VN - Ren'Py - Altered Bloodlines [v0.4] [Dream Cloud Entertainment]

Weird faces and no logic pretty much sums up this mess.
There is a pretty good idea for a story here, but it's hidden behind a bunch of scenes that makes no sense. A couple of examples, why does Luci consider MC her saviour when the dumb clown literally just walks in the door gets distracted by her chain (that he can somehow unlock without a key) and gets kicked unconcious for her to then grab his gun and save them both from the attacker, nice save mc what a useless piece of shit he is.
There is also the part of why the hell does 2 FBI agents and 2 police detectives go full ninja ops on a house without any other info than it's related to the van they have tried to track down, and without proper backup or even calling it in. Then the mc and his female partner encounter an armed man inside and before anything else she just somehow magically manages to put the guy in a headlock and choke him out(that headlock is btw also completely wrong and couldn't choke out anyone), like i mean wtf she is appearantly just so fast that she can cover several meters and get behind the guy and deliver a standing choke on a dude that is both taller and stronger than her before anyone can react. Then MC and the other dude sends the two girls to take out the armed guards in hand to hand cause of their speed and the guards being distracted(by what?) real manly and completely devoid of logic. Also wanna mention that the 5 girls they rescue are all in a room with an open window.

Visuals
This avn actually looks pretty good, high quality renders and not the usual assets you see in 80% of the anv's on this site. However there is something comepltely wrong with the facial expressions, like so wrong that it can barely even be described, it is also persistent in almost every scene so i don't really understand what is going on here, but as an example MC looks like he is on hard drugs or drunk out of his mind most of the time. It is the most jarring with mc both most of the cast suffers from this, like when they all go to the nightclub and compliment Hayleigh on her beauty she makes a face that is literally horrifying.

Ok ok so it seems the dev has no understanding of how police/fbi operates, no clue how combat or tactics works. Aaand despite general high quality visuals and mostly attractive cast of characters, the weird facial expressions is so off putting that it ruins the otherwise pleasant visuals.
So my conclusion has to be that this whole avn needs a rewrite with help from someone with at least a modicum of logical sense and dev should maybe also try and watch some tv shows or something about law enforcement to at least get a basic understanding of how that works if they wanna write about it. Also a complete overhaul of facial expressions is absolutely nessesary.

Version reviewed - 0.4

After a successful FBI rescue operation, the MC and one of the young woman who was abducted begin to feel a strong emotional bond towards one another. Shortly after, another attempt is made to kidnap the same woman as the MC and his FBI colleagues struggle to determine what forces are behind these abduction attempts.

Pros:

1- Interesting story. It's about the only thing holding this one together.

2- The use of split screen when two people are speaking on the telephone was a nice touch.

Cons:

1- The dialogue is a grammatical mess. Commas and periods missing or used incorrectly makes reading this a real struggle.

2- The music feels out of place in some scenes, making it a bit distracting.

3- Average renders throughout the game.

4- Many facial expressions are poorly done. Not properly fitting the mood of the dialogue.

5- The writing does not meet my expectations of how seasoned FBI agents might speak. It feels rather amateurish.

6- The FBI psychologist who does a post op evaluation on the MC is wearing a see through top during her interview with him. At this point I was really tempted to turn the game off. Why on earth would the dev decide that a FBI doctor would wear a see through top at work? It is completely out of context with the rest of the game.

7- There is a scene where the MC is driving in a car and the background is moving to simulate travel. It is a very nice effect, but the car is at an odd angle to the background, giving the impression that the car is out of control. Nit picking, I know, but details matter.


Final thoughts-

A decent story executed poorly. The writing, the renders and facial expressions really drag this one down.

I would suggest that the dev find someone to help re-write the dialogue and redo some of the poor renders. Oh, and please put a work appropriate top on the FBI shrink.

Good luck.

The classic case of MC acting like any decent human being, LIs going "OMG ur such a great guy", immediately falling in love and dropping their panties. He literally does his job as an FBI agent, saves an abducted girl, doesn't have time to have any meaningful conversation with her and she's already head over heels for him.

But hey the renders are nice though, girls aren't the same standard DAZ faces you've seen in every VN and body proportions are mostly realistic.
Unfortunately almost every character (especially MC) has severe case of uncanny valley facial expressions.

If you want to turn off your brain and jork it to a harem VN with hot fit girls who constantly tell you what a Nice Guy ™ you are this one will do just fine, but that's the best compliment I can give it.

Rating may change after the release of Ch.1 however just based on the prologue V0.2 this is gonna be a very interesting story.
Models are great. Animations are pretty good. There is a bit of a lag with the animations during transitions, the dev may be trying a little too hard where that is concerned.
Pretty short introduction to the story but definitely worth a look.