VN - Others - Completed - Childhood Friends with Benefits [Final] [OrcSoft / Denpasoft]

3/5

Art -> Quite good though awkward in some areas. In traditional OrcSoft fashion the lewd elements are cranked up to 11.

Writing -> Nothing massively compelling. The storyline is fairly routine and the scenarios only become more unique about half way through with the introduction of BDSM elements. The characters back and forth serves as serviceable dialogue but the plot itself lacks substance.

Gameplay -> A VN, mostly kinetic, featuring 2 endings.

Content -> As mentioned in Art, the idea seems to have been take a benign scenario (childhood friend) and then crank up the lewdness in both art and audio to create a contrast. The VA for Shiho really goes for it to her credit, though there are times when the audio is comical and any form of believability hops out the window for a lap around the block.

I had high hopes for this based on the pics I've seen, but it turned out to be a heck of a dud. Make no mistake, there are tons of pics of a guy and a girl having sex; there are also walls Everest-line mountains of text to read while you're looking at them, if that's a thing you fancy. Unfortunately, even thought TECHNICALLY this is not a kinetic novel (ie. a choiceless one) in practice it very much is exactly that - don't expect to be anything other than a voyeur being taken for a ride. Which, unfortunately, makes this a zero-star game for me - there are plenty of other sources for proper porn pics, and reading porn fanfic is NOT my idea of fun. So if you came here to PLAY a porn game, move on, this will be several hours of your life you'll never get back, and will regret even if you played on fast-forward (which is bugged by the way and fails to "fast" properly from the middle or so). TL;DR: if you like AGENCY in your porn, this is an epic fail - avoid!

This game isn't bad; just painfully average and disappointing. For the record, I played this game from beginning to end while directly comparing it to Oral Lessons With Chii-chan since both games are very similar in most aspects. That's why I can say that Childhood Friends With Benefits is inferior in almost every way.
Conclusion:
All things considered, this game is skippable. I gave Oral Lessons a 7/10, so this game feels like a 5/10 to me. If the negative points that I brought up don't really bother you, then you'll probably like the game. If nothing else, at least the sex scenes are great if you don't mind the voice acting. The game took me 23 hours to 100% as a slow reader, so there's a good amount of content too.

Unlike Oral Lessons With Chii-Chan, the girl in this one is honestly kind of a bitch. It's not a fun read like Chii-Chan was. Also, there's like 40 million blowjob scenes, just like Chii-Chan, and it was only tolerable in that game because the relationship was good.

I liked the VN fine enough. I like how the main characters are a bit different from usual, the guy not being a real looker, and the girl being a bit of a plain girl too. It really gives you to the feeling of two childhood friends just fooling around rather than both being supermodels. It also works with them being childhood friends that rib eachother between sex.

The sex scenes are pretty nice, the art is nice (if you like the fleshy marshmellow look orcsoft produces) and the content is varied enough. There is a lot of blowjobs and vaginal sex, a few light BDSM scenes, and some anal. Most of it devolves into the "ohhhh my pussy is breaking ahhh" stuff that can be a bit annoying.
The context of the sex scenes is nice too. They run with the theme. They go from awkward first time sex and blowjob, to fucking eachothers brains out, to a quickie in a bathroom stall. However, halfway they start skipping forward quickly and the sex becomes a bit samey. Also they mention some scenes in text (for example. how she puts on a maid uniform and they have sex in that) but have no sex scene of that, which is a bit disappointing.
One thing I did like is that if you want to see a cute girl wear a leather mask and get throatfucked, without it being rape, this is one of the few games that offer that.

In the end i give it 4* instead of 5* because some scenes almost feel like repeats of previous scenes, the story starting to skip through time halfway, and the translation having a few stupid choices (I saw a "le sigh"). But i guess the translator got bored of translating all the stupid sex dialogue.

Pros

• Story
• Pacing
• Character Design/Development
• H-scene Expressions
• H-scenes

Cons

• Choices matter a lot for ending you want (especially when you want true ending)
• Different endings can have different H-scenes
• A lot of dialogue in general
• Pubic hair on girl during oral (perhaps my bias idk)

Notes
I really wish I knew that my choices actually mattered for the ending I wanted (I got ending 2), don't get me wrong I liked the H-scene with the after story it came with... but damn did it feel like I just cucked myself.
Really wish there was more to true ending ...

Translation work is great, voice acting is great, writing at least in the beginning is really great, art is really good but no animation. One of the first games out of orc soft that I have really enjoyed.