VN - Ren'Py - Completed - City of Broken Dreamers [v1.15.0 Ch. 15] [PhillyGames]

So up until update 7/8 this was my favorite game on this site. No competition, the plot, writing, cyberpunk setting, music, ambience, characters, all as perfect as the limited resources and constraints of porn genre allow. Easy 5 stars.

However later, it started going downhill. The quality of writing dropped, we moved away from the typical cyberpunk things and settings that build atmosphere in my opinion, plus philly started pushing multiple side characters, dedicating less scenes to the main cast. I remember staying up late at night to play the first 8 chapters and later on that passion completely evaporated. The whole story frankly got less and less interesting towards the end.

Now, let's talk about Chandra. She was a side girl, eleveted to the LI position due to being fan favorite, and she didn't get an ending, not even a real path. And he knows full well how many people love her. She is the mascot of the game, she is in his ads, his steam page, she is the only girl from the game in his steam ad of the game. That's bc Philly knows Chandy screams Cyberpunk with her looks. You see her and instantly think of clubs, neon streets and cyberpunk as a whole. She is the most cyberpunk girl in this game. She is like JOI in Blade Runner 2049. There is no other way to look at it other than that he's using her as bait but refused to give her a proper path and ending bc he doesn't like her that much or he was rushing.

Moving on to endings, it sure does seem like they were rushed. They were really not great and not conclusive. Compare that to the excellent endings of depraved awakening, and see the difference. Let's compare Chandy and christina from DA, who play similar roles. We meet them both as slutty brats, we learn there is more to them, they end up helping us... And christina gets an excellent ending, where not only do we see what became of our relationship, but that she wrote a book and set her life straight. Meanwhile Chandy has no such complete character arc. Other endings were also not up to par. Overall I would rate this as 3 stars, but the excellent start warrants at least 4 stars.
Hoping for the dlc but I'm not holding my breath.

The first third of the game ( 1 - 5 chapters ) is excellent and quite enjoyable.

The second third of the story, however, starts to drift towards pure fanservice, slowly but steadily.

The last third was the death of it as a decent read, and an utter degradation to the level of being a mere fuck-gallery.


The ENDINGS. Is a fucking joke, nothing much to say here.

Also, for this one-liner ending for the woman, which I personally consider to be The BEST due to her connection with the MC, her mental state after all the drama in Caracas, and her potential for growth, development and transformation, which your incompetent ass couldn't deliver — get fucked, Philly.

The visual quality only improves towards the end, I also like environment and cinematics. Mostly.
2 Pegged Phillys out of 5.

City of Broken Dreamers has me conflicted on how to give it a final rating. Ultimately I think it ends up a 3.5 for me, based on all available factors.

++ Game starts out with a very strong story
+ Some interesting characters with good body types are introduced slowly
++ High quality still renders with a lot of varying backdrops
+ Some good animations, some bad animations - almost makes it an indifferent addition to the game
++ Sex scene position choices were varied, and involved some kinks occasionally
+ Music, but no sounds other than gunfire/explosions (no sex scene sounds)

-- Story that started strong, gets weaker as the game progresses
--- The ending of the story felt rushed, weak, and highly unfulfilling
-- Wrap-up of different character arcs was similarly rushed, and unrewarding
- Sex scene animations were meh compared to a lot of other games, with rough edges and mechanical animations for some of them. Camera angles were sometimes less than good. Overall, just not fulfilling, and usually too short.
---- Sex scene writing was atrocious. The author needs to play a bunch of other AVNs to learn how to get the viewer engaged in the moment and hot 'n bothered by what they are viewing.
----- No love interest choices for some of the hottest girls in the game (Chandra/Abby) as far as endings go. Even though they were "side characters", they should have been viable as a choice for the MC to end the game with. It is an utter travesty they were not available in that regard, and shows the developer wasn't really in tune with the fans.

CoBD had the potential to be one of the all-time greats, but it just didn't deliver for the last 4-5 chapters. It felt rushed, unfinished, and like it pidgeon-holed the player at the end. That is perhaps due to how strong it started out.. it just ran out of steam halfway through.

I wondered what score to give and it's tough because there's so many aspects of the game that are 5/5 for me, but some are not there, especially the endings. It's kind a subjective, arbitrary number. It's maybe 4.5 or so, it is really awesome and I'm glad I played it, just there's some criticism.

Don't read if you mind spoilers.

I liked the world. It's different from the usual 'horny boy goes to college' type of cliches most stories seem to follow. I don't necessarily like grim stories and this world is certainly not a happy place (although we see a small section of it only; for all I know there could be billions of people living ok). However it's depicted pretty well, a shitty world that feels kind of a likely outcome seeing the direction today's politics and quasi-monopolistic corporations are heading towards. Still there's regular people that are not without faults, but somewhere on the scale, but certainly neither absolute evil or good for the most part, itás just in this setting you do what you need to survive so it's even harder to find the line morally where you can still feel ok with your choices.

I really liked the characters and their backstories. I felt the whole story was somehow too short (as timespan at least) and indeed there was perhaps not enough character development due to this, but the way things unfolded for the main characters and how we got to know them was pretty good. I would have enjoyed to stay more with the 'full' versions of these characters.
My favourite was Victoria, character's story was quite believable to me - being raised and trained by Baynard, and not being in on the most confidential projects it's easy to see how one can not really be aware of other perspectives and hins happening.
Gloria was not my first choice but it was cool khm, teaching her a bit and getting friendly, she's not a clueless little girl she's a young woman and that's great.
Katie seemed very similar to Gloria, that much naivity was a bit weird to me but if she represents hope for the society then be it, she carried that well.
Ellen was probably one of the characters that were closer to me, realistic and wearing a mask that must be normal in that kind of society but very sweet and 'everyday person' with 2 feet on the ground in a good sense of the word.
Not my type, but Sonja was pretty cool, physically strong women with a 'soft' (feminine) side can be very sexy, the guilt she carried and MC's guilt over allowing her to do that was pretty strong and could have used a bit more dialogue; resolution was too quick on that, would have enjoyed some private moments getting in detail and clearing up all that once and for all.
I didn't really connect with Chandra even tho her character was sweet and fun.
Who I'm sorry not to see more is in fact Abby, wow that woman, very balanced; a bit of mystery, smart, quite pragmatic but not cynical and resigned at all. Tough cookie that remained very sensitive. I know story wise irrelevant, but I found her very pretty, expressive face, maybe it's all in my head
Sasha was also a great side character, very fun and hot woman. A perfect partner in this kind of world.
Shanlon and Teri were fun as well. Not into that kind of thing but as a fantasy the rough sex scenes were very hot.
Hell I would have even liked to give Meredith a good spanking if I had the chance.
Venus was an intriguing character, there were some hints into why is she so self aware compared to othe bots, could almost see her as a main character if the story had more time, it's a pity we didn't have that. Dream wife, huh.

I only did Victoria ending. Seemed rushed. Considering how she lived her entire life without love and trust I would have hoped for some more romantic / cuddly scenes, something to show that there is a path of a lot of gentleness and regularly expressed affection that could get here to open up and relax and experience a relationship the way it should be, down the line. Reclaim her humanity and find what is her personality inbetween the original person, augmentation, training, previous life experiences and the newfound, radically different kind of life she leads. Some hope through short and lonmg term plans that would suggest it's all possible.

I plan to look into the other endings as well, but overall I find the ending was kinda cut short and didn't do the rest of the story justice.

Scenes and animations are pretty amazing, I don't care about the actual sexual act animations but the 'entrance' (walk ins, or top to bottom, bottom to top looks at the ladies) are absolutely gorgeus!

I think it's a good story everyone should pick up. Don't expect perfection but it's good.

It's been over four years since I first launched this game, and it has truly evolved in remarkable ways. There's something indescribable about it that captivates you from the start. The writing, animations, story, and soundtrack are all flawless. Personally, I chose Gloria's route and never once doubted my decision, it felt incredibly natural for both me and the main character.

Towards the end of the game, I couldn't shake a slight sense of emptiness, feeling like there could have been more to the conclusion. Nevertheless, thanks to Philly, this game stands as one of the closest to "perfection" in its genre. There's a bittersweet feeling that it's over, but as they say, all good things must come to an end.

To anyone reading this review who hasn't experienced this masterpiece yet, do yourselves a favor and savor every moment of it.

5/5

Renders are great, story is fantastic, love the characters. I'm here to read great stories, with adult themes and content. This one is one of the best. The doctor is a sweetheart and my favourite, but all the LIs are wonderful in their own ways. I don't have any negatives of the game, I just enjoyed it.

Amazing game, very nice story, plenty of intrigue, a complicated protagonist and beautiful models. Big fan, what can I say, I will be following this author very closely. What else can you ask for in a VN?

The game already has hundreds of reviews so I doubt there's much I can say that hasn't already been said so I'll keep it brief. This is arguably the best looking game on the entire site, its premise and characters set it a part from the default thousands of 'not-cest' games that seem to get churned out with no end . I think this is the best 3D game on the entire site

With the game now completed, I think it's time to finally review it.

In general, this is one of the best AVN's out there. It has plenty of issues, but it is objectively a high-quality indie AVN. It has plenty of varied and interesting content and the renders are consistently decent, with later chapters bringing this level up quite a bit. The story and dialogue is competently executed, although a bit cookie-cutter at times. All in all, this game firmly cements itself as one of the best games on this website.

So why did I give it 4 stars rather than 5?

Frankly, the 2nd half of the game did not live up to the promises the first half made. The first half set up a bunch of characters, an interesting plot and was paced very well. The sex scenes were appropriately placed and didn't detract from the plot.

The 2nd half sort of lost it's way a bit. The dev seemed to lose his ability to combine both plot and porn in a satisfactory way. The plot sort of stalled as sex-scene after sex-scene was jammed into the game in a very hamfisted manner. I get that this is a porn game, but pacing still matters. Overall, while the visual fidelity improved in the 2nd half, the writing quality noticeably decreased.

Finally, the ending felt a bit disappointing (especially for Chandra/Abby fans). Despite taking a year to complete, it felt strangely rushed. Not just because some characters that got built up to be more important didn't receive an ending, but a lot of side-characters stories felt a bit unfulfilled as well. This is something that could be fixed with a dedicated epilogue down the line, but I have to agree with quite a few people in this thread and say I am disappointed (and not just because Chandra was my fav lol).

Overall, it would be disingenuous to rate this any lower than a 4, as this is a very high-quality avn, but I don't blame anyone for being disappointed with how things ended. I do hope there is some kind of epilogue at some point to flesh out the ending a bit better.

Well, obviously this game has great production values. Art and animations are great, but apart from that I really couldn't get into it.

The story is simple and unnecessarily convoluted. The characters are shallow, tropey and similar. Eventually the whole thing devolves into a string of non-sensical porn scenes, because if you are wounded, you have sex, right? If you are in lethal danger, you have sex. If you visit someone, you have sex. It's gratuitous and forgettable.

I guess that works for a majority of people, but I was actually hoping for something more meaningful than this from this Dev.

It's ok as a porn game, I guess, but don't expect anything more than that.

City of Broken Dreamers... when all started there was much promise for this game. A story that was compelling and interesting, a cast of characters that were iconic and well crafted, even a wonderous soundtrack that was fitting it many parts.

However, by the start of Book 2 (Post Henry), the story really fell apart. There was no draw, there wasn't anything compelling other than minor twists and turns and sub adventures for the occational side character to get pipe or some minor set of drama with the characters. Sure, one could say that Betty's heroics were 'grand' but there wasn't a real impact there. Not to mention that Chapters 13 and 14 should really have been put together and simply been one big chapter instead of split into two small chapters. The same, sadly, is true for the final chapter as well.

While certainly, your choices can influence what happens to your muscle wife, the conclusion of the story felt... uninspired, bland, almost as if Philly was complete bored and simply wanted to be done with this project. In short: Gloria pretty much goes BA, the Red Moon has a redemption arc, we get a couple of last one timer lays with certain people before we 'settle' with who we declared our love with, or not. And while some of the ending endearing, personally I did love Ellens, at the same time it didn't feel all that satisfying. Sure, we 'completed' our mission but it didn't feel like we truly accomplished anything.

Now, being the brutually honest guy I am, if I was to give this game out of 10, I'd give it a 5. Out for 5, I'd say it's a 2.5/5. Maybe a generous 3. While certainly the visuals, animations, music, characters are certainly well done, the story, which has such promise, sadly faltered and fumbled it's way to the end.

This game for me is masterpiece, beautiful unique models u hadn't seen them in any other game, Amazing and most realistic animation u can find on the site, and I love the anal sex, and u can fuck all girls in the ass and that is what made me love the game the most. Of course,
I will recommend this game to any lover of sex game, especially anal lovers, thank u for your hard work I hope for u happiness.

The real cyberpunk experience that we deserve!

Bright, enchanting, twisted story. I highly recommend it for the people that want to start exploring the field of Ren'Py visual novels.

Variety of plot, quality in lewd scenes, no technical problems, nice wallpapers for your PC - all your expectations from that type of game would come true.

I mean, of course, you cannot find a dainty language, the aesthetic of the game-world is kinda dark and tied up to neo-culture, typical cyber setting but more tied up to sex instincts.

To sum up, I really enjoyed it and I'm sure you'll do it too.

Story 4/5
Its pretty good but the plot isent really anything new, MC is a kind of bounty hunter that gets a job to collect a girl and changes hes mind to help her instend of turning her in, its a pretty standard plot really with a side of super powers.

It is a little annoying having huge ugly tits trown in your face all the time when you arent into it, seeing girls in shower where they could have been anywhere else, going into a whore house being forced to look at extremly big tits for a long time and its just constantly pushed in your face, girls are nude all the time its like they cant have clothes on for more then 2 mins at a time before they just have to show their tits..... stuff like that just lowers the value and make it feel more like a b-porn movie then a good game, its to bad dev dont belive more in him/her self to let the story run the game on its own without forcing kinks/fetish on everyone, could atleast give the choice to look at the bimbos or not, i lost count on how many times game turned me off from showing Victoria topless, its like shes to poor to own any clothes and shes the worst looking LI in the game in my eyes.

MC is pretty decent for once, he still has a huge fail with being the standard caveman that thinks huge saggy tits is the best thing in the world and due to that finds the person hot, even girls in the game has a big tit fetish which is just idiotic, why not make him behave like that with small tits as well.....it just feels stupid reading shit like that when you hate it as the player, so lost some points for that, it also feels stupid turning down a girl MC loves so much but atleast you can so thats something and most of the times he acts a bit more like a grown up so thats good.

I might have missed something in the story but at one point around chapter 11 MC goes to Victoria for help which makes 0 sense to me considering shes one of the main players on the bad guys side, why or how it changed to MC starting to trust her felt completly idiotic to me, maybe its due to not being on her route i dunno but it just feels so worng and made absolutly no sense.

But in any case MC is way to soft, hes supposed to be this hardcore bounty hunter with no issues of killing people and such, but the way he act is just way to soft and way to trusting, atleast hes friends tells him hes stupid as fuck but its just annoying you dont have a bit more controle over MC in that regard, in the start it was pretty fun playing MC since you could tell people to piss off and be mean, but later in game he just lost hes balls and backbone.

Girls 2/5
They look ok, i dident really find them all that hot but thats a matter of taste, as for diversity in builds there is a little bit but it is mostly aimed for players with big tit fetish, its to bad so many devs dosent aim to give something for everyones taste.

Animations 5/5
Really nice ones with multiple positions, good head movements and such so it dosent feel stiff so really good, the only time it fails big is virgin scenes theres almost no pain and 0 blood so it dosent really give the virgin vibe.

Music 3/5
Pretty averge stuff nothing with lyrics or anything.

Choices 5/5
You deside who to fuck or not which is how every game should be, if theres any real choices to change main story i have no idea but thats not so importen to me really.

Cant give it less then 4 stars but cant max it out since MC was a mixed bag of weirdness and wasent a fan of all the big tits constantly forced on you since i dont have that fetish, but the story is mostly good and the choices are perfect in the way of being able to controle who you fuck or not, so i still enjoyed this one.

First: This is probably the best looking AVN I have ever played, so ignore my rating if that is something very important to you.

But sadly that quality does not extend to any other aspect of the game.

- the story is meh. The premise is there, but it becomes so extremely, unnecessarily convoluted that I lost most interest by chapter 6 (still played through the rest)

- characters are interesting at first, but after a while you notice a pattern that ends up making them all very boring

- there is also no real character development. Revealing bits and pieces of a characters background to the reader is not development

- the author seems to be unable to write even a single likeable character. Everyone is just so frustrating to interact with.

- the worldbuilding, something that people have been raving about in these reviews, is pretty mediocre. Nothing that hasn't been done exactly the same many times before

- the LIs aren't done well at all. You never feel like you get close to any of the girls. There is no romance at all. None.

- the MC has very little character development. Which is kind of astonishing seeing as there are a lot of opportunities for it.

So yea, overall I could not enjoy this sadly. After the masterpiece that was Depraved Awakening this was a huge disappointment. Maybe not all the funds should have been put into the graphics?

Of all the erotic visual novel games I've played, this one definitely ranks in the top three, cyberpunk style gameplay, cool! There's an amazing storyline and the modeling is very sexy, it's definitely a perfect score in my mind, definitely a game that everyone should play!

Story: 5/5
Modeling: 5/5
Rendering: 5/5
Animation: 5/5
Overall: 5/5

Considering that this game already has 395 reviews with an average rating of about 4.5. I doubt that my review will be of much use. At this point, however, it's more about wanting to contribute my grain of salt, when it comes to promoting a creator like Philly Games.

I've followed this creator since the early days, when they had released a few updates for their first game, Depraved Awakening. Back then, that game was one of the first to raise the bar significantly for adult games, by making an engrossing game that happens to have adult content, as well.

With City of Broken Dreamers, Philly has continued to deliver high-quality content. This has been accomplished not only with way-above average renders and animations, but through immersive storytelling and well-developed characters as well.

The variety of options offered in the game also contribute to it being such a good one, since they actually have significant repercussions, when it comes to how the MC's personality changes, how they relate and interact with other characters and what your outcome is, at the end.

In this game, you play as a ghost, which is the term used in this universe to describe a type of bounty hunter hired by the powerful to clean up their pasts or handle an adversary. The story takes place at a point where our MC is tasked with finding a young woman (Gloria) with a very troubling upbringing and a power that she cannot entirely grasp / control. As the MC progresses with his mission, he deals with several internal conflicts where, depending on the route the player takes, can lead to the MC becoming an extremely corrupted individual, or finding some form of redemption in the company of the outcasts he meets. Although the story has undeniable CyberPunk and Blade Runner vibes, it has an independent story that allows the game to make a name of its own, borrowing mostly for aesthetic and atmospheric reasons. While playing it, you will be compelled to explore multiple routes, as most of the characters have an appeal of their own, and none of the routes seem to have been neglected. Although Victoria and Katie are very popular in this thread, my personal favorite is Gloria. Whether or not you have a favorite, however, you will still feel compelled to explore various routes and the outcomes they lead to, because of how good the game is.

Even though I write this as we wait for the final update of City of Broken Dreamers, I'm certain that it's delivery will not be an issue, as PhillyGames has proven to be extremely consistent when it comes to providing updates, being frank about any holdups or delays, and in delivering a substantial amount of content with each update that is consistent with the time spent on it.

CH.14

Amazing game, had a blast playing it. It really is on another level in terms of visuals and music. Rarely I play games like this on full screen with loud music settings, but I had to this time. Both graphic and music are amazing. Renders are great, there are hundreds of smooth animations that make this world more alive (like driving cars, trams etc) and music is how I expected it to be - matching what's happening in the game and I really liked few of the songs used, that wasn't a level of music that I would listen to it later on on YT but close - really good.

So, now girls. I loved them all. All beautiful, interesting, with great characters. All paths are worth playing, my main playthrough accepted all opportunities and this game is amazing that way, when you can have a favourite girl but still have fun with Chandra, Abby, Sasha, Shanlon etc. You have to choose your path around chapter 12 and you can do basically everything until this point, there is no bad blood with girls that you're not following and I love that this choice is so late in the game, because you don't have to play the game from the beginning just to be on a different path.

Story - great. I mean, we all read/watched better, but this is "just" a VN and I think that looking at this from this perspective - story is amazing, really engaging, making you want to play again, to read everything, not just CTRL through this stuff. Dialogues may be a bit longer but I think overally writing is on a superb level.

Ok, now thing that dissapointed me the most and that is sex scenes. This is obviously only my opinion, but you don't play a game like this for sex scenes alone. What I didn't like is how short they were, I know animations take a long, long time to render and every sex scene is really time consuming, but you can do it in other way - you can loop your animations and add a lot more text so that a sex scene takes 10 minutes, not 2 minutes. You should be describing everything what's happening on the screen, how these two people feel, spend time on their emotions, add additional renders (maybe taken from animations), add a lot more text. There are a lot of games that do it good, and it's fairly easy to change, so I hope that dev will do it in his next game.

5/5

This started out as a AAA game, but it is not finishing as a AAA unfortunately. Visually, this is a good game, it also has a interesting cyberpunk style theme. There is a lot of total content (less so in recent years), but its sum is unsatisfactory.

There is no build up in this game, instead of having stages of a story it goes from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds and never comes down. All except maybe one of the LI want to jump the MC immediately. Considering this game has hours of content it is just far to much. It is not interesting to have a plot that starts and tries to stay at the climax for almost the entirety of the story. Player choice is also pretty minimal. You are going to be stuck with the Gary Stu MC who is an emotionless mercenary that every girl seems to love for no reason.

Finally, the past 2+ years has yielded 3 small-ish chapters that has the story racing to the finish line. It has been disappointing to see how this one turned out after starting out with AAA potential.

I have had to edit this as it turned out my first impression was all wrong. This is a good game. It starts out all cliché with tough guys and slutty girls and quite custom sex scenes but within an hour of play you don't care about the sex anymore you just want to know how the story proceeds. Very nice.