Ren'Py - Onhold - Divine Providence Fall [v0.6] [Ulith]

V0.4

Played all the events, a pretty decent game with few scenes and a good story.

I won't say it's the best but I kind of enjoyed it when I played. Perhaps it will be developed as the story proceeds. Some scenes in the Main story were pretty good. MC is ok, he is a bit monotonous right now but already I am seeing some development on his side due to his interactions with the LI's.

I was really intrigued by Ai's character hope we see her materialized in the physical realm and she is an LI. Aisha is by far the best, I would really like if we get the MC and Aisha's back story a bit more.

Some parts in the Sandbox was a bit tricky, but the guides were ok to navigate them.

Overall a good game, with ability to become really great as you develop it.
The LI's introduced were good and look cute and hot.

Best of Luck with your game Ulith.

I enjoyed my time with it for how short it currently is. What I like is that we don't spend 10 meaningless updates with only foreplay. The lore is uninteresting and I do appreciate the skip choice for it. The score might drop depending on how the sandbox elements are like. I have never enjoyed a sandbox game with money and stat grinding so I'm glad there is currently no money or stat grinding in this game. Since I gave it a 5 star for now, the score can only go down depending on future updates.

Descriptions is misleading. "You're not match for any magician". You're effortlessly beating magicians with attacks they can't comprehend first meeting.
MC is a mary sue. Or, more specifically, AI is. AI the AI. She can do anything. Literally anything. At any time. Somehow. Don't question how. Meet god? Just erase god's reality. Somehow.
Except fix your GF. Or even understand what's wrong with her. Her brain 'failed'. What does that even mean? I don't know, she doesn't know, AI doesn't know... or maybe she does. No one thought to ask her.
MC didn't even make this AI. His GF did. In 1 year she outdoes him in a decade, yet for some reason the AI is considered 'his' and refuses to work for her. He's a guy who 'drifted into coding' and so out of touch with reality he didn't even know what AI is used for while coding AI. But for some reason this 9000 IQ hyper genius NEEDED him specifically to finish AI. Why? What did he do? Not explained.
There's no agency at all in anything. AI completely removes any concept of anything mattering at all. Even actual deity's have to just give up in her presence. As a result, there's no reason to care about or like this MC. He can't do anything himself. Rather than creating a powerless MC who has to think his way around his lack of magic, we have an MC who's just 100% reliant on being carried by his pet AI, who never has to think about anything because she's already curbed any threat before it matters, except when she just doesn't, for no reason.

He's not even likeable as a person because despite his seemingly pure love for his waifu, he's finger banging a chick he met like 30 mins ago within the prologue. Why even have him be in love with a chick if he's just going to be a man whore anyways? I really don't get it. It ruins the entire point of the story and his conviction to literally cross realities to find his GF if he's this quick to thrust a slick dick in some random chick.

And this is all in the prolouge, before it turns into a sandbox. For some reason. Doesn't really feel like it needs to be one, but it is. A sandbox which doesn't even work right. I click 'memo' to see where to go (thankfully it at least has this). Memo never closes. No matter what I click, where I go, the UI has the memo screen on top.

The (small) amount of lewd content is really bad. Like stock animation of licking nipple, 1 (1) line of dialogue, stock animation of dick in hole, done. No insight in how the characters feel, no build up, no real sign of enjoyment, mc doesn't say anything, about 5 clicks long. And that's the BETTER lewd scene.

This is a game where clearly all the focus is on writing, but the writing is abysmal, even if you ignore the constant broken english. Needs a lot of work.

English: 4/10
User Interface: 5/10
User Experience: 4/10
Art: 6/10
Dialogue: 2/10
Story: 4/10
Opinion: 5/10
------------------------------
Avg: 4.29/10 [2/5]

I tried this before, I was turned off and away by the sandbox tag. But there's a stubborn part of me that wants to try to get through this, solely because the dev opens the game by saying "Some people were too stupid to understand the fake pseudo science I put in my game, so skip the intro, play the game a bit, then play the intro again later. It might help your peabrain understand." Yeah, that was hyperbole, but we all know it's essentially what it meant. My advice would be: This is a dumb porn game, maybe don't try to elaborate on quantum dynamics that don't exist trying to be the smartest person in the room about things that, again, don't exist. Also, the last time I tried it i don't even remember getting to the sandbox because it had nothing to pull me in. It was a lot of trailed off sentences and avoiding proper nouns to amass intrigue. Like kingdom hearts writing or something. But I will get as far as I can and express my thoughts as best I can as it's the only game I have in my imaginary "to review" backlog.

Starts by saying MC is one of the creators of the "super" AI named... Ai. Okay. And she discovers a plane connected to the universe. But upon telling MC about this plane, MC already is connected to this plane. A plane that is made of neural activity and somehow those thoughts manifested into the shape of MC. So not only did they discover a new universe, but in that vastness of infinity, that functions on brainwaves, you also found something that looks like MC? Ok, my disbelief is so suspended, it might as well be a bridge.Then MC says he's 200 years old, at least. I'm like 20 lines in and I'm already overwhelmed. Not by the information, but the speed at which it's all glossed over. "Hey we discovered a new universe. We can already scan everything about it. We found you in there. Apparently it's all souls. Oh, only people that have touched something from that universe are connected to it. Oh and you're the bicentennial man. That we couldn't detect the particles from earlier?" Only for one of the next lines to be "ESSENTIALLY IT'S MAGIC, DUMBASS." And it's all in broken English too. There is a line that says "Ask Aisha about this question. Only she can deal with your, the most annoying in the whole world." Stellar grammar. Then flashback to essentially this year, MC losing his job developing AI... To developing different AI? In desperation, he calls Aisha. A woman that contacted him for no reason to help her make AI as well. Then another time skip happens, and with terrible grammar and her legs clipping through her skirt, Aisha says she's learned more about life since MC's been a part of hers. Then you see the cliff notes of their life together and Aisha dies. Then is jumps back to MC going to another universe, he meets a god, gets "saved" by darkness and upon reincarnation, the first person he meets says "Come live with me, my son, and my daughter you strange man."

After that, you get accosted by lore dump after lore dump. Every character you meet tells you their life story. And if they don't, MC being some all powerful, omnipotent being dives in their memories to tell you the information. And yet again, it's in terribly broken English. The dev chimes in with "This has been said it's difficult to understand" But the real joke is it's not because the subject matter is too complicated for our plebian minds, it's because the writer doesn't speak English but is writing an entire story in a language they don't speak. As of this moment, I don't know if I'll have the patience to finish this google translated nightmare. So far, every choice has been "Do you want to see a detailed explanation? The broken English makes it hard to understand." But it's been "AI evolved to do amazing things, almost like a god." Then "Lilith was is the demon lord and abolished men in hell, now she's back after losing some power." And "Magic does magic things." THEN ANOTHER ONE ABOUT HYPERION. So instead of using MC's fake amnesia to learn about the world and history semi-fluidly, you get a bunch of terrible forced lore dumps that you can only return to through save scumming. And some or most of them don't even matter. I'm all for world building, that's great. But build it through characters interacting and MC learning. Not "The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" type walls of text. And all of the sexual content is completely non sequitur. Just out of nowhere you see boobs or some dream sex. Or "It was good talking to you, want same sex?" in the case of Xena. And to continue it's non sequitur nature, the story just stops and suddenly you're in a bare, empty sandbox, clicking skip time until there's something to do. For about what, 8 events that you have to skip to arbitrary days at arbitrary times to see nothing happen? How fun.

I'm not gonna mince words, this won't grab you. Once you get to the empty sandbox, everything says "Under development" or "Please wait for updates." And there's no reason for this to be a sandbox. MC already made his choice to be in love with Aisha. What more is there to do? The English is bad. Like, really bad. The UI is standard, but I gave extra points for the sandbox interface. UX is standard, but a useless sandbox is not fun. I like the art. Minus the 20 gallon missile tits that would give everyone the posture of Quasimodo, I like the "Koikatsu sans outline" style. The dialogue is a bunch of boring lore dumps in broken English, and MC is emotionless, so it's a chore to read. And the story is over. MC finds his dead wife in another universe and they love each other again. What is next? The Evil God wants to do things. Ooohh~ so mysterious. My opinion is middle of the road. If this got rid of the lore dumps and just ended after reuniting the married couple, this could have been a sweet, short story. But MC is dry, banal, and mildly unpleasant and the language barrier just bogs this down. If someone that actually speaks English edits this, and they come up with a point to continue, as well as ditch the sandbox, I would gladly come back to change my rating. But as it stands, "Please wait for updates."

At the time of writing this game is in an early stage and I am giving it a cautious 5 star review to encourage the developer to work on what I think is an interesting concept.

This game is quite story heavy as I anticipated from reading the overview. It is interesting enough though and quite unlike most other games. I really like the dynamic between the two main characters, the MC and Aisha. Their backstory is probably the biggest highlight so far.

I quite like the main character as well. He is not cringy and mysterious enough to allow your imagination to fill in the blanks. This is a good thing, although I do think that in the early game it would be nice to get a little more of the MCs inner thoughts because it slows down the pace and prevents information overload.

That also brings me into the main issue which is the pacing. I think the reason that people say the prologue is "too much" is simply pacing. First of all, I think it's not too bad... but it does warrant mentioning. I think post-"reincarnation" is the point where the pacing becomes too fast. Too many characters and scenes are introduced in too short an amount of time. Right at the start, the backstory of Aisha had much better pacing I think so the author should try to stay closer to that. Although I can sympathize with wanting to get to the point.

I am curious where the story will go and follow the author here and on patreon for the time being.

Enjoyable experience, a complex and creative world, good characters, very detailed storytelling (it can be a negative for some, didn't bother me, it doesn't mean that I understood everything at first, but it didn't made the experience less enjoyable).

The only negative for me was the overall feeling, it felt melancholic (don't ask me why, maybe because of what happens at the beginning or just because MC is a cold person overall).

The end of .20 was pretty sweet, let's see how the story evolve from here.

The story and quality seem great, however it feels like some explanations are hard to follow and too long even for a prologue. I gave this game 5 stars anyways since it is still the prologue so it is understandable to have a lot of explanations and this game has great potential.