VN - Ren'Py - Astreon [Ch.2 v0.2.5] [NoGlory]

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.

Impressive start! The project has a captivating atmosphere, and to me it feels like a mix of tactical history with a touch of dark sci-fi. The visuals are top-notch, easily surpassing many other works in the genre. The important part is the immersiveness of the menus, and the well-built plot, it is clear that the person is familiar with writing techniques and the basics of script writing. Good luck in moving forward!

Astreon [ch 1 v0.1]

This one got the potential to become one of the best games here. Enjoyed the visuals, girls and story. This one's story centred that's a big pluse for me. If you enjoy scifi themed games you gonna love it. Prologue was cinematic. Hope this one gets the attention it deserves

+ Story centric
+ Visuals
+ Girls
+ Music
+ Sound effects
+ Writing
+ Animations
+ Amount of content

- No dialogues during sex scenes

Overall i enjoyed this one. Keep up the good work dev looking forward to next updates.

Peak cinema, fresh storyline, beautiful renders and animations.
It's just story maybe a bit confusing to some with too much information and some may find it a bit difficult to understand the story fully but it's not that deep or confusing. It's just it has a lot of surprise elements in the story which if u don't skip makes the story easier to understand.
Also, add some darker gals too

The game has a very very promising start, I give 5 stars for a future prospectus, I hope the dev doesn't get lost as the story progresses, but if the prologue promises so well, I think we won't be disappointed by the rest of the game.

Good start Dev! Some said that this is like a cyberpunk game, but I feel a lot of Hell Diver vibes from this game. Visual is amazing, definitely better than most HS2 on the site. Story wise, definitely need some improvement. The writing is good. But to be honest, from the start until the end of Ch.1 I have no idea what actually happened in this game. Overall, I would give this a 3.5, but I believe Dev would improve his game in the future! Good luck!

Absolutely a 10/10. I don’t like giving out five stars, because I believe every game has room for improvement.

(No spoilers ahead.)

Cyberpunk, military tech, and beautiful women—it’s packed with all the elements that Bois would love. You can really feel the passion the dev has poured into this project. He has a basic plan for the story (not a lot, but at least it’s there). I always support devs who are willing to invest effort into their story, because you could say they’re a rare breed nowadays.

What stands out especially in this AVN are the custom animations for key scenes (although I often accidentally skip through them, which is a bit annoying.There should be a way to prevent players from doing that, right?).

I understand how tough creating animations can be, so I’ll say the effort is truly impressive. The atmosphere in the scenes is also well-crafted.

The downside is that the dialogue between characters feels a bit bland. In the next version, I hope to see more of the characters' charm expressed through their gestures and actions.

This project has a lot of potential—it just needs a bit more polish in the writing.

Not bad for a start. The plot is interesting, and the soundtrack pleases. I liked the animations too. Of course, I would like more H-content... but, overall, the groundwork for the future is promising. I'm waiting for the sequel!

Great game, with an interesting story, with wonderful characters. This is the first update, and the game already has a nice menu, has sounds, has music. The game is made on HS2, despite this the game looks great.
Looking forward to the sequel

Overall: 3

I want to give it 3.5 or 4 stars for the effort put into making the animations at the beginning of the game, but unfortunately, I can't. I say this because at the beginning there is a lot of attention to detail in crafting both the sound design and the animation, whilst using renders captured in StudioNeo and HS2. Pretty neat trick! However, the renders (eg. scenes get to dark...maybe too dark) and pacing fall off after the flash back. Why are their eyes like that (Especially the granddaughter)? Also....HOLY the hairline on my MC after the time skip. It got pushed back into the North Pole!!

*Hopefully the dev takes these as positive criticisms and not as negative criticism and improve upon their product that shows some signs of potential.

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Writing: The complexity of choices presented seem too straightforward to be given to the player. Might as well remove them entirely. I keep saying this in my reviews so hopefully developers will take notice and understand the strength and importance of choice in VNs. VNs lack gameplay mechanics that are there to entertain and immerse their player into the world which are present in other genres like FPS, MOBAS, RPGs. VNs don't have the luxury of doing that. (Unless you're a god at Python or using Unity and other ENGINES). Otherwise, this might as well be another mindless VN where casual players like myself will find the skip unread text button on Ren'Py before immersing themselves into the plot. (I finished the game till the end before writing this review).

Pacing: It feels a bit rushed in my opinion, but others might like the straight to the point narrative, so I won't fault the developer for that.

Renders/Animation: At the start, great use of both video editing and HS2 Renders. Never seen it done in the recent games released using the engine.

Renders fall short after the time skip. Character design weird and awkward. Character's anatomy oddly proportioned, and shaders seem to be lacking on the characters.
- MC's tongue is too light.
- Lack of Shaders
- Scenes are too dark (Too much ambient occlusion (AO) .. probably developers lack experience in post-production tools)
- Hairstyle doesn't fit some (maybe most) the characters at all.
- Eyes are too emissive and have too much glow)
- Could list more but.... oh well

Nudity/Content: 1 scene (not a spoiler its already in the gallery)

Sound: Great!

Music seems to fit the universe, and I always appreciate when a developer cares about sound design in their game.

UI: Mediocre

Eh, the in the game HUD is really annoying, Thankfully the dev kept the option the reduce the opacity on it. Wish they also made it an option to turn off the backgrounds for the other Ren' Py buttons.