VN - Ren'Py - Bright Lord [v1.2.0 SE Steam] [KissKiss Studio]

V. phase 2 0.9 part 3 fixed (which will no doubt become even more convoluted)

right off the bat the art is great. scenes do the job and visually pleases the eye.
the plot is good. it has a decent hook to it and is different as much as it is similar.
game design is the right choice. this works as a VN as it requires the immersive style of a choice based novel to keep immersion high. trying to break that immersion with something like sandbox would weaken it's hook hugely. it can work for some stories but not this one.

the biggest downside to this game is by far the writing. it has so many inconsistencies it drowns out all the good. does the writer even know the routes? i suspect not as the crossover is obvious.
not only are the characters inconsistent with the stats, MC included, but the story presentation is full of more holes than a taiwanese mega brothel.

why would an MC on a love route be so aloof and treat the women as tools, the same way as a mixed route?
poor writing drags this down considerably

The renders of the LIs are good and they're hot, but oh boy are they annoying. The little sister and the mom are cool at the beginning, but the mom soon becomes a hysterical mess. Worst mom of the decade, honestly. She hates all her children and treats them like garbage and she spends almost every scene yelling like some stereotypical crackhead mom who abuses her children.

Let's not even speak about the older sister, she is your typical bratty and entitled rich asshole, like one of those "young masters" from Chinese novels. She apparently hates the MC because he didn't want to drop out of college for her, lol and she acts like a snobby rich brat for most of the game until she is mind-broken by having two "alter egos" inside her. Then she's suddenly all mellow and loving.

The little sister is perhaps the only human-like being amongst the LIs, but she becomes a jealous mess, which is understandable, honestly and still makes her feel like a human, but I believe in this case she should've remained cool-headed to provide relief from all the crazy women in this AVN. Then there's Liza who was mind-broken from the beginning and is always crazy about the MC.

The MC is alright, I guess. He acts like your typical dude. Not too much of a pushover and you get the chance to stand up for yourself a few times, but it never unfolds in a satisfying manner. The MC always takes the blame for more than he should and puts the blame on him while everyone else berates and treats like him garbage. Not to mention he has a powerful demon in his mind controlling him. Not sure how he hasn't killed himself, yet. Dude is not having a good time, at all.

Last is the plot which is not good at all, either. You have to really shut down your brain if you want to have any chance at enjoying this. Many unexplained events happen and they're just accepted by everyone, nobody wondering it even happen, like when the MC gets blamed for someone's suicide without any proof at all. But well, who knows.

Lastly, I do not feel that choices matter at all. No matter what you do, it seems the events unfold in the same way. Just a few differences in the dialogue and not much else. Overall, there's nothing enjoyable about this aside from the good-looking renders. Maybe I'd give it 3 stars if the sex scenes were good, but they're short and the animations are awkward.

This game did surpass my expectations by a long shot. I thought it's gonna be like all the other taboo harem type games that're only good at half-decent sex scenes. Imagine my surprise upon the realization that there's an actual story that hooks me.

I'll admit that the so-called story only makes sense on a surface level, think but a lil harder about it and whole thing comes crumbling down. But I appreciate that there is at least a tight enough narrative progression that keeps me engaged. Tons of other VNs fail at this very simple task.

I do feel that the older sister's corruption progress was too rushed. I don't feel the hostage exchange they did was great enough a turning point to justify the sister's sudden change of personality, considering the mom and the other sister were progressing much more naturally.

The sex scenes need more work. The models are too hot to deserve such "simplistic" sexual treatment. The dev needs to get more invested in building up these scenes. They are the purpose of the game after all.

All in all, in an environment where hundreds of substandard VNs are being produced daily, the decency and wholeheartedness of Bright Lord is very much appreciated. The road ahead is still long, there are still lots of room for improvement.

This game is pretty good at making me hate some of the characters. Shoutout to Chloe and the Landlady (who btw doesn't even have a fucking name) for being some of the most hateable, dimwitted bimbos in existence.

Good quality renders, and the story can be quite interesting at times. The improvement in both how the renders are used for animations or even for regular scenes is notable across the game as you play. I recommend it, but it does infuriate me at times.

I think the concept of this game is very interesting and was really enjoying the premise at first. However, as you keep playing you realize that if you try to resist you miss out on almost all the good stuff. It just seems like this was geared way more towards the corruption route and much less payoff is given to the resist route. The problem for me with that is if you go the corruption route you feel like you have no agency over the story and it might as well be a KN. IDK maybe if both sides of the story were flushed out more I could get behind it, but how it is I feel like a passenger.

edit: reviewed against 1.0

I can't do it, I can't play the game. The whole thing is just awful. The MC is just so seriously un fun I itch when he talks and what's worse is he's meant to have this... demon? in him but really all that lad does is bitch about how he needs power and the MC is so basic all he does is complain about a sore head. That's it, that's all he does.

The characters are puddle deep, they're so one track minded. I talked about the family being tropes but really there's no excuse for it now. They're boring. The older sister is angry and has like... not a single brain cell in the melon on top her shoulders. She has not a single characteristic other than "angry" so by goodness you better hope you like that otherwise what's the point of her? She makes stupid decision and doesn't listen to anyone but don't worry it's ok. See.... she's angry. Bah.

----
reviewed against Phase 1 v0.6 but not that far through I suppose.

The game is quite interesting. The plot is there but it's not TOO overbearing. The main issue, and by god is it an issue that seems to plague a lot of similar games, is that if you decide to just let go, to embrace your situation and go with the flow.... the MC is still a complete wet blanket at times.

So the overview states "Bright Lord makes you his servant. Will you let him take over your mind completely or fight his will in his conquest for power and revenge"

Now, as porn games go that's actually pretty good. The Dev has spent the time to actually think about what the plan is. So they should be applauded. The issue is the execution. The game seems to have a very heavy bias towards the "letting him take over your mind" route which is grand cause it's an interesting story but the plot goes along the lines of every now and again the MC gets the urge to be naughty cause of lust or whatever and even if you choose to do it, he still acts all "oh woe's me for doing the thing" and he seems to do it half the time. Like I get it but as a player I've picked the option, I'm going down this path can we skip this bit and just move on"

I get it's done for a story point of view but if it is a case of having the MC unsure then why have it as an option at all. Let the hate flow through you, as someone once said.

Aside from the MC, the game's solid. the usual tropes are in there (oh look the older sister is A N G R Y, the mother's a widow, the younger sister is all innocent) but really they've become so standard you can't really knock a game from sticking with a tried a tested formula. Renders are solid and it seems the dev has decided to go with a small core of characters as opposed to playing whack a mole with 500 different women you see once or twice (and chances are you've seen in 20 other games).

On playing a bit more I'm in two minds, It's an interesting game but the issues with it really hold it back. The story's fine, although the dialogue at times feels a bit wooden. The main issue is the MC. As I mentioned above he's just a boring character and it's hard to judge whether it's because of who he is or the story making him as such.

Regardless of what he does, he seems to sit and mope for a while about it, "Oh woe is me I done the thing" and like..... it gets old. Like the game follows this pattern

*thing happens*
*voice in your head* I need energy go do x
I dunno
*voice in your head*
you need to
*selects option to do the thing* Ok
*does x*
Aww how awful, I done x, what is a man to do

Like..... I could understand if the game was more open and you'd selected no to do the thing but to agree to do it then hear the MC bitch about it..... I'll just hold down control and skip the next 50 lines of self loathing shall I? Either let the MC open up and actually let the player enjoy be bad or railroad them and continue to waste time lamenting about it but to give the option of choice just to hear yet ANOTHER speech about how whatever your doing is wrong..... bleh

Quite a good game with decent renders and nice girls. I had to substract 1 star for the poorly hidden incest part. If the first thing you have to do in a game is to rename the character relations, I half way out quitting the game. They said they were going to re-work this part and hopefully get rid of this creepy introdution to the game.

The dialogue is terrible, the story is just really not interesting and yet continuously stuffed down your throat. Pacing is a huge issue in the game too certain relationships develop insanely quickly and other deteriorate at a crazy rate as well. The biggest positive this game has going for it are the renders, but either than that I don't really recommend this game.

PROS:
Renders

CONS:
Story
Choices dont really matter yet

Has a bit of an identity crisis.

Is trying to tell this big, serious story, but the dialogue is just... bad. Especially when it comes to sex. As soon as sex comes into any conversation, its like the characters learned to speak from watching the cringiest pornos ever.

Similarly, uses surprisingly strong lighting and renders, but the bodies as too "Blow up doll" like to be taken seriously. I

In short, the Story and Renders are trying to be "High art" or at least "Quality Porn Game", but they are wasted on bad dialogue and cartoonish body proportions.

Just completed part 1 and had to skip through the second half as it took all I had and felt my IQ dropping by the minute trying to keep up with the juvenile dialog so I never even got to part 2 and deleted all of it after an hour of suffering.

PROS
-Beautiful models
-Great renders
-Some cool animations
-Emily & MC interraction credible and interesting

CONS
-The writing is just aweful and so is the pacing
-Sex scenes too short and could use improvement
-Too much useless drama & confusion from the main LIs & MC
-Every type of sex given right from the start making the game pointless
-Brightlord character very poorly written & boring as hell
-Juvenile dialog. Many comments feel like they were written by a 12 year old. I mean how many women call you "my king" in the middle of intercourse, seriously?
-Useless point system as "Brightlord" makes most decisions anyway
-Rude & bitchy PMS'ing characters throughout phase 1 (and I was not interested in trying phase 2) so no clue if anything changed nor do I care.

Boring LI's and confused MC places this one in a long list of the most boring VN I've played. Almost everybody is possessed in this which makes the MC look as boring as the rest of them. On the positive side, there is a WT MOD and gallery unlocker so you can at least check the scenes & renders without going through so much pain. Cannot recommand without gallery unlocker.

One of the best mind control VNs on here.

The renders are great, the girls are all hot yet distinctly different, and the story is actually interesting. Looking forward to seeing the dev stick the landing.

Loved every minute of playing this game. The reluctant corruption of the MC and his family is very well done and puts a refreshing twist on the usual plot in these types of games.
The actual story and worldbuilding are also really interesting and engaging.

I especially liked how the LIs don't immediately accept the harem situation and there's some drama/jealousy between them for the MC.
I assume eventually they'll give in, but in the meantime, the characters just feel much more alive and realistic because of this. And I also just find it extremely hot.

The pacing and escalation of NSFW content are excellent.
The sex scenes are on a shorter side for my liking and I'd love to see more different positions and camera angles, but overall they are still fantastic.

The renders are beautiful and all the women are absolutely gorgeous. They are constantly dressed in very revealing and sexy clothes which is maybe not very realistic, and I have to suspend my disbelief a little bit, but it's not a complaint and I love this since it creates a great sexually charged atmosphere even outside NSFW scenes.

The only negative I can say is that the renders are a bit too dark.
I even increased the screen brightness while playing.
But it's not a big deal. Also kind of ironic, since the game is called Bright Lord.

Overall an amazing game, now one of my favorites. Hope the Dev keeps this up.

The potential is there, and with what the Dev has been saying I hope there is a rework for phase 1 because, the writing is just not good enough.

The renders are amazing and the animations are decent and become quite good. But the writing does absolutely nothing to keep you engaged in what is actually a pretty good setting.

I simply don't care about any of the main LIs. I got possessed ??? by the bright lord. I don't care about that either, no suspense, no buildup to anything. MC has absolutely no personality. Some MCs are annoying, some are bland, but this game took it into the next level, I know literally nothing about any qualities or personality of the MC.

I enjoy this very much. I played the first part, of course. That is recommended. I f´generally like these mind-control games. In this game, however, I particularly enjoy the doubt, the dilemmas, the levels of submission, as well as a well-written story. Nice.

It is by no means perfect, but it is above average compared to the majority of AVNs on this site in terms of story, renders, models, and animations. If you are a fan of the 'cest genre it's basically a must play and you won't be disappointed.

As of Phase 2 v0.3 there is quality fappable content with all the major love interests in the game; so no fear of blueballing without a payoff for your invested time.

The game has a rough start but I recommend sticking around, especially into phase 2 (which is vastly stronger than elite/phase-1). The art was always good but the writing and characters were noticeably weak at the start of the game and have consistently improved over the length of the game. I believe the dev mentioned they plan on going back and redoing the early chapters of the game to bring them up to the quality seen in the later portions of the game. If this is the case this could easy turn into a 5/5 rating by the games completion.

This game taught me about Russian families and drama. The only thing it was really missing was an adidas tracksuit and some squatting by the mc. The whole time I was playing I was asking myself:

1. Are Russian mothers really that fucking mean? I mean, the mom in this is like menopausal, bipolar and on the rag all the time. She goes from 0-60 in nearly every single scene she is in.

2. Is the older sister retarded. She is not like the Simple Jack happy retard type, no she is the mean kind. Her idiocy knows no bounds and then she gets mad as hell, because she is so dumb.

3. Does the little sister even serve a purpose? She is just kind of there and then goes full brother humper out of nowhere. It's like the writer forgot her personality somewhere between the mom is the angry one, the big sister is dumb and a bitch and the little sister is ???

4. Why is Liza such trash? Bitch makes breakfast and it's a bowl of fucking cereal. She then admits she doesn't even know how to do chores.

5. Why is the mc 100% drama all the time. All he needs is a lispy voice like James Charles to really sell it. 'OMG guys I am really struggling here, but I am not even in control of my actions like this one monster wants me to molest you all the time and I'm trying *sniffles* I just can't even right now!'

Dial back the dialogue, or at least the internal monologuing and do more show less tell. Megan acts like a bad bitch, show her being a bad bitch have someone get lippy with her and she offs them or something. Right now it feels like My So-Called Possessed Life in the OC starring James Van Der Beek from Dawson's Creek.

Don't get me wrong, I think there is all the right elements to make something really great, it's just the ingredients are being tossed in willy nilly. Like all this demon drama is happening and suddenly the writer remembers shit there hasn't been a single titty thrown in this update and then shoves in some bobs as like an after thought. It'd be nice if it was not the after thought and maybe the mc can start cashing in all those love and corruption points instead of having to rely on demon bro to help him get some poon.

Good supernatural kind of family corruption story.

So there is this guy who needs you to get him energy from other people and this gives you anger/lust powers that allow you to do mindcontrol stuff. And you slowly start mindcontrolling your family and slowly change their persoanlities. Good stuff. They hate you for it as well. BRILLIANT. Too often the women like you wayyyy to quick for being a perv superpower guy. But when they actually hate you for being perv and are kind of disgusted even? Now that is some good stuff right there.

But over time they accept themselves having feelings for you so they kind of change over time which is good because this equals them having sex with you without the need for hypnosis. Great. Renders look great women look great, top notch stuff.

Problems? Game is split in half, and at halfway point instead of importing a save like normal you have to manually pick the options you made. I cant remember every decision i made i mean come on maan this too much needs fix. Another issue is all women have pretty much same body type. No cunny characters. I get it people dont like it, but I still feel there was room for cunny somewhere in the game.

But yeah cool story and you have kind of like death note monster tied to you and you have liza who is kind of like the blond nutjob in death note too its great stuff to be honest. Kind of short game though, and I dont know how development will go in future. Still worth playing at current state even if this is all there will be.

The story is very good and interesting
It has 2 branches (a love branch and a corruption branch)
The characters are very interesting
The art (characters, background, animations, etc.) is very good

Overall 4/5 stars

The assets for the environment and models look amazing.
It's just that it's a bad pretty bad time trying to read it. Commas in random places, ending statements with question marks and questions with periods, misspelled words, grammar is all over the place. Awkward dialogue. Sometimes too formal or unnatural but at least they’re not all talking with internet slang. It's not a matter of something being lost in translation. It's not that someone can't understand what's being said. It's more like it's distracting and makes the story rough. It ruins any kind of tone you're trying to set with each scene and makes the characters not feel like they're their own person because I just keep thinking about the person who wrote this rather than thinking someone is actually saying the words.

It's just all so bad I can't really get into the story. Seems more story-focused than content-focused too. It's like the dev wants this to be treated as a legitimate story and visual novel and not just something with good looking renders but it very badly needs heavy proofreading. Otherwise there's no point in playing the game.

Even if the dev is a non-native English speaker, I really don't think that works as an excuse. If you're going to write a story in English that is for English readers then you need to make sure you're proficient enough.
It'd be like volunteering to coach a basketball team but you've only played tennis your whole life and don't know anything besides the one or two games you've watched on tv. It'd be like "We appreciate your enthusiasm but why are you trying to coach the team if you don't even know the rules?" You may be a tennis champion and an overall great athlete but that doesn't mean that translates into your skills as a basketball coach unless you learn and get really good, really fast.

The same reasoning applies to VNs that are written in English and intended for English speakers. You could've made this game in your native language (or other languages you're fluent in) and marketed it towards people in that language but you didn't. Someone probably could've later on just provided a translation as well which would maybe be improved over time if it's popular enough. Only in this case, you probably just need help from a solid proofreader.

Maybe English was chosen because it might reach a wider audience but I mean at this level of acquisition, it just kills the story for me. Gave it a 3 because I appreciate the renders and the effort but I'm just debating whether or not I drop this right now.


It just kind of baffles me that people don’t get that concept. Maybe because some reviewers only speak English and can’t imagine anything else outside of that bubble while the rest are just as lacking in fluency so they don’t really see the problem. I wish I could explain this better but it’s like you do realize that this dev isn’t an idiot and can read and write in his language just fine, right? But he chose specifically to step into this “arena” and chose to make game that's story-oriented and not just hot pictures to look at with interesting game mechanics (nothing interesting in terms of game mechanics btw).