VN - Ren'Py - City Devil: Restart [v0.4.0 Public] [Sabirow]

City Devil: Restart [v0.4.0 Public] [Sabirow]

Animations are amazingly impressive, probably the best I've seen. The rest is mediocre, though.

Far too convoluted, characters lack depth and I struggle to care about any of them because of how rushed everything is. Pacing sucks. MC just goes along with everything and is kind of just.... there.

Too many things happen, it jumps around a lot. Dev can't decide what kind of relation the sister is to the MC. Also can't decide what kind of game and story they want to make, it is all over the place narratively and theme wise.

MC blindly trusts the teacher Minami without getting to know her at all, Minami barely acts like a teacher, more like a school girl who has a crush on the MC and again is kind of "just there", feels like that with pretty much the entire cast. The relationships are dull and feel lifeless. This has INSANE potential but the writing, pacing and very messy narrative just makes it a meh experience overall.

Again, animations are amazing and there is so much potential in the theme and setting, but it's just all glossed over and is messy as fuck in execution. I feel the Dev cares more about flexing the animations then writing a good story and interesting characters. The most important aspect in story telling is the story and characters, not just very good and fancy animations.

There isn't much sexual content either, and what you do get feels rushed and has no build up towards it.

The theme could be amazing with a more talented writer. The foundation was all there for something truly great.

Massively wasted potential/10.

Your huge horror fantasy story lacks fantasy and horror, and some of the sex scenes in it are absolutely ridiculous. Your sex story lacks sex scenes and related dialogue, but it has a strange connection to the fantasy horror story I described above. This whole absurd confusion is the result of the fact that you can't pour motor oil on an omelet. Make two different games: one for those who love horror and fantasy and one for those who prefer classic fap stories. Try to work out the details of their scripts so that they are interesting in terms of plot development and the quality of the scenes. Similar games have appeared here many times. They received low ratings for precisely the same reason - their plots look like laundry from a washing machine after washing, but its narrative accounts for 80% of the game's content. The development of the fap story itself takes up 10%, and the sex scenes themselves also take up 10%. Is it really that obvious? You know what they call games like that? Skip games. You skip all 80%.Boring.

Dunno what to say other than just try it yourself. Personally I quite like the game.. While I have seen some complains been made I do think some of them are valid, however all we can really do is just let the dev cook. Either it's gonna blow our minds or just be another porn game collected.

This game is a masterclass. It has a story full of mystery, horror, action, and animations so smooth that I feel like I'm watching a TV series. Even during certain conversations, the characters are animated. This game makes you feel like you're in a living world. Then there's what everyone comes here for: the girls and the lewd scenes. Absolutely all of the girls are beautiful and sexy, whether they're main or secondary characters, and the scenes with them are hot and the animation is super smooth. Some people complain that the story takes precedence over the scenes with the girls, but that's not the case for me. I find that it's the same in other big projects like Eternum or Projekt Passion, and they are among the highest-rated games here. The only downside (and even that is subjective) is that I would have liked there to be more dirty talk during the sex scenes. I can't wait for the next episode!

Insane potential, but the creator has no interest in making a porn game. This is 99% a half rate demon fighting tale about powers and slaying and complete filler nonsense, and 1% porn (the vast majority of which is teasing.)

It depends on the developer's goal: telling a story, showing graphics, or sex scenes. Let me remind you that this is essentially a porn game site. People come to watch scenes rather than read lengthy text or admire the sway of hair on their ass or the grass. Other games also emphasize different elements. This really does resemble Eternum at its lowest settings. Minimal scenes, but better graphics. If you're into watching a beautiful movie while eating chips, this game is for you. If you're like me and just want to watch scenes, there aren't many here. The camera angles are excellent, though. There's potential, but it's unlikely to be clearly seen due to the infrequent updates. Bravissimo to the author for their hard work. But most likely, this is just erotica.

Great game, the dev has way above average technical abilities, we can see by the moving models, best i've seen so far in these games, TOP. I can see great potential in this game. The models are also great, there aren't bad looking girls. The story seems very good! Great work Dev! and thank you for your game!

A cinematic action-thriller VN that sets a new bar for animation, even as its overstuffed plot and uneven writing struggle to keep pace.

+ Cinematic, Animation-First Experience: Praised for its fluid animations that bring both action and everyday moments to life, creating a deeply immersive, movie-like feel.
+ High-Quality Visuals & Presentation: Features top-tier renders, a unique and well-designed MC, and well-directed, dynamic sex scenes.
+ Intriguing Core Premise: The storyline of a time-traveling "acolyte" trying to prevent a future apocalypse is a compelling and potent hook.

– Messy, Overstuffed Plot: The narrative throws too many elements at the player too quickly, resulting in a lack of focus and jarring pacing.
– Weak & Unnatural Writing: The dialogue is often criticized as clunky and immersion-breaking, failing to match the quality of the visuals.
– Style Over Substance (So Far): The impressive technical showcase is currently let down by underdeveloped characters and a relative lack of meaningful lewd content with main love interests.

City Devil: Restart is a must-try for anyone who values cutting-edge visuals in a VN, but temper your expectations for a polished narrative. It's a stunning tech demo that's still finding its storytelling footing.

Masterpiece...

THIS is like ======= NEXT-GEN AVN

In every sense.

But what truly differs this AVN from others is the USAGE OF ANIMATIONS . My god THANK YOU SO MUCH for taking such a task to make them so frequent and great.
It adds so much depth to the story and totally engrosses you into it.

Love the protag / MC - looks badass, cool, but still grounded / sensible and relatable person.
The LIs are CUTE and that´s what matters the MOST .

This game is the reason I LOVE AVNs for STORY FOREMOST AND MAINLY (and only secondly for the "adult" part) - that´s what defines amazing AVN for me... When you get so engrossed it the story that you forget about time and are excited to see more).

This is now one of my MOST FAVOURITE AVNs EVER and I am
impatiently and excitedly waiting for MORE .

Thanks so much SABIROW for making this beautiful and gripping story.

Take care, best of luck to You and have a nice day.

TL;DR === PLAY IT , it´s HIDDEN GEM
DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

this game is awesome! i love the animations, story, gameplay, and effects. especially that one scene with the demons in the city, i definitely recommend playing this one, very cool yo. i can not wait for 0.4!!

I played v0.3.0 through in one evening, and...it was an interesting experience.

There are so many different skills that go into making a great VN that it is almost impossible for one individual to be good at all of them. In this case, we have a dev that excels at only one: making HS animations. So he plays to that strength a lot. I found myself classifying these numerous animations into three categories:

1. Those that raise the question: Why would anyone bother animating that? E.g. A POV shot of someone climbing a stairway.

2. Those that are actively annoying. E.g. A conversation scene where the characters lips are constantly moving.

3. Those that are pretty cool. E.g. distant shots where we can see many characters moving around.

In terms of animation alone I’d rate this at four stars (one less than five for the annoying ones). Everything else you can think of, the story, dialog, character models, etc. would only rate one or two stars.

I wish this dev would team up with one of the great storytellers out there who struggle with animations.

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 balanced content, there are tons of text/story content, but very little progress with the girls, and lewd stuff, they really should focus on more balanced content for relationship progress + lewd stuff with girls, and story. Because current state is not acceptable for a 2-3 years old game.
- With last 0.4.0 update writers decided to make May MC's best friend, and how their relationship, and ground story looks nonsense now this update was really problematic. They should bring May & MC's relationship back.
- 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, and easily can be 5 star rate game if they fix CONS, and problems, but for now especially with how new update was it's going into very bad direction.

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.