VN - Ren'Py - Bad Hero [Ep.2 v3.2.4p] [Xlab]

The Story is all over the place.predatorial Lesbians everywhere .useless characters that dont add anything or what so ever to the story. everyone is plotting against the MC
too bad the animations. charas design and the start of the story where good enough but the the dev wanted to annoy me soo much and destroy all of it .

Pros:

1- Some Renders are in general acceptable to borderline good in some angles, but overall it's the usual stock DAZ models you came to expect to.

Cons:

1- Story at it's best moments is pretty bad, at it's worst, it's cringe-inducing.
2- Choices are meaningless, this plays more like a Kinect Novel since you have an optimal good choice, a bad choice and an instant game over choice, every time.
3- Dev later adds mini-games into the mix to get extra-content, they're in general pretty much a waste of time.

Not a game, just a story. It's a big job with many nice pictures, but if you like game make another choice. If you want to read an illustrated story download it. thank you very much for the job, but I want to play.

Version: v1.3.4f

Review:
The best this game is you do not download it. Seriously, because this game is really bad. I wasted my time playing this, the game's story is totally meaningless and the content is pretty weak. I don't have much to say, I just didn't think it was good and gave up playing it. The renders of the female character models are even acceptable (some), but the sexual content is quite tedious, it's not even worth it.

So, why I did gave 1 star?
The game could have a different idea, not that silly and boring script. The gameplay is made by choice and if you choose wrong, game over. There are mini-games in the game that you have to do to receive the bonus scene, it is not so bad but it is a waste of time. So, some female characters even have a reasonable render, the animations and gameplay, I didn't think they were very good. The story is completely boring, which you will leave of the game and move to recycle bin. Anyway, I do not recommend this game.

I tried to like this game, i really did. The renders are really great, but thats about all the positives i have to say about it.

The writing is so incredibly bad, full of grammar and spelling mistakes, some passages just straight up dont make sense and seem machine translated. The story is incredibly uncreative, and the parts that had potential were handled terribly.

If the dev can fix spelling, and actually get a bit creative with the story it has potential. but as of now, v.1.3.4 its sadly just bad and a waste of time.

[Rev @ v1.2.4f]

Art's about all this has going for it. Characters are alright; the setting/backgrounds/layouts are meh.

Writing is bad. Scenario is novel, but handled abysmally. Narrative is a disjointed derpfest. Characterization is weak and voice is immature.

Porn was dull and unconvincing. The very first bit of porn was to surreptitiously jerk off on a chick; it sets the tone nicely for the rest of the experience being wanky.

TLDR: Would be better as an image gallery.

It was an 'okay' game but it wasn't anything to write home about, if you read the kinks and like them you'll like it a bit but it won't stand out. It's also kind of a pain to play when the walkthrough isn't up to date because while it's not bad it just isn't good enough to play guessing games with. Try it on a slow day if you like it's fets and when an up to date walkthrough has been posted, there's enough in here it's 'okay', otherwise look for better games.
Update: I'm going to cut it a little extra slack, the bondage apparatus scene with the chick with HUGE boobs deserves an extra star. That and the walkthrough mod is up to date.

Incredible; rare idea, terrible, terrible execution.

The idea of being a bad guy is quite rare out there. And our MC here has all the necessary qualities to be one. There's a great cast of girls, diverse in all ways. Also, the music is kinda nice in the beginning.

However...

a) This is secretly a cuckold game. Everyone's getting some decent action with hotties, we are just there to watch. To each their own, I guess, buuuuuuuut that should've been mentioned explicitly.
b) The most major pitfall of the game is the structure. The symptoms of the problem include asking "what the fuck is going on?" more times than the author obviously intended, absolute lack of understanding of characters and their motivations (especially for MC), lack of a mental map of the story, forgotten ideas, having a christmas special in the least appropriate of places, and just general amateurish feeling of the story.
c) General writing is absolute garbage. It's unpolished and feels amateurish - when I was 12, the characters in stories I tried writing talked similar to this.
d) While all of this would've been forgiven to a game with good sexual content, the sexual content here is... Not really good. I'll admit, I got frustrated and left when the author , so I don't know ALL of the sexual content, but of what I've seen, it's very vanilla (so really undeserving of the tags) and mechanical, soulless. There is no emotion to the sex, no context to it.
e) MC doesn't respect the rules of gun safety. He leaves his gun unattended and unsecured. While I get that he's a gangster, even gangsters don't let their guns get stolen. This is just a personal pet peeve of mine, but a major one.

Overall, the good really, really doesn't outweigh the bad here. I was torn between 1 and 2 stars, and I decided to leave 2, just because some of the girls and their personalities were hot, and some of the moments felt emotionally engaging (all of those within the very beginning).

This game is about MC being a real hardcore bad guy. There are not much games in this genre especially with such good graphics and story and without any grind, free roam. I dunno why this game has so low rating since it has everything to attract attention in a good way.

A story about an excon mc. Returning to regain his turf in his old milieu. I'd rate it largely a comedy. The mc is sometimes genious sometimes buffoon. Mostly asshole occasionally decent. The game doesn't take itself seriously. Any critique of inconsistencies of character in the mc are mute. Guys like the mc exist if in slightly less exaggerated form. The game is a parody. There's are surprises, cute girls some violence and generally a lot of degeneracy. Kinks include incest and drugs. Give it a go if you like those things in a game.

The story isn't great but the absurdity of it makes it fun.
The animations and renders get better a bit later on in the game and are rather good. There are a lot of mixed reviews for this game. I'd say that if you're looking for something polished with a serious plot, you might be disappointed. But if you like something a bit stupid and fun, then you'll probably enjoy this game.

The MC has just a bizzare personality especially after being in prison for 18 years...

Really jarring location transitions between dialogue.

The more irritating thing for me was the sudden screen telling me to go play the spin-off at this point. Which then frequently gets referenced in the game.

If the content is supposed to be known information in the main game it SHOULD NOT be separated out into a different game.

Frank swings wildly from being a formidable criminal to seemingly being the most naive person alive at the drop of a hat and it feels really jarring at times and makes a lot of the game painful to sit through.

I like this game. the story is good, the MC of the face has been remade, it's a progress. But there are still some problems, like a bug that suddenly appears makes players feel bored. Please fix it again, I'm waiting for the new update,keep it up boy

First about the story, it's pretty good, it has some action and some funny moments and some dumb girl moments But all might not like this games kinda humor, but I love it!

The animations have gotten A LOT better from it was in the start, it's the only reason that i'm first rating it now, other vice my rating would not be good

The renders are good, but not excellent and there is some mini-games/tasks, that for me not would be possible to get through, without help. There is not many of them tho, but they are still there.

So it gets a solid 4 star rating from me

I've tried to play this game twice now but the 'story' is just so nonsensical that it almost causes me physical pain. Decent renders is the only good thing I can possibly say here, the title fails hard in every other aspect; story, translation, character development etc. avoid this one unless you are the type that likes dumpster fires.

Okay, this might surprise some people, but I actually have loads of fun playing this game.

The renders are only so-so, the writing (though improved) is still pretty bad and Frank is a complete dick, basically every time you think he will do something decent, he does 3 horrible things to counter it.

But that is also the charm of this game.
It's nonsensical, it's sexy, it's fun and from time to time it actually makes sense as well, what more could you want?

Honestly, I don't even know if Xlab does what he does on purpose or whether it's a killer tomatoes thing, but as long as I can get my laughs from the game and still get some sexy times, why whould I care?

Intermittent review: Just started playing and so far almost so good. Have found two problems.
1: Music is ok, but the sounds aren't sounds, they're musical interludes that are porly selected, imo. Breaking the mood, such as it is.
2: Main character render. FFS! If you decide to switch the main character model completely, redo the entire renders featuring him, not just do an insert with the new models face.

More to come as I continue, expect the vote to go up or down.

So I have to rate this one maybe 4 stars.

The good to me:
1) An evil (I wish he were more evil) protagonist. I have a much easier time imagining playing a villainous male versus a normal one because at least it reminds me a little of myself on my bad days at times hee hee.
2) Renders seem pretty good. One of the girls looks great to me and the others are good generally.
3) Humor doesn't always land for me, but it does try and create a fun narrative that is different than a lot of stuff you find on this site and a few times I laughed out loud, super rare for this kind of game.

MEH:
1) Penis. It feels more comic book than sexy to me. Maybe I care about this more than most of the players here coming from a female perspective.
2) Some of the writing - sometimes it's good but sometimes not so much, it's a little uneven at times, but compared to a lot other games on this site, not a huge problem at all.
3) Boomer anything...yuck.

(Update on a much older rating, this time it's for chapter 2, version 2.4.4)

I played through the entire game to make sure, and if you're anything at all like me, the biggest takeaway from this is simple:

SKIP CHAPTER 1, JUMP STRAIGHT TO CHAPTER 2
(there are no choices that matter between chapters anyway)

Here's why: Chapter 1 isn't only much uglier in every way, it literally has more sex scenes featuring other males than sex scenes featuring the MC. If that's your kink, good for you, but for most of us it isn't.

Furthermore, the animation that does exist in Chapter 1 is embarrassing at best, completely mood-ruining at worst.

The story is complete nonsense even by the lowest of porn logic standards and characters follow no sort of internal logic nor act according to their personality whatsoever, it's genuinely like someone just rolled dice to see how any given character would act. There are frequent attempts at humor and genuinely none of them land, a random 12-year old would come up with funnier quips.

There are some puzzles/quests/"quicktime" events in the game as well and they're nothing but a complete waste of time, just annoying and pointless.

Oh and the music is terrible and what sound effects there are, are just annoying and brings nothing to the game at all.

Objectively the only upside of Chapter 1 is that it has pretty good models. Not even outstanding by the standards that are being set nowadays, but well above average. Oh and if you're really into humiliation and sharing kinks with the ugliest characters imaginable, I guess.

So what about Chapter 2?

Well, it's a little bit short so far, but the animation is CONSIDERABLY better, maybe even straight up GOOD.

The music selection is better if not perfect and the game actually has sound effects that blend in now.

The story isn't much better, but that might just be by virtue of having to follow up on Chapter 1, but it does feel a little more coherent and well paced so far and I didn't come across any inane attempts at humor.

No forced sex scenes including other men so far, though there are scenes with other naked males, but they don't dominate by any means.

The game just looks better in every way across the board.

No puzzles at all so far, which I think is good. Puzzles in porn games are just a way to make a short game feel longer by virtue of wasting the players time with irrelevant activities.

Because of the abysmal start the game had, I'm willing to give it a relatively high rating; all it has to do is continue on the path set so far in Chapter 2, improve a little bit here and there and not stray back to the dogshit ideas and execution that plagued Chapter 1 and it well and truly deserves this rating and maybe even higher.

Chapter 1 by itself is genuinely a 0/5 game but Chapter 2 is, at least for now, deserving of a 4/5 rating.

Below, saved for posterity is the review I left over 2 years ago, so you can get an idea of how this project started: