VN - Ren'Py - Academy of the Elite [v0.5] [Chaosborn]

V0.5

Played till the latest version. My first and the main point to emphasis will be that who doesn't love Monster Girls and if they are cute like these LI's that is more than enough for me to play this game.

Story wise it is quite intriguing, not sure how it will move forward but its engaging.

As mentioned before the LI's are humans and some very cute & beautiful monster girls and non-humans. Love those.

There are good amount of content for just 11 days in, i think as it goes it would surely increase.

Will surely keep an eye on this one, Best of Luck Chaosborn.

3.5 stars if I could pick.

The game has a very interesting story. I will not spoil it here, if you do not mind being spoiled, the post below me explains the gist of the story. I will do a simple pros and cons list as it is simple to do without a spoiler risk.

Pros:
The general story is interesting. You see the MC as a child, something that makes you want to follow his story. It is filled with magic and other races, something that can spawn an interesting story, though I personally find it hard playing as a, like in most of these games, normal human. The rest have interesting designs and most definitely unique racial abilities, something that makes the MC fairly boring to play as. This has yet to become a problem, but he will have to possess something special to keep him interesting.

The models are interesting. There are many unique species and characters, many of which has yet to be introduced. They all seem to have some backstory which adds on their character.

The MC is not docile and unintelligent. During the beginning of the game he is very servile and permissive, but this is expected of a child with a father vocal about his disappointment. This later changes as he grows up independent from his father and m- I mean his Lord and Lady. He is not a stoic "chad" like some, including me, would prefer the MC to be, but he is still less servile and docile than the main characters in these type of game often are.

Cons:
The logic of the game is a bit off. The main characters essentially accepts everything that is told to them and go do them without really thinking. "Go home without knowing the reason", "go to this academy" etc. A lot of the LI also fall into this category, accepting to be in a harem very quickly.

Every time they move rooms a screen presenting what room they are in appears. This is unnecessary as you can tell what room you are in from clues as well as through common sense. This also affects the pace of the game, adding pauses when none is needed, making the jumps seem less natural.

The girls fall in love with the MC instantly. While there is certainly nothing wrong with the LI's thinking the MC is cute or impressive when they first see him, this, however, is not the case. As soon as the characters see him they almost instantly starts talking about having sex with him. This seems very unnatural and illogical. While the MC is predictably the "chosen one" with some strange power, he has not done any great deed, nor has a very interesting personality. The girls essentially fall in love without any actual reason. This occurs constantly, even in the beginning when you are but a child. You look prepubescent, yet the maid is extremely attracted to you, letting you see her naked. Your sis- I mean roommate gets extremely jealous over you being attracted to the maid and not her, also showing interest in the prepubescent MC for no discernible reason.

Another point I wish to bring up is the constant erections. The MC gets an erection every time he sees cleavage, buttocks, legs or just skin in general. This most often than not, if not always, leads to the female being flattered that he is attracted to her. This, whilst annoying, is fine one or two times during the story, but the fact that it happens with essentially every female in the game makes it extremely irritating after a while, you can already guess when it will happen every time he is alone with one or two females. It is hard to get immersed in the story when the main character are written so childishly and predictably.

The last point I wish to bring up is the lack of choices. I cannot think of a single girl you can reject having sex with, possibly one. You are forced to have sex with really any girl that makes advances, and they usually make these advances because, you guessed it, you looked at them for a bit too long and you got an erection which they found flattering. You should get an option to reject girls, especially the exotic looking ones in the school. There should also be an increase in flavour text choices. A skeptical or hostile response when characters appears out of nowhere just to tell you that they have spied on you since you were young. A choice as regarding if you want the maids to call you by your name or by your title. Choices like this helps the player make the MC theirs whilst still going down the story created by the developer. The lack of choices makes the fact that the developer is planning an optional sandbox quite scary, as without the choices to reject people, why even have a sandbox to begin with? It will only take time and effort that should be used on developing the story and characters.

TLDR:
Pros: Story, Models, MC not docile and weak willed.

Cons: Logic: Transition screens, LI's instant love, Constant erections/ childish humour, lack of choices.

I was very critical in this review. I really like the game and wish to see it flourish, yet there are several points it could improve upon.

English: 7
User Interface: 4
User Experience: 4
Art: 6
Dialogue: 4
Story: 4
Opinion: 4
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Avg: 4.71/10

I really don't know why this story bugs me like it does. A lot of it does stem from every female character gushing about how cool and strong and "badass" MC is, when you the player have never once been shown what it is he's ever done. And another part is that every internal thought or back-and-forth between characters is "Damn, she's hot" or "I know [INSERT CANNED BRO-SIS RELATION HERE], you think she's hot but can we please stay on topic?" So none of it is conducive to giving a sliver of a shit about any character. But there's also just some intangible thing that rubs me the wrong way. And at the current time of writing I can't describe it, so if I figure it out, I'll let you know. But all that aside, another gripe I have is the blatant false advertising of the graphics. The banner, I know, is usually some photoshopped hook for potential players, but I don't understand how the graphics can be so downgraded in the actual game.

So the story cold opens with "Totally not prepubescent" MC being berated by his father for no reason. They argue, MC leaves and then their maid essentially says "You were nice to me lets do some sex." And you get to see MC's first of many totally unearned sex scenes for just existing. Anyway, MC says "I hate my dad, and this town. I'm too pop-punk for this" And with no plan whatsoever, runs away with (his totally not sister) Izumi. But his parents are rich and give them money so they don't struggle, even if daddy hates them for no reason. Then a time jump of YEARS. And you don't even know how many, just that MC has grown a foot and a half and every woman in his life wants to jump his bones, for, wait for it.... No discernable reason. You "meet" MC's gf Sayu, a succubus that is a virgin (because god forbid a woman have sex before meeting you) Lala, and a couple other love interests with no personality traits to speak of. Then, suddenly, MC's mother sends a new maid, Tisha, to get MC and Izumi saying "I want to wait for MC to arrive before telling you what happens." Then, when he does arrive, she says "I don't want to tell you why I'm here, let you mother tell you." Like, WHY? Why did I have to read any of that to get a non-response? And then MC travels back home, with no hesitation I might add, and all the while just ogling Tisha and that's enough for her to just be like "Yeah you can make sex at me." Mind boggling. And I wanna chime in here and say, Sayu, the gf, was possessive over MC, and only greenlit Lala to have sex with him so MC cheats on his girlfriend. So, he's not some amazing guy anymore, is he? (Only to be retconned with some fabled off-screen conversation MC apparently had with Sayu)

Moving on, MC learns that Mirai, the maid that sexed up the young MC, and their father were attacked. And the mother's only statement about her husband dying is "Your dad's dead, anyway it doesn't matter." (later revealed he's still alive) Then she gets MC and Izumi to enroll into the magic academy. Why? No one knows. But MC and Izumi just decide "Yes, I will uproot my whole life at the drop of a hat for no reason." The had a decent life only to run right back home. MC goes to school, has black mana or whatever, is chosen by some ancient sword, and everything meanders a bit here. Another little tid-bit is outside of the dad and one random asshole in a bar, MC is the only male character model at all. And it leads up to a line that says in the future this is where there will be a sandbox, and I hope that day never comes as sandboxes are boring and add nothing to adult games. And to add to my frustration, characters that haven't even met MC are already swooning over him. And then you, the player, have to sit through a magic class and "learn" how to use magic. At most it will be one choice later in the story about a spell to use, at worst MC is (obviously going to be) some chosen ultimate being with all the powers and there will be no problems. So Dev cuts out conversations about sex and intimacy (in a sex game) and includes useless knowledge about magic. And being taught as if you were a child. Great.

And I really don't mean to single this one out, as it's a big issue I have with the genre as a whole, but just how quickly all these women fold to facilitate sharing MC. People are selfish. You, reader, you're selfish, you wouldn't want to share probably even these digital maidens that virtually fawn over you. So the idea that all these women just take no more than 4 lines of dialogue to convince them to be cuckqueans is annoying. You know what would create interest and make a decent amount of character drama that you'd actually WANT to read? Dealing with women that have more thoughts than "Well, as long as we're all happy, that's good." ANYWAY. The English is fine. A bunch of spelling mistakes but fine. The UI/UX is default Renpy except for the main menu and a bunch of random colors for buttons and text. The art, like I said, is significantly worse than the banner. And there's THREE different art styles for the characters. There's default KK models, models that REALLY want to be from world of warcraft, and then the secondary characters that are some much more detailed than the main characters so they just look out of place. The dialogue is either baby speak to teach MC something. Or MC's brain turning off and him thinking "WOW I SEE BOOBIE, ME WANT SEX." Really, I had high hopes for this but at every turn, it just disappointed me. If you're like me and think about the plot for more than 10 seconds it will probably turn you away.

Overall, an excellent game.

Pros:
Great character variety. There is a wide range of species, races, and personalities of girls. Most of the models feel more unique compared to other Koi games I have played.

While the engine is Koi, the renders and animations are good.

The music used is not the same old, same old.

MC and girls are all likeable so far.

Neutral:
Writing quality. While the story is not the most original, it is entertaining enough to get the job done.

There could be more choices for the characters you may or may not want to pursue.

Bad:
Grammar/Spelling. The grammar and spelling could use some proofreading.

Will raise the rating to 5 stars if the text has outline~ it's a bit hard to read sometimes no matter what colour I choose.
Other than that, it's great~ The girls' designs are cute and the story is my cup of tea. Keep up the excellent work.

Reviewed as of [v0.1]

Really enjoyed this so far. It's early on in development, but I think the content to date is great.

Likes:

- Good character design. Two characters in particular are now among some of my favorites, design wise, for koikatsu style games. Even the more "exotic" looking characters that I wasn't a fan of, due to personal preference, still felt well designed.

- Good scenes / renders.

- Good story so far. Still early on in development, so a little hard to say, but I liked the overall premise of the current content.

- The music player in the options was a nice touch.

Dislikes

- Some of the scenes require more clicking than they probably need to. In particular, the fight scene. I think that one could probably just auto play after one click instead of having to force us to click through each render. On the flip side, I suppose clicking through it gave me some appreciation for how many individual renders it took haha.

- I would enjoy having more player choice. Currently, it feels like a visual novel more or less. Not a bad thing necessarily, but not really my preference. Specifically, it would be nice if we could choose to skip certain scenes (I'm probably in the minority here haha). Since the MC is in a relationship, I would have liked being able to play out a loyal boyfriend and not get with the elf right away behind the girlfriend's back. Cheating ain't my thing, even in games.

That's about it from me. Maybe I'll think of something to add later. Thanks for the content so far dev! Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Reviewing v0.1

Currently, I'll give this game a 3.8/5 stars. This game came swinging right out the gates with a pretty solid character and a colorful cast with a surprising amount of content at release. The girls are cute, there is a decent amount of sex scenes and story, and the mc seems pretty cool so far. However, even with the amount of content currently, I cannot make a solid judgement about the story just yet. I do think it's kinda weird however, how easily the girls instantly fall for the mc. I hope this doesn't become very commonplace, and if it does I hope there is a reason like the mc's ability exudes an aura that draws in girls or something along those lines. Also, if every girl does continuously fall for him, my desire is that every girl is at least properly fleshed out and all do not become one singular personality where they just thirst after the mc. It is only the early stages, so I will not judge too harshly, but if the dev can keep in mind to properly give differing personalities and good backstories, I think this game can be quite good. Finally, I took off .2 stars because there seem to be some inconsistencies with grammar and spelling, but I'm hopeful that it will be fixed in the future.