VN - Ren'Py - College Kings [Act 2 v5.3.0] [Undergrad Steve]

this is a review of college kings v15.0.2/15.0.3

story - 1/5 actual plot does not exist !

- premise of two underground fighting college frats is a disaster,
- there's a gym inside the college, but no normal sport activities,
- just two classes (history and economics),
looks like hungarian developers know nothing about college life in us.

render quality - 2/5

- while models are good, there's lack of different wardrobe, especially for aubrey, nora, lindsey and chloe,
- most of male characters look short compared to females,
- mc is anything but charismatic and handsome,
- if all those males are hothead fighters, how's that none of them is tattooed ?
- you can't see mc wearing frat's jacket, what's the point of being a frat member ?
- renders lack proper lighting, also most of time look washed out.

characters - 3/5 there's a variety of character, some are well developed, some not so well

- there's obvious lack of college staff,

sex scenes - 3/5

animations - 2/5

choices - 0/5 why zero ? there are meaningful choices, but they're nullified by script errors.

- most of the time there's no way to avoid hanging out with girls who may not be your favourites,
- i understand that there must be some main line of so called story/plot, but hanging out with all girls is way too much.

updates frequency - 4/5 there's a lot of content, but the quality of the content is questionable

user interface and stats - 1/5 phone applications (buggy as hell), and kct are total disaster !

so, why just one star ? because of bug fest and kct. also, devs don't give a shit about fixing bugs.

one of the members said something like this about college kings: "there's a game somewhere inside that big bug". but i'm sick and tired of trying to find that game.

save files deleted, game deleted, thread ignored.

good luck to all of you who want to keep up with steve and his team.

A bit of a rollercoaster ride.

Some parts of CK are extremely well done, others ... not so much.

Ever since the dawn of visual-novel time, there's been tags for "school" and "slice of life", and those two already describe most of CK rather well.
Early on (and judging by the title), school (or rather university/college) appears to be the dominant tag, but as the game progresses, it quickly becomes clear the slice of life tag governs more content.
That's neither good nor bad by itself, unless you were actively looking for a game heavy with school content.

After the gargantuan download, one might expect breathtaking visuals and a huge amount of content. In a way, that's also the case.
The renders mostly high quality, although a ton of them are grainy, something you might not expect (and I have a hard time understanding, it's not that hard to get rid of grain in Daz Studio).
Asset selection is a bit uneven, especially when it comes to environments, something I've been noticing in a few games recently, but probably because I dabbled a bit in DAZ myself. It can be hard to find exactly what you are looking for, I'm familiar with the difficulty, but some low-poly assets really stick out like a sore thumb, especially when most things are on the better side of the spectrum.
Anyway, where it matters most, in terms of the "actors", I have hardly any complaints. Lots of familiar faces (popular Genesis 8 characters), but also a few nice surprises. A strong point overall, minus the grain.

There's few animations, and I felt there were fewer and fewer as the game progresses, but those that are there are - especially early on - outstanding.

The music is okay and besides that there's hardly anything, except some occasional ambience sounds. Nothing to write home, but also nothing to complain about.

As for the story itself, as I mentioned above, it starts rather college centric, but then heavily digresses and keeps meandering in all sorts of directions.
There's a pretty large amount of content, but many, many plotlines are opened, and I'm not sure there's any point to it all. The game appears to be developed like a soap opera on TV, every update includes whatever content came to the authors mind at the time, with the occasional "arc" running several updates. There's some impacful decisions, but sometimes it appears the story goes on randomly afterwards. A few things make no sense whatsoever - for example you can be with a girl for the first time and she tells you her boyfriend, and then there's no more content for her for several in-game weeks, and afterwards, she's treating you as if you were just casual friends. I can understand juggling the impact of decisions can be hard, but if you're not willing to follow through, maybe it'd be better not to have a certain option in the first place?
Also, the romance options seem to be pretty disconnected from each other, i.e. for the most part, other girls don't care about / react to the MCs escapades, even if they should.

The moment to moment storytelling, as I wrote above, is best described by the "slice of life" tag. There's a lot of little things happening, and for the most part, at least it remains some semblance of brevity, so I wasn't tempted to skip through too much of it all the time, but on the other hand, it's all low-key day to day affairs, mostly disconnected from each other.

As I mentioned, there's lots of content, but, like a soap opera (or this review by now), it drags on and on without really going anywhere.
If you're a fan of soaps and/or the authors writing style, this could actually be a good thing, as the game appears to be updated regularly, so at least you can look forward to getting your next fix.
It has to be said, though, the kinky scenes are few and far between, so as an adult game, CK is a bit of a failure.

Finally a word about the game "engine". It's renpy, of course, which is a good thing, but that's not what I'm referring to.
I've read quite a few people here complaining about "pure VNs", citing that they aren't really games, and there's some truth to this. In a choice and consequence based game, part of the appeal is to see the other side of the story offered by other perspectives, which are opened by taking different choices. Exploring these "alternate timelines" requires replaying a lot of already-seen content and retreading a lot of familiar ground, though, and that's where renpys Skip mode (a staple of VN games long before renpy, of course) is a godsend.
So if you "enhance" your VN with "gameplay" such as a mobile phone with apps, free-roam or minigames, you violently interrupt this "flow" of replaying the game. The player is forced to go through the same boring motions each time. And who wants to do that, especially when a game has so much raw-content volume as this one? There CAN be too much of a good thing.

And that's why I can't give a higher score. With some games, it's very easy to point at something and say: in this area, this one sucks, but that's not really the case here. There's nothing REALLY bad about College Kings. But it's not REALLY good, either. Once again, it's like a (somewhat average) soap opera. You can get attached to it, and it's entertainment to kill time with, but at the end of the day, it isn't all that special.

The game starts off strong but goes downhill really quickly. The story doesn't make sense because there is no story to begin with. Feels like every update is now just a bunch of random events sewn together while the dev wishes it makes sense. Lauren, Emily etc are some of the most boring girls I've ever seen in any AVN. The saving grace for College Kings and why i will keep coming back is ONLY because of Nora and Chloe. That's just the only pro for this game. Other than that, horrible writing, good music, pathetic animations, and 2 girls that are a saving grace.

GET RID OF THE PERSONALITY SYSTEM. IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!!

currenty boring stroryline but i hope something intresting will happen, cause it has so much potentiel. The best thing about this game is , every month there will be an update, with plenty of contents.

bugs after bugs after update. kinda start to be annoying since it's been this way since act 1. hope it will improve someday or ask some people that willing to do a beta test. because errors keep fking our saves.

i genuinely like the game, i even owned this on steam so i can support the dev.

This used to be a must play dating sim. One of the best, I would argue.

This game had the greatest potential I've seen yet. Up until homecoming, I was completely blown away.

However, it went downhill fast.

The save system is broken. I was sold on the "Real life mode" idea, but it broke. I can't use any of my saves. Even restarting from the start doesn't work for new updates. Version 2 (what??) or not, there are way too many game breaking issues and those will never be truly fixed, I'm afraid.

The story clearly lacks direction. The MC goes to sleep exhausted. Wakes up, tired. Goes on a date that usually leads nowhere because you've not chosen the correct path for that character. He goes back to sleep exhausted. Rinse, repeat.

The dates are mostly boring as fuck. They barely develop the story. It's just a bunch of nonsense thrown together to show off the newly acquired assets.

The fighting aspect almost completely disappeared. Strange, since I thought that was the main plot. It's not. There is no main plot.

There are so many events that are completely fucking pointless and dialogues that lead nowhere with a bunch of giggles.

The best game on this site has become almost completely unplayable and unenjoyable.

For every new version from now on, you will input your own variables and play the new content from the "path maker", which is essentially a cheat code to experience any content that you want. The game completely lost all its charms.

What a shame.

This game is one of my favorite games, lots of content, lots of different girls (different personalities) several different paths that you can choose from. Interesting story, personally i think that this game is number 1 in recreating the "college experience", the activities, field trips, lewd events, blazing hot teachers...

Great game, Keep up the good work!!

Reviewing v14.0.1

Some of the best renders and animation I've seen in any game and a light hearted story that doesn't take itself too seriously while still having impactful consequences for choices.

There are still some choices that have a bad way locking you out of certain paths when not warranted and occasional long gaps between sex scenes but they're minor annoyances on what is a great experience through a pretty long playthrough already. Great replayability value too. I've also had just one crash/bug in over 20+ hours of playing.

A must play in my opinion.

One of the best games in the site. Good renders, funny characters, not too much drama and while it shows a lot of sex, it isn't a fuckfest. Luckly it's still a VN.
What I like the most about this game is that it tries to be original gameplaywise. It got different paths, some fun minigames such as a turn-based combat system, and even a detective one. Not to mention instead of points earned or lost depending on what we say, this game has its unique personality system. Even achievements! Not everything works great, but you can definitely see the devs are working on something special.

The renders are good, but the writing could use some work. Sometimes it's good, but other times it's either decent at best or below the mark. The scenes are enjoyable, but things get strange at the Europe trip. The controls and QOL can be improved a lot on the boat if we could go by the map instead of clicking around and getting to the locations. The choices and how they affect the story was implemented well and is one of the big pluses of the game

v14.0.1 played circa 17 hours (1 normal playthrough, 1 fast skip playthrough and replaying a few scenes).

Renders are great and the story is serviceable to accommodate banging the pool of hot chicks.

Dialogue can be hit or miss, sometimes it's great, sometimes it's utterly cringe-lord terribad.
For example, at the start of the game, 1 gameday after meeting the prudest/shyest character in the lineup MC has the following conversation: (after ONE day!!):

Shy girl: "I haven't actually had sex before"
MC: "You?"
Shy girl: "I mean I've done stuff... just not sex."
MC: "You haven't had sex?"
Shy girl: "Yeah..."
MC: "Your vagina - has never seen a penis?"

..Please just kill me. The second worst dialogue, that feels like it was written by some 14 year old whitenkight fulltime-reddit moderator, happens during the last part of a particular characters story if you decide to mess with their relationship.

Outside of that the writing was mostly good.

I encountered some minor bugs, mainly blue notification dot on messages not disappearing when all messages are read+answered and sometimes a phone message buzzsound being tied to entering a room, regardless if you enter it for the 1st or the 20th time. Clicking the phone also sometimes did not disable the layer below, resulting in my character advancing 1 line of text or switching rooms even though I am just navigating the phone menu.

Navigation can sometimes be very confusing, especially on a specific boat location, point of view gets reversed randomly so you never have any idea what direction you are facing or coming from (e.g. clicking 2x UP/Forward will lead spinning in circles, etc). For that scenario there was a map that unfortunately was utterly useless because there is no onscreen compass nor is the map clickable, navigation made me dizzy/disorientated due to inconsistent frame-zones+angles.

Despite my complaints which seem to occupy a lot of physical writing space there actually isn't that much wrong with the game overall.
I am still rounding to full rating due to the sheer amount of high quality content, in terms of story, writing, dialogue and animated scenes.
The variety of woman is very high and each one has her own personality, some with minor other with major deep rooted issues. You also need to juggle the girls a bit since some characters are totally fine with sharing the MC while others seem to lock into a proper relationship status with jealousy/breakup consequences.

Overall a very good title, among the top I have read/played thus far with minor negatives that can be patched out/fixed.

One of the best games ever.

The characters, the story, the scenes, just amazing.

The concept of fight, cheating, and harem is not new but still while playing this game, for some reason it feels different.

The story is very similar to another very famous game but still it's different in several other aspects.

The only issue I see is none of the characters are build to be a fighter but the whole story revolves around fighting and being a King.

But overall it's a great game, thus 5 stars.

Extremely pleasently surprised! I was afraid that this was going to be another boring VN or a cheap knock off, but I assure you that it is not!

The story is compelling, there is a lot of decision which allows you to have a personalized story and the characters each have their own unique interesting personality which got me hooked for every character and emotionally invested in both the girls and the project.

As of v14.01 there are hours of gameplay available especially if you, like me, like to see all the different paths.
The game looks gorgeous, the animation is good and importantly, there's plenty of good scenes with every girl.
I particularly like VNs with some element of gameplay/free roam and while it is not abundant in this game, it is present and never bored me.
The grammar and writing style is also well above average for those who find it important to get hooked to the story.

So if you're looking for a good VN that will make you emotionally invested in its characters while still making sure you're horny throughout your session, this game is for you!

A good game that could be great. Something just feels like it's missing? Like the game is almost lost.

Starts out 5* but the drop off is noticeable around the Europe trip.

My biggest gripe thus far is with the Emily character. The whole "Cheating ex coming back into the MC's life" thing has such potential, IF we could get some development with her aside from a few dream sequences. What was her reasoning? Who is she as a person? Show us that she's grown. Instead she just comes off as a hollow, psycho piece of temptation bait for the player.

The sex scenes also aren't the *best*, but they are fine. Would like to see less vanilla stuff, personally.

The other supporting characters are cool in my book, though. Imre, Josh, and Ryan are all true bros, Aubrey, Chloe and Riley are smoke shows, Nora is temptation bait done right (take notes Emily), and Lauren and Penny are just so loveable.

I haven't seen the bugs other players are complaining of, so I cannot comment there. I just think the world could use some building, and the writing could be more refined.

*chuckles*

4*

Edit: I also wanna' make note of the game basically forcing you onto the Lauren/GF path if you do anything with her romantically at all. (Even if you reject her at the start)

Was jarring for her and the MC to act as if they had something exclusive when she catches the MC with Aubrey on the plane. The romance with Lauren moves way too quickly in general, but I love her so I'll allow it. Ha.

Edit-Edit: Figured I'd revise my already edited review to add some small things that I feel Steve could add to make the CK world more immersive.

The Kiwi app feels clunky and a bit useless. The UI makes the app feel like a chore to navigate, is very bland looking and I would suggest adding more color to the posts page as well as adding NPC/LI posts more frequently. Small stuff like that makes the world feel alive, instead of NPCs and Love Interests only existing when interacting with the MC.

The option to ignore text messages more often, and even starting small talk convos would also be very cool. A big issue I have with CK is it feels like the plot is "MC gets a text to do a thing, he does it, rinse and repeat." I feel giving the player the option to not respond, kinda like with Emily at the start or like you can with Lauren at the Apes party would add some freedom, and feel less kinetic.

A chit-chat feature could also add some much needed life in free roam as sometimes the free roam events seem a bit small. It'd be cool to check in on our bros or love interests.

Just some things for Steve to consider.

This game started great, been one of the very first to play and support it. But it lacks the spirit (quit after Act 3 Part 3) it had in the beginning.
I don't understand what our goal or ambition is as a player, since we had our inner conflict wether we should fight or not, which was completed by joining a frat. So after playing a bit and traveling a few countries I still don't understand what drives our player aside from banging every chick we want.

Kinda sad as I really loved the game but I feel like it's not only the road we go is unclear, but also very buggy and those bugs don't seem to be removed with time.

The game started off strong but it has been nothing but downhill ever since. The only sorta good thing is the renders, which are not the most amazing but they are the only consistent thing about the game. The story, writing, pace feel like it's going nowhere. You have no idea what is going to happen next because there is no story. Just a bunch of random events glued together. And don't even remind me about the bugs. I can't decide what is the worst thing about this game, bugs or the story. Probably the story, honestly

Started off great but has just become cringe. The Storyline is boring and shallow....actually it's dire. Just short random scenes loosely connected together. The dialogue script is so bad....it's constant *laughs* and *chuckles*
In every conversation...it's like the writers have no idea of how real people talk to each other

There is no feeling of depth to any relations with the girls...hardly any boxing fights...scenes feel short and sparse i.e the dates in the europe trip part 3.
I found the last 2 updates a snooze fest.

Oh and the kct system just sucks! you can miss a path *cough Amber* just because your kct was the wrong type...and the things that change your kct don't even make sense at times.

Including your ex as a LI seems a complete waste as the dev has made her an unlikeable psycho bitch. Don't bother with Emily, trust me.

For me, this is the weakest college vn on here. It just feels aimed at kids with how shallow and infantile it is. I think that's who they are targetting..
Thank god I cancelled my Patreon.

There are much better vn's out there with college themes.

Sorry Undergrad Steve, but despite all your hype every release, I just find it subpar. it's the equivalent of watching teen tv drama.

14.0.1 Windows

First of all there's no way that this game is only rated average!

I love the the KCT system, even though it took me a while to figure it out.
The renders look great, the characters have a solid background, the interactions feel pretty realistic while still making it fun to play.

The writting is pretty much flawless, the music doesn't get boring after a while and all the free roaming games give plenty of playing time...

Five stars for me! Really keep it up with the dev dude, and if you're someone reading the reviews before playing you're not wasting your time.

I did not expect the huge story line,
Good graphic, good animationa, good story, good characters delevopment
I prefer long story, The game haves a lot of routes, that you might explore to see every scenes.
The developer delivers regular updates of the game.

Keep the good work

V 14.0.1
Pros

• Very beautiful female characters +
• Good Animations and renders +

Cons

• Many girls with uninteresting stories
• Boring very boring dialogues (hard to survive this)
• All choices seem the same, everything leads to sex
• The story of this game is extremely simple, there is no intrigue. It's drama, bad drama
• Some of the girls' personalities seemed to me exactly the same
• The "overlay" spoils the sex scene, loses all the "magic". (You can hide it but it's annoying).
• Emily's route is a disaster