VN - Ren'Py - Defending Lydia Collier [v0.16.2 Hotfix] [White Phantom Games]

Visually, the game looks boring and uninspired, and it plays exactly as it looks. I mostly blame the stale writing style, which harms both the plot (and it is a plot-driven game) and the various kinks this game offers to the player. Yet, it's ambitious enough to be worth checking out.

While the game is not yet complete, I believe it merits a review.
The author presents a scenario in which a lawyer becomes enmeshed in a complex web of political intrigue, following what initially appears to be a crime of passion. The game's romance options and sex scenes are notable for their darker tone, which sets them apart from the majority of other games presented here. I would like to state that the storyline is well-structured and offers numerous options. With regards to kinky sexual encounters, I must admit that it is precisely these elements that draw me to this game. In terms of visuals, there are other authors who demonstrate greater artistic capabilities. However, the female characters in this game are generally appealing.
In light of the above, I would like to recommend this game without reservation and award it the highest possible rating.

This is a fantastic game to play, if you can handle the challenges that come with it.

Defending Lydia Collier is a very Traditional Visual Novel. Old-school Japanese visual novels traditionally had dedicated branching storylines, where you could only see all the endings by playing multiple times. And sometimes could only see the "True Ending" by playing multiple times and fulfilling specific choice or action qualifications. For a modern game comparison, think of Nier: Automata. Unfortunately traditional VN's do not, generally, have the difference in story and gamplay that Nier has with repeated play. But, you will get into relations with different LIs, so there are many differences each play. Stephanie is completely different from Vanessa, as is Ellie's path. And we're not just talking about vanilla or "phoned-in" differences.

It is clear that White Phantom Games has put and has to put an incredible amount of work into this game. The choices they've made in the making of this game set it apart from at least 90% of the games on here for the discrete paths alone. This is something you don't see often anymore in VNs because it is SO much work. It takes longer to do updates. Since this is all an Early Access development cycle, eventually, based on player's choices, they may end up "stuck" in their current chosen path because it may be several more updates before their path will get an update. This can piss off a lot of players, as you can see in the discussion threads, Defending Lydia Collier doesn't seem to be suffering TOO much because of it. Reviews are high and mostly positive, discussion thread hasn't had to be split due to comment spam, etc.

If you are like me, however, and don't like multiple Replays and not being able to see everything all at one go, it's tough. KoGa3 has us covered with their Settings/Gallery Unlocker mod. I would recommend this if you are like me. It does lessen the impact of things, so if you end up with a favorite LI(s), I would make a play through focused on them and see that to the eventual end. Seeing things from the Gallery with the build up and context hits differently when you're in the story and, hopefully, invested in it.

There isn't a walkthrough mod anymore, but there is a PDF walkthrough that will be necessary for your own sanity (at least it is for me). Making a WTMod for this game is A LOT more work than most other games because of the complexity involved in the game script and structure. I would love to see it get picked up again, but I'm not holding my breath.

Play till the overhead in the game mechanics and organization frustrates you, and then fill in the holes with the Gallery Mod. Or sample the gallery mod and then use the walkthrough PDF to figure out what story line to focus on and play focused on that and use Gallery to catch what you miss.

Edit: Formatting, bold bled through the rest of the review from the first linked item. And following update.

Update:
I didn't address aesthetics. This is an older game that is still going. So there are familiar models and set pieces. The quality of renders does reflect experience level as time goes on. I probably forgot to cover this above because it doesn't stand out.

Writing. I don't know, a number of recent reviews list this as "bad" or sub-par. Each to their own, I guess. Maybe I just haven't gone deep enough. But I've played Stephanie, Ellie, and Vanessa to the point of either getting a Ren'py error that stops that (I would assume is my fault due to using a WTMod back then), but I know there were/are some errors with the recent updates that don't involve the Mods. I don't know. I'm not floored by the writing, but I don't think it's sub-par. Just maintaining and keeping this script going at the level it is at is incredibly hard. I'm just not seeing bad writing, corny sex dialog, or grammar errors (WPG is from the UK, no Google Translate involved, sometimes "their" is used instead of "there", but it's only a few times) . Certainly nothing to nitpick about. Again, in comparison to a lot of what I've seen this year, this is good. None of the typical tropes are present.

I respect the levels that WPG is going to with this. For example (incoming spoilers),
I can't think of a potentially more divisive mainstream (on F95)game. You'll either love it or hate it for what it is. As I said earlier, I hate games where I can't see everything with one play ( I judiciously use mods), where relationships aren't silo'd (no consequences for cheating, the girls only know about and interact with each other if it makes sense for the story, not the typical harem because those seem impossible to finish satisfyingly), and I feel open world/sandbox is a gimmick/crutch style stolen from MMOs who could only build worlds and quests that way but that allow Single-Player game developers to use them to get some development freedoms, but it always seems to create more work than it saves and bites them in the ass at some point later in the development. I should hate this game. It's not open world, but there IS so much that frustrates me playing it (I don't see the point to the Teams minigame, I look for the answers in the Walkthrough and hurry through it). But I respect the work put in and if I control my exposure to what frustrates me, I do really enjoy the game. But, yeah, I cheat (Gallery Mod, settings, etc)

A wonderful VN that does a good job of mixing lewd stuff with an engaging story. The different love/corruption routes are well fleshed out and fun. My personal favorites are the Steph Bimbo and Ellie corruption routes.
There is a lot of content and plenty of stuff to explore across the multiple playthroughs.
My only critique is that some of the renders look a bit dated. Perhaps these will be improved in future updates.
Thank you dev for a wonderful experience. I recommend this to anyone who loves story, romance and kinky sex.

Replayed v0.16.2 - My second most favourite game on this site - visual novel with a male MC - you play a lawyer who has to defend the titular Lydia in court from a murder charge after the disappearance of her husband. You quickly figure out that the situation is more complicated than it seems and start investigating.
Has an interesting story, gorgeous and interesting characters and the creator is a great writer. The main storyline is pretty linear - but your choices can change outcomes, way of doing things and your relationships with the heroines and other people. Also seems pretty planned out and we're moving into the end game (so it should only be some years - but I am willing to wait for quality...).
Sharing your girls only happens when you initiate it, but (most) girls did have a sex-life before you - you do get several warnings if you are about to make a choice that will show you a flashback of a heroine with another partner.

The game has five-ish heroines (three main heroines and arguably two lesser main heroines). There are also some side girls attached to the main heroines and some one-off girls that serve for plot developements but have no storyline of their own.
Each main heroine (Ellie, Vanessa, Stephanie) has a "romantic" route and a "darker" route depending on your choices.
Romantic routes are what you expect, dark routes feature the interesting stuff we're here for. The more extreme routes also generally include the side girls. Extreme doesn't necessarily mean the MC is a cruel dick - it just has more extreme content.
Lesser main heroines (Lydia, Jenna) can be romanced separately or combined with some other women.

The main Bdsm-storylines are Stephanie's early route and after the route split - the bimbo route (no extreme bimbofication thank god, mostly just a boob surgery - she doesn't look like a blow-up-doll), the dark Ellie route and the late Lydia route. The Vanessa and Jenna Cuckquean routes have some humiliation elements.
Has really great and well written scenes - bondage, device-bondage, pet-play, Electro-play, chocking, spanking, whipping, humiliation, slave play, (avoidable) scat and watersports,
Steph is a great submissive and masochistic sub who is an enthusiastic participant, Lydia also seems to lean in this direction (but only has a handful of scenes), Ellie's mother is deeply fucked up and a hardcore masochist. The Cuckquean routes mostly have humiliation - Vanessa's is pretty sweet and wholesome - Jenna's is a lot more cruel and she's very much not into it.
There's also some cheating scenes on the darker routes (with you as the bull). While you can sleep with almost all of Ellie's sisters on her dark route, so far we got no sister sandwich.

Negatives - I don't really like the handful sex-animations - they don't look all that great (change of lighting, short and not that pretty) - I strongly preferred the static images.

Aside from that the game is awesome and I strongly recommend you play it.

I mean hands down the best vn game ive EVER played. Nothing can beat this, the amount of paths, kinks and women, AMAZING. Great story, well written, perfect amount of choices! I hope this gets updates asap, really looking forward!

Pure perfection in terms of plot, choices, and kinks. You can mold every girl to be an honorable person or a completely sexual slave (it's not a harem game, but you can form small harem bubbles). The game's plot is incredible, you are a lawyer with a lot of influence who has a gigantic conspiracy case on your hands to solve, and is up to you to save Lydia and drag a girl to heaven or to complete sexual depravity, in a consensual way, step by step corrupting or protecting... If you completely break a girl, she will still love you. You can find almost all kinds of kinks in this game, the tags in the genre are quite shy and modest.

A pretty standard police mystery with outdated renders, awful replability, glacial pace and in the latest versions full of bugs and performance problems.
The story is nothing to write home about but it gets destroyed by having to replay it to see the other paths.
Dont bother with this game.

To me, this game is an example for good representation of fetishes in AVNs. You can see that the author delves deep into what attracts people to fetishes and how important consent is.

Then, the worldbuilding in this game is next level! Outside of the rich narrative, there is so much para-narrative going on: like unrelated newspaper articles and complete chat logs of a LI, that are not "necessary" for the story, but that add so much flavour to the world, its characters, and their dynamics. The icing on the cake is an obscure social media post (you have to opt-in to in the first place) by a character you (so far) never meet in the game that leads to adding said character to a messenger and then getting exclusive nudes. Discovering this genuinely blew my mind! I wonder which other additonal content I haven't seen so far.

Each romanceable character has their own microcosmos within in the narrative and this is one of the only games where I actually have different save states to play along *all * of the different paths (and subpaths). It's that good!

In a lot of AVNs, even the good ones, the sex scenes get stale after a while. In this game, the author manages to one-up themselves with each new update. In each path, you always anticipate the next chapter in the MC's relationship with their LI(s) like a giddy child in a candystore.

All in all, I'm a massive fan and can't wait for further updates!

One of the best AVNs I play and I played a lot. The story is well written and intriguing. I love the fact that you can have multiple paths and options within those paths. the women are beautiful and varied. I don't go all dark but for those who like it there is an option. There are a lot of lewd scenes and many options in those scenes. I recommend to write a description to the saves because you might get lost with all the options.
In summery - really fun and immersive game that I enjoy a lot.

Honestly, I don't get all the hype around this game. I mean, sure, some people seem to love it, but for me, it's just a big disappointment. Like, yeah, the reviews talk about how well-written it is, but seriously? The writing feels so flat and the characters are just... blah. And don't even get me started on the plot—it's like they threw a bunch of random ideas together and hoped for the best.

And those renders and models they keep bragging about? Meh. I've seen better on my fridge. Plus, they try to sell you on all these different paths and options, but it's like they can't even keep track of them half the time. Everything feels so disjointed.

And then there's the whole fetish thing. Like, okay, I get it, everyone's got their kinks, but this game just feels like it's trying way too hard to cater to everyone. And that government conspiracy subplot? Please. It's like they ran out of ideas and just threw that in there as a last-ditch effort to be edgy.

And you know what's really suspicious? All those glowing five-star reviews. I mean, come on, are we playing the same game here? It's almost like they're trying to compensate for something. Trust me, save your time and find something better to spend your time on. im going to go out on a limb here and say a famous youtuber played this game lmao

The one star is for the good story only
I really dont know if the renders or animations will improve
Three days playing this game and still this news and articles on laptop ..show up every time
5 min playing the story..30 min reading this articles
You can try it if have long patiance
I cant stand it any more

STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME.

GOOD:
• 1. The lewd scenes can be arousing at times, which is good.

BAD:
• 1. The writing quality is below subpar.

• 2. Each girl has her own respective path, and you can only choose and romance one girl at a time and one of her respective paths per playthrough. Now, a decent developer would inform you about these significant decisions beforehand. However, this developer isn't one of them, as he completely neglects that concept, leaving you with absolutely no idea who you're romancing.

• 3. Due to the virtual computer mechanic, replayability is a nightmare, especially if you want to see all the scenes for each girl.

• 4. The dialogue options are so vague and unclear it makes you question the point of even having them in the first place.

• 5. There's this idiotic system where you have to send your team on missions, but you don't receive anything special from it. It feels like it's incorporated into the game just to piss you off, and you can't skip it.

• 6. The characters' skin tones are all wrong, making them resemble corpses. Also, many character models appear unnaturally muscular, as if they're on steroids. Hard to imagine a 19-year-old girl would look like Proxima Midnight.

• 7. The discrepancy and inconsistency in the girls' character portrayal is disturbing. For instance, Ellie is portrayed as a bratty little bitch, indicative of a submissive, but she's forcefully written to be dominant, and it just doesn't work.

• 8. As you progress through the girls' paths they undergo drastic and very sudden transformations, turning them from seemingly normal individuals into freaks. Stephanie transforms into a hentai sex slave, Ellie becomes an extremely hateful bitch (which would be fine if you could punish her for her behaviour), Vanessa transitions from a prude single mom to a sex hungry succubus, and Lydia is revealed to be a fucking kidnapper and a total psycho.

What an absolute piece of work this game is, utterly infuriating. Written as of v0.16.

Pretty good! Decent writing if you can ignore a smattering of grammar issues, which fortunately I can. Renders are largely serviceable. Animations are few and not that great, but they aren't bad or frequent enough to be a deal breaker.

Not that I'm inherently against such things - wouldn't/couldn't play so many of these games if I were - but I appreciate that the MC isn't a young, vaguely twinky, barely adult as seems to be the norm. And along those lines I also appreciate the UK setting. Makes a nice change of pace from the usual, generic American suburb or a fake US city stand in.

Story 10/10 :is a detective story where you have
To solve a case as a lawyer for Lydia Collier
My kind of story

Renders 10/10: has great art and renders and best
Characters renders I have ever seen eg Veronica
And Ellie

Characters 10/10 : great characters eg Steph , Veronica
And Ellie
Choices 10/10 ; there are many kinks which are obviously
Optional like Steph bimbo path also there are many side
Routes

Conclusion:all in all a great game

I would rate this as 4.5 stars. One of the better executed plots as far as AVN games go. Writing is pretty good for the most part, characters are distinct instead of being written the same with different models. Sex scene dialogue is very corny though. Most of the game is pretty polished, in the newer updates there are some spelling mistakes and goofy looking scenes.

Not a harem game, which is nice and good for replayability. Most of the paths are pretty even on the amount of content available, which is also a plus. A negative is that its pretty easy to get stuck on a different characters path which locks you out of other characters paths early on in the story. Having choices matter is good, but ambiguous choices like staying at the bar or going home should not start you down a characters path.

Models are fairly typical - not bad, nothing special. This game is starting to get pretty old (5 years in the making), there is a fair amount of content relative to development time. Probably will take another 1.5-2 years to wrap up the game if prior development time holds

Good renders & nice story. First thought this was gonna be a story focused game later shifted to kink focused. Not a harem game main girls has separate path, that path again splits to another path sometimes collide with other girls. Each path has exclusive side girls. Even if your are not into kink you gonna love this game. I'm more of vanilla romance guy but now loving the kinks in this game. Cause girls are written in such a way. Seems like dev loves bimbos, but this is not your usual bimbos. Steph's bimbo path is way better than steph normal path.

NB : This is the only game where I loved the bimbo even though I'm more of vanilla and romance guy. This route is kinkier and got nice romance too. In other games i avoid corruption, slut, bimbo paths in this game it got nice charm. All hail to dev for this


If you love lot of kinks this game is perfect for you. Nice story is a bonus. But to enjoy full gaming experience you surely need a mod or walkthrough, walkthrough is better

Defending Lydia Collier is a sometimes rewarding, sometimes frustrating experience. The first thing you'll notice is that this is an extremely high quality AVN. The renders, the story, the world building, the characters, the gameplay, even the occasional voice acting on the radio; it's all had a lot of work put into it, and it shows. Perhaps most impressive is pulling off a true mystery/thriller in the AVN format without it becoming boring or predictable. I can't adequately summarise everything that makes this game impressive.

Why am I only giving it 4 stars then? Because a central part of the experience of playing an AVN is how it tackles player choice. Some games opt for branching routes, others for a more linear approach. Both are fine. But Defending Lydia Collier looks less like a branching tree and more like a messy bush which hasn't been trimmed in years. The sheer quantity of choices is overwhelming, and it isn't at all clear to the player which routes their choices will send them down, or even which routes exist. To some players this is fine; they don't much care about whether they miss content, they just want to immerse themselves in the story and experience whatever comes of their decisions. Players like me, however, want to be able to experience the best a game has to offer without having to do lots of playthroughs, and that involves some degree of planning. Normally I would rely on a walkthrough, written or in-game, to do this. However the ones that exist for this game are woefully inadequate, because while they tell you the immediate effects of your actions, they don't tell you where those actions will take you in the long run. And indeed they can't, because the game's decision tree is so messy. If you're a completionist and want to experience every girl's scenes, including variations such as bimbo or not, you have to either be prepared to play through hours with the skip button on before you reach new content, or keep an exhaustive history of saves at crucial decision moments, and you'll have to figure out where those are yourself. It's also not entirely clear from the walkthrough how much interacting with optional elements like the newspaper articles and betting matters; it probably doesn't, but be prepared to either waste your time clicking through fake buggy websites or worry about whether you should have.

There are no good or bad games, there are only preferences, which are entirely subjective. For many people this is a 5 star game, and I envy them, because while I deeply enjoyed it, I was unable to overcome my aversion to the gameplay.

This AVN is extremely well-written. The character development and plot are both very good. The renders and models are above average and attractive. The most impressive thing is the multiple branching paths and how well the Dev is keeping them all straight, with respect to events and passage of time in the story. There are so many different ways to play this, so many paths/options, such a variety of women, and a bunch of different fetishes to explore. This game explores some darker sexual themes, fetishes, and a tin-foil hat style government conspiracy. Most of the more questionable/dark/fetish-y story elements are completely avoidable, so no need to skip this game if you aren't into those kinds of things. No true Harem content, but there are opportunities for multiple sexual partners, including several limited multi-partner relationships. This has something for almost everyone and the story draws you in almost as much as chasing all the hot women.

Renders: 4/5
Story: 4.5/5 (so far)
Sex scenes: 4/5

I prefer non-fantasy, non-scifi games, and this is definitely one of the better ones. Plus it has a different theme than the usual college student games.