CITY OF BROKEN DREAMERS: The Official PatreonGamer Review
General Verdict: A visually gorgeous and emotionally vibrant, if slightly predictable, dystopian sci-fi porn experience that, unfortunately, runs out of fresh ideas in its second half.
City Of Broken Dreamers is the second and so far the last AVN by PhillyGames, whose previous title, Depraved Awakening, as I have already written elsewhere, is easily my favorite AVN of all time, if (maybe?) for all the wrong reasons. Technically, however, DA was a water-testing effort from Philly: relatively short, graphically and sonically underwhelming, and only slowly getting better and more confident in itself as it went along. So, naturally, for his second game expectations were set pretty high — there was a clear unique talent here that was finally on the verge of being properly supported by technical expertise.
And by all means, Philly leaves no one disappointed, as, from the very start, CoBD demonstrated a huge leap forward in effort. Static renders became more detailed and exquisite. Animations became plentiful and properly rendered, no longer confined to simple 2-3-frame repetition as it was in the early stages of DA — and not just confined to the sex scenes, either, as they now served additional purposes of marking classy screen entrances for the ladies, or, sometimes, just to illustrate the overall atmosphere of the game. There was much more music, much more exposition, extra little game-y details like «secrets» to look for... overall, on the technical front, CoBD remains an important milestone. Every now and then you can hear somebody grumble about how the render and animation quality has become antiquated for the standards of the mid-2020s, but that’s just nitpicking. If you’re expecting atmosphere and seduction rather than graphic-card-taxing heavy-duty realism, CoBD remains every bit as visually stunning today as it was on the day when Philly unleashed the first episode upon us.
Genre-wise, CoBD at first seems to go in a completely different direction from DA: where Philly’s first game was a blatant tribute to the classic «noir» genre, focusing on a private detective investigating the dirty, seedy underbelly of the modern big city, CoBD takes us into a sci-fi, cyber-punkish, dystopian future where... uhm, a private mercenary is investigating the dirty, seedy underbelly of the futuristic big city. As you can see, not that much has changed: Philly merely transports us a few imaginary decades into the future, where the corps and the creeps are running things even more ruthlessly than today, and sex, just as it was in DA, acts as one of the most common commodities for bad and good guys alike. The atmosphere may be more Blade Runner now than it was a Chinatown / Requiem For A Dream mix in the earlier game, but the essence remains the same: you are going to meet a lot of impossibly hot women, some of whom will be trying to corrupt you with sex and some will be trying to save you with it — and some will offer a mixture of both at the same time.
However, unlike it happens in DA, here the sex itself is formally not at the center of the game itself, but rather acts as a peripheral device, framing all the circumstances of the main plot — in which you have to help rescue a young persecuted girl in distress from the usual evil corporate overlords while exposing the evil corporate overlords’ corrupt schemes to the public. The plot, as many have pointed out already, is not particularly original and not particularly thrilling to deserve such multiple layers of convolution — but I do not think we should be too harsh on it, given that this is, after all, a porn game first and an ambitious take on the cyberpunk genre only second. On its own, without all the sexual content, it would hardly have a chance to endure as a sci-fi classic; but as a derivative exercise whose main goal is to provide a credible, immersive context for all the dick-and-pussy action, it certainly holds up better than most of the plot-based porn movies I’ve ever seen — and the sheer love that PhillyGames holds for the genre is evident from just about every single shot of the game.
Speaking of the sexual content itself, I am a little on the fence here. On one hand, there is no arguing that the design of the girls is gorgeous. Of the five or six characters with whom you are going to get intimate on a regular basis (or not — it’s your free choice to enter or not to enter in a relationship with each of them), each single one has a distinct appearance and personality, and these personalities are going to determine the dynamics of their sexual evolution as well. Sure, they may be somewhat stereotypical and cliched, but in this day and age, good luck finding a well-written character that is not stereotypical anyway. What matters is how believable (and fappable) these stereotypes are — and I found myself drooling over most of them.
Dr. Katie Hamilton is the classic «intellectual cutie with big tits» nerd dream, shy and blushing and polite and still adventurous enough to both accompany the MC on his dangerous missions and to try out anal penetration after having explored all the conventional boundaries. Ellen Lane is the feisty, dominant punk MILF with an attitude, though surprisingly resistant to anal action for her type (she’s not my favorite for all the tattoos and weird hairdstyles, but I’m still glad she’s in the game). Then there’s Chandra, the adorable-slash-terrifying glitzy spoiled teen brat who finds it fun to fuck older strangers just to piss off her corporate Mom — but Philly paints her as psychologically mature and stable enough to handle the consequences of those actions, and there’s an irresistible artistry to her narcissistic depravity that has, understandably, made her a particular fan favorite. Her horned friend Abby (the horns have to do with her medical condition, which is the central theme of the game) has an even more interesting character arc, going from being emotionally broken and suicidal to gradual redemption and a «healthier» embracing of her sexual urges as she eventually begins to represent a more mature and responsible counterpart to Chandra, while being every bit as wild on the carnal side of things. And Shanlon Russell is probably the quintessential image of the «corrupt TV celebrity slut» we all have in our minds: dashing, bossy, and bitchy in public — and a big fan of rough BDSM activities in private (the scenes with her and, later, with her loyal-but-treacherous assistant Teri, while not particularly disturbing, are still among the nastiest PhillyGames ever created).
The two «main» characters (appearing most frequently and generally serving as the game’s primary advertising cards) have the largest amount of character evolution and are also notable in that they are «moldable»: depending on your actions in the game, you can put them on very different paths — a Paragon or a Renegade one, to use a Mass Effect analogy, with the Paragon one providing more moral satisfaction and the Renegade one essentially leading to more dirty and salacious outcomes which (you guessed it) also offer far more tasty sexual rewards. (The ruthless part is not really quintessentially «evil», though, so you’ll feel more like Donald Trump than Hitler for taking it — yes, with all that sweet pussy in tow.) Gloria, the innocent, traumatized blonde beauty whose warden you eventually become, is basically the equivalent of Judy from DA (except this time around, at least you’re not her father — CoBD is completely incest-free, by the way): you help her find the meaning of life and happiness not so much by saving her from the corps or curing her condition as you do through romance and sexual kinks (or you result in making her shape a far more cynical and nihilistic outlook on life, which reflects poorly on romance but does even more wonders on the sexual kinks). Her sex scenes come late in the game and are a bit on the so-so side at first, but quickly heat up to 100% (the "corrupt" finale with Victoria and Meredith is an unforgettable experience).
And then, of course, there’s Victoria Shields. With Vicky, I think Philly’s goal was pretty obvious: create the ideal 3D woman for us — classy, intelligent, traditionally-aristocratically beautiful, perfectly shaped everywhere where it matters, bold, uninhibited, and a demon in the sack, just the kind of lady for one night with whom some people might agree to sacrifice their lives in the real world. On the whole, I would say he succeeded: at the time when Victoria first appeared on our screens (in 2019), there was nobody like her in the entire AVN business. Much more perfectly engineered than Mass Effect’s Miranda Lawson (the red hair and freckles alone are worth an extra million), she is the quintessential devil-in-disguise — although as you proceed with your choices, you have the subtle option to either transform her and make her find redemption, or, on the contrary, be transformed by her and dissolve yourself in her overriding, ruthless, dominant personality. (I always try to keep both paths open with different saves). Some might complain that, perhaps, she gives in to the MC way too early (we can go all the way with her already in the very first episode), but I think that Philly himself knew — with a gal like Victoria, there’s no such thing as too early. You can ravage her as many times as you want and you’ll always be left wanting more of the same as if it were the first time all over again. Seriously, every time a scene with Victoria comes along I am reminded of why I love these 3D AVNs so much: there is hardly a single real porn actress alive who would exude as much sexuality and do it with such devilish flair.
That said, while I like, love, or adore all of Philly’s characters, it is also hard not to acknowledge that many of the sex scenes feel a bit... gratuitous. In DA, where the actual plot all revolved around sex — perverted sex clubs, sex trafficking, sexual addiction, etc. — the scenes were always in their perfect place. City Of Broken Dreamers, on the other hand, is not really a game about sex. It is about preservation or loss of humanity, about fighting against The System, about survival, about technology, about dystopia — seriously, you could cut out pretty much every sex scene out of the game and it would have still made sense (though, as I said, the relatively generic plot would not have left a lot of space for serious enjoyment). Much of the action follows along the lines of «oh, we have about an hour to kill before the mission, wanna fuck?» or «hey, we might not be alive tomorrow if the plan goes wrong, wanna fuck just in case?» or «I feel really shitty right now because of all the terrible things going on in the world, can you just fuck me to make me feel better?». Yes, you can actually establish strong romantic connections with one of several potential love interests — but this comes very late in the game, by which time you’ll probably already have had sex with everything that moves (strangely enough, Philly is quite conservative in that he gives us no harem endings).
Of course, this cannot be a serious criticism, because this is a porn game supposed to have a lot of gratuitous sex; I’m just saying that every now and then there will be a sex scene feeling weirdly out of context — and that the overall plot is a bit undermined by that, as if we’re being instructed that in the technologically advanced, morally dystopian world of tomorrow everything will be beginning and ending with sex. If you’re OK with that, no problems.
My main problem with the game — a serious one, though it still won’t deprive the title of a 5-star rating because I like to judge games by their strengths, not weaknesses — is the sheer length. I think that Philly made pretty much the same mistake as his main competition in the world of AVNs, Dr. PinkCake, is still continuing to make: after the success of Depraved Awakening and all the newly-gained confidence in his own strengths, he decided to stretch out his next title for as long as possible. My full recorded playthrough of the game takes about 50 hours as compared to DA’s 19, and, frankly, much of that — even including some of the sex scenes — is padding. The plot eventually runs out of fresh ideas, turning into an endless series of similar action scenes (run, hide, save a party member, have sex, run, hide, have sex, save a party member, run, hide, have sex, rinse and repeat over and over again).
Worse, the sex scenes eventually run out of ideas. In the first third of the game, we are already introduced (including carnally introduced) to all the main characters. In the second third of the game, we pretty much get to go as far with all of them as possible (in Philly’s case, "as far as possible" usually means anal — really rough stuff is restricted to a few totally freaky characters like Shanlon, and it is introduced very early on). In the final third, it’s mostly just going through the motions, and it feels like the creator himself was getting tired of his creations — most of the final scenes seem very perfunctory and unsatisfying, unlike in DA, where Philly was just getting into the proper mood as he rounded off the plot. (The only exception is the final scene with Gloria, Victoria, and eventually Meredith — because it is the only scene from the finale that introduced a new angle to one of the characters).
In other words, CoBD overstayed its welcome by a good 4–5 episodes at least — ironically, it still leaves us somewhat hanging, since it is clearly shown in the end that the "bad guys" have only suffered a temporary setback, and that the story about a few good guys battling futuristic corporate evil is only just beginning. It is unlikely, however, given the tired feel of the final episodes, that a sequel to this will ever happen — and maybe that’s for the better, since the game must have creatively drained Philly, for a while at least.
That said, when CoBD is at its best, it shines like a bright cyberpunk star against the background of so many uninspired or unskilled other titles. Katie, Victoria, Chandra, Gloria, Abby, even Venus the nearly-sentient sexbot (is it just me, by the way, or did Philly sarcastically model her face after Taylor Swift?) — they’re all among the best-written and best-rendered characters in 3D AVNs of all time. Romancing all of them feels almost cathartic (even Chandra, the glitzy brat who seems to just want to use you as a revenge tool against her mother, shows a human heart under the pretentious facade), and there’s always a touch of exquisiteness in Philly’s approach to rendering and animation that makes you feel elevated even when you’re at your dirtiest. It’s like watching all those old «glamorous» Europorn movie scenes from studios like Private, but with ladies that are both prettier and warmer in terms of personality.
Gameplay-wise, CoBD is the same choice-based AVN as Depraved Awakening, with your choices largely serving to determine which of the girls you want to pursue / keep around as your sex partners / romantic interests and how kinky / depraved you want to get with them. A few really stupid choices can lead to the death of several of these characters, so it’s not entirely a matter of totally random clicking, but if you read what you click on you don’t really need any walkthrough to make the right selections. Other than that, the only addition are small random «secrets» (hotspots) to click on in order to unlock extra gallery renders — since the game always flashes a warning at you whenever these come up, this is extremely simple, not much of a challenge at all. (Then again, it might be preferable to all those non-advertised easily missable secret images in Dr. PinkCake’s Being A DIK, where you either have to play with a walkthrough under your nose all the time or waste hours of time on each new screen to find tiny clickable journals or rolls of toilet paper).
As usual, Philly shows excellent taste in his music selections — this time, he picks out a bunch of extremely moody, atmospheric «futuristic» tracks from the electronic music circuit that sound appropriately «sinister», «romantic», or «nasty» depending on the particular plot or sex scene they are supposed to illustrate. The only problem is that there are not a lot of them, and with 50 or so gameplay hours to burn they will quickly become too overtly familiar. But in the early episodes they really helped spice up the experience for me (I even ended up adding a few of them to my casual playlists).
Overall, I noticed that CoBD is one of those games that commands quiet respect on the part of the average player (it remains one of the top-rated titles at F95Zone, for instance) but is not actually played nearly as often as that respect would surmise. Possibly, this is because of its glamorous and exquisite setting, rather than in spite of it — experience shows that many more people are interested in games depicting the usual «girls next door» (preferably with big T&A) than these kinds of exotic personalities and settings which they find more difficult to identify with and, on the whole, more boring. In other words, CoBD may be too much of a weird fantasy for people to take in, and I can see that point of view (again, same reason why more people watch casual gonzo porn than lavish big-budget Private movies). But those of us who do hold a soft spot for high production values and hi-class glamour girls with a futuristic flair will have to agree, I think, that few, if any, other titles match these values when filtered through PhillyGames’ vision — at least, for as long as that vision remained fresh and inspired, which is still quite a long period.
