clueless and incompetent in another. Did she not think of recording her first "date" with the teacher? Why did she even tell him her son is at the school? Most teachers with children at the same school would try to avoid such conflicts of interest for practical reasons. I could see including it as a choice--cause porn game. But, she's portrayed as much smarter than that and you're not given a choice.
Returning to the good being undermined by the bad. The narrative choices often undermine the realism of the scenarios. A young teacher flirts with both teachers and students, and is likely sleeping with some of them, flunks her son and uses it to blackmail her for sex--we haven't seen how this plays out with the principal, but it's an expensive lawsuit waiting to happen in the real world.
And why go for the job at the nursing home, when it's been suggested she could be a model? Reason? Ugly old man macking on the hot wife content that appears to be quite popular on this site.
Though I gave it a 2, consider my rating a 2.5 for a valiant effort and a hope that some of these issues can be corrected.
