VN - Ren'Py - Ashes of the Sun [v0.40] [Pandarinka]

Started really well; the mc has a childhood friend, a masochistic bully who loves the mc abuse , a horny teacher and some imouto type character that has a crush on her childhood friend and apparently you can chose to either let these girls get taken away from you or have a harem ‍♂ "i love having a HAREM " BUUUT instead after waiting for some updates you are now a guy who spies on his apparent? Friend?" I have no Idea honestly " fucks his family members while u jerk off in the closet like wtf ....i thought since the time we found the "thing" we found in the safe it Will be an interesting game instead the dev suddenly decided fuck it I'll just copy my real life experiences and attempt to butcher the sex scenes and making the mc a beta for lack of a better word....
I highly implore the dev to remake the game with clear plot points PLANNED ahead of writing the story
HONESTLY you're game was at first a 10 and now many players me included are disappointed in this game
I never written a review before so I'm only writing this because i cared about this game and wanted this to be a success & to warn players to what they should be expecting...

After reading a couple other reviews, my first suggestion is to just try this game.
Normally, I do not even write a review because most games are not worth it.
This game seems to have a problem that a few other games on F95 have. This story has a LOT of depth, and because of that, it takes a while to evolve. No one wants to wait more than 60 seconds for the first sex scene, despite the fact that when you get there, the scene is far better than you even expected. The player leaves a bad review, without ever getting into the game at all. In any game, it takes time for the player to get to know the characters, but it does not take THAT long to get there in this game. In the mean time, it is a ton of fun and in some places, is very funny.
In real life, you do not know everything about someone in the first five minutes. And try having sex with some girl you just met. Good luck with that dude . Fortunately there is an actual story to go along with the sex in this game.
There is also the problem that people seem to be confused by the fact there are two paths. Just pick one. I am sure you will not be disappointed no matter which one you pick. I played both paths. They were different, but both were a LOT of fun to play and the stories were great. You will still have the chance to play the other one. It is not going to disappear.
There is nothing about this game that I did not find interesting. The renders are excellent, especially the newer ones. Most HS games are not nearly this good and their stories are so shallow that you could not get a toe wet. This story starts good and just gets better and better. This developer is also a master of the unexpected. You nearly fall off your seat a few times in this game, thinking, "I did not see that coming"!
I have played so many games, that I can easily recognize when a developer has designed a game that is easy to make and then they can milk the fuck out of everyone. This is NOT one of those games. It is designed to be immersive and it succeeds munificently in that regard. I will admit that I am pretty hooked on this game, and I have about 500 others to choose from. At this point only a few others are even worth my time after playing this one.
If you made it this far in my review, playing the game will be easy and a lot more fun .

Ashes of the Sun [v0.40]

Well, it's bad. Don't play it, it's real disappointing waste of time.

Pros:
1)HS2.
2) Some things and concepts.

Cons:
1) "dialogue"
2) """plot"""
4) "routes"
5) """"""world building/rules/lore""""""
6) """"MC""""
7) "characters"
8) and just boring.

Great story so far, I like the characters and their personalities, it's an early version so it hasn't a lot of sex scenes, but they are ok! If I had to say something bad about this VN is its weight, almost 2.3GB (ver. 0.40) I think that it's too heavy for the little content that it has. Very Nice atmosphere and it left me wanting for more (that's what she said!!)
8.5/10

Ashes of the Sun [v0.30]

a good game not for the porn (mostly)

art 4/5
story 5/5
character/designs 4/5
sex scenes 3/5
vibe 5/5
overall 4.2

art okay for the characters but its good in background stuff

story it doesn't make sense in real world settings no nerd stuff , its actually good with 2 main route to go ( School | Home )

character/designs is good enogh in my eyes above AVG

sex scenes not great it got good moments , but animations are snappy

vibe i really enjoy playing this mostly because of story kinda edgy but good , 2 route to go and choiceses that actually do something for the story even is little

Was mediocre throughout the first, releases, got worse over time.

From raped characters, cucking side characters to forced voyeur scenes - for every NTR lover something to enjoy.
Of course not written in a way that actual fans of that genre would enjoy it.

Quick warning for those looking for a harem game: move on, this is not it.

The story is very ambitious but written poorly. Everything is just a bit too outlandish to be believable. It also splits into to paths, so you'll miss content if you're not into replaying the game twice every update.

The MC starts kinda good, seems to have a solid character, but of course ruined later on by revealing his love of getting cucked.
Looks of male characters in this engine is always awful, but he is on the better looking side of awful.

There is a nice variety of women in the game. I don't call them LIs, because some of them are for your classmates to cuck you, others are for the super-genius doctor to cuck you, you get the picture.
All in all I had some favorites, but I won't stick around to discover who gets to fuck them first (probably not the MC).

The horror aspect is the typical jumpscare-trope that is as scary as a fluffy kitten on a sunny day. There are people who enjoy that, I don't.

There are some positive points: it is not a sandbox game, the english is fine, it didn't crash.
But thats about it.

On one hand it is still early in the game, so changes could be made.
But seeing that the development already took a long time to this point, I doubt there will be big changes. Doesn't help that dev communication is non-existent. A hard pass for me, at least in this state

Review for v0.25

It's not a horrible game or anything, but outside of the premise itself, this isn't really doing anything new or noteworthy enough to have really gotten me invested so far.

A strange asteroid crashed into the sun, causes it to go dark, and then fragments of said asteroid crash into the earth. These fragments have microorganisms on them that are causing some sort of zombie virus. So, an apocalyptic tale. An interesting start to one anyway. But I'd advise you to not really think about the details of it all, because I don't think the game is really doing that either.

Right away the game splits into two paths, where you can either run home with your best friend or run into the school. I chose the home path, but a skim through the school path seems that while it is different, they still converge after a point. If I had to guess the only real consequence is what sex scenes you see. There exists a sort of paragon and renegade system as well, but I also don't know how much those choices really matter right now. It seems like it boils down to whether you avoid killing or not, but you get railroaded into killing anyway when some tropey bandits are about to assault your best friend. I also got presented with an option to peek on your friend in the shower, which I chose not to since that's creepy, and then the game took that as me not being interested in the character at all since it didn't give me any romance scenes after that despite selecting romance options.

Most of the characters just don't do much to get me interested in them, and the few tense moments kind of felt fabricated for the sake of having some violence and such when unhinged bandits show up day one of the apocalypse. Like everyone has seemingly vanished, but some rapey bandits are already running around apparently uninhibited by alien zombies? I think I'm just not interested in basic bandits given everything else but the girl inside the safe caught me off guard. I almost felt the game time skipped at some point with how quick everything collapsed as well. Even the sex scenes themselves feel out of place when you think about the world falling apart around them. Suppose I'm thinking too much though.

Animations and renders fall a bit more on the average side as well, but one thing the game is good at is creating that dark atmosphere. Which makes sense considering the sun itself went dark. It's still early so maybe the game will surprise me a bit more down the line. If you're into apocalypse stories maybe this would catch your interest but otherwise not a ton currently keeping me here. I think alien influenced apocalypse is kind of neat though, so I hope the game does more with that.

Off the bat, a very good start to a hopefully very compelling visual novel. It becomes quite clear at first glance that this game is going to have a lot of branching paths, thus allowing for great replayability.

The premise is also very well done. Post-Apocalypse as a genre has always been a popular one, yet one that can easily be messed up if not done right. So far the developer has done an excellent job, especially in regards to the mood and setting. You can feel the despair and uncertainty in the lightning and the way the developer crafts the world.

Horror, when done expertly, is already scary even when you can see everything, but the lightning makes both player and MC feel anxious. You can't even see what you should be looking out for. It could be even be standing right in front of you and you would have no idea. It makes for excellent ambiance.

That said, the ambiance works a little too well. It's hard sometimes to see the characters. Perhaps a lighter shade of dark would be appropriate. Such as when one of the women attacked the MC, it was a little hard to tell what was happening (unless that was intentional.)

The trait system is nice, and I hope to see how that evolves throughout the story. Some of the writing could use a little work, but nothing I would call a detriment to the game. The scenes were nice and hot. You can tell the dev cares about the characters of the girls other than just making them accessories to the MC.

As for the MC, obviously you get to shape his personality which I quite like. Every trait as a positive and a negative as it should. Here's hoping that all these branching narratives won't frustrate the dev.

All in all, good game! Great first impression and premise! 10/10!

I like the story; it's quite interesting for a beginning. I like that the main character can make strong or calmer decisions, shaping his personality. For now, I see a lot of potential. Keep it up. It was missing more steamy scenes, but I always appreciate a good story over meaningless sex scenes, so I'm not complaining. For now, I only played the school route. Now I'll go the other way, which is the home route.