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 v0.51...
This is a bit of a mixed bag for a VN/Game... Be forewarned that this review will be a bit lengthy...
The visuals of the characters go with an Asian theme, probably using Honey Select... A majority of the female characters have large to overly-large breasts, as well as large to overly-large butts and thighs... Couple this with some of those also having small waistlines, kind of makes those particular characters look over the top and fake... A couple were somewhat believable, that fell into that category... There are a few normal looking female characters with proper body proportions, but not many... The male protagonist is where the visuals kind of look sloppy... There are some pictures and scenes where his penis visuals show it extremely wide with very large veins sticking out, which looked completely unnatural and gross... But in a majority of the pictures and scenes it looked normal to his body proportions and smooth, with no veins... But in almost all the pictures and scenes, it looks more like it doesn't belong on his body, almost like it was someone else's penis and balls just glued to his body... It looked so unnatural...
A majority of the backdrops looked unique, with just a few I remember seeing in other VN/Games... There are a few animations here and there... The clothing choices looked so over the top, most of the time, that it kind of pushes this VN/Game more towards the porn fest side of the spectrum... The biggest issue for me was the clothing they wore to the Dance Club... The clothing looked more like slutty swimming suits over actual clothing, even for a night club... Stuff strippers would wear before doing a pole dance, not to go dancing in... In any case, a majority of the clothes in this game, while being unique looking, were mostly pushing for a raunchy sex look then actual functional day to day clothing...
The script is not bad, as it reads fine for a majority of the time... There is some occasional broken English, spelling/grammar mistakes, as well as misused words... You can tell that the game, once upon a time, was going with the Incest theme... You get to select the names of the 2 main female characters, that the male protagonist is living with... The default for the older women is "landlord", which is odd for a woman, and should have been "landlady" instead... The default for the younger women is "housemate"... But based on how often, and the context in which they are used (depending if you go with defaults, or with your own made up relations) the text, for a majority of the time, uses those titles in such a way, that the words "mother" and "sister" would have made more sense and fit better... In essence, the replacement titles sounded weird some of the time... I went with sister for the older character, and it didn't sound right at all when it was used, a majority of the time... Even landlady would have sounded weird... So you can tell it was probably mother and sister at one point, before they added in the custom name system, and just replaced those words with what you selected... Without doing any sentence restructuring and so forth, so it would sound/read better...
The plot revolves around a male protagonist who got messed over financially by 'bogs', what ever those are? I guess you need to be privy to bitcoin terminology to understand that part... In any case, he ends up moving back home to live with two women from his childhood...
Now, the beginning of this VN/Game starts off in normal Visual Novel style, with character introductions, plot revealing, and lots of choices... You meet the two women he lives with and hasn't seen in a while, as well as a very promiscuous and over the top female character who is the friend of the protagonists younger housemate... Now, at first it completely feels like the younger housemate is, very much, lusting after the protagonist, and visa versa... She even acts like she's almost as slutty as her friend, especially when they go clothes shopping... But later on, when the VN/Game becomes a Relationship Grinder, she suddenly becomes this innocent girl and the protagonist seems less willing to go after her, to the same degree he was feeling and doing in the beginning stages, prior to the grind game... This felt so confusing, like the continuity was being thrown out the door... The only consistent characters between the two halves of this VN/Game were the slutty friend and the "landlady"...
In any case, once you go through 30 to maybe 60 minutes of visual novel, the game took a drastic turn into a Relationship Grinder with money being the major hurdle, to open up most of the content. going foward... Here I was thinking it was a Visual Novel with choices, then it flip flops to becoming a grinder, with much fewer choices... In the story you also find there is some kind of mysterious twist, in the form of some mystery woman, who keeps popping into the minds of the protagonist and the young housemate, from time to time... Sometimes it sounds like the mystery woman is pushing the protagonist into doing stuff, and other times she seems to be making it sound like it was a bad thing he was doing, depending on the character's story chain, that you were working on... It just felt weird and out of place in the story, and again was hurting the continuity... At no time, is it ever really made clear, yet, what is really going on with that... And I have no clue, why it wasn't completely freaking out the protagonist...
Now there are moments, when the developers are trying to help you figure out what to do, almost like holding your hand... Such as the coffee shop, where there is the female bartender studying and drinking coffee... If you don't buy some coffee before you try to talk to her (each and every time), you get a warning from the developers, that you really should buy her some coffee before talking to her... It was a bit odd... There are times when the developers do add some perks, such as when doing the landlady story line, if you talk to her in the morning and there is a continuation in the evening, a button appears to skip to the evening... Those were nice touches, but that was only because of how the game mechanics were designed, which I will get into next...
The game mechanics for the Relationship Grind were ok, but still felt a bit archaic... Such as only having the City Map Navigation option appear if you are in the hallway of the house, and not in any of the other rooms... Or only being able to skip through the time of the day, by napping in the protagonists bed... Otherwise, there was no option to skip time... Gaining money involved several various avenues, only one of which is ever mentioned in game play (working at the Café in the mornings)… For the others, you are not really given a clue, and either had to experiment to figure them out, or they were only revealed in the walkthrough, which I completely avoided until the money grind became unbearable... There is a form of Bitcoin trading added in, once the protagonist gains a cell phone... And you can beg the landlady for money ( which is referred to as "an allowance" - no landlady does that, so can you say she's his mother?)...
Money is the major grind needed to open up a bunch of the content during the relationship story lines... You have to buy coffee, buy a camera and clothing, among other things, but the worst one, was the 3 different tiers of facility membership at the resort hotel... Buying the first and second tiers do nothing to open up content with any characters, that I could find... Only the third tier was needed, to open up the young housemates story arc further... And that money wall, appears rather quickly in her story arc... Expect to waste a lot of time doing morning work, sleep till next day, morning work, sleep, and so on... Maybe gamble a bit with Bitcoin stuff (once that option opens up), or repetitiously beg for money as well... Just expect to waste a bunch of time to get those membership tiers and other stuff... The membership tier stuff felt like such a waste of time...
The biggest qualm I had was, how between the end of the Visual Novel content and the beginning of the Relationship Grind, the developers threw in a Holiday Christmas event, that was so out of place... It made little to no sense for the story... I really hate it when developers throw in holiday event stuff, that isn't really in-line with the visual novel/game story, up to and beyond that point... Plus, later on, during the Barmaid's story arc, one of the holiday pictures appears, for no good reason, during part of the dialogue, which had to have been an error/mistake...
Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind the Relationship Story arcs during the grind portion of the VN/Game... For the most part, they seemed to be more believable then the Visual Novel starter... And if you can get your head around the inconsistencies between the two halves of this VN/Game, I can see some potential for some partially decent story telling during the relationship routes... But I don't feel like the young housemate was the same person in the grind game that was shown in the visual novel starter... And some of the grinding also felt unnecessary...
It's hard to tell sometimes, if this is meant to be a porn fest with fast moving story, or a meaningful and well thought out story based VN/Game... Perhaps it's a mix? I almost felt like the slutty friend of the young housemate started off a slut, with the protagonist's primary goal being to tame her into a more believable personality... And that the housemate is the polar opposite, shows a slut side initially (even though the difference between the intro and the grind made very little sense) but is in actuality a more realistic innocent, who the protagonist loves, and she is meant to be the main love interest? I just don't know... As the story telling sometimes feels like it's flip-flopping, with no way to tell what is supposed to be really happening... There are many plot holes and inconsistent story telling... The only fully consistent relationship story thus far, has been between the MILF landlady and the protagonist... Sometimes I can see a romance brewing with some characters, but then it doesn't seem like a romance is brewing and it's just a lust story, but then it's back to romance again...
Overall, this VN/Game has left me feeling more confused then anything... It doesn't feel like the developers are consistent in their story telling... Like they are trying to do too much too quickly... You can see elements of many different forms of story telling and erotic play, but it either moves too fast or feels like the developers have too many cooks in the kitchen, pulling the project this way and that way... I can see they are using a patron voting system for character stuff, from what is said on the cell phone, once a story arc's current content ends... Perhaps they are allowing far too much creative control to be placed in the hands of their paying fans?
I have completely mixed feelings and emotions for this VN/Game... I can see some promise in some parts, while seeing disaster ahead in others... Will I revisit this one? I don't know right now... I do think it needs a major overhaul, and a lot more polish before it will standout in the crowd... I liked some parts, hated others, and when looking at it as a whole, see too many inconsistencies and issues that need fixing... Only time will tell...