Ren'Py - Bright Past [v0.99.2.5] [Kosmos Games]

UPDATE - Deducting 1 more point.
There maybe a translation issue when it comes to the English version of this game... The worse thing this VN does is BORE you. I continued playing this after my initial review thinking maybe the game becomes more enjoyable in later updates. Unfortunately this is not the case this game goes from annoying grind to BORING. It shouldn't be boring all the ingredients are here but no plot point is given a chance to breathe, its like a boring soap opera.

For Example - 1) The Mafia shows up and kills people in front of you. That should be a major event but its brushed off and glossed over with no consequences at all.
2) You take deepthroat classes so you can deepthroat a partner finally and when the classes end and you meet the partner. The same scene plays the same as before with 1 render of the deepthroat and we move on after all the training and work.
3) You become a Prostitute a huge monumental decision and it's give no time to breath at all it just "Whelp I guess I'm a prostitute now".

This game is dull and the story is going nowhere and it has all the Ingredients so it's either bad writing or a bad translation. The MC is Vapid and dull and boring.

ORIGINAL 3 star Review
Do you Like Grind! Do you like micromanagement of seemingly every little detail? Do you like Random events that you have to click click click to hopefully one day trigger then this is a VN for you!

Your MC will always be hungry it seems and you will have to take a lot of time out to make money just to buy her food! Fun!

Your MC will STINK, so realistically you will have to take time out pretty regularly to shower or bathe her. Fun!

Do you like a quest log that only gives you the vaguest idea most of the time to clue you in on what to do next. Fun!

Do you have WRISTS and FINGERS of Iron that would make a martial artist weep with envy? Excellent because you will need them to get through all the random clicks you need to eventually activate some random quest. Fun!

Do you have no job and no money and only have time for one VN then this is for you as it is the ultimate time sink! Your time is wasted so thoroughly here you may never need another VN ever. Fun!

The Good
The renders are attractive although static I never made it to any animated renders but I guess my random luck was just bad!
The Premise of the story sounds like fun and its interesting initially.

The Bad
Wow do you ever need money in this game and man if you think inflation in any country is bad, you haven't seen anything until you check out this games inflation! You want a Hotdog from a street vendor? $40!! You want a Burrito? $65!! So forget a burrito and get a TACO you say!!! $70!!! Damn I would love to try a Taco that's worth $70!! Holy crap I will never complain about inflation again!

The art is tremendous and the story is ok initially so they have a great start to as VN, but they have a sadistic BDSM dungeon master designing the UI and playstyle that is designed to torture anyone who dares play this title.

I'm being super generous and giving this title 3 stars as it has potential, but I fully understand the people who give it one and two stars. Anyone who gives this VN 4-5 stars in it's current state needs a butt plug shoved up there backdoor because they are into hardcore keyboard BDSM in my opinion.

Pros:
- nice renders
- interesting characters

Cons:
- grind
- bugs
- questlog is pretty bad
- if you do quests as you want, they might make no sense sometimes as the dev didn't take into consideration that this is not a kinetic novel
- economy - money earned compared to prices is just silly
- having to take care of hygiene, hunger, sleep etc.
- skills rise painfully slow
- navigation system makes me want to vomit

Big cons:
- for only straight, there is not that much content
- for lesbian, there is allegedly no pure lesbian route (as far as I know, I'm not interested, but it is a con)
- even using cheats to speed things up, considering how much time you have to waste there is a really low porn density, there is a bit more in the beginning, but later on there is even less

Beautiful MC and generally fantastic characters. The story is interesting, perhaps a few things could be developed further. For example, the hotel is virtually not used in the story. But I loved this story!

+ music
+ renders

- sandbox is not so good, everything quickly become monotonous
- too much lesbian content, straight stuff is poorly done
- short and boring sex scenes
- errors and bugs
- uninteresting characters and conversations between them
- story

One of the most boring games i played, 2 stars from me

I really love both the story and the game play in this. I think the ability to write your own song titles and is a really novel one that is not often seen here. I also think the character is pretty cool, driven, goal oriented, not super innocent and doing everything she can to explore herself and make a career as a rockstar. Also no incest (well not much) nor implied incest to work around, everyone is just an adult living their own lives in their own houses.

Honestly it might be my favorite game here and I look forward to the final release so I can really dig in but also not lose my progress with each update.

The idea of creating as realistic an environment as possible around the game's protagonist is a good and interesting one. However, as usual, not all of these tools and the author's vision are well received by the players. Either the implementation of the features is not very good, or the feature itself is bad or unnecessary. For example, when in all civilised countries smoking is banned in life and movies, in this game you have to click hundreds of times to buy cigarettes and smoke them... This only happens in the 4th world.
But the game has great graphics and models. If they are not all beautiful, they are more or less acceptable, not squares or triangles as in most games. Everything seems to be in order.
Money. What kind of balance sheet is this, where a waitress works for 1 hour and gets paid only 20 dollars, but goes into town and pays 50 dollars for a coffee from a vending machine? With that kind of income, she will never buy a pickup truck from a dealership. Not even a pickup truck, not even clothes and food. That is stupid, both in life and in the game. It shouldn't be like that, at least in a game, if the author's life is like that. It makes the gameplay worse, it drags out the time, the game becomes boring because of delays and expectations.
English. Or what the game offers instead. It's terrible even for non-native speakers, but for those who notice mistakes and want to play and learn English. Sometimes some nonsense slips through untranslated into English with hieroglyphics.
But the most disappointing thing was the way the quest log and interface were created. When you change location, there is no indication of where you are.
But the most disappointing thing was the way the quest log and interface were created. When you change locations, there are no markers of where you are, and there are no markers of the NPCs you are interacting with. It's all very inconvenient, makes the gameplay worse and creates confusion. And the quest tasks are not clear, without explanation, without hints or clues. The game should entertain the player, not stress him or her with guesses that only the author knows in his or her misconception of usability.

Undoubtedly, one of the best sandboxes presented on this resource.
If you don't like sandboxes, this game is not for you.
The game is very close to its completion, so we can confidently name its advantages and its faults.
Pros:
1. graphics, renders, animations - 5 points out of 5
2. Story - 5 out of 5.
3. Degree of involvement in gameplay - 5 out of 5.
4. Grind - for sandbox lovers, it's OK.
5. Lots of content.
6. For the first time in my time here (since May 2019) I met a game where my native language (Russian) is not distorted by machine translation. Obviously, the author is a Russian native speaker.
Cons:
1. Music and voice acting - gets boring quickly, I turned it off early in the game and never turned it on again.
2. and, oddly enough, grind. At the initial stage of the game it is a lot, which may scare away some of the audience. Yes, there is a cheat mod, but with its help I recommend to increase only money, it makes it easier to pass the game at an early stage. The rest of the characteristics better not touch - you risk losing some of the content.
3 Once again I repeat - this is a sandbox. If you do not like such games, do not touch it, so as not to be disappointed.
4. In my opinion, lacks a good, preferably authorized walkthrough, without it you can get confused in the ramifications of the plot. Yes, there is a list of ongoing tasks, but the tasks are listed very vague, lacking specificity. And the game is very big, it took me about 60 hours, if you still move blindly, it only unnecessarily increases the gameplay time.
One more warning - if you need porn and only porn, this game is not for you. Here the story balances the hot content, if you need only sex, then pass by.
Another warning - fans of wincest can skip this game. This project is not for you.
Having carefully weighed all the pros and cons, I give this game the highest rating - 5 out of 5, for the advantages outweigh purely its disadvantages. And in general, if the game did not let go quite mature man (I am 40+) 60 hours - it says a lot.

The game has supposedly some really good content judging from the screenshots. But it is locked behind some of the most frustrating grinding I have ever seen.

For one, the game economy is simply obnoxious. That means you need way more unnecessary grinding with the work mechanic than necessary.

And the work mechanics are locked behind aggressive hunger and *smoking* mechanics so even more incessant clicking.

Meanwhile scene unlocks are bottlenecked to a ridiculous extent. Which all adds up to some sloooooooow pacing. Absolute time waste with some carrot of decent smut scenes hanging out in the horizon. But I do not like wasting hours running at it.

Oh and there is racism. Yep.

This game could be good but I find there are too much events with little impact, too much "grind" (like "do this or that X times" before a next step in the quest appears), and too much places with little importance (the decor doesn't matter at all in most scene, except for the story point of view).

Some girls are very good (like the milf character), other feels forgettable.

I played this from the earliest version and it has really gained content over the consistent updates. Each update usually brings it's own bunch of bugs too, but overall I find Bright Past to be an enjoyable experience overall.

I enjoy making Alex into a rockstar with the neat option to write songs and join a band as the lead vocalist on stage. My Alex also tends to indulge in girl on girl action too

The gfx are really nice in this game and I love Alex having tats because hey many of us girls do have them nowadays and if you're a rock chick then definitely..

Only downside can be the grinding with money, managing addictions and mood etc. although there is a cheats option to help that side.

I've just downloaded the latest update, so I'm off to check it out but yes, I would recommend this to anyone wanting to play a female protagonist game where you can mould their experiences.

overall not really a bad game, the 3.5* is almost a bit too much, 2* or 2.5* would do the game justice.

what i like:
- the idea of being able to decide for yourself what to do and when. that's far too rare;
- time-dependent triggering of events;
- interesting characters, but unfortunately with far too little interaction after completing the individual paths (actually none at all);
- the choice of clothing, unfortunately a little too little choice overall;
- the pastry shop in the old town, unfortunately only with a time bonus.


expandable:
- apparently not a linear novel, to really continue with the story things have to be done that you don't feel like doing. Refusing should also be able to get you further;
- too slow build-up of the important skills (courage, charm, oratory);
- unfortunately no motorcycle for Alex.


what I don't like:
- That the game does not recognize when you complete paths in a slightly different order;- paths cannot be bypassed/rejected
- DP with "Mistress" and "Martina Hill" - absolutely unnecessary, rejected means rejected, Alex is not a fucking whore;
- same with "Broom" what for?! the guy doesn't interest me, no means no damn. especially stupid because after that the path is considered "done"........;
- the trucker is uninteresting and superfluous, money or not, it doesn't do Alex any good, just getting fucked/pregnant makes no sense in the whole story;
this is better solved in "Beauty and the Thug". fuck you and end (if necessary with cheat)

one thing in advance if you think you can play her lesbian without any other male involved, don't even bother to start the game, it's like most other fem protag games, she becomes a total slut does things you may not want her to do and every interesting girl gets either fucked by some dude or loves working as webcammodel or prostitute.

in addition comes eternal grind without any help so walktrough is most likely needed if you don't want to search for hours for something. the only good thing and why i give it 2 stars are the renders and good looking girls but that does not mean anything if the rest is just not worth playing.

Bright Past [v0.97.0]

Pros:
Decent renders

Neutral:
Character Models look average and feel aged

Cons:
extremely grindy and repetitive
UI is too overwhelming
no auto/skip function
forced quests and actions
bad sex scenes
terrible stat grinding
dull story
Characters are uninteresting

Conclusion:
I thought of giving this game 2* because it looks decent, but this game is just too frustrating to play and has some major issues that takes the fun out of it.
It´s such a huge waste of time and nearly unplayable without cheats, or it just feels like an endless circle of grind and frustration with few rewards.

Love this game! The best 'visual novel' Ive ever played. It actually has choices and ways to interact with the game as your character, instead of just clicking forever through boring conversation + content.
Love it!

one of the best games ever! if they add corruption it will be perfect! i think it would be good to remove the smoking and refueling because it's a bit annoying, i personally hope for a development of the story with Valerie and her mother..

I give this Game 3 star.

Reason why-

Pros-

+Hot Protagonist.
+Good Graphics.
+Writing

Cons-

-Too much hard.
-No Character Development.
-Bad story presentation.

Conclusion- I like this game, but why is this so had and confusing. I played this but even now I can't finish it. Everytime I saw something confusing and I quit it. This is my personal opinion but if I said overall game has very decent graphics, Theam and music. You only need patience but I don't think you can hold your patience in porn games.
Thanks.

Yeah still can't play this game even after so many years.

I think the dev was going for a hardcore life sim with it ups and downs.

If you want to fap this game is not for you, if you want to listen to music while you scroll around throw maps for hours and doing pointless chores boy you hit the jackspot with this one.

The models are ugly af
The grind is unbearable
The story is confusing like the map and the NPC
The sex scenes are very few but it will like they are none since you have to grind somewhere between 5 to 38 hours to get 1.


Just an really awful "game"

Versão 0.93

This game is even worth a higher score, 4/5, or 8/10.

This simulation part is well done, and very interesting. I like it this way, (however I confess that I play using cheat, I even suggest putting a god mode for the game).

My negative criticism for the game is that the game does well a service simulation needs, vices....

But there are parts that the game gets linear and also and ends up forcing us to do things we do not want to do, just to gain courage, money, or other attribute. (In my case as I said, I use cheat to avoid and continue, otherwise I would have quit)

I'm playing the full lesbian path, and I would like to avoid almost every straight path, even if it shortens the game.
I think the dev is doing that now, since some options are impossible if certain points are missing.

With this I suggest to have the possibility to refuse quests and still gain the attribute, or to find another easier way to gain courage.
This would close the quests that we don't want to do,
for example. Playing basketball, putting on makeup and going to the highway, or going to the laundry room.
I won't do these things, and the quest stays open and irritates me.

I hope in the end I increase this grade here, because as I said, it is a good game, even though I don't like the female protagonist so much.

I see some low reviews here, based on repetitive actions.
I can see where they are coming from, when most Ren'Py games are linear novel where your choices barely matter and some people just scroll through the story. This certainly isn't something you can do with this game.

That being said, this is one of the best open world erotic games in existence. The UI is pretty intuitive, and repetitive events are very minor compared to the mess of other open world games like Girl Life.
The story hits a perfect mix of freedom and character developement, and the task list really helps with never getting lost.

The only awkward moments start when one approaches the end of content, when a lot of the story lines have ended, but for a few which then leaves one with a lot of waiting time between those events in those story lines. This however is to be expected for a game in active developement and I couldn't be more satisfied with the integration and planing of these interwoven story lines.