One of the most overrated VNs I've ever played.
Right off the bat the author breaks the promise about the player being in control of relationships. Within the first 5 minutes of the game 2 sexual relationships are forced on you without your choice, in both cases the MC screws a MARRIED woman. Worst of all, one of them is a wife of a man who took you under his wing and treated you like a son he always wanted!!! What shitty, disgusting, backstabbing thing to do.
That already sunk the story in my eyes. the next time you meet the woman she immediately shoves her tongue down your throat and humps you in a snow storm while her daughter (who apparently watched you two cheat on her father in the past) is just on the other side of the house's wall. Oh, you can fuck that daughter 3 minutes later if you want, but despite claiming she's a virgin there is literally nothing that supports that claim and apparently, despite living pretty much isolated with only her parents and no boy anywhere within 200 miles she is on the pill (I guess she knew you were coming and that you will have sex lol)... what a convenient way to eliminate any possibility of having any further contact with her in the rest of the story. The author should be commended on such an expedient and with great dispatch way of eliminating a fuck buddy as an LI! Also, despite her being very athletic from her lifestyle and sports she has a second chin for some reason. Doesn't make any sense, plus lowers her attractiveness.
Then you find out that some guys' wife that you fucked in prologue (apparently cause she looks like the step-sister, ungh!) is now divorced and is a SQUATTER in your Naples villa! She literally broke into it and is just helping herself to your possessions. What does the MC do? He is surely calling the cops to have her arrested and thrown out, right? Or telling her to get the fuck out of his home? Or calling the locksmith to have the locks changed while she's out so she can't get back in?
NOPE! He does NOTHING. Worse than that, at one point you can actually send her a DICK PIC so she can make a 3d print dildo of it! WTF?! That just boggles the mind. Why the fuck would the author even include that? Since I didn't try that I don't know how it is later used (not sure I even want to know, tbh.).
The 3rd forced sex is your sister's lesbian lover who, get this, is NOT a lesbian (neither is your sister apparently) she way just being a therapist for your sister by being a stand-in for you (despite missing an important part: a cock) and letting her live out her incestuous fantasies by imagining her gf was her brother. Thus the author re-educates us that there is nothing lesbian about girls licking each other's vaginas over like 10 years nor is it wrong when a person diminishes itself by turning itself into a masturbation tool. And she does that for MC too whether you want it or not. Later on you can pick up things with her, but what is the point when the author allows only 2 LIs and she's not one of them?
I've never felt violated from a game before, but this time I did, lol, because of the sheer number of times I was forced to watch MC being forced into sexual relationships without my consent.
The point about the story not allowing you any agency despite all author's promises becomes even more apparent later when it's blatant that the author wants you to choose Jaye (step-sister) and romance her over any other option. I've disliked her and tried to choose every decision that would give me negative points when I could, but somewhere about half-way into the game there were NO such options anymore!!! Thus I went against my will from minimum points (1) to half of maximum possible (+30) despite disliking her and pushing her away. There was an option to let her die at one point (which sadly bad ends the game), but despite the fact I've spent the entire game hating on her I didn't qualify because I didn't choose some weird deception scenario earlier that made no sense. The author simply doesn't allow you to push her away for good, which I find dishonest and heavy-handed.
Jaye has 0 personality aside from being an unhinged, unstable, jealous, manipulative and violent lunatic. she literally physically attacked and battered the MC in the prologue for the gall for trying to protect her from a would-be rapist! And yet she's apparently so deeply in love with him that she can't forget him for 6 years and is broken hearted when you push her away. Also she looks like one of those keychain trolls from the 80s.
Mallory, the other LI, is apparently your mother, but despite sharing all her DNA with your mom she looks nothing like her (er, how is that possible?), whether skin colouring, hair colour, facial features or even body shape! Which just cheapens Mallory because she, contrary to Jaye, actually has a developed personality and backstory and is actually quite likeable!
So, whether you like it or not, you are deceived into an incestuous relationship with a member of your imminent family, either your sister (we don't know until the very end that Jaye is actually MC's half-sister) or your mother. What looks like the lesser of two evils choice can actually be the biggest evil.
Also, was the author dabbling too much with AI? Cause the expressions on the cast's faces range from hilariously weird to dafuq-is-going-on-here. Never seen faces contorted like this before and especially their eyes take up comic proportions. Mallory/Mommy could've looked decent, but most scenes have her face twisted in weird expressions. Amanda was another major victim of this.
The part about your sister being a lesbian becomes more prominent when you realize that half the female cast subscribes to that. The author obviously has a kink. Now, people on forums claim "but they're not lesbians cause they are just experimenting!" (Oh, no officer, I didn't kill him! I was just experimenting with putting a bullet in his brain to see how it feels. Me just experimenting means there are NO consequences for my actions, it's as if they never happened, doesn't change me nothing. Just ignore the dead body there. Wait, why are you pulling out the handcuffs?!I WAS JUST EXPERIMENTING, OFFICER!!!). Sorry, if a woman has a sexual relationship with another woman she's a lesbian, especially over such a long period of time as Jaye. Period. If a man takes another cock up his ass he's gay. There is no "experimenting", your actions from the past don't simply get erased, that's just an American construct and self-delusion that an action or a chain of behaviours you engaged in has no consequences just because you claim it doesn't. Just because US has this permissive culture that supports people (women especially) who refuse to accept responsibility for their actions and make them think their fuck-ups won't follow them through their lives, doesn't mean actions don't have consequences.
Aside from Jaye your only other LI is ALSO a lesbian (big surprise, right?) and she can get it on with her childhood best-friend (surprise again, right?), which can involve you into this weird threesome. Which is not actually a threesome, but a couple with a "you can have sex with the other girl only if your gf is present" thing. The times Mallory is absent you can't have sex with Amanda. Doesn't make sense (like most things in this game), but there you go.
Your "innocent" lover from the hills later sends you a pic of herself naked, cuddling with 2 equally completely naked big-breasted chicks, confirming her switching sides as well.
The captain's gf also has very flexible views on sex and morality. And I'm sure there's more, but the women are so one-dimensional that they're completely forgettable. Suffice to say, LGBT in this game is about 10x more represented than their RL figures.
All is not rosy even in the area that will interest you most: physical attractiveness of the girls. The game's engine is pretty bad, so it's honestly no wonder most are ugly to mediocre. This is NOT Summer's Gone or some other game with it's better engine.
Of the entire female cast (which is pretty big, mind you) only 1 actually looks beautiful and has the least amount of scenes with distorted face or over-blown eyes and she is your mother's second-in-command. She's supposed to be 40, but looks around 30. Sadly, you guessed it, she's not an LI...
Mallory who is an LI just looks weird in many scenes and average at best. Her lesbian lover aka best friend Amanda looks cute in a way, but she's mostly comic relief due to the outlandish and no-filter things she blurts out if you save her life since she's a cured autist/savant. The least said about Jaye the better. The Japanese chef/martial-arts-master (what?) looks okay, but in terms of age she's already hit the Wall (and even though she teases MC about letting him knock her up later it will never happen since she's not an LI). There is a divorced wannabe-MILF that's around 40 but has the body of a REALLY fit and hot 18 year old, she looks beautiful. The other models are not really worth of note.
As with story and rationale and other things, this is also not a story for you if you want to gaze at hot girls. Play Summer's Gone for that purpose.
The MC is a manwhore btw. He literally fucks everything with a vagina, no matter how inadvisable or callous or shitty. Never uses a condom either, even with women he's just picked up in a bar. But as is standard these days he is also the butt of jokes, even if that means he has to be castrated and emasculated in some really mean-spirited ways, especially if it makes a woman look good and superior. He literally has no backspine, especially towards women, he just lets them walk all over him.
There is nothing endearing about him. Not only is he constantly in the scenes thus ruining immersion, especially as he looks some over-sexualized beefcake with a 10 inch dick so you can't really identify with him.
Then there's also the best friend who dies behind the scenes. Former Israeli special forces (gives this especially untasty flavour what with current events happening in Gaza with what Israel is doing to civilians) that somehow finds himself in Honduras and out of pure goodness of his heart saves the MC. And then eventually dies. Oh yeah, apparently an armed and active Israeli special forces unit is just COINCIDENTALLY in Libya and in the SAME TOWN in fact with an IDF cargo plane during the 2011 NATO's destruction of the country that included an assassination of it's President and his son (who was sodomized with sharp instruments before being murdered by NATO's terrorists). Libya went from the most prosperous African country with the living standards better than Germany to the nest of terrorism, slave trade and misery that it is today. And in this place the MC and his Israeli friend just somehow found themselves in with no heads-up what's gonna happen (lmao), the friend got whacked by bandits with revolvers and then an IDF spec ops team rode in to the rescue and included this "emotional" moment of giving the MC some medal or coin or some other IDF brotherhood symbol.
At this point as I was puking I was about to press Alt+F4, but forced myself to continue out of morbid curiosity as to how it can get worse.
With the mess that was yet to come I should've just followed that instinct and stopped playing. Hopefully you, dear reader, will now choose better.
There's plenty of nonsense in this game, but as a longtime biker what stood out to me was the hilarious "race" MC and his sister engaged in on their date (another case of the author making our choices in a heavy-handed way instead of letting us choose cause I didn't want to go on a date with her, nor did it make sense for my MC to go or be that friendly as he was there). There was literally nothing in the hours of the story beforehand to even hint that either had ever ridden a motorcycle before and here they were going flat out on a country road (it's much harder than it sounds like), the sister beating the brother easy --- HOORAY FOR GRRL POWER!!! (I guess) -- even though she had the completely wrong bike for the job (no fairing, no wind protection, poor aerodynamics, weaker engine, etc.) simply because she's a girl and girls are always better in everything than boys until it died (probably Italian bike lol or a BMW - a biker will know what I mean). As it's been beaten into our heads in the west since 1970's "a woman can do anything a man can and does it better". IRL they would've killed themselves within first minute of riding like that and being complete beginners. The corporate espionage/murder/extortion plot is there, but nothing special or exciting.
It's not all bad though! Amanda is hilarious with the stuff she just blurts out, especially her breeding fantasies. Mallory is a really interesting character with sob story that gives her personality and makes you invested in her. Then there is the van that is the victim of some very unflattering jokes and quips. Plus the game has AIRWOLF! Despite the fact that the actual heli was sold after the show and later crashed, killing all onboard. The MILF-whose-name-I-forgot has a really hot body and Lisa has the most beautiful face (and great body too). These actually save the game from getting a single star.
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This is review for Chapter 10.
Well, the dev started the new update on a note that he seems to like, getting the (only) two LIs naked and wet together after wrestling on the bed while wearing as little as possible. Makes no sense whatsoever, but at least they weren't wrestling in jello or mud. Thankfully that was the only thing approaching lesbian fantasies for this chapter.
No change or improvement in models or visuals. Lisa is still the hottest girl of the huge lineup and still out of reach. Considering only the epilogue is left, I'd say nothing will change.
Second thing that jumps at me is that the dev continues breaking his promise about player controlling relationships. 1 minute into the update and I've already received 6 love and 4 trust points with Jaye even though I try to alienate her. In the entire chapter there was only 1 or maybe 2 opportunities to lose points with her, everything else improved them.
The espionage story kicks back in pretty soon. Apparently the enemy corporation could go to HAGUE (International Criminal Court aka war crime court) for creating Mallory. Er, my dear dev, if NETANYAHU is never gonna go to the Hague for what he's done (according to the British Lancet medical journal, Palestinian death toll in Gaza is over 186.000 NOT 40k that media are trying to sell to us), then one corpo is surely not gonna appear for CREATING a person, even if they were playing Lebensborn the Second Coming. On the other hand...
Also, if Mal is such a threat to them, they wouldn't be sending just one guy to kill her, they would've sent an entire team and killed everyone who knew the truth of her. The whole spy plot seems to be wrapping up very quickly and mostly behind scenes, which is disapointing.
Er, considering all of George's grave warnings about the danger Mal is in I would've expected some kind of PROTECTION, you know? Security team and the likes? Instead they just go on like before and are just gonna "keep their heads on a swivel"? What's next? How are they gonna make it even easier for the assassins? Later events just confirmed my point. Plus the fact that the person who is in danger and should be kept alive went SKYDIVING! facepalm
The dev continues to make Airwolf references, which I appreciated.
Otherwise aside of a few funny moments, the update was pretty passive, the events were either determined in your previous choices or by the dev, so you mostly just sit and watch the world go by.
Aside from some hotness provided by Mal, the most significant part was her revelation that she dreams of being knocked up by the player. No clue whether that will go anywhere, I imagine it won't.
Aside of that the update can be skipped and it is my recommendation that people either ignore this game or just wait for it to be completed to know how it ends. There are better games out there (like Acting Lessons, but prepare to have your heart ripped out).
