VN - Ren'Py - Chronicles of Kartoba [Prologue P2 Fix] [SinisterSlick Games]

"As you forge bonds, uncover buried truths, and grow your influence, your choices will shape both your harem and your legacy. "

I know it is only the prologue but this is not fun.

The choices in part 1: stare at ass, play guessing games of who's covering your eyes, spy on girlfriend at school, stare at tits, masturbate (then pick who to masturbate to - and if you want to fill your gallery you'll need to pick both - doesn't everyone love masturbation scenes?), stare at more ass, punch an asshole, leave a message on girlfriends phone.
Oh, and then you get a sex scene (the posts and replies make up 3 pages if you search "forced" in this thread. But the Dev says it is important and a 1 time thing...

Onto part 2: starts off waking up in a dark room and already someone else sitting in the dark waiting for you to wake up - really set you at ease for the bullshit they are about to lay on you. First choice: try to stab the fucker? (and we introduced the beloved timed choices) Second choice: sex with the girlfriend (and to the Dev's credit, it is not forced). Third choice: stare at tits (timed choice here). You are given a choice that alters stats (assertive/diplomatic). Finally, to end the scene and update you're given choices but is a checklist and have to click everything anyway.

When chapter 1 comes I hope it follows another middling game - we wake up 1000 years later and begin to hunt down our son.

That important forced sex scene from part 1: a third party sold your baby batter to another family. And your girlfriend is that third party's granddaughter. I kind of checked out - everyone and everything was making me mad and in turn losing interest in plot and characters (intended consequences of all prologues, I'm sure).

At least the renders were above average.

Aside from the blood I would have given this a 5. Sure its a vampire game and blood id to be expected.....but during the sex scene it was a huge turn off as it came from the wrong locations.

Great story. Although it takes a few wanderings from the beaten path at points it is not terrible and I can stick to it well enough. Well enough at least that I failed to do my usual which was to skip through most of teh story. So I should say that that alone says a great deal about the quality of the writing in this one.

I really really want to come back and revise this one to a 5 star in the future. Please, God above, Please!!!! Do not turn this MC into some simp cuck little yes man bitch. Let the players choices matter and above all else let him have a set of balls if he chooses to and damn the consequences as a result. I would rather die as a full blown male MC in a bloody blazing hellfire than go as a nutless cuck. So sick of games that do not let you live and die by your own choices but sneakilyy force you to play the game the Dev wants to play instead. That is cute but it royally pisses me off. And it gives me a strong distaste for anything I see their name on in the future.

I am angry at being decieved but also curious enough right now to bide my time and see how things unfold around the MC before choosing a course of action. If I was to choose a course right now it would be a reckless one. One of vengeance and destruction. Lots of needless people would be hurt including the MC. So yes, its best the game stopped where it did so I have time to prepare myself for futur eepisodes.

Well done and well played so far. Look forward to future eposodes and as such currently recommend this to others as being worth their time. As I said, I usually avoid vampire and moster related stuff but something told me to give this one a try.

Not a lot of sex here but it was well presented at least.

Version: Prologue P2 (Fix)

I'll revise this review at some point, but I primarily wanted to leave some kind of rating while offering a succinct overview of the game and story.


First off, the underlying plot is a refreshing take on the whole vampire trope that seems to be rising in popularity in recent years (seems the Twilight burnout is fading...). While politics and intrigue are at the center of this story as well it at least changes up some of the setting (we're definitely not on Earth) alongside introducing a lore friendly version of vampire hierarchy. If you've ever experienced Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines then this story isn't all that different in terms of what it's attempting to convey story wise.

As for the MC... I sincerely did not like him in the first few scenes with how he felt somewhat schizophrenic while having a personality of a wet towel (gross and slimy). However, the second part of the prologue changed my view of him after the added perspective, and in doing so fixes the issue I had in believing the MC was a weakly written character. Spoiler territory below:

Just another vampire game... Or so I thought, high quality, reasonable story thus far, and the models are high quality. This game has a very promising story if it keeps it up, things are ominous enough to the point where you as the player want to speculate what's going on behind the scenes. Bright future.

review for Prologue P2 fix

Really nice renders, girls be super cute.
lots of forced drama, super mid writing.
cringe ass protag, to be fair to him, he not the only cringe character in this.
weird start, hope it gets better.

Not a lot there at the moment, but what is there is good. Interesting story, well written with minimal spelling/grammar mistakes. So far not an overload of characters, hope it stays that way. Looks like it will be story driven rather than slice of life. I would keep an eye on this one

This VN is worth watching just for the stunning renders. Everything else is just cheap. The plot, if you can call it that, was clearly written by some horny schoolboy after watching Twilight.
Basically, you can skip ahead and watch the images; you won't miss anything.

- Models and visuals - 6 out of 5
- Plot: 1 out of 5
- Sound: hard to rate (I haven't listened to it)
- Interface: 3 out of 5, unremarkable

Prologue P2 Fix

Story seems to be a mix of power fantasy and teen vampire drama. Beginning of the story has good amount of both, as the MC is forced to this complex situation. It is really fun to follow MC, as he does re-establish his relationships to all the people around him. Great plot device to make us learn these characters, even the old acquaintances for the MC.

Writing is overall great. Specially loved the women characters, as they all seemed to have personality and their own agenda. Sex scenes are so much better after little bit of drama and tension. And the game used that setup really well to spice up the conversations on sex scenes.
Only thing I hated was how MC did act like privileged teen after the "awakening". I was disappointed that no one slapped the MC and introduced some humility for our hero. Many great stories have flawed MC who raises to be a hero through hardship. Or is this another story of male Captain Marvel/Star Wars Rey. We will see.

Visuals are just great. All the women have unique differences on their bodies, but still they all look beautiful. The blonde had perfect 10 body, main brunette had unreal nipples, the teacher had ass to die for. And sex scenes with nice animation, damn.
I personally think "change angle" / "continue" are little annoying, but not a big problem. Re-using same angle multiple times would not brake the flow of the scene as much.

Strong start, I enjoy the lore and the characters, it'll be interesting to see moving forward how they blend the MC's old and new life. It's fun, can't wait to play more.

One thing I could say is you don't need to write "thinking" over and over again; the font changes signify that well enough, as well as the context, but the models, the MC, and the plot have the potential for this game to be a top-tier game, even if vampire games are very plentiful.

Besides the PG rated housing setup, the story kicked off really well. Ending with a nice cliffhanger.
The CG is excellent, quality backgrounds, and there were moments it looked photo realistic, which I guess is the intention. My only critic on the CG was the reverse cowboy scene. I had a 90s Lara Croft flashback, and it looked/felt forced, contrary to the rest.
The characters still lack some depth, but I haven't seen enough to really establish that.
My biggest issue here is that the prologue alone is far too short to say something about quality, but the developers did get my attention. I don't do pre-order, nor bankrolling. Commit and keep it up like this, and my support will follow: For me it is not about the money, VNs get a monthly budget allotted. 30m of story is not enough to really establish entertainment value.
Well done devs!

Looks amazing, the character render I will a solid 10/10 SinisterSlick really took his time to make the characters amazing. The plot seems interesting with the vampire twist and so far I love it and looking forward for it's development.

Now this was an excellent prologue that succeeded in making me want more.
The girls are all smoking hot, especially Jess.
The plot seems interesting, and from what it sounds like there are cyberpunk aspects to the surrounding world, with corpos ruling the nearby city, etc.
The animations were great, the first sex scene was long and very steamy.
One point of criticism, please fix the times where "room-mate" slips in instead of the labels we applied at the beginning.
Looking forward to seeing more, great job dev.

I'm not a graphic specialist, but I am an avid reader, and I simply loved it, both the staging and the music. There are still many questions and open issues to explore, but that's the point: weaving the plots together in each episode. I'm looking forward to reading the next one.

VERSION: 0.01
SUMMARY: Pretty good start and decent overall, starts like the regular old trope but has a bit more story going for it.
RATINGS: (out of 5):

NOTE: The following categories and scoring method are my own criteria and may require more context. Additionally, scoring is based on the state, and what is in the current version and not what may or may not be.

1. Model Visuals..................... : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
2. General Visuals................... : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
3. Animation Quality................. : ⭐⭐⭐
4. Character (Persona)............... : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
5. Story Quality & Pacing............ : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
6. Writing Quality & Dialogue........ : ⭐⭐⭐⭐
7. UI & Game-play Mechanics...........: ⭐⭐⭐
8. Playtime & General Quality.........: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
9. Sounds & Music.....................: ⭐⭐⭐
10. H-Content & Fetishes.............. : ⭐⭐⭐

Average: X of 50 possible points giving a X% rating i.e. X stars.

PROS:

1. Models are really nice looking and sexy, and the MC is a decent looking young man.
2. Writing is decent, structured and reads well. English is not bad though not 100%, not that I am a guru either mind you.
3. Being able to set relationships at start is nice BUT, see cons
4. Music is decent and seems there are sound FX like interactive sounds that are nice.
5. UI is standard but has all you really need like setting dialogue box opacity etc.
6. Story seems intriguing actually, with some interesting concepts and a tad different approach to the regular stories, probably not very profound by has good potential and I liked it.
7. Characters seem to have some back story, and unique personalities which at least keeps it interesting. MC seems level headed and "normal" and not some fool like often portrayed in VNs with young characters at college.

CONS:

1. Setting relationships feels half baked, and needs some polish. Read my comments.
2. Can do with more audio sounds for immersion, little details go a long way.
3. Another game that uses the odd single choice action button that the user must click to progress...why not just use a text and carry on to the next slide the normal way...fml...
4. Animations and lewds are are not the best, they not horrible, but they don't really flow smoothly, they feel a bit clinical I guess you can call it, and lack the angles and sexiness of the general renders, which is a pity considering the general quality and model renders are so good. NOTE: This is not really an issue, but sometimes it seems the quality is not consistent which makes reviewing these animations a little tricky. See further comments below.
5. Same with sounds, pity there are no lewd sounds, like moans, squelching sounds etc. All these add to the quality and immersion.
6. What lewd sounds there are is like the MC cumming which sounds like a ketchup bottle squirting tomato sauce...lol, no really...

FINAL REMARKS, OPINIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

NOTE: The following remarks are my personal opinions and thoughts, which may provide more context and could be useful to the developer.

• Relationship setting at the start need work, references are not correct and for it to work the developer needs to change a few more things. Those who want to set incest as a thing for instance or something otherwise will get some weird dialogue or references that are not correct.
• Some ambient and environmental sounds would go a long way though to add value to this game, so please look into that.
• Animations don't seem consistent in quality and speed across the board. While I can appreciate most attention in the lewd areas, even here I found it not always feeling the same. I was a little on the fence until the cow girl position which was very good, but as I said, it didnt feel consistent throughout, this could just be a little bit of a nit pick, but something the dev could maybe shed light on?

TLDR:

Fairly decent VN, combines a few elements to make for an interesting plot and setting. Its done at pretty good standards with good quality all round. There is always room for improvement but I think its a damn good start. This VN I can wholly endorse and recommend, I will review it again after a few updates.