Ren'Py - Bonds of Love [v1.5] [Zelathorn Games]

Great game.

The graphics is only average. Neither the image quality nor things like lighting or backgrounds are very good. Characters models are also far from being top notch, but they are unique to this game, which is a plus for those who hate to see the same models everywhere, and the LI-s look good enough to do the job. In some scenes they can look especially cute or sexy.

But what I really enjoyed was the writing. The characters, dialogue, progression with the characters was nice.

I don't like NTR or sharing. This game has both. Both of them are mostly optional at this point. That means some of the girls will be available only with sharing but you can avoid them. And there are NTR like events which was avoidable completely based on your choices.
You also learn the past of some girls. Most of them are not virgins and some of them even has a past where they were, let's say quite active. Unfortunately it's not always clear from the start who has a past like that.
IF YOU ONLY LIKE PURE VIRGINS THIS GAME IS NOT FOR YOU!

For me most of the above was acceptable by either accepting that they had left their past behind or treating them as casual sex partners .
But of course everyone has different tastes. For some, neither of this is acceptable, but in my opinion this is much more realistic than having all hose hot virgins (strictly 18+!) running around.

The game is sandbox, which I know many people hate. This one wasn't that bad in that sense though it also doesn't add that much to the game. You can at most chose the order of things to do.
At the least You always know where is some new event. You don't have to visit every location to see if there is anything new which can be very annoying in some sandbox games and the grind is also not bad.
In some games you have to repeat the exact same scene multiple times to progress to the next one. Here is no such thing: Every event is unique.
It might take some time to unlock sexy scenes with most characters but at least there is some progress in every event.

My biggest issue with the game is also related to sandbox. I think it's related to parallel 'questlines' involving the same characters where dependency is not checked. This can cause you to reach a certain level of intimacy with a character in one such 'questline' while on the other they still treat you differently. This can cause inconsistencies in their behavior.

There were also some bugs. One of them caused me missing an important scene and was very surprised when in a later scene they referred to that event.
Another one is that at some point the in game phone kept showing the new message alert even if there was non. Because of this I had to check the phone all the time to see if there really was anything new.

4 stars despite the mentioned issues, because I really enjoyed it and because I don't think it deserves some of the low ratings it got from others.

So, the menu bar (along the bottom) has been disabled and, since the game treats all input as a 'next scene' or completely ignores it, there no way to save, no way to get to options to turn off that incessant annoying 'music,' no way to do anything except advance to the next scene or force exit. Why do some devs insist on wrecking a perfectly good default renpy interface?

At first I thought it's not too bad if you can get over the poor graphics, but the further I got in the more disappointed I got. This is a slow, slow burn and I kept think surely he is going to get some sex but they streatched just getting a kiss out for like forever then they stretched HJ then BJ after a bunch of hours you finally get sex with some of the girls. But then you have to put up with drama about getting caught in compromising position with one another girl and have to listen to them complain to you. One of the other things that irritated me is the dialog box is to tall and can not be adjusted so the bottom third of the screen blocks everything unless you hide the dialog. I played as far as I could till the days advance with nothing happening.

This game is kind of a mixed bag. It has some good things that are hampered by bad things and some bad things that are hampered by good things.

First, as others have pointed out, the sandbox is unnecessary and actually detrimental to the story. It's true that you have markers so you never get lost, but not only do you get repeated scenes every once in a while, probably due to bad quest tracking, but you get inconsistencies where you're telling your mom that it's totally fine to have a mom/son relationship and in the next scene you're telling your little sister that their relationship is wrong. This would be much better as a VN so you can be more consistent.

Second, the lack of consistecy actually applies to each quest itself. The little sister is the best example of this:
-You start by choosing corruption options that make her more submissive and some of those scenes were actually pretty well done.
-Then suddenly you decide that it's all wrong and you have to protect her from yourself. It's the sister that starts pushing herself on you.
-After all that, you suddenly have an option where you treat her as a sex toy.
It's all over the place, and the same thing happens with the rest. MC's personality goes all over the place.

Third, due to being a very slow burn for the main girls, you have to go through dozens of quest steps until you get anywhere. This is not helped by the MC constantly backtracking on the way he deals with them.

Fourth, some of the girls are really cute. This is obviously subjective and each will have their preference, but I like most of them. There are no huge unrealistic tits and ass and the MC doesn't have a horse cock. However, some of the poses are weird, in an uncanny valley kind of way. And while the animations aren't terrible, they don't have any text and only last one click. So if you're a fast reader you can skip past them without barely noticing there even is an animation.

Fifth, there should be an option to not pursue some of the girls. Bella has that option, but others don't. The game would please more people if they could just drop the ones they don't want.

All in all, this game could easily be 4 or even 5 stars, but it gets in its own way. It still has some very nice scenes, although the animations could be better presented, but it keeps getting bogged down with many pointless scenes in between.

Well, this is certainly NOT a gem.

It's not entirely bad either, but, it veers toward the low end of the spectrum of goodness.

The renders are average, at the best of times.
The characters and the story, are average at best as well.

The sandbox, is absolutely pointless and unneeded. While unlike many others, will not need to look for things to do (they're clearly indicated by either ! or ?, including on the "outside"). But this, renders the sandbox element, completely pointless as well. since there are no repeating events either, once you're done... you're done. This, would be a lot better off as a narrative VN without sandbox, since the events are locked in by your progress and the days/time anyway. However, the negative, is also a positive: You do not need to even look at the tracker/quest log, because it doesn't fucking matter... just pass time until you see a ? or a !, click on that. Done.

The scenes, are average as well.

I tried, but I can not find anything above average, or good about this game, as off V1.4.

I can see why so many have concerns about potential NTR happening as well, as regardless of your choices, some things seem to be happening behind your back, it is very murky...

The game is bugged. Game's sandbox - worst sandbox ever.
There is no story whatsoever.
It's NTR-focused game. Some events you can prevent by choices but mostly LIs (not all of them but most part) get banged by some random dudes permanently.
Also game gives you very bad cuckish vibes, I dunno, It just felt really uncomfortable, always got a feeling that even if game didn't show some of LIs being banged - it still happened in some background scenes.
Honestly, considering that there is no story in a game - developer could have just posted a collection of animations (sex scenes) and that's it.

Pros
- Mum doesn't fuck half the city
- Little sister doesn't get fucked by half the city. You can stop her from ending up in a relationship with her lesbian best friend.
- Clara seems like my mom and she won't let the whole town fuck her

Cons
- Big sister's job. You get the feeling that the dev doesn't show everything and she gets drilled from all directions. It's also one of the reasons that led to the game's removal.
- Bella... I'm definitely not sharing her so this shit can fuck off out of my life. I even started a new game because of this I don't do anything with them.
- Scarlet and her daughter are getting drilled by anyone who can even get their dick up. So they can get the fuck out of my life, BUT when there is no way to stop them. I can't take another game because of them and they're one of the reasons I deleted the game.
- Mary is also too mysterious and dev doesn't tell you everything and her slutty history makes me not care about her.
- Gabriella is a lesbian and that doesn't interest me in any form.

This could be a damn good game if it wasn't for that sharing of women with other men and telling you how much those women are fucking around town. Same with that big sister's job should be something other than being groped (or even fucked which I suspect is happening in the background), but the dev doesn't tell you that because he doesn't want to lose the NTR-Haters, but the dev would have picked some other job for her. Now that's one of the reasons why I'm deleting the game.

Review for Bonds of Love v1.4:

I loaded my save from v1.3 and nothing happens after 3 weeks of skipping time. No new events trigger, can't access map, no repeatable events except for automatically going to school. This game isn't good enough to even consider starting over. I'm out.


Review for Bonds of Love v1.3:

Summary: Every time I think I've played a game with the worst sandbox design ever, some game comes along and manages to lower the bar. This is such a game. If you love sandboxes games, you won't like this game. If you hate sandboxes games, you won't like this game.

Story: 3/5 - just your average cookie-cutter incest story. Nothing new here.

Writing: 4/5 - It's well above average, but it's not great.

Originality: 1/5 - Unless you count creating the worst sandbox ever being original, there's nothing original about this game.

Renders: 3/5 - I think I'm being generous with a 3. The renders are not very detailed, the resolution seems low, the models aren't incredibly attractive. The renders would've been average 5 years ago.

Animations: 3/5 - They're OK, not super smooth and the loops seems strange, too.

Playability/Bugs: 1/5 - This game has so many bugs I don't know how anybody can play it. Check the discussion thread, it's full of bug reports.

Gameplay: 1/5 - The sandbox is garbage. I don't really know why it's sandbox. In this update, players can't do anything except skip time until an event triggers. Maybe the developer was trying to take out the tediousness of hunting through the empty sandbox while the game is in development, but the way it stands, the game shouldn't be a sandbox and the sandbox doesn't even allow the game to be played as a sandbox. What's the point?

I'd have given this 4 stars if not for the errors.

There isn't really much of a main story, not necessarily a bad thing in itself, it's more like a series of tasks to do. As long as the Dev throws in enough things to stay busy without making them too complicated or restrictive I don't mind having hoops to jump through.

For me the female models look good with realistic figures, the MC is middling. At least he doesn't have to comically large penis, in fact this one almost goes too far the other direction.

The animations are average but better than none. The biggest draw back are errors. A little more spit and polish and this could be a fairly entertaining game.

Review of 0.9

Simply put, don't waste your time. There is a very good game in here, somewhere, but it's buried under a mountain of terrible game design.

The models and renders are average, but the writing is superior. Great humor and the scenes are very enjoyable, regardless of sexual content. The strength of this game is the relationship-building between characters.

The deal-breaker for this game and why I'm giving it a one-star review rather than a four-star review is the bugs. This is an over-engineered mess. As of this review there are fifteen pages in the game thread and most of it is bug reporting. Not minor, missing image bugs, but key errors, attribute errors, bounding errors, and so on. These are errors which break the game and cannot be skipped at times. It's a complete mess. Worse yet, often the same bugs persist from release to release, so it seems like not much is getting fixed. This game is nine versions deep. Errors like these are glaring red flags that the game design needs to be shit-canned and replaced.

This is not worth your time or frustration.

Not recommended

First time trying out the game as of 0.8

I think it has potential some of the renders don't seem right especially faces close ups, but for the most part it is alright.
there is an issue with posing in scenes with more characters in, where the focus is lost entirely.
some issues with code as well which could be ignored you can bypass with rolling back and picking the other options, overall code use a review.

Dialogue was fine and the models are unique which is a plus.
Quest log is great so I wasn't lost on what to do.

Game feels empty for 0.8
Events seems random
Most of the time you skipping time to find a event
Still found no sex scenes after finding like 6 events
Feel more like a vn with a useless sandbox mode
no bugs

V 0.5
Sandbox games are not my jam usually but wanted to give this one a chance. It still is in its early development and it's a slow build relationship style which I like. A bit more realistic than those games where all the ladies fall suddenly in love with the MC and want to fuck him...
And, for a change, MC is not a perverted manipulative jerk even if his hormones are acting up.

- Renders look a bit outdated (though, the quality of a game can't be only defined by that) but at least the faces (and bodies) are pleasant to watch and are not the one that are seen in most of the recent games.
- Some clothing and postures look a bit unnatural and/or out of place. But I know nothing about game designs and all that, so I guess must be difficult to have a perfect rendering.
- Could use some more different facial expressions during dialogs, that would give a more immersive and genuine feeling.
- Timing between dialogs and images are not in sync sometimes.
- Writing is good and funny. I'm a sucker for sarcasm and puns.

Game still has way too many exceptions occurring while navigating the map. Will come back to check in few versions and see if they've been fixed. Can't bother "rollbacking" so many times to advance.

----------Review based on v0.3-----------

Writing (5*)
-Pretty good writing in my opinion. The developer has done a good job delivering the expressions of different personalities (Introverts, Silly, Naive, etc.). Couldn't find any grammatical errors according to my knowledge.

Story (5*)
-It's the usual fatherless home kind of story but a bit realistic and engaging. In other words, you are gonna have to wait for a couple more updates to see actual action, but I would say the funny interactions and small excitements cover it up pretty well.

Renders (4*)
-Characters are unique (I've rarely seen them in other games at least) and beautiful. match their personalities. Renders are not that great but good enough to enjoy the gameplay. (With better support it will hopefully get better)
I would suggest you to definitely give this a try. Also, sandbox is just to let the player have more control over the mc I guess. It's pretty simple and straightforward so don't have to worry about it being grindy at all.

The first review doesn't do justice to this VN. it definitely needs to be updated. It's weird that there are much worse games getting less hate than this.

90% of your time will be clicking on rooms with character icons on them, then looking for chat or eye icon and usually there is none. So then you skip to another hour and repeat.

Empty sandbox, should be just a VN.

Very little content at the moment. Wait at least few months and updates before downloading.