Summary: Long story short. We start out with an MC ripe with apathy, on teetering on the verge of ending his life. He is in his last year of school, living with his mom and having a few acquaintances in his class, but not being close to any of them. The center point around which the story develops, is the awakening of MC’s subconscious, who assumes the form of his childhood crush. She serves as the catalyst by which MC very quickly starts to get proactive and competent, sometimes to the point that she could be considered a supernatural element in the story, due to how overpowered her helpful acts can be. And truth to be told, there isn’t that much of a storyline to follow really. After Serena’s (that’s the name of the subconscious) awakening MC, with Serena help, wastes no time in further developing existing relationships and forging a couple new ones as well. Things are progressing disturbingly fast and we find ourselves in a classic harem power fantasy, but unlike most other harem VN’s, Depth’s Revival goes all in on its niche of incest, impregnation and pregnancy, introducing these much earlier and in larger amounts than usual. And to wrap up my summary, I must mention that, yes, Depths Revival stumbles with the ending. The tonal shift is too sudden and significant. Bittersweet elements could have been included in a far more elegant fashion.
Pros: The meta discussions between MC and Serena can be quite interesting.
- Animations for H-scenes are probably stock HS, but used to decent effect. Positions, movements seem natural enough and smooth. Exception is that there is a little stutter when animations loop, but I have seen worse. Animations also include a separate climax, rather than a still render.
Some scenes do have lower quality levels, but they aren’t trash.
And quality slowly improves with time. Animations in the last couple chapters are great.
- The AVN seems heavily focused on several of my favorite niches/tags/fetishes. It absolutely aces the concept of impregnating the LI’s and seeing them in pregnant form as time goes on. But this alone still cannot hard-carry the AVN in its entirety. There is simply too much slack and too many objective flaws in other areas.
- Dev did a decent job making the older characters actually look their age, at least by HS standards.
- Fine job with making a LI (Kailey) that doesn’t rely on the same overused “supermodel”-ish type of beauty.
Mehs and hit/miss:
- Soundtrack is serviceable. Generally the music matches the tone of each scene. Including lewd ones. But i will lose my mind if i have to hear that damn guitar riff main theme.
- High School setting, but the ages don’t seem to match.
- Scatterbrain MC who only remembers exams the week they happen. Or rather, the writer never mentioned them because he only wrote it into the story the moment he needed the plot device. Instead of, you know, planning ahead.
- MC as a cheap self insert. A no lifer. Seemingly no friends in his entire childhood, just barely living day after day with no purpose from the start.
- At some point in chapter 4, Serena calls you MC. Breaks Immersion.
- Good but basic looking HS models. Boobs in particular are way too similar looking. Same relative areola size and texture, same overall boob shape (almost perfectly round, except kaylie). Most other HS AVN’s have at least a little bit of variety between models. (Except the boobs does in fact change with pregnancy, so theres that).
- Different models used for MC’s dong. I suppose I can respect the dev for gradually working towards better looking models. Some of the early ones are very plastic looking.
- Not using Mrs. Bells real name Mary in the later chapters. It feels a bit unnatural.
It seems the name issue, or title issue, applies to other persons. Sarah refers to MC’s mother in the formal manner of Mrs. Heartwood, rather than her actual name or surname, or just “your mom/mother”.
- Dialogue that ought to be handled with care and seriousness (cheering up Kaylie) is just a few cheap compliments and bam, she’s happy again.
- Camera during the first H scene moved around enough to cause slight nausea.
- Occasional grammar mistakes. Things like Punches -> Punched.
Cons: All men are assholes, comedy relief, villains or goons. Especially Toni and his father. They are scarcely more than a plot device. Also Vlad. Pure power fantasy.
- The decision regarding telling Melinda about your relation seems to be a fake choice.
- The world feels devoid of people, I assume that render limitations based on the number of character models is the reason.
- I had several sections here that I decided to cut down to a much shorter and simpler statement.
Depths Revival relies far to much and taking shortcuts and duct-taping otherwise good individual components together in a messy narrative contraption. You need to have an extremely open mind to not find yourself rolling your eyes dozens of times as you read. The amount of contrived setups and outcomes in the first 2/3rds of the AVN is substantial.
- Awkward scene transitions. At some point early on you leave the locker room to go to the P.E class. But the P.E class is a single CG of a few characters standing in a gym. No, text, no nothing. Next thing you know MC is sitting outside waiting for someone. Seriously, a black screen with a few passages of text describing the basics of how the PE class went, even if nothing significant did, would be way more immersive. The single CG was nothing but a pointless distraction.
- Generally speaking, dialogue is very superfluous and there is rarely anything to be understood and interpreted between the lines of text. If the story wants to tell you something, it will do so in a brunt manner, spelled out loud.
- I do not like the way the Imogen route is handled. Out of nowhere, MC just becomes this dominant asshole. Ok, I get the domination part, that seems to be Imogens niche (that and subservience), but why does MC randomly insist on all this assholery and vile trash talk. This isn’t the kind of behavior that becomes part of a main character out of nowhere. It feels very much like the writer forced the inclusion of this type content on the reader without consent. Now that I think about it, we weren’t given an Opt Out with Imogen. It was either femdom or maledom. Forcing this on the reader when your AVN seems centered around the niches of Harem, pregnancy, lactation and lovey dovey adoration is not wise. Variety is fine, but femdom and maledom are widely considered divisive/controversial and should be handled with care, unless they are the main feature of an AVN to begin with.
Rating conclusion: I decided to give Depths Revival 3 stars. But ones impression of the AVN will be very niche dependant.
If you are indifferent to incest, harem, impregnation and pregnancy itself, then Depths Revival may be no more than a 2 star AVN in your eyes. If, however, your expections for writing quality found in AVN's isn't that high and you also likethe mentioned niches, then DR might even qualify a weak 5 star experience for you.
Myself? Well, i definitely dig the niches and they are handled well here, but DR still lacks in so many objective qualities that i can't give it anything more than a strong 3 star rating.
