Based on the (as yet) unfinished v0.6
My usual disclaimers when writing reviews on here are that A. I am here for the "plot" not the plot and B. I am very picky with visual novels and think broadly they can be very subpar. So, take both of those into consideration for my review when thinking about this game.
Pros
- Very cool premise – So the broad setting is a near-real world city that has been kinda/sorta invaded by supernatural forces that nobody yet understands. This has thrown the city (country?) into disarray and law enforcement and emergency services are overwhelmed with not only normal problems but now the existence of supernatural stuff too. You take on the role of a private investigator who is something of a “freelancer” hired by the police for certain things. As part of this then you, play a standard dating-sim style game with all the harem trappings but ALSO many of the story beats are (or will be) linked to you solving cases and crimes. We haven’t actually got much in the way of different cases yet, but quite frankly I quite like the way this has been done. You get to perform investigations, interrogate subjects, make accusations based on evidence. Admittedly it’s not the most absolutely rock-solid of mechanics (it would have been very cool to see more options, along with the possibility for making mistakes, or dare I ask for anything as in-depth as Obra Dinn?), but I definitely appreciate the effort made here and personally feel like it draws me into the game when you have external objectives that push the story forward along with getting more sexy times
- Great character models – I’m honestly a bit stumped here because I’d almost say that the character look like they are made in Honey Select (they have that semi-cartoonish vibe to them and you’ll recognise some of the faces), but they’re also really high fidelity and look like a tonne of effort has gone into them. Basically, it’s night and day comparing the Honey Select here with the Honey Select used in many of the games on this site. This is apparently a contentious statement though with a number of other reviewers saying they hate the looks, so your mileage may vary.
- Very sexy sex – Always super important for me and the reason I am here. The fucking in the game so far is unquestionably SUPER hot. There’s the right amount of build-up and tension, the scenes have a decent length, they aren’t JUST a bunch of animations with no dirty talk or internal thought. Basically, they are amazing and there’s already a decent amount of them. We’re talking about a game that clearly has the intention of pushing a decent story whilst not skimping on the good stuff. It’s also already pretty damn kinky with some very rough and dominant scenes occurring which is just *chefs kiss* MWAH
Mehs
- Believability of the setting – As much as I enjoy the premise, I personally struggle a little with some aspects of it. We’re talking about a setting in which the paranormal is becoming something of an element of everyday life in the city… Or IS IT? Because it seems just about every character you meet doesn’t really believe in paranormal stuff. Which, I get that would be the normal reaction in the real world, but in a city where monsters and crazy phenomena are commonplace it strikes me as odd that everyone seems to constantly dismiss the likelihood of supernatural things happening. I also really struggle to buy the whole “the city is on the verge of collapse because of the amount of crime and strife and stuff” when REALLY you don’t actually get shown much of it, you just get told about it happening elsewhere off-camera. “Show, don’t tell” would be useful here.
Cons
- Awkward UI – Bit of a weird one here, because I think that the UI of the game actually LOOKS very sleek, intuitive and nice… However… Maybe this is just on the Mac version, but actually clicking on the buttons in the top left felt extremely fiddly, with the buttons not registering the cursor half the time unless you had the mouse in a very specific place. I would have liked this to feel simply a bit nicer and a bit easier to use. I also hate the fact that I have to go back to the house to skip time and that time-skipping cannot be done from the map. If time-skipping at the house is necessary then at least do not make me click through like 3 different menus to get there and just have a button that allows us to quickly teleport to the bedroom, so we don’t have to go through that every single bloody time.
- Grindy and awkward questing – There’s a number of “quests” in the game which relate to different characters and also plot threads. Many of which are totally separate from each other. These quests are extremely frustrating because it is often very difficult to figure out when one is completed in the current build, how to trigger the next stages and sometimes also frustrating because of having to grind events repeatedly in order to progress. This is something which could be made so much easier with a much clearer quest log and also reduce some of the repeated events (particularly in the CEO lady’s quest)
- “Patchwork” development – I’ll come back to this in the main review body.
Deviant Anomalies I think has the potential to be a super interesting and fun sandbox game. There’s sort of three or four different threads to the game, all of which are relatively inter-woven to different degrees.
There is the thread of “your parents have been murdered by supernatural entities and you are some kind of chosen one to sort this out”. There is the standard detective investigation stuff, which has the potential to be the most interesting part of the game. There’s a sort of pimping/e-girl management thing going on when you progress far enough with one girl and I’ll mention this again in a second. And then on top of this there’s a bunch of different relationships with multiple different girls you will progress over the game.
Of these, like I say, the detective thing has the potential to be the most interesting aspect, so it’s just an absolute shame that the quest log and tracking is just so absolutely janky as hell. The very first “main” investigation has you heading off to investigate the murder of a nun and actually pushing through it and figuring out what to do when is frustrating as hell, and even more unfortunately is that I my version ended up bugging out near the end so I wasn’t able to finish it without a complete restart of the game (which I WAS NOT willing to do).
The reason I wasn’t willing to do that is related then to the pimping/management bit of the game. This feels like there might actually be a whole different interesting thing going on here too, but in order to actually access the pimping bit you literally have to work through dozens of repeated events with one character. It’s kind of insane actually, you work through event after event with this CEO lady (as part of a bet with a bartender) and it’s only then after hours of this that you win the bet and THEN go back to the bartender and she goes “hey let’s set up a prostitution ring”. It happens so far down the line and yet seems like such an important aspect of the game… Like… Why is this not easier to access? Surely it should trigger much earlier given how major the thread seems to be becoming?
The questing thing in general feels like it needs more work. It needs to be clearer how to trigger certain events, it needs to be clearer when you have reached the end of a certain chain (as per a given build) and it also needs to be clearer what quests have been completed and so-on. As an example of this, there is a red-head, tattooed chick who constitutes one of the side-quests, and during her quest there are a few seemingly important decisions. After the MC and her fuck each other senseless, her quest vanished from my quest log. Did I fuck it up somehow? Will I get another new quest with her down the line? It’s just… Constantly frustrating not knowing if I am on a certain chain and doing things right there.
On top of this, I mentioned earlier that there’s multiple different quite important story “chains” and the fact that they all seem important actually makes each of them lose their individual impact. Like, the whole premise of the game is that you are becoming this detective to solve the mystery of the supernatural murder of your parents. Well, at some point there was a major moment in this story and I had genuinely forgotten that this is what I was meant to care about because I was too busy trying to fuck a redhead chick and also set up an escort service with another one…
I think the “patchwork” development I mentioned is currently potentially actually the biggest issue with the game and I actually think might be the root cause of a lot of what I’ve moaned about so far.
Essentially the dev doesn’t seem to be developing everything in a strictly linear fashion. Instead, it seems like he will develop one branch of a story a good chunk down the story line (be it a side quest or main investigation). In doing-so however, he also seems to want some decent overlap between the different missions and quests and stuff (which is laudable in theory I guess). The sticking point here is that if a branch of one story extends past where another one has ended and they then overlap, he essentially will “cut to black” for the section of the mission where the overlap occurs. Then when he extends the other branch he fills in the gaps as he goes, filling in the bits and pieces where they overlap.
This leads to TWO major issues: one it means that some story missions will have a section which says “this part is not yet completed and so will be skipped here”. Quite aside from any immersion breaking (which is significant on its own) this means that if you want to experience every mission as it is intended but also DON’T want to have to go back and replay the game a bunch of times, you might basically have to wait until the whole bloody thing is finished. The other issue is that it means that some branches extend waaaayyyy past other aspects and so the whole game is just totally lopsided. Again, a good example of this is setting up the semi-escort service is easily the longest piece of content in the game and requires many multiple visits to the same location at only ONE time point during the day. So there are many days in a row where you skip through the whole day itself and then do this one thing in the evening, which is always just a bit of a pain.
On top of all of this, this patchwork and janky development means you will regularly find roadblocks to progress where there will be a button placeholder which, when you click says “oh this doesn’t actually work yet”. It’s, again, stupidly frustrating and exhausting because there’s this sensation of there being all this promised content and none of it is available… Yet… It’s all just being teased for future releases.
The thing is, I’m not sure what the solution to this is beyond suggesting that the dev
TOTALLY change their approach to actually making their game. You’ll notice that I am reviewing this based on a (much) older version of the game, and that’s because while I actually genuinely liked the content of Deviant Anomalies, I was so thoroughly put off by the feeling of constantly missing things that I basically don’t want to go back to it until it’s in a MUCH more completed state and I won’t have to worry about replaying it over and over just so I can see one scene all the way through as its intended to be.
I noticed as well that at least one recent review says basically the exact same thing, so this is not something which has changed in the last 2 updates either. It’s just a real frustration because I feel like there’s some very sexy and fun framework here, it’s just aggravating to actually play it.
