VN - Ren'Py - City Devil: Restart [v0.3.0 Hotfix] [Sabirow]

a LOT of work has gone into making something that's simply not that good when it comes to the story and characters. All style no substance you could say. I can't believe I'm saying this but I feel like this avn suffers from author putting too much effort into the wrong things.

The animations in this are some of the best I've ever seen but they come across as extremely tryhardish at times and most of them are wasted on transition shots that don't really add much value to the story. The sex scenes especially are too disappointing because with the amount of effort went into animating the transitions I'd have thought this is the area this game would shine but if was a major let down, I've seen better animation in a lot of other HS avn.

This game has another weird issue, I've seen the reverse of this problem a lot of times but this is the first time I've come across a game in which MC is extremely hot but the LIs are just not that good to look at, most of the main LI's atleast.

The dialogues come across as cringy a lot of times, and there is a very obvious difference between the writing of the flirty lines and general conversation. Infact, I kept getting the feeling that some of the dialogues may have been generated using chat gpt in order to add fluff to the game. It gets way too yappy at times and the conversation goes on and on about nothing at all and it doesn't feel like a human conversation.

This game is like if a car had the body of Chevrolet Camaro but the engine had 4 cylinders. Very pretty to look at but ultimately if this didn't have all those fancy ui and animations, just based off pure story and character alone this would probably be a 3 star rated game on this forum.

Version played: v.0.3.0

Pretty good stuff.

Intersting idea, great potential. Some very cinematic scenes, almost like a movie. Effort can be seen.

However, it's been almost 2 years and it seems it will take quite a while for the story to wrap up, considering the current version of the game.

Still worth trying now, there's a least a few hours of gameplay.

Some conversations are quite pointless, and there's just a smidge of engrish, but I didn't feel like taking a star away for that.

Didn't expect much at first, however it turned out to be an actually good game. Mind you the game isnt finished as of writing this, but its very good. The animations are very good, the models are nice. Maybe some spots in the game have slightly iffy english but it doesnt impact the quality of the overall game all that much.

PROS
+ Story was interesting, at some point MC was founded by a girl named Asami, and from her we learned one day monsters appeared, and the world went to sh*t, a lot of people including MC's half-sister died, and somehow MC went back in time, he has special abilities, and even tho he can't change the original timeline he can change his time, and he has 1 year to do so, then Asami told MC to find her, and shot him on the head, and send back, from this you got the gist, it's kind of like Edge of Time movie, and looks promising. He even has powers like freezing the time for short amounts, and when he does it he gets glowing cool eyes, etc, as well. Later we learned from Minami she worked someplace they made experiments on people, people with power are called Acolytes, and they have these powers because of their contracts with demons, in fact cost of this power is their soul, after becoming Acolytes they become ruthless, dangerous, emotionless, etc, and basically lose their humanity, they never know what tomorrow holds for them, or when their Redemption (death mission) will come, but she told MC she doesn't think he is one of them despite seeing him use his powers, she wasn't sure but told maybe he is serving another entity, etc. There is a mystery with that drug, and glowing heart-shaped eyes as well.
+ Your choices in most situations matter, which is good.
+ The game has a lot of animations here and there, and they add some depth to the game, like the car animation we had in the first scene, MC, and his step-sister walking in the house, or characters having small animations to look them lively while talking, etc. And especially scene translations are quite well made.
+ Sex scenes have different positions/angles with animations, and they are pretty good.
+ Most of the characters have good-looking models. Especially MC, he looks kind of unique, and kind of muscular, etc, as well, and it's refreshing not to see one of those overused models.
+ Some choices were interesting, like the one we had while fighting on the roof and having animations for punches, etc, was good as well.

CONS
- Even though the story is kind of interesting it feels like the writers are trying too much, there are tons of things blended together, and that's a bit too much. Like all that Edge of Tomorrow stuff, then world-ending event, demons, Acolytes, then bullies in the school with rich parents no one can touch, and like all of these enough then out of nowhere MC's uncle calls him, and says his father had another debt around 60.000 dollars, MC needs to pay it in 13 days, and he should consider selling the house, etc, then another problem occurs, and we learn Lilian is having problems with her ex, he is abusive, and tries to have her forcefully... Seriously there is no end of problems in this game, and it's just boring at this point.
- The game lacks content, currently we have two sex scenes with prostitutes, only one sex scene with one of the main girls from MC's school, and one sex scene with the customer from the bar where he is working, considering the game is nearly 2 year old having no sex scenes with other girls from his school, or not having sex scene with his step-sister is nonsense AF.
- There are a lot of jumpscares, so be aware.
- The game needs better proofreading, it's not as bad as ''English'', and mostly doesn't bother you that much, but it's still not as good as it should be.
- Music, and ambient should be separated, especially alarm sounds, etc, which are too loud, meanwhile music is not, and that ends up with quite unbalanced volume, and you have to change it constantly because of it.
- The left mouse button takes you to the save screen, which is good, but there is no option to change load quickly, mostly in these menus you have another clickable with ''Load'' or ''Load Game'' so you can load your game, and the save page you are on doesn't show up on the screen after the page 6, adding these will be conventional.
- Sex scene animations are a bit long, having them part by part would be better, especially some sex scenes like Olivia's feels kind of weird with all that movement happening, and not letting you watch the angle you prefer, etc. Aside from this, there are some animations with too much physics, like how Yumiko's pussy constantly moving, even going after her own body textures sometimes.
- There are some texture bugs, like Yumiko's stockings going inside of her own body in some pictures, etc. Or sometimes pictures from before appear on the screen while screen change happening, etc.
- Lightning, and shadows on some renders look a bit weird, like Asami's first appearance, there are some good reference games out there, might be good to take an example from them.
- It's unnecessary, and distracting to see characters' portraits in the textbox, you are already seeing characters on the screen, so there is no need to see their portraits as well, in fact, it looks quite weird, there should be an option to close them if not gonna remove them completely.
- Having a lively look, and small animations for talking characters is good, but their lips/mouth constantly moving looks a bit weird, honestly the classic stuff most games have like blinking, breathing, etc, are better than constant lip/mouth movement.
- MC's design, especially his hair was cool, but the workplace he gone asked him to ''stylize his hair'', and he changed his hair, hoping he would only use it for work since his original hair was far better.
- Some unnenecssary characters existence like Ryuishi, or Jabrayil, like seriously why you have to add these unnnecesarry cliche *sshole characters no one likes? BRUH.
- Some characters feel like wasting their current writing, like Yumiko, who has an amazing model, yet she is just a prostitute working in a brothel, if she were a student from school, etc, that would be better.

VERDICT
The game has potential, but it has too many CONS, I mean at least content-wise it was rich I would say better things, but lacking content is the worst part about it.

The story is a huge mess of events that don't make any real sense but the bigger problem is the way the story is laid out, when you drop bombs like magic abilities, demons, time travel, aliens, alternate dimensions, god is real, dragons etc...(some of these are made up to avoid spoilers don't expect them) you cant go back to long boring mundane conversations and still expect to hold the players attention, from a story perspective spending 10 times the amount of time picking out a drink than you did the revelation of seeing a vampire(for example) is just horrible writing.

The MC is way way too happy to go along with everything giving the sense that he has read the games script and knows whats going to happen(doesn't feel like hes part of the game) i.e. he doesn't ask obvious questions anyone would have, isn't surprised by huge revelations and trusts random people for no reason, as for his personality to say he is a stone faced robot is a huge huge understatement, it would be easy to pass him off as not human.

The game is still quite short so it s hard to see if the choices have any long term effect but at the moment they don't do anything.

The sex scenes what there are are nothing special but the art is very nice with some smooth animations.

Story 1/5 (huge mess)
Sex 3/5 (average)
Characters 1/5 (robots)
Art 4/5 (good)
Choices 1/5 (nothing yet)
Kinks 1/5 (none)

v0.3.0
It's clear that a lot of time and effort went into the visual aspects of the game. It looks good, the H scenes are well-presented and, in particular, there are a lot of animations used throughout the game.

Unfortunately the game's writing regularly feels like it's been poorly translated from another language and can be completely immersion-breaking. In a game that is clearly trying to take itself seriously, it's a bit too jarring to slog through in my opinion.

I'd like to be able to recommend this, but I don't think I can. If you can overlook the writing issues, there's probably a lot to like about the game.

This game is amazing! The world-building, the cinematics, the animations. It feels like I'm playing a legit action/adventure game, but it's a visual novel... So well done. Looking forward to future updates!

v0.3.0 review:

I played about an hour and the most supernatural thing I saw was a brothel that didn't charge up front and then let you leave without paying. Otherwise, it was bog-standard high school wish fulfillment: orphans move to new city, edgy boy wants to screw his questionably-aged sister for no reason, all the girls at the new high school lust for him and all the boys hate him but he's a master of fighting and can beat them all up. Maybe it gets really good if you just keep playing.

The game has a lot of animation and people on this forum react to animation like Cro-Magnons responded to their first encounter with fire but all the animation in the world doesn't matter if the underlying plot is meh.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

Without exaggeration I think this is the best looking game on the site. I'm not sure there's a game the compares in its art quality and particularly the fluidity of animations working with the art. All the characters, even ones that are intended to be ugly/plain, look great.

I'd say the story and characters are passable. The premise is nothing special or new, the characters have their own charm. Some story developments feel rushed - but I don't totally mind this understanding the nature of adult game development cycles. Overall the plot and story developments are interesting enough - nothing is really bad or distracts from the appeal of the game and i think for this game that's the most important thing.

The visual rating carries this game to a 5. Normally for other games with solid, even great graphics, I still would need a decent story to put it up there. But when a game has you saying wow over and over again, I think it needs to be appreciated in that light in the same way that there are some games that are 5 stars for the story with average graphics.

The renders and production quality of this game is very high (for an porn VN). Unfortunately the game is let down by some subpar english and strange plotting.

The characterization is also quite poor. I think a large part of this is the conversations seem heavily rushed. It's like the dev doesn't want to spend time on writing and more time on unnecessary (but cool) animations.

This game could really use a dedicated writer, because everything else about it is top tier.

The game features extremely high quality animations and an intriguing story. Although there are a few areas where I feel the dialogue could be improved, it is not a large enough issue where I would give a lower rating for the game.

Thank you for this game, you made my day better. this is the VN game with the best graphics I have ever played, good scenario, good characters, a great MC, waiting for new updates ALSO HOPE FOR NEW FEET SCENES
PLEASE

Rating: 3/5 (Rounded down from 3.5/5) for v0.3.0

My first time playing this game, and I had a pretty good time with it—albeit with huge caveats. Got some spoilers about the writing, so open those if you want to dive into it.

First, the good stuff. The production quality on visuals and animations is clearly the main focus, and you can tell the devs really poured their effort into it. Animation during character dialogues and some select scenes? Pretty damn good. The models look great, though the hair strands can sometimes get in the way, but it’s not a dealbreaker. And the sex scenes? The dev is one of those rare people who knows how to direct a hot scene properly. Camera angles, sex scene animations, durations, —it’s all top-notch. Honestly, this is where the game excels the most.

But then there’s the writing, and... yeah, it’s noticeably lacking, especially when compared to the “adult” and “visual” parts of the game. Dialogue sometimes feels unnatural—the way it’s written and how it flows makes it seem like it wasn’t written as dialogue first but instead turned into dialogue later. It just doesn’t flow naturally.

The pacing is another issue. The way the story arcs jump between each other is abrupt as hell, especially compared to the calmer moments. There’s really no proper setup for a lot of the big plot points; instead, shit just gets thrown in the MC’s face when you least expect it—and it kinda does that every damn time.


Overall, it’s a weird mix of highs and lows. The visuals and animations? Great but inconsistent. But the writing? It’s barely holding things together. Still, I had fun with it despite the narrative stumbles, no bugs or game breaks either.
Should you give it a time ?, IMO give it a go.

Finished 0.3 and it was my first time playing it, at first the story looks like your typical Japanese shounen genre of manga/anime, well maybe it still does but after Asami appeared and explained what was happened it starting to pick my interest and the flow of the story also decently fast and some relationship could be seen as too fast like how it was with Lillian.

As for the render some looks great while some looks underwhelming, for example May, personally her render looks mediocre for an important character such as her, so far only Asami,Izumi and the teacher what i love the most based on their renders so hopefully the dev can added more stunning render down the line.

If i want to nitpicking then i think those non lewd animation kinda pointless, i know its unique unlike most of the games on this platform but this is not a triple AAA game so i think those animation could be better off allocated it to a lewd scenes instead, ofc some of those still good like the MC dream where he was jumpscare by the ghost but most of it like walking around the house etc is pointless to me.

Overall a 5 star ratings and despite only at 0,3 the content also considerably large imo, this game and the dev definitely deserves more support.

Review for 0.3.0

Definitely 10/10 Perfect

I didn't expect this game to be so good, the dev really put a lot of efforts into this and it shows. The story is a bit confusing at times, but nicely written. This kind of high quality AVN really set a high standard and makes it harder for me to enjoy anything less. Amazing work, honestly, I didn't feel bored reading at all, playing this feels like watching a movie.
I hope the dev will continue to deliver until this game is finished, really want to see this till the end.

Sublime, Can't wait for more. The character animations, which are not exclusively lewd, make it feel alive. Much appreciated. I'm intrigued by the story so far, The lewd animations are great as well. The girls are cute and while it is still too early to judge the characters and story since it's still the 0.2 update, it looks promising so far. Hoping for more soon!

After scrolling through dozen of games and becoming a washed up volleyball Player, to being teleported to a house in the rift and another realm with baddies that has qi, to surviving an apocalypse with two sisters, to enrolling to a new school abroad where my busty nanny lives with her two precious baddies and now a high schooler with unknown ability, I'm in.

Deserves way more attention. Has some issues with grammar and sentence structure but it deserves 5 stars just because of being innovative with animations. Looking forward to see how the game progresses.

Such a fantastic game! Holy crap. seamless transition is so good and I don't think any other AVN has feature like this game.
Graphics,Sounds,Art Style,Story,World building is 5-star game.
Well done developer.
This game is my one of the favourite game .

A truly exceptional game! Right from the start, you can feel the high level of development quality. The animations are meticulously crafted and visually stunning. The characters, from the Uncle to your step-sister, are engaging and well-developed, adding a sense of realism that keeps you deeply invested in the story. I was genuinely sad when I reached the end, but I can't wait to dive back in for more of this fantastic storytelling. Keep up the great work, Dev! This story has incredible potential.