VN - Ren'Py - Astreon [Ch.2 v0.3] [NoGlory]

The story is really confusing and the pacing is all over the place, but the animations and renders are nice. If you're into sci-fi like fantasy world building this might be for you, but I found myself trying to get what was going on more than anything...

Reviewing Ch2 V0.3

Pros

Art – With each update, it’s been getting better and better. And in Ch2 V0.3, it’s already on a pretty decent level.


Animations / H-scenes – They’re also improving quite well. If in the earlier scenes there were no dialogues between characters and the animations were just okay (around 5–6 out of 10), then the latest one is actually pretty hot. I’d rate it around 8/10.


Music – The dev tries to change the music quite often, and most of the time it really fits the scene where it’s needed.


Cons

Story – Above, you read that everything else is getting better and better. But when it comes to the story… it’s the complete opposite. It’s getting worse and worse. There are a lot of questions but very few answers. And even when we do get some answers, they don’t sound convincing — you either don’t believe them or just can’t understand what the characters are talking about.
And the cherry on top is that the dev decided to make the next update a flashback about Miries (she’s hot, and I’ll definitely read her story). But there are still so many unanswered questions in the main story, and it’s just not the right time for flashbacks.


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Conclusion

Even with its story problems, I could still recommend this game. It’s definitely worse than Cross Realms or Profiler, but it’s still okay. Especially the beginning of the game is pretty good. Give it a try — maybe you’ll end up liking it even more than some other games.

"What happened to the sexy porn game?"

The prologue starts off slow, but all of a sudden, draws you into its worldbuilding. One of the very few games which made me so engrossed in the plot that I skipped over the sex scenes.

If I have any criticisms, it's that that the ages of the characters feel off - we know the MC is at least in his 40s but he looks barely a day over 19.

Didn't understand a single thing storywise...lots of talk about some portal, an abyss, reality layers, cyber enhancements, other world and galaxy but honestly the story lost me completely at the start of act 3 and i basically gave up.

I do like the renders and the characters, the girls are beatiful, the h-scenes could be better (animations are too much speeded up).

Kudos to the dev for the quality of the renders but negative points for the story that is too convulated.

Hope it improves with further updates and the story becomes clearer.

Reviewing Ch2 V0.3

I'm not sure what a lot of the previous criticisms are really referencing. Maybe it's a result of the reworks, but the story was interesting and coherent. The only minor criticism is that some of the rhetoric could be perceived as a bit pretentious. Maybe you could argue that the character dynamics are a bit janky, but i had no issues understanding what was going on.

Game has loads of content. Renders are broadly good, with a lot of diverse characters and scenes (impressive given the genre). Some great animations too, though the H scenes are possibly a bit too fast (in the sense that the MC looks like he's having a seizure rather than fucking). Fascinated to see where this is going, given the unique storyline.

Keep up the good work dev! Also given the previous dev comments i'd warn them to distinguish between people giving constructive feedback and people demanding they abandon their own vision.... that never ends well.

This is a 3.5 stars round up to 4 for me.
The models and renders are good but the story line could get a bit more of work because it is very messy in its current state.
The idea behind this plot line is intriguing but its execution is somewhat lackluster.
Please keep refining this, it have so much potential.

Dam story imo, i love the way all sister so much care all, lucky mc not dumb, the feeling character feeling so live, i pray good luck, and im wait the update, cause i feel cant not play it if to long not update xd, im going crazy and feeling something missing in my life now, cause this game awesome, feel like MC same like me( just MC a bit lucky, handsome, and smart, also richer than me xd)

There is definitely potential here, but it's also lacking in several areas.

The prologue and Act 1 still somewhat made sense, even though the information was so sparse with all the important characters being so evasive with their answers that I honestly struggled to even care about the story or characters. But all beginnings are hard right? So I pushed to Act 2 with big hopes.
Sadly, it just went downhill from there. Very quickly after the attack started, I had no idea what was going on anymore, why we were going where we're going, or what the current objective even was. On top of that, no character is consistent anymore. One scene they're friendly, next scene they're hostile without any apparant reason and sometimes even inside one scene characters are suddenly angry at each other out of nowhere, even though right before they had what I would call a friendly conversation. It all feels forced. And don't even get me started on the insane amount of empty platitudes the characters are using. Every other sentence is just another wannabe cool action hero line at some point. It all needs some serious revision.

The good news is that the renders are good, animations so far have actually surprised me with their quality and the girls are cute. Hoping this gets better in the future.

Overall, the game looks really good, and the animations were impressive. However, the writing and pacing really needs work. So many characters have lines saying things that should have just been shown through actions or emotions over-and-over. A lot of throw-away dialogue in here when the creator hasn't even explained what the focal plot is or where the adult relationships come in. I couldn't help but skip through a lot of dialogue after a while. Every character talks in multiple sentences at a time, which isn't the way real dialogue flows. It really needs to be cut down to focus on the relationships and the story.

Great Game, with a great story. It has a lot of potential! The sex scenes could be more, but the story compensates with a lot of action. I hope the DEV keeps pushing this project, games with this kind of story there aren't many! Great Work!

This game holds a lot of promise but it fall short into certain areas. I want to start out by saying the animation and renders is what stands out mostly in this game. The writing from CH.1 was a bit rough to get through. The dialogue needs polishing. Uneven pacing, flat humor in key moments, and similar speech patterns among characters make conversations feel repetitive. However, there has been some slight improvement with Ch.2, especially the ending scene. I'll show grace for lewd content because the story is still building between characters. As it stands, it ok, there's plenty of room for the dev to work.

I still have hopes for this game. It has a unique story compared to other AVNs, and it's still early in the project. Hopefully, the next update, the dev will cook something up nice down the road.

Game definitely has potential going forward, and the authors receptiveness to feedback and the community gives me hope that the game will only keep improving as time goes on.

What drew me to this game initially was the renders, and specifically the setting. I personally haven't seen many military scenes before in an AVN, and the sci-fi/cyberpunk angle was enough to get me to try it. I personally dont mind having an older MC especially if we start playing into cybernetics and implants meaning extended age. The renders were enough to carry me to the finish line, but I do have some issues with the story looking back at the finish line...

The game has a very decent length for .2.5 release, but I found at times the dialogue took over with little sustenance while the main plot line slowed to a crawl. The characters also did not react to the main plot line as often either. Do not get me wrong I like character dialogue, but if the dialogue is just pointless plot baiting or bickering it feels like the dialogue is pointless. There were several times I felt the story was pulling my leg by baiting interesting story elements but then keeping them a mystery yet not stopping to bait more dialogue on said mystery. My advice is in the future try to match the main plot's progression with the characters bantering with each other.

Characters are alright so far, I like Olivia's situation but I feel her dialogue can tone down a bit, we dont need 5 lines of her threatening to beat someone out of irritation we get it. MC is decent but I hope his character doesn't become one note after finally meeting his wife. As for the others, I am still building an opinion on them.

Graphics: 8/10
H Scene Animations: 6/10
Normal Animations: 6/10
Story: 5/10

Review:
Too many unimportant chit-chat or banter between characters make it boring to read all of it, everytime there's always a banter between characters and it's too much and long. I don't even know what's really happening because of that too much unimportant chit-chat makes me too tired too read all of the dialogues.

My Advice:
Make the characters (ALL OF THEM) talk about their objective more frequent and tone down the chit-chat(out of context talk) between them.

v025

Star for girls looks, renders, and animations, aand... just it.

It's too boring, too sad, too mysterious, or should i say inconsistency everywhere. Try it again after a year or two. Now this game is not worth it. There is no novel, just walls empty dialogs, supposed to be mysterious, sad text.

But even some horny edgelords, probably wold not find it tasteful. There are too few connections and scope in the narrative. Just, sorry, man.

Giving up at the end of the first chapter. I'm just too much lost to actually care about what is happening at this point.

The prologue first part was all about the Mc connecting with his friends, while keeping some mystery about it. The second part was about tackling the mystery of his wife's disappearance (probably, it's mostly guessing), while keeping the whole case mysterious.
This result as one of the most boring prologue I ever saw, having information lacking at every turn to give this “mysterious” vibe and completely failing at making you care about anything happening since you don't know anything about those characters and theirs motivations.

The Chapter 1 then begin with the isekai trip and the explanation on what happened, with everyone answering with poems rather than facts, the first half is basically just walls of text without no real substance.
You can still guess some parts, but it is a bit hard to play this game when the intel is lacking on a fundamental level.
The second part is the Mc moving with a purpose, which you don't know since everyone go out of their way for not answering, and begin to play the hero having the story heating up. The whole action should be interesting, but the guy being as much of a lost lamb as yourself, it felts weird to have him being confident talking to others characters about their common knowledge and using naturally weapons from a cyber world.
This resulted again in a lack of interest in what is happening, having too many loopholes to make any sense.

The common problem here is the lack of knowledge, the second problem is the poesy giving just a fucking wall of text of nothing rather than some update on the situation.
With actual answers, it may have been appealing but as it stands, it is just a VN pretty to look at.

There are some things that work in this and somethings that don't. The pros are that the animations in the introduction really attempt to sell you on this game. However, as you dive deeper into the game it becomes more discombobulated and ruins the immersion. I feel like it is a game that is struggling to find its identity as it tries to mix genres of fantasy and cyberpunk/sci-fi, which is difficult to connect with. The MC has a very one-dimensional goal that could have been tackled a bit differently to give him more depth and allow the audience to empathize with him to further connect with the narrative. Same goes for the LI's and side characters. It unfortunately just misses the marks that it needed to hit in order to make this a standout VN.

This is one of those games that feels like the characters aren't characters in the narrative; they are actors acting out the words that the author wrote down. Their dialogue doesn't seem natural, the biggest example is the MC having a PTSD attack about his son going to a specific place, he doesn't act like a normal person, it's like he's reading words off a page.

The saving grace of this game is the models and animations, they are done very well, but someone prior to me mentioned that this VN is like reading every 4th page of a book and I think that is very succinct, the author is too coy about what actually happened and wants to tell the story through flashbacks and cutting back to the present but nothing makes sense at the start and it's hard to get invested in a story that isn't including the reader.

The models raise this to 3 stars but I'd probably give it a 1 for new player experience, but I can see the author put care and effort into this and if you want constructive criticism here it is, you know more about the story than we do, you can see all the webs, you can see every avenue, and therefore everything makes sense, but when you put a pillowcase over our heads to try and make reveals dramatic, it instead doesn't come off as dramatic but more of a relief of going, finally I know what's going on in this game. Try to put yourself in the minds of readers more and this game will go far.

Okay; I tried to get into this ... and I gave up.
Dealing with this VN is like speed-reading a book by only scanning every fourth page. There is a narrative that seems to make sense, but there are numerous gaps that leave me wondering why things are happening, with no indication that I'll ever find out.
There are plenty of attractive models that would undoubtedly make for decent sex scenes if I could be bothered persevering.
This game needs a LOT more care put into the narrative in a LOT more scenes so that a coherent plot can be developed.

Review for [Ch.1 v0.1.5]

Game has almost everything to be perfect and at the top.
The music, art, models, dialogues, personalities are mostly well done even if it on the intro of the act2 felt too much like a shonen where MC get isekaied into magic/sci-fi universe, but I like the factions and explanation parts.
I prefer more mature universes, nice Deus-ex inspirations (wink wink hero getting repaired + no problem with implants)

Kael (hero) seems to have a big head and big forehead. For the personnality, hope he's not gonna be also too badass, it feels cool to have a realistic character living real things. Since there's a lot of plots I hope to see some pretty well developed antagonists way ahead a little group of rebels and not too extravagant.

Only stuff I'd say need some reworks or polishing are the animation/scenes. Some look unfinished and/or are pretty short.

Anya, Miriel, Flora best girls, hope to see a lot of kinks with them.

Reviewing Chapter 1. That was one hell of a roller coaster, from investigating a forest to realizing you have to save a planet... The stakes have definitely been raised.

The quality of the visual novel speaks for itself. The narrative is definitely interesting and a lot of effort has definitely been put into this. It requires a little patience since everything is shrouded in mystery and you will just as clueless as the MC concerning a lot of the developments.

I love the MC, he's design is cool and he is a well written character, level headed and bad ass... he's coolest Dilf around. Now the issue is marrying the loving husband schtick with the harem route

I love the heroines, currently Olivia and Flora are my favourites, looking forward to seeing Lora, Anya, Shiya and Mirielle getting more fleshed out as the story proceeds. The Character log did not update for Flora and Mirielle but based on the interactions with the MC, I'm pretty sure they are romaceable characters. Now we just have to wait and see if Astoria and Emberlyn are included in that list.

All in all, this was a bloody good time and the future for this looks promising. If you are looking for a good Harem Sci-FI AVN then don't miss this.