Review written for 0.11b, viewer discretion is advised
TL;DR: While everything around this game oozes high production value, the game just is not engaging for various reasons and thus can only rate at an average of 3/5 for me, reasoning for that in the long post.
Alrighty, I've played this game for many versions now, feeling qualified to give a reviewing statement.
After checking it out, I was actually unable to finish the game this time around - not because of game-breaking bugs or anything like that. No, it's because I lacked the engagement and the hook to keep on playing. This honestly is a huge shame because the renders, interface-work, music choice for locales all scream out to me "This is some high qualiy work.", but why is the engagement lacking? Well, I'll come to that one later down the line, But for now...
Let us start with the good bits:
-The quality of character renders, screens and music is all superb - this alone is a huge plus for the game.
-It has very little to no grind, more about exploration and working off the goals you tend to stumble into, which is a nice plus for a sandbox-typish game, despite it being marked as a VN, which tend to be either branching path or fairly linear.
-For a first playthrough, even when following a walkthrough, it has a good amount of content and a relatively lengthy playtime, so there's enough around for you to enjoy.
Well well, this all sounds too good to be true, a decent playtime for what the current version number (0.11b) would suggest, high qualiy graphics and not that much grind involved? How could a game then receive only a meager 3 star rating? What abhorrent flaws must I have come across that I could only rate it this low, or am I just talking out of my ass here?
Sadly, this is where the bad bits hit hard:
-The characters themselves are basically so wooden you could mistake them for cardboard cutouts with smiley faces drawn onto it. This is not reflective in their... well, extremely unbelievable physique. Let me elaborate:
->Their personalities are basically one-dimensional. Why is this a bad thing? Many games work with stereotypical characters and make great work out of it. While this is correct, none of the characters here have any real progression to them. Their personalities shift barely at best - They may react to the events surrounding them, but they barely grow from them.
-This bleeds into the second issue: The premise is barely drawing you in. With characters that are stereotypically flawed and not developing from this point, you may quickly lack any form of engagement on your part.
-This issue is also not helped by the next thing that (at least on my end) is bothering to no end: Every person here looks like an absolute bombshell model. While there is nothing wrong with attractive figures, it's totally not helping your suspension of disbelief in a game which bases its' premise about you nailing your (extremely hot) family - there's barely any variety in them and they could basically be interchanged for any other character.
-I do have another issue with the renders: While they all are extremely high quality, to me the animations feel extremely stiff and robotic nontheless, regardless of the quality of the models. This might just be a personal issue, but it still tanks the experience like tiananman square.
While the material very well be great for a quick nut, anybody who is looking for an overarching plot or actual character development that goes deeper than "bad thing happen, lets avoid bad thing" is better off looking for another game. If you can live with these issues and just want to enjoy the game for what it's worth, or aren't really interested in story to begin with, give it a spin. It might be worth your time.