This developer's games are an experience. They are so strangely constructed that I find it hard to put my thoughts on them into some form of practical feedback. I've been playing this game off and on for years now, so there is some fundamental appeal, but there is so much frustration and outright oddness built in that it overstays its welcome.
I think another review below pointed out the first, and arguably most important, issue - this game is not a sandbox. It is a linear story cut up and sprinkled throughout the basic structure of a sandbox game. You have no real choices (and not even really the illusion of choices, either), and the stats you are shown are meaningless. What this means is that there is a lot of meaningless hazy nothing inbetween the actual events where things happen. So much of this game is just a performance of 'sandbox' with no actual meat to it, and it is a bizarre experience to play through it.
You go through the same event multiple times over many days and/or weeks, and each time you see the same event, except one paragraph is added, or one gif is added, or, if you're lucky, both, and by the end you get the full scene you should have gotten immediately. Watching a woman take sixteen consecutive days to have sex with someone, bracketed by mindless sandbox filler, makes me feel like my brain is slowly unravelling. It is absolutely maddening.
1) The game will often, but not always, tell you when there is more to see (it will literally say 'It's not over!' or 'Come back tomorrow/next week!').
2) The game will sometimes, but essentially never, tell you when there is nothing more to see.
Points 1) and 2) together create a soul grinding game experience, where at first you will just keep doing events on the off-chance that more content gets randomly added on, but then you get a sort of sense of when content is 'done' so you stop grinding, but also because of the inconsistent notifications of 'more' you sometimes keep trying a time or two because it hasn't but it never does, and sometimes you stop grinding too early and it makes later content take longer to get to because you didn't do the last part of the event chain, except the way the game is laid out you can't even be sure that's the reason why it didn't happen, and-
And you feel like you're slowly going insane.
... The thing that I think bothers me the most, personally, is to do with how root constructs the world the game takes place in. The fundamental flaw is worldbuilding. Everything feels floaty and vague. Characters teleport around, locations exist in vague voids. This adds on to the bizarre way scenes play out piecemeal, nothing feels real. And not in the 'oh, I'm in a haze brought about through hypnosis' way, in the 'this is all utterly contrived' way. I have no idea where anything is in relation to anything else, the game feels like series of contrivances to get to porn gifs, with only the loosest connection to characters and locations within the game's fiction.
I will give praise to root where it is deserved - everything that isn't centred around the writing of the 'main plot' (such as it is) is reasonably good. Their editing of gifs to convey the feeling of being hypnotised into a bimbo haze is among the best I've seen of its kind (although I have admittedly not seen a whole lot of other attempts at it). The first time you see some things is really hot, even if it becomes something you spam-click through later. The individual events, that aren't there to be grinded out to see more of the same event, are very good. I especially liked the 'Consultations', which are all one-shot content that aren't explicitly tied to anything else, and therefore not bogged down by anything else. It was always nice to see the notification that a new one was available to break up the monotony. I was also very sad when they ran out. Like, it's literally one gif and small bit of writing, but you get uncomplicated bimbo content, and that is a blessing at certain stages of this game's progression.
As far as the bimbo fantasy goes, if I ignore most of what happens inbetween the actual interesting stuff, I can immerse myself in it. There is something fundamentally appealing here, if you have the fetish, it just takes so long to play out, with nothing interesting happening to make the wait less agonising.
I first discovered root through their work on a certain mod, that I'm going to avoid naming specifically because of the odd rules. Point being, they are perfectly capable of producing quality smut - when they're adding to other people's work. The problems begin to emerge when they build it from scratch, because their fundamental flaw is in laying foundations. These are some quality walls, doors, and windows root has here - but they've placed them in a swampy muck, and the more I try to access the house the less convenient it becomes, and the more frustrated I get.
A piece of advice, if you are going to play the game - cheat yourself a ludicrous amount of money and makeup, and stop even thinking about it. Doing the jobs is only fun for a while, and then you just get the same scenes over and over again. Maybe check in when you reach a new level of 'bimbo' (which happens like... once, maybe. I'll edit this review if another one happens towards the end of the game, which I am determined to finish) but otherwise just ignore it.
Edit: Yeah, there's only one 'transformation' for the main character (and every other character), so once its happened you can stop checking for things changing at the jobs.
The 'ending' is underwhelming, but expecting something compelling was probably a bad idea anyway. It's hot, at least.
tl;dr: there are a lot of fundamental flaws, but if you're into bimbos there is good stuff sprinkled throughout. You will sacrifice hours and hours (and hours) of your time to see it through. You'll have to decide for yourself if that's worth it to you.
I think another review below pointed out the first, and arguably most important, issue - this game is not a sandbox. It is a linear story cut up and sprinkled throughout the basic structure of a sandbox game. You have no real choices (and not even really the illusion of choices, either), and the stats you are shown are meaningless. What this means is that there is a lot of meaningless hazy nothing inbetween the actual events where things happen. So much of this game is just a performance of 'sandbox' with no actual meat to it, and it is a bizarre experience to play through it.
You go through the same event multiple times over many days and/or weeks, and each time you see the same event, except one paragraph is added, or one gif is added, or, if you're lucky, both, and by the end you get the full scene you should have gotten immediately. Watching a woman take sixteen consecutive days to have sex with someone, bracketed by mindless sandbox filler, makes me feel like my brain is slowly unravelling. It is absolutely maddening.
1) The game will often, but not always, tell you when there is more to see (it will literally say 'It's not over!' or 'Come back tomorrow/next week!').
2) The game will sometimes, but essentially never, tell you when there is nothing more to see.
Points 1) and 2) together create a soul grinding game experience, where at first you will just keep doing events on the off-chance that more content gets randomly added on, but then you get a sort of sense of when content is 'done' so you stop grinding, but also because of the inconsistent notifications of 'more' you sometimes keep trying a time or two because it hasn't but it never does, and sometimes you stop grinding too early and it makes later content take longer to get to because you didn't do the last part of the event chain, except the way the game is laid out you can't even be sure that's the reason why it didn't happen, and-
And you feel like you're slowly going insane.
... The thing that I think bothers me the most, personally, is to do with how root constructs the world the game takes place in. The fundamental flaw is worldbuilding. Everything feels floaty and vague. Characters teleport around, locations exist in vague voids. This adds on to the bizarre way scenes play out piecemeal, nothing feels real. And not in the 'oh, I'm in a haze brought about through hypnosis' way, in the 'this is all utterly contrived' way. I have no idea where anything is in relation to anything else, the game feels like series of contrivances to get to porn gifs, with only the loosest connection to characters and locations within the game's fiction.
I will give praise to root where it is deserved - everything that isn't centred around the writing of the 'main plot' (such as it is) is reasonably good. Their editing of gifs to convey the feeling of being hypnotised into a bimbo haze is among the best I've seen of its kind (although I have admittedly not seen a whole lot of other attempts at it). The first time you see some things is really hot, even if it becomes something you spam-click through later. The individual events, that aren't there to be grinded out to see more of the same event, are very good. I especially liked the 'Consultations', which are all one-shot content that aren't explicitly tied to anything else, and therefore not bogged down by anything else. It was always nice to see the notification that a new one was available to break up the monotony. I was also very sad when they ran out. Like, it's literally one gif and small bit of writing, but you get uncomplicated bimbo content, and that is a blessing at certain stages of this game's progression.
As far as the bimbo fantasy goes, if I ignore most of what happens inbetween the actual interesting stuff, I can immerse myself in it. There is something fundamentally appealing here, if you have the fetish, it just takes so long to play out, with nothing interesting happening to make the wait less agonising.
I first discovered root through their work on a certain mod, that I'm going to avoid naming specifically because of the odd rules. Point being, they are perfectly capable of producing quality smut - when they're adding to other people's work. The problems begin to emerge when they build it from scratch, because their fundamental flaw is in laying foundations. These are some quality walls, doors, and windows root has here - but they've placed them in a swampy muck, and the more I try to access the house the less convenient it becomes, and the more frustrated I get.
A piece of advice, if you are going to play the game - cheat yourself a ludicrous amount of money and makeup, and stop even thinking about it. Doing the jobs is only fun for a while, and then you just get the same scenes over and over again. Maybe check in when you reach a new level of 'bimbo' (which happens like... once, maybe. I'll edit this review if another one happens towards the end of the game, which I am determined to finish) but otherwise just ignore it.
Edit: Yeah, there's only one 'transformation' for the main character (and every other character), so once its happened you can stop checking for things changing at the jobs.
The 'ending' is underwhelming, but expecting something compelling was probably a bad idea anyway. It's hot, at least.
tl;dr: there are a lot of fundamental flaws, but if you're into bimbos there is good stuff sprinkled throughout. You will sacrifice hours and hours (and hours) of your time to see it through. You'll have to decide for yourself if that's worth it to you.
