VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Become a Rock Star [v1.01] [Mr Jet]

Become a Rockstar 1.01

Pros:

+The renders are fantastic and the girls are beautiful.

+Lots of attention paid to facial expressions and body posture which elevate the visual storytelling quite a bit and add life to the game.

+All the LIs are attractive and portrayed in a manner that makes it clear the dev knows how to make things sexy. They're not terribly deep characters but each is still alluring in different ways and they have fairly different personalities. There's also just enough diversity in looks and body type to make characters distinct without going overboard in any direction with proportions.

+While the LI paths can play out in a bit of a formulaic manner at times, there are enough differences that most people should be able to find at least one if not multiple routes that they can really enjoy plus plenty of great side-girl options.

+Just enough to get invested in with the LIs while staying pretty easygoing most of the time and not getting bogged down in much drama or anything that would bring the mood down for too long

+Lewd content is pretty generally pretty hot while not straying straying terribly far from fairly vanilla stuff most of the time (for AVN standards at least).

+Good variety of glorious facials and body paintings in addition to having visually satisfying results when finishing inside. Only nitpick are some of the same exact patterns are used a bit too often for some of the facials (they seem to be pretty commonly used assets in other games as well).

+Outfits pretty much all fit well with fabric that hangs in a believable enough way (I hate that I have to make this a positive since it should be the standard but there's still a lot of games being made with too many outfits that stick to the curves of the models in ridiculously unnatural ways) and attire is generally well suited to the character/situation

+Depth of field effects are used incredibly well in the renders with just the right depth, focal points, and subtlety. Again, I hate that this is not the norm but a lot of AVNs that attempt this ruin their renders by slapping on a super shallow depth of field that just turns everything into a blurry mess.

+Game is complete and decently sized in terms of length/content.

Neutral:

=Animations are a mixed bag. The first couple are an absolute train wreck. Following that there's a leap forward in quality and for a while short looping animations are used. These are hit or miss in terms of quality, lighting/color, and impact varying not only scene to scene but animation to animation within the same scene. Some animations will have good jiggling/bouncing and movement that is satisfying while others seem much more unnatural, static, lifeless, or occasionally robotic. In general, as the game progresses the animations do get better (as well as get a tad longer and more detailed/complex) but at a certain point they start to go overboard with unnecessary camera movements, occasionally too many extra angles, and animating things that didn't need to be animated. By the time you get near the end of the game the animations have improved quite a bit but still maintain the same problem with inconsistency in overall quality and impact from animation to animation so that they're really hit or miss throughout the game despite the improvements. Lighting and color of anims compared to the renders can also be an issue until near the end but generally isn't super-noticeable outside of the earlier parts of the game. I think, despite the issues, the animations were generally effective enough on the whole but everyone has their own standards on animation and for me these were not quite consistently impressive enough to count as a positive.

=There are two non-optional sex scenes early in the game. It didn't bother me as they felt in character for the MC at that point but some people may take issue with it on principal alone.

=Sounds are there for some things, but I had mine turned down pretty low to avoid being jump-scared by things like the doorbell. Nothing too special with the sounds.

Cons:

-Music was extremely disappointing for a game with a band as core of the story. The music is incredibly boring and repetitive.

-I personally didn't care that much for the MC for a good portion of the game (he does become more tolerable as things progress). He's not only an ungrateful self-righteous hot-headed horny brat and a bit of an a-hole for a good portion of the game, but he also lacks any kind of charm or anything to make him interesting outside of his blind ambition and poorly executed love of playing music. The horny part is the one thing that they actually got pretty right for his age - so that bit isn't a complaint. He also ends up getting and taking credit for things he really didn't do anything to achieve (he's the most useless member of the band that his friend does almost all the work for) and things that are clearly his fault are almost never recognized as such. The characters around him make the situation worse by enabling his behavior. Example below includes spoilers for Emma:

-Routes and reaching certain events can be anywhere from tad confusing and to just completely unintuitive. What constitutes getting together or breaking up isn't even really clear most of the time. Even the author seemed to get confused as there are continuity issues where the MC or another character will mention something they didn't do or didn't even have knowledge of in the current playthrough (which seems really confusing until you've played the path/part it's referencing). There are a lot of continuity issues in general between visual issues and dialogue/path issues but most are minor enough to not mind aside from a few exceptions. Anyway, regarding the routes, technically you can be with all the LIs (though some events may be missed) but things will eventually go south at a certain point. Each LI has a point of no return (none of which are at all clear without referencing a guide or the code) at which time it's your last chance to commit to that character or get out of the relationship before things go sideways if you're seeing multiple LIs (you want to try to commit to one and break things off with the others before this happens). Most of these big decisions start a little over half way through the game with the exception of Lisa/Jade. Lisa's path (and by extension Jade's) is the only one you need to commit to very early and then don't have any chances to get out of before judgement day comes which kinda sucks. Even some of the side girls you need to kinda plan for as they're mostly all fair game without interfering with the main LI relations but you still need to know the right steps to open up options with them and sometimes have to choose between. The best bet is to use the walkthrough and work backwards from what you want to the steps needed to get there to figure out the key save spots and decisions. You can also just use the WT/cheat mod or console commands but still need to understand what to do and when.

Example of how unintuitive it can be to get to certain outcomes/events (spoilers):

Side note about Jane's route (spoilers):

-As much as I liked the characters, they're mostly a bit on the shallow side in terms of characterization and progression. The LIs each have unique enough personalities, ambitions, living situations, and sexual tendencies to do a good enough job making them all seem pretty different from each other but, like other parts of the game, it still falls short if you're looking for any real depth. Aside from one story from Jade, what we know about their personal histories even in flashbacks only goes back approximately as far as MC has known the character (and the flashbacks themselves I almost always found myself disappointed by). A bit of laziness with the path writing also makes matters worse in this department as well. While they each have plenty of their own unique content in each route, various scenes always play out nearly exactly the same no matter which LI you're with down to the same setting, poses, and copy-pasted dialogue for each LI. If you've played multiple routes you've heard the different LIs do/say the exact same things in those sequences in a way that's very distracting and diminishes what uniqueness they do have.

-Writing - It's not great. I'd call the style utilitarian if I'm being generous. It's generally simple and gets the point across (though there are frequent superfluous little additions that often add nothing of value). What I assume are translations (or english from those whose first language isn't english) can end up leaving some wonky lines particularly early on. Dialogue and narration are usually some combination of very ambiguous and/or incredibly uninteresting with lots of "you sat there talking about everything in the world" type narrated lines in place of actual dialogue. When there are larger amounts of dialogue it made me regret wishing for that due to how poorly it's often written and how little of substance is actually said. There's also a ton of redundant or unnecessary lines in both the dialogue and narration which detract from the flow. Pacing tends to be a bit all over the place. There's a severe lack of dramatic tension with all issues being undercut by quick and easy resolutions. The whole story about the band and breaking away from the family seems like nothing more than just a poorly executed backdrop for the relationships to happen. The LI routes really do the heavy lifting for the game. Note that while the writing was certainly lacking, it didn't infuriate or irritate me (at least only rarely), which I wish I could say about lot of the more story-driven (which this game doesn't pretend to be) games in the genre as well as some others I've tried lately. The one positive thing I should mention is that the setups for a lot of events are actually well executed so when lewd scenes happen it's generally not without a nice sexy buildup. Within the lewd scenes themselves the writing can vary from route to route and scene to scene with a tendency towards a bit too minimal but it did make certain scenes much hotter when it was being used for more than spelling out silly moaning sounds and spouting super generic lines. See extended notes on writing below.

-One of the hottest girls (and likely best girl overall) in the game is unfortunately the MC's sister (Julia) who's not an option (it's not that kinda game). Too many gorgeous girls is a good problem to have in terms of constant eye candy I guess but in this kind of game you ideally want the beauty of the LIs to shine and not have the player wishing there was lewd content for other random characters instead. To this point, Erica is also a shame (nobody from Naked Park gets naked) and there were also a few other very attractive girls that are introduced and may even seem to be progressing somewhere and then just disappear (the two from one of the first days working at the bar come to mind). Some of the side-girls I also found even more appealing than a couple of the LIs. Yes, this whole part isn't a real gripe (aside from the Julia part maybe ;P) but just something I found a bit distracting at times.

Conclusion:

I absolutely loved playing this game despite its flaws. The writing issues and lackluster execution of the story weren't nearly enough to stop me from thoroughly enjoying the LIs and sidegirls that make this romp one worth doing multiple routes from. Characters may be a bit on the shallow side but each have their own unique charm and are either quite likeable or somewhat nuanced enough when you're not meant to like them (a few even have what might be considered very simplistic arcs - sadly the MC isn't really one of them). Figuring out the unintuitive routes/choices and how to proceed through them for each route is a bit of an enjoyable game in and of itself at times (even using a walkthrough). This is one of the rare games with multiple endings that I was interested enough in all the LIs to finish all the routes/endings for. It's also one of the few games where I found that the render quality and attention to visual detail could make up for other shortcomings as I find a lot of games lauded for their renders and attractive characters are often prone to having other issues too large for me to get past. For anyone that just wants a pretty basic story chock full of good times with plenty of very attractive females beautifully rendered, I highly recommend giving this a spin.

Rating: I'd like to rate this somewhere between a 4 and a 5 due to the issues (mostly with the writing/main story) but after trying a lot of other games recently they've made me appreciate just how much better this gem does so many things compared to most of the ones I'd normally give a 4. While it does have some pretty large flaws and is far from perfect I still feel like this one deserves to be rounded up to 5 rather than down to 4 as it really is a cut above.

An excellent VN that should be higher rated! Beautiful models and a very clever story to back it. Personally, it's the type of path driven VNs that I enjoy the most; you get to have your fun, especially with side girls that don't affect your main path, and an actual ending (even though I think you could've 2-3 more chapters before the ending).
I understand that some don't like the lack of a harem path, but you do get deep into the game before it's noticeable. I reloaded from a early save & ran 3 other paths after finishing the main. Yes, you miss a little, but it's still excellent and definitely recommended!

This game was a great surprise!! Girls are amazing, all of them look hot, and have great personality. Renders and animations are top quality too


The story is good, and the only problem I had with the game was the MC. For my surprise this problem was over by the end of the game, it felt like he matured 10 years in 1 month lol

Very fun game, I strongly recommend it

In a midst of a lot of abandoned games, Become a Rock Star is a game that essentially delivers on its promise.
A basic premise surrounding aspiring rock artists, loveable love interests and consequences to your decisions.
I'm personally really fond of solo-centric routes and this game really shines in that regard. Trying to juggle multiple relationships simultaneous (for the most part) will lend you some very deserving results.
The cast is pretty solid, also, the addition of a dedicated route to my favorite character (Emma) which was previously just a side character really tied it all up for me. It might not be a perfect masterpiece but it sure as hell delivers a solid experience from beginning to end, therefore, to me, it deserves a 5/5.
It might not be groundbreaking storytelling or dialogue but Mr. Jet has shown he is dedicated to creating very enjoyable Visual Novels (to completion) and I'm looking forward to support his new title Domino Beach.

The girls look nice (very nice even) to okay. Animations are above average. There lie the positives.

I don´t usually have a huge issue with MC´s visuals, but this guy is ugly af, in that uncanny valley kind of way. Also has a punchable face. The writing is genuinely terrible all around, from dialogue to "story." Not really sure there is a point in some complex breakdown, it´s like the average high schooler wrote this at best. Boring, uninspired, cringe slog of a game.

Terrible and cringy dialogue completely ruins this game.

You drive on a bus with a girl you barely know in the middle of the night and this is a conversation:
MC: You know what would be cool? If we just got off the bus at random station and start walking in random direction.
Girl: Idk, that sounds stupid.
MC: Nah, it will be great, trust me.
Girl: Ok, you convinced me, let's do it.

Also, the game is extremely boring and soulless. No real progression of any sorts, you just meet girls and get to fuck them without even trying.
I was very disappointed considering the high rating the game has, which left me very confused.

This is a well-executed game, with high technical quality and very beautiful female characters. However, it is a game for those who like everything to happen very quickly, without any development in the plot or the characters.

I found the storyline quite dull and tedious. I recommend it for those who just want to dive straight into the action and don’t mind skipping the dialogue occasionally.

Top tier game with amazing graphics and story. Personally, I find the the more I play, the more the game sucks me into their little world. So many paths and different choices, took me a couple days to complete the entire game more than once. This is one of the games I decided to take the time to give a rating because I enjoyed it so much. I tend to skip through dialogue in VN usually, but not for this one.

"Become a Rock Star" is a visually appealing visual novel featuring beautiful character models and well-animated scenes. The storyline follows a young man from a wealthy family who forms a rock band, navigating romantic and musical paths with multiple endings based on player choices. While the main characters are well-developed, the dialogue often feels awkward and the story can be simplistic and rushed, especially towards the end. The game includes numerous erotic scenes that improve in quality as the game progresses. However, the protagonist's unconvincing attractiveness and the sometimes unrealistic character actions can detract from the experience. Despite these flaws, the game offers an engaging escape with its diverse romantic interests and multiple narrative branches, making it worth multiple playthroughs for fans of the genre.

Plenty of other reviews to scan through to find specific likes or dislikes.
I like fun stories with multiple paths and endings, like them even more when all the paths make sense and are fun in some way.
This one was an entertaining ride with some very nice, rewarding scenes.
The only "bad" part, which I will not count against in the rating, is that you can't end up with all of your favorites together at the end...lol

The story follows a young man from a wealthy family who pursues his passion for music by forming a rock band, much to the dismay of his father. Throughout the narrative, various female characters serve as love interests for the protagonist, leading to different paths and endings based on player choices. The novel features multiple erotic scenes, requiring multiple playthroughs to view them all.

The character design in the novel has a diverse range of beautiful females. While characters like Jane, Julia, and Lisa maintain consistent and well-developed personalities throughout the narrative, others, such as Selina (whose transformation from a wild nymphomaniac to a tender and caring girl may appear unrealistic) and Anna (whose storyline feels somewhat lacking in depth), fall short in their development. Interesting characters like Jade and Nicole, while possessing beauty and mystery, are underdeveloped and relegated to limited roles.
Lisa is initially portrayed as a kind, respectful, and sensible girl who prefers a gradual approach to relationships. However, certain choices in the game can lead to her character abruptly taking a more sexualized turn, such as having threesomes with the protagonist and Jade, which may not align with her original personality.
Emma, the protagonist's ex-girlfriend, is a stunning blonde with sporadic appearances. Her goodbye scene is heartbreaking! to achieve a good ending with her you must reject all other girls.

The visual aspect of the novel is of good quality, mainly the design of female characters and their detailed bodies. The sex scenes are passionate with enough kissing and foreplay, and cover a wide variety of sexual positions, with short but smooth animations.

The background music is correct without much variety, something that may be missing in a novel whose main theme is the world of music and rock bands, and there are almost no sound effects.
Overall, "Become a Rockstar" offers an interesting story with a little drama, some emotional moments, many beautiful girls and romantic paths to explore.

The graphics are good enough. The gist of the story is fine, if a bit simplistic.

The dialog is awful and a constant distraction. Even though it's clearly a translation, the original text must also be bad. The main character is a good-at-everything Mary Sue, which is a bit tiresome. There aren't any real challenges or hurdles to overcome.

It's... fine.

I didn't end up finishing this game as the writing lost me after a while. I might come back and give it another shot some time, because I really enjoyed the interactions between the bandmates. I love that you get to name the band yourself and there seem to be very few limitations on what that can be- I was trapesing about with my band, "STAR WARS™ Knights of the Old Republic™ II - The Sith Lords™." Always fun to see that pop up in dialogue unexpectedly.

Plenty of content and the story isn't exactly terrible, but can be pretty boring as there are times where I have the urge to skip through some dialogues as they really don't seem meaningful. Lots of H scenes, and while they aren't the best in the beginning, you can actually see the improvements in renders and animations as you progress the game, which is really nice to see. The girls here are beautiful, with each of them having their own unique personality, and seeing their growth as you play on is really nice. What's not so great about them is how all of them just wants to fuck MC lol, not to mention MC looks pretty rough. While the development does feel a little rush nearing the end, I'd say this game is enough to get me playing 2/3 times to see different endings. Jane's easily my favorite girl by a long shot, given how beautiful she is, her personality, the growth between her and MC, it just ties very well together. I did enjoy choosing Anna/Selina on my other playthroughs as well.

Pros:
-Renders and animations improving overtime
-Beautiful LIs
-Jane, Anna, Selina
-Some good character growth
-Multiple endings

Cons:
-Story can be pretty boring at times
-Initial renders and animations aren't great
-MC looks like a bitch
-Too many LIs, which limits the amount of content each of them gets
-MC isn't very good looking, yet all the girls just wanna sleep with him
-Gallery option is nice, but is unorganized

Although my experience with this game is mixed, I can acknowledge that it is very unique in its premise and executes it pretty well.

The LIs are good but my one major gripe is the MC looks horrible. This dude looks like he couldn't even pay to get laid. The story is also kinda rough and ends abruptly.

Nonetheless, still recommend giving it a shot because of the unique premise and you might end up really loving it.

Short summary:


The story is not terrible, but character action (not believable) make it hard to invest into it and care. Lots of sex scenes, some are really hot. Animation start terrible but greatly improve with time. Renders get better too. Surprisingly large section of pure kinetic novel, and not that interesting.



Good Things

• Lots of hot sex scenes
• Later on animations are pretty good
• Some girls are hot
• Renders start ok, but later on many are good

Bad points

• Everyone wants to fuck you right away
• Girls don’t act believably
• Too many LIs, so some get far less time, and its hard to know which ones will get this treatment
• Initial animations are pretty terrible

Played this some time ago and totally forgot to rate it, but here we go:

PROS
-The girls are amazing and good looking.
- The LI stories are interesting imo, and diverse enough.
- The fact that you get multiple endings is a huge pro.
- Reasonably good looking renders.

CONS
- Not saying the MC is an Adonis, but without trying to be rude, the MC in this VN is just too odd looking. What makes it even more unrealistic is that many women in here find him good looking enough to pursue him. Some girls are into funny looking people and that's just fine, but all of them? Funny thing is in the endings we see the MC as a full grown adult man now, and he does look more attrractive now.

- The story doesn't justify the title of the VN. I came here expecting the MC to fight and have his adventures to become a rockstar. We only had one concert....and that's it. No more adventures about becoming a rockstar, no more content of being a rockstar. We see little jam sessions that don't feel like they immerse you in the world of bands at all. Given the name of the VN, it really lacks the 'rockstar' part.

Despite the cons, I enjoyed the VN enough to play multiple paths back in the day. Can't wait to see more of the dev's future projects.

To be frank I didn't play very much before deciding enough was enough. The game failed to grab my interest before the poor writing put me off. There are only so many odd, Engrishy turns-of-phrase a fella can tolerate and I hit my limit in the first twenty minutes.

If you can make it beyond that I have to assume the game is otherwise good, it IS highly rated here afterall. But it ain't for me.

Plot
There are actually two. The actual beginning of a rock band, from rounding up the crew to getting the first contract. At the same time it is also a coming of age story, where a young man shows a middle finger to the family fortune, becomes a responsible adult, and tries to solve conflicts with his dad. Strangely, the choice of the love interest will add additional scenes related to one (!) of the themes: a Lisa playthrough seem a bit more about the band, while a Jane playthrough is more about the coming of age story.

Liked
* good looking, but relatively rarely seen models (except for the "wild girl" hairstyle which is used everywhere from Riona, through Chandra to Lisa here)
* strange to point out in an AVN, but I liked that important male extras, like the father or the security dude, are believable (this is usually a weak point, since noone focuses on these)
* the female models used are not super over the top. I especially liked the clothing options for the more professional ladies (like Julia or Nicole)
* the LIs in general are well thought out. I especially like that they are different. Lisa is a classic love story with a twist, Jane is casual fun for busy woman turned into something more. While Selina is a nympho who only opens up, and turns into a sweet lady after you navigate this crazy period of hers.
* many extras are quite memorable, like the dad and sister of the player character. I really like the evolution of the father character.

Didn't like
* the actual lewd scenes are a bit vanilla, some of these I even found boring and just clicked through. Despite many scenes, this worked better for me as a romance novel than an adult novel.
* the ladies ask for exclusivity pretty soon, and there is a price to pay for cheating. I mean very soon: you are introduced to the mains, and inmediately after this (like on the second or third date) you have to commit. I don't mind this in theory, but I do think it is a bit too soon in practice.
* the writing is really strange. Multiple very specific sentences, like someone wanted to be absolutely sure it is clear. This reminds me of... Witcher 1! There, CDPR admitted that they wrote the game in polish, and the english version is translated text. I suspect this is the case here, and because of this, dialog seem a bit overwritten, sometimes even unnatural, and strangely specific.
* in the beginning of a first playthrough, it is not obvious who will be love interests, and it seems the dev made some cuts during developement. I was waiting for quite a while to meet the barista lady again, but it never happened.
* despite the theme, the music is pretty basic in the game. I would recommend turning it off, and looking up a metal playlist on spotify or youtube.


Summary
In general I liked this one. Might be strange, but I liked the conflict with the father and the family story more than the band stuff (even tho I am a metalhead). Maybe this is the reason, why I liked Jane's path the most?
I would recommend this game to players who prefer romances over lots of varied lewd scenes.

Embark on your journey to stardom with 'Become a Rock Star', a delightful visual novel that follows your ascent to independence and the formation of your own music band. Featuring stunning character models and a plethora of captivating renders and animations, this game promises a visually appealing experience from start to finish.

The storyline unfolds in a straightforward manner, devoid of any major plot twists or dramatic upheavals. While there may be moments that briefly stir concern, they pass by fleetingly, leaving little impact on the overall narrative. Though the main characters are well-explored and possess endearing personalities, I found myself wishing for more development among the secondary cast, whose screen time felt insufficient.

Towards the conclusion, there's a slight sense of haste, leaving me yearning for additional content in this engaging game. However, my primary disappointment lies in the choice of music, or lack thereof. Given the thematic focus on forming a music band, I anticipated a more robust selection of musical compositions. Nonetheless, I acknowledge that many players prefer to curate their own playlists while enjoying VNs.

In summary, 'Become a Rock Star' offers a lighthearted narrative, charming character designs, and an easy-to-digest storyline. If you're seeking an enjoyable escape with visually appealing characters and a breezy storyline, look no further. Give 'Become a Rock Star' a try, and prepare to be pleasantly entertained.