You know how sometimes, you're watching a list on youtube of "THE 10 TOP BEST MMORPG" or "THE TOP 5 BEST RPG" or whatever, and you see some of the games in the list are like mine craft pixel indie games, rated 9, and you're wondering WTF?
That's because when games are rated, they are rated according to the kind of games that they are, sometimes in very specific ways. So the rated 9 pixel art indie game is given a 9 because compared to other pixel art indie games, it's that good. But it's no where near a AAA game that's a million times better, but yet has a lower rating.
I encounter that problem sometimes when I review a game here on F95, -even though I don't oft)en make reviews) except it's from the other point of view.
I immediately loved this game, and I feel it's on a whole new level compared to other games of its category, yet I can't give it a 5 star. Partly because this new category is a lot more demanding, less forgiving.
So I'll make the TL;DR right here and now :
Compared to all the"interactive" Visual Novels I've played, this one is quality. It's pro, it's smooth, it's creative, it's well done. In one word, it's polished. I wouldn't know, but I'd guess the dev(s) aren't doing this for the first time, and it shows.
But if there were a whole ton of devs or dev teams doing this, if there were a lot of games in this category I'd expect better, a lot better. See what I mean?
To me, this game is like one of the first of a new generation of interactive VNs, and even though there are (imo) only very few games in that category, and even though it would be unfair to ask more from the dev(s) because they already did so much,and despite what I'm guessing is the extensive experience and talent they have, it's not really ready to compete in this new category. So even though there really aren't that many games to compete with "at this level", I'm rating it according to what I would expect from this level, kind of as if I were rating a AAA game with a 8 that is a million times better than a small indie game that I would rate 9.
Not sure if you followed this "line of thought" hehe.
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Anyway, here's a more "classic" review :
I loved the story. I don't usually read VNs to be honest, I usually have my left pinky pressed on CTRL pretty much the whole time, and though I did skip a few parts, I also read a few parts, which for me really doesn't happen often and is already a kind of achievement for the devs.
But I got a little over excited at the beginning, when I discovered the story, I started imagining : "oh wow, a sandbox in which the player could possess anyone and be free to do what they want with them. I mean, as far as fantasies go, particularly sexual themed fantasies, that's a super big one. But of course it isn't a sandbox, it in't a "RPG", it's a visual novel, and though it isn't the dev's fault, I was a little dissapointed when I "came back down to earth".
It's that freedom isn't it, that gets people addicted to a game, it's the whole point of what the original "choose your own adventure" novels were in the first place: giving the reader the illusion of being in control, of making his own choices. And that's something the game does extremely well. By that I mean that the limitations to the freedom of the player (or reader) are enforced in a smart way, one that is not so hard to accept.
I'm not going to go in every detail, this review is already longer than I was planning, so I'll "try" and be a bit quicker with the rest.
I really like how the hints are implemented,giving the player the freedom to try and do whatever he wants (even though most of the time the game says "you can't go there" (((which is a good thing imo because it saves a lot of pointless time)))) while at the same time, they are basically a live walkthrough. You could basically skip everything, read notinhg at all, except for the hints.
The UI is clean, making playing the game easy to do.I might suggest one or two improvements (in particular regarding navigation from one area to the other) but these are mostly details.
Now, funnily enough, (and let's be honest here, if most people play or read these novels it's to FAP), I never really became super horny while playing it. Ironically, this means that (at least in my case), if the game had only one single objective, one goal, to get horny or fap, then this one would (again, in my case) fail.
That's the biggest reason why I'm not giving it a 5 star.
And I can see the dev(s) if they read this, pulling their hair, thinking : "what more do you fking want??? We got high quality pictures with extremely good animations (extremely good), pretty, sexy models who's boobs even change size I mean short of a VR empflix video, it really doesn't get much better than this lol.
The explanation is that it's a personal thing. I think, for me,a lot has to do with RenPy. I mean I usually don't really like them so much, the skin looks like it's made of a mixture of plastic and rubber and the men and women, at least in the sex scenes, make me think of plastic dolls more than human beings (or demons and angels). It's not just the skin, but I'm guessing I don't have to go more in detail on this as you probably know what I mean.
But I will say this, it isn't simply about being realistic, there's this game I played not long ago from Illusion (I can't remember the name) which was loaded on F95, it came out like 10 years ago and the models are all cartoon style, but I loved it, even though they were objectively less realistic, they felt more real to me.
The other thing is, very often in these kind of games, there's a wide variety of girls, the "petite" one with no breasts (usually a daugter), the "voluptuous" one with big breasts (usually a mother or aunt). Personally, I don't really like the "petite" type, I like voluptuous women, not fat ones, but you know what I mean. And appart from when one or two characters in the game take a pill that makes them grow their breasts or just grow their body, there isn't a whole lot of that kind of women in this game.
But like I said, I really did love this game, and it really brings VNs to a whole new level, and I guess I'm giving it a 4 because I'm hoping to give the dev's next game or any other dev(s) who start working with this kind of quality a 5 in a few months, or however long it takes, cause way I see it, this is only the beginning, it's like a new standard has been set.
