VN - Ren'Py - Abandoned - Craving Curses Reloaded [v0.06.1] [HAG]

Review of version 0.5.2

Ever had someone excitedly describe this amazing dream they had to you, but you had trouble maintaining even the slightest amount of attention to their story? This is basically the adult VN version of that.

The MC is a photographer whose family is falling apart because his dad is an abusive control freak. Turns out the MC may be some sort of demigod with a manifest destiny and finds himself in the middle of a battle between good gods and evil gods for the fate of mankind. If you like high concept in your porn games, you're in luck.

There are two threads in this game that are beginning to dovetail together - MC's life as horny photographer and MC life as a tool of sci-fi gods from a dream world. I found the former engaging and the latter boring.

The models are mostly stock elements that have been used in a hundred other games. Facial morphs are weird often times and make otherwise appealing models somewhat revolting. Props to this game for having an age-appropriate GILF to fuck in the first 10 minutes. Renders are grainy and not well-defined. This is supposed to be a "reloaded" game? I guess the originals were outlines.

The story is largely linear with the appearance of open world sandbox play. Beyond refusing opportunities to potentially bang various women, I can't remember many choices. This seems more like a kinetic novel.

There isn't much sex and what there is feels mechanical and uninspired. With a mountain of dull dialogue I found myself viciously clicking and then skipping most of it by the end, trying to find something sexy to engage me.

This feels like an HBO show that you get bored with after three episodes and then it gets cancelled after one season.

Not recommended

[Rev @v0.05.2]
...wha?...

Art's meh. Stock assets with a few tweaks. Facial expressions bottom out in on the floor of the uncanny valley.

Plot is incomprehensible, exacerbated by very poor writing fluency. Reminds me of listening to a hyperactive gradeschooler chitter on about something they think is dreadfully important but their rant gets less and less understandable as their caffeine level rises.

As of the point I stopped playing the plot was way too concerned with nailing the MC's mom and sister and not concerned enough with nailing the hot secretary throwing herself at him.

TLDR: if Babelfish had an erotica section...

I gave this Visual Novel 4 stars as a sign of potential. It is not bad currently, but it doesn't really deserve 4 stars.

This game has a strong story concepts, and it may be very well written in the author's native language. However, the English translation needs serious work. The translation is not worse than the average low quality stuff, but this story is complicated, and philosophical. This poor translation does not convey the complex concepts well. With this being a strictly story driven game, the flow and tone of the writing are critical. I hope the author finds someone who can write well in English to rework the English script.

My only other comment would be one common to many games. The author is only willing to display one sentence of text at a time and never a complex sentence at that. It would work far better, from a story perspective, to convey a complete thought with each mouse click than requiring multiple button presses to get the same information.

I hope this game evolves well

The story is a total non sense ....
You don't even understand what's happening.
Some models are more than ugly ...
Just wondering why monster are coming like that ...
Could have been a good game but the environment and the story made it pretty bad. I let you make your own idea about it ...

Pros
- An intesting and original story quite well written
- Great renders and animations set in an open world scenario with good back drops
easy to play
cons
-occasional misspelllings- but in my opinion these do not detract in anyway from the overall enjoyment of the game
-added forv0.05 a journal/Diary to help navigate the story complexities

About version 003:
Holy sh*t! Who the f*ck is making this game? HBO? This is amazing. I hope it's not gonna be too grindy, and it could use some kind of journal [ to let us now what to do next (to keep us up with the story)]
There's still a lot to do, there's lot of bugs.
But this is so great - I will patiently wait till it's completed.

The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs... The version this review is based on is v0.02...

This is a bit of a confusing visual novel/game, due to several issues I'll get into... Plus it is yet another VN/Game going with the over used Family Sex stuff...

The visuals of the characters are a mix of decent to absolutely bizarre... The backdrops are a mix of unique and ones used in lots of other VN/Games...

The script is a mixed bag with some small amounts of broken English spread throughout the whole script along with the occasional spelling/grammar error... The plot is very difficult to fully figure out, but it revolves around a male protagonist photographer who lets his sister move in with him due to issues with his family not getting along with one another... His mother also left her husband and is staying in a hotel room... The protagonist owns a photography studio which he works in now and then... And from there he lives out his life working, and dealing with his family crisis...

This is going to be hard to describe because of how confusing this whole VN/Game is, but there seems to be either fantasy or sci-fi elements that just pop in now and then, with little to no explanation as to what is really going on... With that said, in the protagonists studio he has two employees... One is another photographer and the other is his receptionist who has a huge crush on the protagonist, but never sais anything... There is a lot of inner monologue with her character as she struggles with her inability to say something about her feelings to the protagonist... And I mean a lot of inner monologue... So you can't tell if she is a love interest or a psycho, because no choice ever presents itself for the protagonist to interact with her...

Now, the protagonist is presented with a few choices now and then that involve peeping and/or interacting with his mother and sister at certain points... And depending on choices made, he has extremely confusing and really odd dreams (or so he thinks)... The first one occurs after he peeps on his sister, with a really bizarre and sci-fi looking room with static characters and a female cyborg with mechanical tentacles having sex with his sister, which he tries to stop, but is blocked (NTR anyone?)... Which then very quickly shifts to a scene with a woman and a man having some sort of discussion about losing some sort of game, and how they talk sounds really weird and barely makes any sense at all, as though they are some sort of demi-gods talking in god speak (not fully discernable English)...

I don't want to go over every oddball scene, because otherwise this review would be far too long... But lets just say that barely anything discernable comes from any of the sci-fi or fantasy looking sequences... Now, near the end of the current content, you get a small feeling that some of the protagonists choices have some sort of bearing on how the future of these weird characters that keep appearing, will pan out... But there are so many oddball characters talking about this and that, it's extremely difficult to nail down what their purpose is or what bearing they truly have on the plot... It is so unclear if the protagonist is just insane, having a mental break down, or if all these random odd ball characters are really supposed to exist and have some bearing on the story...

I did run into a continuity error, where if you have Sam do the photo session with the older lady, later on the story, it plays out like you had sex with that lady, even though you never did her photoshoot... Because a talk with the receptionist later in the story includes a discussion about not wanting to see the lady the protagonist had sex with during a photoshoot, that never happened... That just confused me even more, which is probably an error in the game logic...

Overall, in some instances I enjoyed this VN/Game when the odd stuff wasn't around... But as a whole, most of what was occurring didn't feel like it belonged and/or made barely any sense at all... That is either because of how it was presented, maybe because of bad translations, maybe because it was meant to be totally confusing, I don't know... In any case, I didn't like it at all... It made the story, over all, feel like a bad acid trip from the 70's... It was almost like 2 totally different stories smashed together... I could have done without the sci-fi/fantasy bit, and enjoyed this VN/Game just fine...

I give the game 5 stars. Why? I think the game mechanics are great. It is a VN but not a typical VN. Hag has tried to build a kind of open world. This world looks very big. I'm looking forward to how the game grows! And the story could be interesting.

So far (ver. 0.02) ther is not much in the game but some things stand out, both good and bad.

PLOT: So far much better than the average game, it actually makes me want to read more. Some elements seem rushed, like the dev was in a hurry to put hints of future directions in the game, however this might well be, based on the limited plot so far, part of the plot itself. I guess we will have to wait to find out. DEAR GOD, THE ENGRISH. I can accept that english might not be the dev's main language, it is not mine either, but parsing through the text feels like trying to play a VN in japanese while using Google translate. A spell check at least would have diminished the cringe factor.

GUI: Minimalistic interface so far that actually feels nonexistent yet works. Not bad

GRAPHICS: The renders are good quality, the backgrounds are minimal and stock.

INTRO: Ok, this I did not expect, The movie is actually good, even though it looks more like intro titles for a 1980 low budget pseudothriller.

PLOT: 2/5 due to severe eye bleeding
GUI: 3/5
GRAPHICS 3/5
INTRO: 3/5