VN - Ren'Py - Broken Promises [v0.403] [Light Cavalry]

I'm writing this as a fan who followed this work closely, I'm highly disappointed. Unlike some VNs that are braindead VNs to enjoy, the premise of this VN necessitates good writing with all the drama and it failed miserably. For a VN that’s been extensively promoted, let's just say they lived up to their name, Broken Promises.

First, how the MC acted; I get it, he's a 21-year-old virgin with no girlfriend, but what's with his thought process; you call boobs melons like a teenager? At least act like a proper cop. Also, he's all of a sudden a casanova? Every girl got their panties wet at the first sight of him. Did he go from a total virgin to a master kisser within a few hours? Holy smokes that's a superpower if you ask me. Also, did he forget that he's undercover with drugs involved? The only thing he did was go after the dean, get their info then flirt with the girls. I know these are very common to VNs out there but this VN's premise fits more of a grounded one but threw it out the window as soon as they can.

The dragged-out dialogue. If you want to describe something, it's fine but you don't have to drag it out like it's a novel, it's a visual novel, the visual part comes into play too. Just go straight to the point with minimal bs. There are also so many filler dialogues that say the same thing.

What’s with the cringe-fest intro too? It drags on for too long, just keep it simple. For a game that took 6 months, with multiple delays, you seem to have time to spare.

The language switcheroo by the twins in the cafeteria. Ok, one language switch to Swedish is acceptable; it's probably their mother language and they are comfortable with it. It also gives them some privacy to their conversation, cool if not a bit rude to their companion. But what's the point of switching to Japanese then Italian? It's so unnecessary. Is it to show that they're smart? Or is the writers just flexing? I highly doubt multilingual people speak like that in a normal conversation. Just confused the readers for no good reason at all. It also made the twins look pretentious and insensitive, but hey if that's the goal, good job.

Too much information. We know every thought process of the LIs, down to every detail. This is probably the first VN where we know every thought of every single character present on it. We know more than the MC that now, the next chapters would be us witnessing the MC learning what we already know from the first chapter. This also leads me to the next and the most talked-about situation here, Grace.

I wanna say that the devs are either brave or dumb, probably both, to put a backstory like that in an explicitly non-ntr vn. I can see why people here are blasting this to oblivion. The audience is promised with a non-netorare vn, hence they put their guard down and boom, one of the LI is a homewrecking, whore who probably fucked the whole company she worked in and remembers how good she was pounded by Benoit and how many times she cummed while complicit to cheating/homewrecking even though it happened years ago before she got guilty; guess the dick was really good huh that it overpowered her will to change. While a few scenes ago, she's getting her pussy wet cause of Jack the Casanova that she just met again for the first time in 10 years or so. Anybody here knew how the crowd would react so why? I guess it’s just to put more drama in it.

Personally, I don't care that a LI is not a virgin and a whore, however, I don't need to hear how good was she fucked by a dirty old man. Are we supposed to like Grace? Help her? How can we help a whore to change if Benoit's dick is still on her mind? Maybe we're supposed to hate Grace? If the goal is to help Grace from her past, the writing didn't do her favourably as it only showed us she's still a dirty slut.

However, the most disgusting thing is the devs on their discord server lashing out to those who gave their opinion. According to other servers I’ve read, the writer knew how fucked Grace’s situation is and it would make people mad at him, so what’s with the tantrums when you get the reaction you anticipated then started lashing it out on fans. If you can’t take criticism, don’t make a game.

The only thing salvageable in this game are the renders, its good. There’s some clipping here and there but the LIs are gorgeous which makes it more painful to see how they are wasted and butchered.

I don't know why they decided to rob Chasing Sunset mc and few other models. Looks promising albeit the long ass sloppy opera is buzz kill especially if the said characters (most in this case comes with terms and conditions applied) are yet to become person of interest (poi) romantically but they did become poi professionally and threw romance option out of window (at least wrt certain character).
If the game is tagged as male protagonist I'd expect him to be in the driving seat, if the update has 60 to 70% writings filled with monologues of not so main protagonist then it breaks the rhythm of players playing this game with first person pov.
Why three stars, well
Renders 4/5
Animation 3/5
Script/writing 3/5
Direction 2/5
Character development 2/5
Character's traumatic background 5/5 (is that good?)

A person behaving sympathetic towards someone without even getting to know each other better is not directly proportional to saying he has romantic feelings for her, i.e sympathy =/= love. It just ruins the image of character in that regard in most cases, does that mean she's a bad person, no not at all but feeling towards her will be protective in nature rather than being romantic,. I would have liked it if there's some sorta romantic interactions or moments they had between them and as the story progress mc gets to know about their problems either through them or indirectly.

Edit: (+star) Grace's updated storyline and direction is good. Hopefully it continues throughout. Definitely worth a time if anyone wanna play.

There is a lot to be said about the story, character traits, render work, style and so on, but most has already been posted here.
Therefore I will mostly react to that, no particular order though

Is it strange to be privy to the other characters inner monologue? Maybe, especially as in First Person View story telling, and VNs qualify for that, you normally don't get that. Is it a problem for me?
Nope, it gets me a bit closer to the characters and their inner workings. More relatable. Others have done it before.

Why would Grace run to MC for help in her situation. She did not really know him in the past when he was a boy, only has seen him now for minutes so running to him is quite like going to the cops directly. There are other ways to deal with that asshat, one quite easy one that does come with a cost, but I am leaning back and wait for the Devs how they will resolve it.

About all the girls gravitating to him now and all the sudden. Not sure that is actually the case. He did not go out for dates, he is now in a situation where he is meeting them them by necessity. He had an effect on the ladies before, see Vanessa or his Boss, even Grace when he was a youngling.

Should he be drawing in the girls?
Heck yes, it's an adult VN after all. There already are voices complaining about the 'lack' of a good banging.
On the other hand an adult VN does not mean it has to be a fuck fest. Not at all.

Maybe him being the White Knight is pushed forward a bit prominently but hey, let's see where it will lead to.

Lack of choices. Well yes, there was only this one. Are choices necessary in the introduction part of a story? Don't think so. The fact there is one shows that there seem to be plans.
Again waiting for the next updates.

Oh, speaking about the teacher, is that behavior realistic?
Nah.
Do I have an issue with it?
Nope, as it is both a work of fiction and for adults.
So they are throwing us the horny teacher trope. Let them, she is a beauty.

With that coming to the Models.
No matter what a Dev will do, DAZ will only give you so many options, especially when you are working on a budget, they are a new team of Devs after all.
Does this model remind me of xyz? Possible. That a problem? Not as long as it is not a blatant rip off.
Looking at what they have done with what they have is great. Especially the models of the father and the dean have a lot of work put in, the girls are stunning and the environment has variety and done well.
Room for improvement? Sure, but again consider, it is a first release of a new team.

Want more variety and differences on the models, support them and hand them the money to buy new stuff, then they can send the girls to the hairdresser and beauty saloon or whatever Devs do to explain the new assets in their games

Summary of my 2 cents:

Story telling has the making of a deeper than average story. I am looking forward to delve deeper into that.
Artwork is solid and good looking at minimum, considering it is the first installment personally I would call it impressive.
Characters have a lot of potential, we get a quite high dose of issues with them, true, the next chapters will show if and how they will handle that.

It's a good 4 Stars now, the potential for more is given.

Again, thanks to the Devs, looking forward to more.

Based on v0.1

Pros:

• Really liked the renders.
• Background music is creating quite good atmosphere. Gone line by line so took me nearly 6 hours to complete without skipping.
• Story is quite good, there is so much to uncover and it's look like some complex-maze story.
• Story setting goes through different tones sometimes happy, comedy, sad most times (at the end very much).
• Intro video was quite good. Liking this new trend.

Cons:

• No sexual content right now Blowjob & handjob is there.
• Lots of inner monologues can ruin your experience.

Suggestions :

Comments:
Well what can i say. for v0.1 it's pretty good.
People who like very fast paced vn's will surely not enjoy this one. I won't recommend to players who like faster pace.

The game has been reworked now, the story now has overall changes and is much better suited, all the problems the old version had such as "cringe" dialogue, small screen time for the MC, the story having controversial problems with some of the love interests, and HEAVY drama are gone(the game appear to still go for some drama in the future updates, but definitely less lengthy and heavy compared what it was).

The game now has a good development pace, nothing seems rushed or out of character, and the love interests now are way more interesting than it was before, specially Afina and Grace. If you played the old version and didn't like one a bit, I definitely recommend trying out after the revamp, a completely turnaround from what it was and such a rare thing to see here in F95, since when the criticism goes heavy on something, the devs just abandon the project and that's it.

Goodspeed!

Renders 5 (amazing)
Animations in the sex scenes 1 (just terrible which is a shame)
Story is interesting ill give it a solid 3, undercover cop in the university (21 jump street vibe) but just too, too many monologue, characters talk to themselves for like 80% of the game, and in the sex scene with the teacher Mc is acting like a completely different person, he's all scared and sweet before the scene and as soon as he dropped his pants he's like this bdsm master or something, and the teacher is all dominant before the scene, but in the scene nothing, I dont get that.

The VN has potential even after bumpy start. Renders are good considering that MC is Chasing Sunset guy, but it's not first time to see models are used from other VNs. Actually is very often. Now, writing needs huge change, not only with silly foreign languages especially in character thoughts. Who cares if they think on Italian, French or whatever? It doesn't have any impact on the story. Characters thoughts are important for any VN, but in small ammount not like here where we find out all secrets and plus with Italic fonts. It's so difficult to see the diffrence between thoughts and dialogs because is mixed and apparently Dev/s want us to know what everybody think before they talk...
All characters have dark side and they all somehow know each other in some way or they paths are connected. In New York?? Village, small city ok, but NY? C'mon.
It's still early and with plenty of people with a lot of baggage are not doing a favor for readers( cuz we just read,no interact). VN needs lighter mood, fun and much,much more enjoyable moments for readers to get hooked or change the opinion about it. We need to interact, make choices so we can avoid things that we don't like. It seems to me that dev/s are working from chapter to chapter without having end already planned and that is dangerous game. Those usually end up with abondoned tag.
Renders 4*
Writing 1*
Story 2*
Effort 3*
Quality 4*

There's too much drama without no build up that it just ends up hurting the overall narrative. It's revealed that every single character is dealing with some major issues even before we get to know them properly which just doesn't make any sense to me. Why should I care about any of these characters problems when I don't even know the characters? I just end up not liking them because I don't see a reason to deal with someone else's problems when I have no personal connection with said person. Also you get to "hear" everyone's inner thoughts all the time and that's really weird.

The renders are good tho so there's at least something going for this right now.

I write this without a doubt in my mind. This is the cringiest writing I have ever seen in one of these games. It gives me second hand embarrassment, awkwardness, and worst of all it's not fun.

None of the characters are likable or interesting. The story makes no sense whatsoever. There is literally no meaningful character development. It's baffling to even comprehend how terrible this is.

The MC, though different in many ways when compared to other games, fails to captivate and comes off as a whiny, entitled crybaby.

The only thing decent about this experience was the art. But it cannot hold up the shit show that is this game.

I'm writing this as of Version 0.1

To preface, I'm honestly dumbfounded how this game has a 2.5 rating right now. After playing the game I can safely say that this game can easily be one of the top ones to look forward to in the future. The renders are top tier and the story is something fresh and new and could only blossom further in the future. The only knock that I have as of this release is that the animations aren't great and that is a little disappointing considering how great the renders are, that being said I'm sure that is something that can be improved upon in the future.

I think people who are writing negative reviews for this game just had extremely high expectations and when they weren't met they were upset. I know nothing about what this game was supposed to be but I can safely say that the current product is great and I look forward to seeing future updates.

This is for version 0.1:
After a long wait we get the first release of the game, it's not that short in that regard, the renders look good, I see that the dev likes blonde girls which is a plus for me. The story is not a happy one, each girl has its own backpack, and it is shown during this first chapter, even the MC. I've liked it so far, and I have also chosen which girls are my favorites, let's hope the next update shows us a bit more interaction between them. There are hardly any choices, and the most important one is with the teacher at the school and you get a small scene.
Now some concerns that I have are, the teacher, who basically throws herself at you, maybe some more foreplay could have been done there to build up the scene. And, finally, the elephant in the room, the reason why I think this VN is getting a low rating, is the part of Grace and her past. Knowing what happened with her may be a big turnoff and all the signs might point towards to NTR, but I will trust the dev on this one as he said that nothing of that will be in the game. So I am looking forward to the rest of the story, let's hope the dev doesn't take that long.

Normally I don't review a VN/game until its had several updates, or it's simply so awful that I have no intention of every going near its radioactive husk again. However, there is a lot of negative reaction to a specific scene in this introduction that I feel unjustifiably is pulling down the overall rating of thisVN.

So I offer this early reaction. I will revise this review after the VN has time to mature.

Massive amount of content for a first release. Excellent renders. Generally attractive women. MC is kind of interesting. All in all an impressive initial offering, so don't let the nay sayers discourage you from at least taking a look. There's a lot of potential here. Isn't that all we can really ask from an introduction?

Interesting storylines of characters here. Im actually more involved in stories of Kylie and Afina then MC x) Not that much, but good work.
Qualitty renders. Also kinda good work with models, but they are still kinda "stereo" imho
Already love this one, one of my favs actually. I dont know why, but this game has sunk into my soul.
will be w8ing for the next updates.
giving 5.0 in advice, but actually rn its more looks like 3.5-4.0

Well, it's pretty early to give a review, but i already decided my opinion and view on this game and i don't think it will ever change so here it is.

-The renders are probably the biggest plus of the game, the characters look great but a little unnatural i would say because pretty much all of them have gigantic and enormous tits.
Also talking about renders and characters, the MC's model is exactly the same as the MC's model from Chasing Sunset, i don't know if it's just a model that every dev can use freely but i saw him firstly and first to Chasing Sunset and it's weird seeing the same model twice since i never saw this model before in other games, there are many games that use the same models as other games use but you could have at least change him a little, giving him a different haircut and some facial hair so he could look more different, it's just the exact same.

-The dialogue/writing is at least mediocre at best, there are scenes where you try to smooth things up like adding a joke but even those jokes are pretty terrific and it makes the writing even more bad than already is.
Not going to talk about this inner thoughts the characters have, personally for me this is immersion breaking, knowing what others think and feel without talking is very bullshitting, i don't understand the necessity of this and i don't see why would this be considered a great asset for writing, it's ruining the game in my opinion.
-The characters feel empty even though you try so hard to give them a personality, it just doesn't add up probably because of the writing.

Overall the game is not really good or bad either, maybe if there will be improvements in the future, i'll change the rating but i kind of doubt it, also as i side note, that intro is unnecessarily long and useless.


EDIT 2025: So i replayed the game again after 4 years and it really did improved especially the writing, it isn't something amazing but it is an improvement, so i will change my rating because now it starts to feel like a pretty good game.

Updated review from 0.1.2 to rework CH.1 : +1 star

Having played the work I must say it is infinitely better than 0.1.2, though its still not without it's faults.

The visuals are incredible, this VN has image quality that is similar to the most high quality VNs on this site

the dialogue is much much better. No unnnecessary character thoughts, or jumpin gbetween perspectives and languages. Though it still feels awkward and unnatural some of the time making hard to follow or care about what's being said. Ex. (Sancho calling mc "kid" every second sentence"

The girls are pretty, though they are the self entitled looking for sympathy type which I find very unnappealing. Now this could be because where the mc is undercover or it maybe bias from playing the previous version. But in the previous versions all the girls has heaps of baggage waiting for the mc to fix them, making him a rebound at best. So fingers crossed for some major character development/variety of Li's

The Rework is much much shorter than 0.1.2, and much more effective. It's much easier to follow and care about the story. Though I was not a fan of the transition from regular life to a mission with Sancho, but I am glad the mom was not introduced yet.

I find the MC a bit strange, I get voicing how everyone left you to yourself, but the way he basically tells every character that he was abandoned doesn't sit right with me. Also, I'm not sure why he's that important and it doesn't really feel like he's undercover. But it's still early and I feel like he'll develop as we go along

I'm interested to see how the girls backstories change from 0.1.2. I found none of them even remotely appealing last time and I hope it changes going forward.

overall, the rework is much better than 0.1.2 and the dev has saved his game from the brink of death. I feel like it's unfair to leave my 2 star review up. I don't feel comfortable changing it to a 4 star at this point and as far as I can tell There's no way to fully delete a review so I'll change it to a 3 for now.

Also, massive respect to the dev for being able to take constructive critiscm. It can't be easy having to completely scrap adn rework something you worked on for countless hours just to deliver a better product. Best of luck.

Not your cliche soft and sweet games where every girl is dying for MC's cock but a deep and sort of sad game where every one is broken and fighting with her/his demons of the past. Quite Intriguing story to play . Sort of give SG vibes . Looking forward to the future updates

Good renders and nice girls. Backstory when they were kids is sweet. Present story is interesting and makes you looking foward to it but it's poorly executed.
The dialogues... are bad. We always know what they both are thinking when it's obvious and it gets boring quick. The Ryan entrance in the class room alone... I never read anything so bad. what the hell was that?
What about the "conversation" after lunch when the sister arrives? Cringe doesn't even start to describe it and the non-english dialogue?! Disrespectful to say the least. I would have paid my part and left.
The teacher going full retard on the first day is silly even for porn games standards.
Let me clear here, I really enjoyed the Demo. This chapter? Not really, no.
But what really don't like is the lack of choices. I sincerely hope that changes.
One thing good: it's a long chapter.

Missing Blackmail tag that if it was present I wouldn't have touched it. So on top of all a waste of my time.

1 star because I can't give 0.



Thank you and good luck.

P.S. Before it gets reported/removed as usual, version is 0.1...

P.S.2. Game was revamped and it's way better. I'll try to find time to edit this review.

The story is quite dark and sad as pretty much all the girls in the game are going through some trauma . Not a single girl other than Alice is having somewhat a normal life

Liked: The game surely has some pretty renders , and some beautiful females too. The emotions they are going through are quite nicely shown and so is the kid MC and Vanessa playing.

Disliked : To be honest other than Alice ,Kylie or Tianna or hell even Afina I personally don't think I would wanna go for any other LI as what left are either a dug dealer or a blonde whore who enjoyed fkin a married man and has a kid now or a drug addicted model who is pretty much a lesbian ora horny teacher . I mean how are u even supposed to like such people.
Hell Vanessa is a fkin druggie dealer too who maybe in future MC might have to arrest.

Not many choices till now , plz do work on that or add Kinetic tag to it

Eager to see how the story unfolds.

Well what can i say. for 0.1 it's pretty good. Really like the renders.
Background music is creating quit good atmosphere for playing.
Story is quit decent and good, but there is so much to uncover and it's look like some complex-maze story and i have a feeling this will be in slow burn game list

For short i like it.

Good luck!

Decent start but needs a whole lot more planned tags, hopefully this will lead to something great where the mc gets involved in all sorts of wonderful crazy sexual antics. Beautiful renders and decent story so far, the only critique is no real taboo sexual fetish.