Ren'Py - Falling Stars [v0.8.2] [nyatd]

I really liked the story. And the development of the character throughout the story. Also the variety of personalities in friends that the MC makes. In addition to the effects and background music.
And its originality in the plot.

This VN manages a truly amazing feat of having half a dozen LI and literally none of them being actually appealing. Every main LI is a collection of red flags and negative character traits with little to offset that, and you have no control over who you want to interact with because of plot. Piling mountains of "tragic backgrounds" doesn't make characters endearing, it only takes out the sting of it and reduces everything to meaningless drama.
The main plot could have been interesting, if it wasn't completely lost between a dozen different plot threads, all pulling in different directions and turning the whole thing into a mess. The MC acts like either a passive bitch or an utter mongoloid, completely against his supposed background of a great champion wrestler.
The world is unbelievable and illogical, breaking its own rules. Breaking the law is apparently fine and dandy if it happens on the ring, as no one gets punished for the constant disregard of the organizations own rules, and the literal armed assault. Imagine if in MMA fight one of the contestants pulled out a baton an wailed on the opponent, while no one cares and no punishment is served. This happens several times.
The gameplay pretends to have depth, with stats and action choices, but in reality is a window dressing to what is basically a kinetic novel. The stats have no relevance to the main plot, house events have no relevance to the main plot and exist purely to segue into poorly thought out porn logic scenes, and progressing the main plot itself is either done by playing the guessing game of when to arbitrary hangout with one of the 8 characters, or far more sensibly just asking the help option for the next event.
The koikatsu visuals are at best adequate, hardly worth mentioning, if you played any of the other kk based games, you know what you will see.
Being koikatsu based also severely limits the actual "fights", because it just isn't made for that, so they end up looking like a joke.
The sex scenes are of two types, an out of nowhere plot contrivance. or "congratulating" the losing opponent, that for some reason really wants to ride your dick after getting the shit beat out of them. Oh, and doing that also reduces affection with your own fighters because :^) . And the story pretends like you DO actually go for those scenes, because despite the fact that I chose the LI girls, it was treated like the MC was going around fucking the fighters in a later event of random sex.

Being a huge WWF/WWE fan, it is a pleasure to see a game based on professional wrestling. Getting to know the different characters and watch them go at it in the ring is fantastic. The build up to the adult scenes is decent The story is passable. Keep up the good work

Great game,great story,great concept.The only slightly negative thing about the game is the renders that might look less appealing compared to some other koikatsu games.But even still the game doesn't look bad at all,and even adding new characters every update the design are still pretty unique from each other.Even if the game have a big focus on wrestling you don't really don't need to understand a lot about to understand the story.

review for version 0.7.0

good wrasslin vn, cute as fuck girls, especially the twins, some funny jokes, decent revenge story, lost of wrasslin jokes and references, pretty comfy, gonna need more soon tho.

This game is high effort and much more interesting compared to plenty of other koikatsu games.

The plot is pretty earnest and fun. Characters all have different personalities and the dialogue is written well.

I didn't expect much going in but I actually really like it. Worth a try, and I hope it gets finished!

Version: 0.5.4
Type: Story-based
Content: A lot
Pacing: Slow but linear if you check Saki reports
Plot line: Wrestling, MC is disabled Coach seeking revenge, Bullying, Corruption, Violence

Character Models: Ok-ish
Personalities: Main Charm of the Game - Fiery - honest - disgusting and more

Music: Decent - Pumped
Animation: Ok-ish

Note: A LOT of story but H-scenes are not few for those worrying. LOTS of jokes and insults with many funny situations and some heartwarming scenes too.
Thoughts: at most 4 stars (really subjective here). Depends a on how you feel about wrestling.

Review as of version 0.6.

Pros

• Decent idea for a story.
  
  
• Uncommon and nice concept, ie women being bitchy towards and beating the crap out of each other. Catfighting is not a well represented fetish in the erotic games genre. That it's actual hard core violence rather than scratching and hairpulling is also a plus, allthough how unfased the victims of the violence are for the most part are is severly unrealistic (see below).
  
  
• Good dialogue
  
  
• Humour, right amount without it taking over.
  
  
• No grind
  
  
• No engrish
  
  
• MC decently taller than the female LIs. A low bar many games can't clear. During the later stages of the game he seems to shrink down to the same size as the women during sex though, so only half points for this.
  
  
• Good animations, however not that much of a pro considering the con regarding the ugly models.
  
  
• Sex early on.
  
  
• Decent explanation for women flying to the MCs cock, as he's a super famous wrestling star (and supposedly good, looking, though the model sure doesn't look it) and the women he's fucking are all part of the wrestling universe, so for them he's this huge star. Still, takes it way to far with many of the non-LI fucks, se below.
  
  
• Jealousy and conlfict between LIs. Realistic in a harem setting and gives the game some nerve. Plus for non sexually induced conflict, but also a minor minus because some of it is silly.
  
  
• All the LIs have their own music score.
  
  
• Much content.

Cons

• Ugly, look alike, stick-figure models with balloon tits and baloon dick that have no curves or muscle tone apart from the attached looking breasts in the earlier parts of the game. Gets a little bit better in the later parts of the game, but still not good. Actually I would like to reduce the rating even more for this, but since there are a number of games with the same basic set up I guess some people go for that, so to some extent it has to be subjective. But for me, it's bad enough that I have a hard time getting aroused by the sex animations.
  
  
• Literally cartonishly scrawny MC in the early parts of the game, despite him being a famous ex-wrestler. In the later parts he has muscle tone, but is still very scrawny. Also, when he grows a little muscle tone, he shrinks during sex at the same time, so still bad.
  
  
• LIs have no muscletone at all, despite being wrestlers who can both fight and do acrobatic maneuvers.
  
  
• Inconsistent world building. For instance, at one point we're told that being a porn actress in Todogawa (the fictional country where the game takes place) is lethaly dangerous since in Todogawa anything goes in porn and that has attracted criminal elements that murder porn actresses on a regular basis. But later, we're told that in Todogawa police look the other way when vigilantes murder rapists and child molesters. And the reason they do that is that in Todogawa, violence towards children and women is not accepted, which leads to the vigilantes not having that much to do, because the entire society punishes men who abuse women and children and also, there are less of that kind crime because it's not accepted (unlike the rest of the world where child molesting and rape is accepted... ). How the "no tolerance" policy regarding violence towards women go together with the porn-actresses-murdered-on-a-regular-basis is never explained.
  
  
• Two LIs outright telling the MC that he should continue fucking other women, because they want him to. Yes, because that's what women do. Particularly when one of them is the MCs former girlfriend who still loves him and wants to get back together, she conveniently doesn't want it right now and the other one is his number one fan who also loves him. Completely needless too, because none of them are in a relationship with the MC at the time, so he shouldn't need their permission. But I guess this is there to give permission for our white knight to fuck around while still pining for his lost girlfriend.
  
  
• MC wild change of character not that believable. MC used to be super arrogant asshole, but in game he's mainly a white knigth simp. Now if someone is going to go from one extreme to another, shouldn't there be some sort of personal discovery journey involved? Shouldn't there be relapses where his old personality rears its head? At least in his monologues. Feels a bit like this is two different characters rather than the same person. In real life people rarely change their personalities so drastically and completely over night.
  
  
• Women pursuing the MC for sex, rather than the other way around. While that isn't so unrealistic given that the famous and supposedly handsome MC is used to women fan-girling him all the time, it works poorly with a harem concept-game and leads to the MC coming across as a simp more than what is probably intended by the dev.
  
  
• Very slow burn for LIs, probably because of the above.
  
  
• Little sex to time ratio, because of the slow burn and exacerberated if the player isn't interested in the silly and formulaic sex with female non-LI wrestlers after they loose matches to the wrestlers in the MCs stall, see below.
  
  
• Silly setup for sex with non-LI women in the form of the MC getting to fuck all and every wrestler who looses to one of the wrestlers in his stall. Apparently, every female wrestler have the hots for their opponents coach...
  
  
• All fuckable non-LI npcs are super ridiculous stereoptypes. Some of the LIs also trend towards silly stereotypes.
  
  
• Railroaded story. Choices are mainly relegated to sex or no sex and good response (gives affinity) or bad response (reduces affinity). Some choices seem like they should matter, but when I tested to go back and choose differently in one of those instances, the story didn't change, just a couple of lines of dialouge at a later date.
  
  
• Too many sob-story backgrounds for the LIs (is there anyone who doesn't have a sob-story? Don't think so). But I guess if you're getting off on playing a white knight, maybe that's a feature rather than a bug. For me it feels silly, unrealistic and repetative and it cheapens the impact of the tragic background stories in the game, as they feel like a dime in a dozen.
  
  
• Ultra violence, yet no one is ever bruised, almost never any blood (they should be drenched, not to mention, sometimes dead...) and everyone wants to fuck after having gotten the shit kicked out of them.
  
  
• Cliff hangers over and over and over again, meaning characters who are to reveal some long sought after secret are interupted and then the revelation is pushed back to a later time. Very annoying, this is not a fucking tv-show where you have to bait people to come back for the next episode. Similarly, information is being kept from the MC at all times by his allies and being the simp that he is, he accepts it. All so that it can be revealed later, like som godamn Mexican soap opera.
  
  
• Young innocent virgins have hairless pussies, sexually active women between 25 - 30 have hair on their pussies. Realistically, it should be the other way around, shaving ones pussy is not an expression of innocence, but rather an expression of sexuallity.

This is a great game. If you're wondering if you should play it, you can stop reading and go play it now. Even without the lewd stuff, it's just an entertaining thing to experience.

Why is it good?

The setting: It's unique and well thought out. It's not a high school or a college, you're not all living in a love hotel, you're not corrupting a harem (But there IS a harem, don't worry!)

The writing: This game is funny. Lots of clever jokes, culture references (even outside of wrestling) and parodies of Celebs (poor Not-Ronda-Rousey) But there is also a GOOD underlying story building, with high stakes and quite a bit of mystery. You sometimes have to wonder if you can trust someone that you obviously care about and it's not at all clear who exactly is on your side. I find that the best VNs always leave you wanting to see whats next with the story, rather than just wondering what the next set of lewds will be.

Production value: Good music, dynamic scenes and a lot of good locations. It's never repetitive outside of the few times you need to "train" for stat points. (There's also repeatable events for affection points, but they don't do anything yet apparently, so just doing them once to see them is sufficient)

The lewd: Lots of girls to have sexytimes with, from Love Interests to "I'm only doing this to see how crazy it's going to be" No real jealousy from pursuing multiple girls, though there are some rivalries that are baked into the storyline. And there are some slow-burn girls still developing, so there's more to look forward too on that front. A wide variety of scenes, and they're pretty good if not revolutionary.

The visuals: I see a lot of comments about them being bad. They aren't. It's definitely Koikatsu. There are some big games out there who use it better, but what you're getting here is still pretty great, and it's obviously improving a lot, quickly. Best of all, the game uses these assets very uniquely, so you're not just getting another dozen variations on school girls (though if thats your thing, you'll be happy with a few of the wrestling uniforms for sure)

I'm not gonna list anything as a negative, because honestly nothing is bad enough to complain about or bring the score down.

The game is good, and I can't wait for more.

Join us all in anticipation of Tessa (that blonde jerk in the banner) getting what she so richly deserves. (as the twins would say; it's a kick in the fanny)

Overall, the writing is great, especially the moment-to-moment writing for all the characters. The story has a good mix of comedy, drama, and suspense. Although the story revolves around Professional Wrestling, it's very approachable even if you don't know much about it, and the author's clear fondness of it is infectious.

There's a good variety of music that consistently matches mood of the scenes, and the game avoids the many common royalty-free tracks you tend to hear ad nauseum if you play a lot of VNs.

Visuals are the biggest weakness - particularly the somewhat stiff and basic Koikatu models/animations. They lack the refinement and added detail that is put into some of the games that implement Koikatu better. The backgrounds are also a bit notably low quality/resolution in some cases as well.

I'm not going to dock a whole star for the visuals (I'd dock a half star if it were possible), as the VN makes up for it in being an all-around enjoyable experience despite this flaw.

I hate to give a mediocre score to a game that so clearly has a lot of love pumped into it by the creator, but here we are.

The good: The releases are timely, the characters are mostly engaging (other than the MC), there is some decent humor, and there's a ton of content.

The bad:
First-- the art sucks. Koikatsu games can be pretty good (there are several great ones out there), but in the hands of someone who is not as skilled or has no time to spend on the CGs it can be underwhelming. This is the latter.

Second-- The underlying premise is "what if WWE was real", which is kinda interesting, but the implementation is, frankly, dumb. I realize this is partially a taste issue, but since I have to spend a lot of time in this game seeing the exact same shit over and over (one of the wrestlers is standing still and not defending themselves, the other one takes a lot of time to make a ridiculously elaborate "move" that would put someone in the hospital) I feel it's valid. It's "real wrestling" that looks nothing like what you see in the Olympics, it's 100% WWE bullshit but we are supposed to buy into it with no help whatsoever from the writer. You gotta give me a reason to believe, man, and it's just not there. It's "real"WWE with no plausible explanations for the sillier bits.

The third problem I have with the game is the sex tends to be pretty formulaic. That is not a huge flaw-- the MC bangs a shitload of girls, so that's gonna happen-- but there doesn't seem to be as much effort put into the sex content as the "wrestling". Since I'm here for the former, that's a problem for me.

TL,DR: It's a silly fun game, and if you are a WWE fanboy with no art-snob DNA whatsoever you'll probably enjoy it. But it's not top tier, nor even really close.

So for once 90% of my issues with a piece of work are all technical. This one isn't bad. There is ACTUAL humor in this that isn't all just making pop culture references (at least for the main characters.) The characters are generally all personable and likable. The dialogue isn't stiff and the phonetic spelling is fun. And MC being a Gary-Stu isn't as bad as it usually is which I'm thankful for. But he still is one. And later i'll get into my issues but if nothing else it's worth a read.

The story is about MC, former wrestling champ that got his career destroyed by disney villains. They're the worst part of the story, honestly. And what I mean is they literally just do bad things to do bad things. Almost everyone else has good and bad to them and it's appreciated, but the villains just are bad, so they're boring. But I digress. MC loses his career due to injury and defamation, and one day decides "let me manipulate some female wrestlers to fight the daughter of the guy that hurt me." I'm paraphrasing but it's how all this starts. He tries to loop his ex into it but she's checked out mentally for reasons yet to be explained. So since he can't get Mirai, the ex, to do it, he pretty much uses his fame to get a former fan to wrestle for him offering to coach her.

Now, I know I'm being reductive and things are spun better in the writing, but that's the basic gist of it. I like wrestling, for whatever reason, and this is entertaining. This spins it as instead of it all being an act, all the drama is real. Tessa, the main villain, is a nightmare of a human being that just wants fame, and all the women MC brings into the fold have a vendetta or goal that aligns with his. And the backstories are actually not that bad. However it does that thing where as soon as MC is about to learn something either someone interrupts or says "I'VE GOT SOMETHING TO DO KBYE" and that even becomes a running joke. Usually I go over the story more, but I like this and it's worth a read so I won't spoil anything.

Now, onto my issues. The UI. I think I am the loudest, or the only, person on this site that says anything about the default RenPy UI. But it needs to go. The main choice screens, the ones that you choose what to do twice a day have to be changed. Making a custom screen for those would be simple and 100% should be imagebuttons that make it more interesting to look at. If Dev wants to talk to me about helping with that, gladly. But change the textbox and choice backgrounds, and some UI improvements and this is golden. That or change this to a linear story because it mostly already is. My ONLY story complaint is what I mentioned earlier, the villains are nothing. A good villain is not someone you want to destroy because they are just evil, it's someone you can understand but they're doing the wrong things. But this is a dumb porn game so i can let it pass. (That's not a jab just a statement, look at what website we're on.)

I enjoyed that game a lot.
Spent a good time on it.
I would have loved better H scenes and to be able to train more specifically the girls
Or to be able to improve training room for better training results
I loved that game so far, I laughed a lot and got in the story.
Thanks mate

Game version 0.4.2

I must say it: This game has the ugliest, least detailled chars I have seen (or at least one out of 3) on FN.
I was wondering why- is it intentional?

The animation quality is medicore at best, I blame the engine for that (,too..)

The story is quite good, in comparison to the mainstream out here. In fact, I haven't seen anything like it before.

The reason I quit, deleted and set it on my ignore list is simply the graphics- it hurts my taste, eyes, and my Bernhard.

A fantastic game that deserves a lot more attention than it seems to be getting at the moment. Don't let the theme put you off if you're not a fan of wrestling. I'm pretty ambivalent towards wrestling, and I never felt that it hindered my enjoyment in any way.

The clear strengths are in the writing and characters. The characters are all well developed and unique, and despite their quirks they don't feel one-dimensional. Their interactions with each other are both believable and very entertaining. The setting is also well developed, with great attention to detail and a world that feels real. As of v0.4.1, the story itself is still in a building phase, but I'm invested and eager to see it progress.

Visually, the game is a well executed Koikatsu game, with solid character designs and generally good use of the available assets.

In terms of gameplay, the sandbox is generally pretty inoffensive, though I'm not sure how much it really adds to the game. Grinding is minimal, and the addition of the Saki Report function makes it easy to find the next event.

If I had to critique something, it would be that the actual wrestling matches tend to feel a bit disjointed. They feel like strings of individual moves that aren't connected to each other, and it can be hard to follow the flow of the fight as a result.

Overall, the game is brilliant, and I'm eager to see how it develops.

Reviewed v0.4.1

The story is good, some revenge, romance mixed with wrestling which is not bad, it has good ambience music and also some nice characters (Yuki is my favorite), the sandbox tag may be scary, but there is not much to grind. For this version (v0.3.4) there is a decent amount of content, the only downsides for me is the UI, it can be a bit more stylish not the standard one, but other than that I find it enjoyable. Looking forward to the next update and how this conflict will resolve.

Gameplay
Controls: Click to progress, occasional choice of options.
Interface: Basic menus, with options to get rid of certain translations. However, there is no gallery system. Which for me, keeps it out of five stars.
Writing
Plot: Extremely interesting, with good main and subplots.
Characters: Very powerful women who don’t put up with any shit, I love them all.
Typos: I can’t remember any typos.
Art
Models: Stunning and stylized.
Background: Exactly as good as they need to be.
Audio
Music: Got some serious grooves in here.
Effects: Well used.
Voices: Silent.

I absolutely loved playing this. Funny dialog, great and diverse characters and a clear love and respect for wrestling. This is one of my all time favorites.

Thank you for making this great game, I look forward to seeing where it will go from here.

I'm such a mark for this game... colorful characters, unique concept, detailed and complex back stories, humor, and of course lots of wrestling. Its not perfect yet- just a few minor nitpicks that's in most porn games- but nothing to stop me from giving max stars. I'd recommend this to anyone looking for something fresh and fun

v0.2.3

Fun story, cute characters. The dating sim elements feel unnecessary and this would have been better as a VN.

You're a former pro wrestler who has been drummed out of the industry after being framed for using performance enhancing drugs (that's how you know it's fiction). You decide to get your revenge by becoming a manager for women's wrestlers in hopes that they can beat the daughter of the man who discredited you.

The writing is delightful. There are very few games on here where I don't check out and start hitting the "skip to choice" button pretty early on and but this one is very readable without overwhelming you with text.

The girls are cute as heck--both their figures and personalities. They're maybe a little too willing to go to bed with you but you're portrayed as this big name celebrity so it's not THAT implausible.

I just really don't like the dating sim elements. The way the game works is you have two time periods each day (morning and evening) where you can pick a girl to meet with for training (increases their ability) or hangs (increases their affection). In the evening you can also enter them into main show bouts (required for story progress) or house show matches. At a house show the girl will gain ability and then you have the opportunity to meet with her after the match (increases affection) or meet with the opposing girl who will have sex with you for "porn film logic" reasons.

So in theory you would have a requirement for your next main or side story progression (Have Girl A at Affection > X and Ability > Y, etc. etc.) and you'd grind training or hang outs until you met those requirements and were then given a series of new requirements. In practice (and I admit I haven't finished current content) the house show requirements are set at your starting values and I haven't run into any other real gates. So it's more like the game will say "I should do [thing] next" and then you can do that thing if you want to progress the main story or you can do the house shows or hangouts if you want to unlock or replay sex scenes.

This means there isn't much (or any?) grinding which is commendable but it's a drawback when, for example, I haven't played in a couple days. I load up and it's morning and I'm asked what I want to do and I can train one of three girls or hang out with one of seven and in order to remember what the one specific thing I'm supposed to be doing is I have to rollback text. You could fix this with something in the roster scene telling you what the next thing is but I hate that choice-less choose your own adventure thing and I really think this would have worked better as a visual novel with the hangout scenes and house shows included as plot beats rather than side events.

I hope that wasn't too harsh. It's a very good game especially for a first-time effort and I recommend checking it out if you like wrestling or cute girls or both.