I really wanted to like this game.
The TLDR is:
Production quality is good, with good models, good animations, very good english (no weird phrases or typos), good music and sound effects.
However the MC has some major choices taken away from him and a lot of his agency is removed.
The story is a bit different from most VNs but it is not the marvel that some other reviews make it out to be.
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Longer review now, with some spoilers, stop reading now if you prefer not to be spoiled:
Chasing Sunsets presents itself as serious game, with some porn. It tries to distinguish itself from a simple porn game, and, therefore, I expect more from it.
One of the things that the game tries to market itself as, is a game about choices, and yet, the MC has nearly no agency in his life,. You, the player, are not even allowed to make certain choices, they are made for you.
For example, you can't chose not to fuck Fiona, why not? supposedly because she reminds you of your sister.... ok. This will also be used later as a plot point, however, it would have been more interesting if you had the choice to do it or not, and that then affected the scene where your sister reads your journal.
You are also not given a choice on fucking Linda, which, I may add, I would never have done if given the choice. This doesn't even seem to be a plot point yet, after 6 episodes, and doesn't even have a scene in the game. If it had a scene, I could even imagine this being a "hey, lets throw some sex scene here so the player can see some action". But no, it just happens in a past we are not shown. If this was a normal porn VN, I wouldn't mind, as I accept (and have played and enjoyed) that the MC is nothing more than a dick with legs that is out to fuck everything that moves, but, in a game that tries to be about choices, why am I being robbed of one?
The worst though.... is Tara. I felt revolted by this scene. Again, I am given no choice, they fuck because.... well, they fuck. The excuse that the game tries to give made me roll my eyes, I didn't even use they button to "see Jaye" during this scene as it just made me feel disgusted. I gave Tara at least the small dignity of fucking her, not the idea of Jaye. The character of Tara is totally destroyed in this scene and any connection between myself and the MC is severed here. Again, if this was just a game, like some many others, where I am encouraged to let loose on any woman around, without pretense of a more elevated purpose, this would be no problem, I have played those games and actively tried to get it on with any female character, however, many of those games still give me the choice.
These are three major choices, but there are a lot of small ones, for example, the whole "Han shot first" discussion at the beginning, a smart way to do this would have been to let the player position themselves on one side of the discussion and then position Jaye on the other, but no.... the game places the MC, and therefore you, on the stupid side of the conversation
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Regarding the MC and the other characters.... I didn't find them likeable in general, lets see some of the main ones:
The MC: as I said, the game actively made distance myself from him by forcing choices that I would never have made in a very heavy handed way. But that is not all, I am then told that I roam the world for 5 years while my parents pay my phone bills? what growth as a man has the MC during those 5 years.... none, except becoming a typical american fuckboy. Other characters even call him a fuckboy, and he is one, so I can't blame them. When taunted slightly about his game, once in the yacht, he tries to prove himself by going after the first woman that comes by, and makes an ass of himself. We are given three choices, but the three lead to him being ridiculed. Again, no choice to just not be a fuckboy.... this feels disempowering, emasculating and demeaning, and we have no say in it. This is a character with no agency. And the worst of it is.... his love for Jaye. We are just told he loves her, but why? we have no say in it, we have no control over it, it just is.
Jaye: she is supposed to be the MCs main love interest, and yet, I hate her personality. Her looks... I can see why some reviewers say she is awesome, and I guess it is all a matter of personal taste, however, to me, she personally looks like a fake barbie, her red hair looks fake and her tan.... meh, just doesn't do it for me. But I could look over that if her personality was well fleshed out. It is not. She has swing moods and acts like a loon and, at the same time, like if she was somehow above the MC. I feel all the time like she is acting in an arrogant way against me and yet, somehow, my character loves her. Why? and why does she love him? they way she treats Tara, fucking her in some weird substitute for her brother is also appalling. Her jealousy and capriciousness... I just see nothing here for me to be attracted to.
Mallory: now we are talking. I really liked how the trauma of her father being abusive towards her was presented in the game, his voice inside her was great and made me feel for her. I also liked how she and the MC interacted and I felt protective and attracted to her. The reveal that she is somehow a genetic copy of the mother was a huge disappointment, not because of how the character was being handled, but it made me go "really?" at the writing in this game. It felt stupid and unnecessary. Her personality is great and glossing over the genetic thing I enjoyed the scenes with her and her relationship with the MC,. If only he wasn't such a fuckboy....
The other characters all seem well written in general and believable, no complains here.
Story:
I read a lot of reviews praising the story and, yet, I find myself a bit underwhelmed by it. I liked the part with the company, and the lawsuit and such, however the game has a lot of stereotypical elements in it, from the murdered parents, to the silent and manly special forces mentor to the MC (totally unneeded ending for him, by the way, with a ridiculous scene with the other commandoes appearing...) , but to me the main failing of the story is again the lack of proper choices on the critical elements, and just railroaded into a position in which you either go for your sister or have to behave like a fucking asshole. I would have liked, for example, to be given a choice, at the first meeting in the lawyer's office, to say "no, I don't want my inheritance, I am my own independent man, my spoiled brat of a sister can take the company, I am out of here, enjoy your life". And even if that meant a 30 second montage of how the MCs life went from then on and then game over. Why can't my character make the choice of just walking away?
But the worse is that the game uses a trick that I hate in its storytelling, and that is forcing you to make decisions based on information you should have but you don't. For example, after that first meeting, and Jaye having you blocked on her phone, you are asked to make a decision on whether to respond to her SMS or not. I chose not to, angry that she was a spoiled princes and behaved like an asshole to me, the MC. Then, a while later, it is revealed that it was me who had blocked my own phone on her... what?! are you fucking kidding me?! my character should have had that information and, thus, I should have had it before being made to make a decision like that one.... for a game saying that they do not want to present you with "gotcha" decisions... this was a very low blow.
Look, devs, if you are going to present the player with a decision that basically kills their relationship with another character, you have to be fair and give me at least the information that my character has. I should know, at that point, that my character was the one blocking his number on his sister phone, I should also know that my character fucked Tara. These two clearly change things. It feels really shitty having to replay the game, to go back to that decision, to take a different one, every time you present new information that I should have had in the first place! that is not good storytelling, it is scummy. It is cheap.
You invested a lot of time on that introduction at the bar which, I must say, I liked as a way of introducing me to the story and the characters, why not make these major decisions a part of that intro? let me chose if I block myself on her phone, let me chose if I fuck Tara, let me fuck Linda or not, let me chose whether to fuck Fiona or not.... and then, once in the game proper, make me pay for the consequences of my actions, make other characters react poorly or not to my decisions. You do this when in the cabin during the storm, and I can decide there whether I want to fuck anyone or not, why not give me that for the other decisions? with a very small tweak your revelations later, the journal reading and all, would still work.
All in all, I do not think this is the masterpiece its score shows it to be. If it was a game with less pretensions of being deep, I could even see it as a 2/3 , but when the game itself tries to tell you how much it is about choices and emotional intelligence.... no, this is not that.
