Ren'Py - Abandoned - Bancroft Academy [Ep. 1] [MrAuroraGames]

+ very good renders
+ attention to detail
+ interesting characters
+ nice music choice
- story is nothing special but i still see potential

I will definetly bookmark this VN and cant wait to try out episode 2 once it releases!

Edit: Never heard about Lust Academy while writing this review. LMAO

Ep.1 two stars.
one for efforts and one for renders.
everything else is meh at best.

story of 5 episodes and after ep.1 basically all you know is where you are and names of characters. ( which i don't remember next day after i played ep1) you exchanged a few words with them and that's it. you got some hints, but mostly is just impressions. story wise, introduction of characters is, as good as, just showing you pictures of characters with short desc. on them like: mom, first love interest?, diverse college bro, second love interest?, dean, ...

" choices that dictate your path " this imo ..., if only author didn't said anything about those "choices" and how much they mean, i would probably laugh less. eg. scene in market present you two choices, every normal person, in this case, would like to have third option, to ask "what is going on?", but you have to choose between " fart loud or very loud"...

my overall impression of ep.1 can be desc. in two words, premature ejaculation.
i would probably check ep.2 to see if this gets any better

+ fairly nice renders/lighting and pretty decent UI except for the audio issue below
+ significant content for a first release (though this may be due to dev's previous work that this is remake of?).

- feels very fast paced, there's no build up to being friends etc. you just instantly are.
- unnecessary loading screens
- immature simp mc
- some audio not controlled by volume sliders
- not sure what else since I couldn't bother continuing after morning of Day 2 when mc shows up 30 min late for first class.

I'm rating this a 2 instead of a 1 because I do see what the author was trying to do. I'm not allowed to mention other game names, but it's clear the author was inspired by another very highly-rated game with a similar (kinda) concept. The last time a game was inspired by that specific game, it was a great experience for me, however, this game was not.

As the other reviewer mentioned, a major problem with this game is the sentence structuring. However, I think it goes deeper than that. Things happen in this game that doesn't make sense and should be explained thoroughly. For example, when you are given the option to kick the guy bullying your friend, a proficient author would explain how either this is a normal thing that happens in this universe (kicking someone while you are at work) OR show that it's NOT a normal thing (like in our universe) and show how there would be IMMEDIATE consequences to that action (people circling the situation, maybe calling the police, the immediate firing of MC, guy threatening to press charges, etc). The MC does get fired, but the boss never specifies why, and it's up the the reader to assume it's because he attacked a customer.

Even if this is a supernatural game, you must explain how and why in very specific ways that can successfully suspend the readers disbelief. This is actually a cardinal sin I see often in games that have evil protagonists or games that have anime-style plots. They allow the MC to do things that make no sense even in their fabricated universe and don't properly explain why it's okay. I've seen stories where MCs go around killing and raping people with literally no meaningful consequence... but I digress. I do hope this story gets better cause the models look good.

Things such as the character renders, the school locations, house leaders, as well as plot is almost like a lousier copy of the original. Thing such as the Raven's home navigation was terrible and unintuitive, the plot was severely lacking any captivating essences, and it just felt empty as a whole.

As of this version (Ep. 1), I cannot recommend this game at all.

Great renders, good plot and story but whether or not English is the Devs 1st language, its wrong. The English, or translation, is wrong, making the script terrible and the pacing is awful and way too fast (A girl you just encountered for the first time ever, asks if you're ok after u space out, and MC randomly blurts out about going to school. To which she replies. "I'd have liked to get to know u more." Conversation don't go like that. How do u not know that people don't interact like that. Just awful. Couldn't get more than 5 or so mins in.