Another game with a cliche premise, tired and awful writing, utterly unlikable characters, and—to its credit—a reasonable amount of mediocre content.
The story is something you've seen a before. I don't know why so many games in this genre insist on having the MC move into a brand new situation to start the game, but it's almost always awkward unless done exceptionally well, which this game fails to do. You can tell stories beginning in steady state conditions. You don't need some grand upheaval to get the ball rolling. I understand the appeal of narratively starting with a blank slate, but when the game is all about your past baggage it makes no sense.
The anemic story is made even worse by the terrible pacing and insufferable writing. There's a lot of games guilty of overwriting, and this is one of the worst. MrKnobb seems completely incapable of letting renders speak for themselves or even giving them space to breathe. It's a visual novel for a reason. The visual element can carry a lot of a scene, to the point where often words aren't even necessary. Yet, this game overwrites more than most regular novels.
The developer can't just show a hot girl on screen, and then maybe show the character stunned by how hot she is. No. He needs to add in ten extra panels of the MC's lizard brain going, "oh my god she's so hot!" and "wow! boobs!" and some commentary about his boner. Boner talk has literally never been sexy, especially not when it's ubiquitous with every girl that appears on screen.
You can understand the occasional over-exposition out of the desire to make sure the audience understands a critical moment. But the frequency that it happens make it feel like the developer genuinely relies on it to carry the scenes. Either that, or he thinks the audience are a bunch of brainless lizards who can't identify an attractive woman when she appears on screen.
The MC can be generously described as what an emo teen thinks a cool 22-year-old is like. He's irresistible to women. He's killed a person (but it was in self-defense!). He's stronger and tougher than everyone else. He has a pornstar dick. He sleeps in the nude, on top of the covers. He knows year make and model about cars (and has to obnoxiously show it off), because manly interest to break up how he does nothing all day except lounge around and fuck girls.
He apparently has "exceptional" grades but can't get into school because of money. Like really? Can't get into literally any school? Surely if his grades are exceptional there would be at least some school out there willing to give him a full ride, then he can work to cover living expenses? Instead, it's emo porn for him to be down and destitute, waiting for this beautiful, buxom savior to come in and turn his life around.
Yet he's insipid, whiny, oblivious, and absent of any charm. He strangely acts like an incel ("but hot women don't pay attention to me!") literally while hot women are throwing themselves at him. So, while said hot girl is seducing the MC, she also has to take time out of her day to play therapist for the killjoy MC too? Why is he bitching about hot women not giving him the time of day while a hot woman is currently draped all over him? You never expect well written women in the adult VN genre, but these women are so transparently written as incel fantasies that it's actually frustrating.
The girls themselves are more props than characters. Most of them only have value in how attractive they are to the MC, or how much they want to bang him. None of them act or behave like fully fleshed out people, made worse by how there's over a dozen of them so it's doubtful even the developer can keep them all straight. They're little more than pinup cutout wet holes.
Most of them range from weirdly aggressive to ridiculously annoying. The former is at least understandable, considering the MC doesn't do anything. You can't make him less of a spineless worm with any of your choices. He's just this wooden plank that, inexplicably, over a dozen women can't resist from humping. Most of them are as completely devoid of a real personality as the MC. You know it's bad when racist cliche of broken English Asami is strangely one of the better developed love interests in the entire game.
The aunt is the obvious savior with the complex to boot. She comes out of the blue and gives him a Princess Diaries life upgrade for free, even if her reasoning never makes sense to begin with. She feels guilty for abandoning him when he was young? So why not just support him now instead of forcing him to "babysit" her daughter, who's apparently the same age?
Why give him up for adoption when you literally have another child of the same age? She clearly had the means to care for a child, and not just scrape by, considering her daughter turned out completely spoiled and a borderline sociopath. For that matter, why are all his classmates all around the same age and at the same stage in life as him if he started 4 years later than everyone else? (Don't think about it too hard, none of it makes sense.)
The daughter, the person you're ostensibly there to "babysit", hates you for no reason. She's a total spoiled brat devoid of any discipline or manners. But the MC is not much better. He's tired of her even though he doesn't even do any 'babysitting" (you know, the job he signed up to do). Hell, the first few chapters barely include any scenes with her because she just runs off in disgust whenever the MC is nearby (though considering how much of an incel cliche he is, I completely understand. It's the only sensible thing to do). The MC certainly has a cool gig. He gets free boarding in a mansion, free car and motorcycle, tuition, new clothes and laptop, all without having to actually do anything.
Wait, are we sure it's not the MC who's being babysat?
The cousin goes around partying and drinking and lazing about, spending mommy's money, bringing boys home, etc. But it's important that the developer includes she doesn't actually fuck them. She just brings them home to... I don't know, cuddle?... but is actually a virgin who's secretly desperate for the MC's cock. Yeah, again, don't think about it too hard. It's as stupid as it sounds.
The other girls are just window dressing, to be honest. Most of them are absent any personality outside of being desperate to get fucked by the MC and totally eager to commit to being one-sided loyal playthings. Dialogue with them is wooden, stilted, and totally skip-worthy.
The visuals are alright. Hell, many of them are even above average. There are some nice renders and abundant animations, including for all the lewd scenes, and most of them are quite nice, though fairly generic. Honestly, there's too many animations to the point that it breaks up the flow of the gameplay. Every girl comes with a dozen super slow, pan up pinups and a few too many goofy walking animations. All the women in town, apparently, walk with sashaying hips that would look over the top on a runway, much less when they're just going to the grocery store. Not to mention that you're end up spending fifteen minutes of your playtime just staring at girls' knees because of all the slow pan-ups.
The visuals are held back primarily for two (2) reasons. The first is the lack of composition. Almost every shot is globally illuminated with the subject front and center. There's no creativity or imagination with the scenes. Secondly, ever girl has their makeup gun turned up to clown. We're talking like coming out of the pool with full on raccoon eyes, Betty Boop lips, and red clown blush on. Someone should tell MrKnobb that not every girl needs to have the filter turned to whore.
But, if you're looking for very generously proportioned, high res renders of beautiful women, this game won't disappoint. There's an abundance of nice renders and a good number of lewd scenes to back them up.
In a genre that should be all about choices, there's not many in this game. It's completely linear, and yet the only real choices you have is if you want to peek or not (poorly framed as peek vs "respect", as if chivalry is the only reason why you wouldn't creep on a woman in the shower). Later, this choice becomes do you want to fucc or not. And in a game where there's literally nothing else except having sex with a bunch of women, who would pick the option not to? The game could be a kinetic novel with zero choices and feel the exact same.
The entire game feels like a transparently bad attempt at stringing together a bunch of sex scenes with the same male model. It wouldn't feel as bad if the game didn't take itself too seriously, complete with an overarching alien (??) plot that doesn't make any sense to begin with. It's hard to recommend it or anyone who doesn't want to hold ctrl (make sure you toggle on unseen dialogue in the settings) and skip through to the lewd scenes.
Writing/Story - 1/5
Visuals - 3.5/5
Characters - 1/5
Dialogue - 1.5/5
Choices - 1/5
Content Amount - 3/5
