TL/DR Review: As the first outing of the creators of the superior game City of Broken Dreamers, it falls into many of the trappings of the “learning as you go” development cycle of adult virtual novels with the quality steadily increasing as the game progresses. The story is strong throughout while the adult scenes are a bit hit-and-miss with the best scenes appearing later on with improved writing, length, still frames and animations. Despite its faults I find myself playing through it a second time, and I feel no compulsion to skip scenes or dialogue. 4 out of 5.
Now, for the longer review.
As someone who found this game after having already played several chapters of City of Broken Dreamers, it was interesting to see how far the authors have come based on their previous, rather popular first title.
The renderings are a bit scattered in quality, though like everything else in this VN they improve as you progress through the story. Backgrounds are consistently high quality and varied while the characters themselves sometimes pull weird faces, like a render that didn’t process correctly but wasn’t broken enough to warrant the hours of rendering time to redo it. All of the love interests are attractive though the real standout is the Hooker-with-a-Heart-of-Gold. Near perfect body proportions and an excellent face. Her scenes are by far my favorites.
The music and sound effects are… well, they exist! That’s a selling point in and of itself. There’s a consistent noir soundtrack that plays throughout most scenes that sticks in your memory such that if you ever hear it again, this game will come to mind. That’s a good thing. The sound effects are rare but spot on, like the crack of a rifle, breaking glass, or the breaking of someone’s jaw. I would have liked more variation in the musical scores but that’s a nitpick more than anything else.
The story has a detective/film noir feel to it such that if you’re a fan of either genre you can probably pick out some classic novels or movies that the creators took inspiration from. There are some holes in the story but they’re not so obvious that you’ll pick them out in the moment. Rather, they’ll come to you upon further reflection after you’ve finished a playthrough. There are multiple endings that are quite rewarding, with lengthy adult scenes to signal your triumph.
Speaking of the adult scenes, as I mentioned earlier everything in the game improves as you work your way through the story, and this is especially true of the adult scenes. Some of the earliest adult scenes have animation so jerky it can scarcely be called animation. I’ve seen GIFs with better quality. There’s a healthy dose of… well I’m not sure if it qualifies as NTR, but unless you choose to turn it off you will occasionally see people other than you having sex. Two of them are with a love interest but they occur before you’ve even met them, and a third occurs with a non-love interest you get to enjoy once during the story and is one of the villains. All in all, I never felt that distinct “betrayal” emotion you normally get from NTR, so I would recommend leaving it on.
The adult scenes improve steadily with many of the later scenes worth revisiting in the gallery, especially the scenes involving multiple love interests. None of it holds a candle to their current work, City of Broken Dreamers, but that’s to be expected.
A few nitpicks aside, such as characters using the L word too soon in their burgeoning relationship or steamy but out-of-place incest that progresses far too fast and is accepted by others far too quickly, it’s a solid title with an entertaining story, strong dramatic elements, some truly breathtaking love-interests, and some steamy adult scenes. Definitely worth a 4 out 5. Not a must-play, but definitely recommended.
Final thoughts: It’s unfortunate that the authors themselves rarely make these, but the walkthrough by Maim Lain is essential if you don’t want to miss a lot of the content due to inadvertently making poor choices. There are numerous instances where it’s unclear if telling the truth or lying is the better course, and you won’t find out until many scenes later where you’ll have to reload a save to try to correct things, and there are other times where you won’t even know that you missed a scene until much later. On my first playthrough I ended up with an undesirable ending despite making what seemed like the common-sense choices. The walkthrough fixes that, but it’s unfortunate that a walkthrough is even necessary.