Ren'Py - Fashion Business [Ep.4 v10.00 Extra] [DecentMonkey]

There's a lot to like in this game, but its not without its flaws. Whether the good outweighs the bad will depend to a large extent on your own playing style and preferences.

The graphics are first class, with an incredible number of detailed renders, good animations, lots of characters and well developed locations. The MC's facial model and expressions often remind me of a young Holly Marie Combs, with a far more developed body.

The plot can be confusing, especially if you've skipped the earlier parts and only started the latest, because the constant flashbacks and references to past events won't make much sense if you haven't experienced them. Strongly recommend playing each part in order, as you'll enjoy the story a lot more with this approach. DecentMonkey has clearly put a lot of work into the plot and you'll see this as new details are discovered and plot points start linking together.

The biggest downside for me was the grind, which was worst in Episode 2. Since this is (IMHO) the best episode so far, its a mixed blessing. Players who are used to RPGM games won't really notice it, but if you mostly play Ren'Py VN's, your mouse finger is in for a serious workout and you'll be frustrated by the repetition needed to advance the plot. Having said that, the catfight scene in the Shiny Hole made it all worth it for me!

Multiple paths are open to you for game play, so keep plenty of saves and be prepared to start the occasional new game if the paths start becoming exclusive, or demand too much micromanagement to play them all simultaneously. As always, prioritise the parts you enjoy and don't feel that you have to complete everything - unless you're a completionist.

Fashion Business seems to be a highly polarising game. Look through the forum thread and posters seem to love or hate it, with few in between. Give Episode 1 a try and refer to the guides on DecentMonkey's web page (linked via the main game menu) if you get stuck. It can be hard work at times, but I think the rewards are worth it.

Forgot to mention that 90% of the grind can be eliminated through heavy use of the CTRL key (on Windows PC's, not sure about other platforms) to fast forward through slides and animations that repeat a scene. In some cases, dozens of times. This will save you thousands of mouse clicks/key presses to advance to the next screen and you won't miss out on anything because all the information for a scene is conveyed on the first playthrough. I wish I'd realised this on my first few playthroughs, but hopefully others can benefit from my pain.

There are 3 things in this game that are Visuals, story and gameplay.

For the visuals, on complains, the game loooks decent, but there should be sex scenes, and for 4GB of download, there is 1 "sex" scene performed by the Mc, and its not even voluntary, the times you are prsented with choices, the MC rejects them, so its a woman that rejects sex. THE WORST MC in a porn game ever, hands down.

For the writing, which is not only the words and sentences, but the story, and how is structured and built, well, its the biggest bullshit. 100% suspension os disbelief, and tehre is not much of an arc, so far is a constant humilliation fest, but not in a sexual kink way.
The game forces you to believe that wife of some big fish in a big company has no paper or citizenship and she is still processed in the shadows by local laws, and wht is supposed to be a major scandal under constant scrutiny by the media, but in this game, nobody knows shit, aos you are sent to jail, to grind mistery box events, that are quite predictable.
The thing sending the warden to places was predictable from the start, still, grinding the same moves countless times was needed to progress.

The even if you made every good choices, Monica is still a spoiled bitch.

The when you go to the house, you need to perform, again, 3 actions that, as happened before in jail, are ment to annoy you, cause you are kicked and prevented from doing such actions in those places. Totally unnecessary.

I understand sexual kinks, but this goes beyond that, and if you write something like that, a Redemption arc is needed.So far there is no progression, i doubt the writer has the talent for that. So far the quality of the writing is "everybody is a bitch or a rapist or a sex maniac" and everybody hates the MC and hummilliates her. (not much depth anywhere, and there is not that much characters)
Needless to say writing is poor, as best. You can not expect me to face absolutely unfair and unbelievable situations without criticism. And all this situations still lead to a absolute lack of encounters of sexal nature.


For the gameplay, the game is presented as a visual novel, with the appearance of Sandbox, but actually you can only go where the plot tells you. There are a couple of dialogue choices that have impact in the game, but i would say only to unlock this or that scene where the plot allows it.
And then there is the grind, having to speak 10 times with someone instead of making a full conversation?
The game is esentially a kinetic novel, most of the "choices" you make, could be automatic cause they are pointless clics who only drag the gameplay, who is borderline insufferable already.

Still, since i want some sort of satisfaction i will wait for an Arc, and continue playing 2nd chapter despite the warnings i have read in many reviews.
If there is not an arc i will gladly decrease the rating of the review.

Final thoughts:


After completing almost allcontent in Ep2 pt1 and playing some in Ep pt2, whihc led me to directly check the gallery, i will have to keep this 2 star score, against my initial impulse of rating it 1, just because the technical aspect is quite good, and some scenes, where Monica is not the protagonist are good.
Monica is the worst MC i have found in any VN, cause she goes through countless life changing events and she doesnt change a bit. The whole game is designed meticulously to not allow her to enjoy sex, which is a major turn off and shows this writer doesnt have the talent to make this game about real himilliation. This is a shallow portrayal of humilliation. Humilliation comes from within, but this game focuses on the outside, and it does it repeating the same formula over and over, yes the formula of Monica llowing something to happen, while in her inner dialogue she thinks badly of the person doing it, telling how muhc she hates and so on. It happens in most of the scenes and its repetitve and predictable and boring as if Dev copy-pasted dialogues into the scenes.

At some point this Monica (Fakely) endures so much, that this humilliation you are selling me i cant believe it cause In the end, every person she visits, and most of the things she does, they happen because she wants them or needs them.

Checking the scenes in the gallery i see a clear pattern:
The scenes that she may be enjoying, either they are cut conviniently, or there are moans (like she is enjoying it) but she doesnt speak or think, which in my opinion is contradictory as hell, she either enjoys or doesnt, if she doesnt, remove moans, if she does, let us hear what is she thinking or feeling, as i said, humiilliation comes from within.

As a game which has 90% of the content based on that specific thing, it sure makes it badly, and as i said, shallow.

Cool game by the way! Even at first I was somehow skeptical about her. I downloaded it, deleted it, downloaded it again, deleted it again, etc. xD The introduction is probably very lengthy, but it is necessary here to understand who GG is =) In fact, I even went nuts when I got to the second chapter, and the movement started! Melanie is generally fire! How did the author manage to convey her coldness and character in general hz. One of the best characters, and one of the best games I've ever seen

This game has so many issues that it seems the developer ignores them all and doesn't pay much attention to negative feedback. The first problem we encountered is its slow gameplay, even though the engine is Ren'py it seems that everything is stuck. Another problem we found is that the sandbox is absurd because it has to grind so much. If you don't use a cheat to increase Monica's corruption, you will spend quite a few days grinding this game until you get to a time when you're going to get tired. Yes, you will get bored, there are many other games on this site that are better and have a gameplay time limit where you can have better fun. Now, let's talk about the general gameplay.

Episode 1:
You play this episode hoping it will be a great game, the story is quite decent, but there comes a point in the writing when Monica is arrested for lack of documents and some things that don't make sense, ok, I prefer to consider this more because she is deceived by her manager, since for me it makes a little better sense. So she is purposely thrown into a prison of men and then you think things could happen, from blackmail to gang rape, but that's not quite it, she suffers blackmail in her cell and also by the sheriff. And then she comes out of prison and sees that she has lost her entire fortune, house, car, your glamour life, your comfortable life, everything.
And then you think, how cool, a game that will make the female protagonist have to prostitute herself and then get back on her feet again. In theory it's almost that, in practice not so much.

Episode 2:
Here comes the second part of the game, which was so far minimized because of so much grinding there was, now the game is at a size of 10gb and you won't need to grind as much as it used to, but you'll still have to grind during the story. A lot of people ended up saying the characters were annoying, yeah, I could say the game was written by a young man, but at the same time i wonder if there were more heavier elements? It's precisely in this episode that I end up getting pretty discouraged to continue, but why? you need to go back to your little room and have to change clothes, do this, do that, the game could kind of be something fantastic and beautiful but for me it ended up being quite annoying and boring.
On the other hand, the story in general, become considerable because for a woman who had everything in her hands and suddenly lost everything, going down the path of prostitution would not be so logical, so the game ends up being quite faithful to that, seeing the people around you blackmail you and also humiliate you, well I think it interesting, but unfortunately what spoiled the whole experience was the slow gameplay and grindfest.

And then we come to the 3rd episode, after grinding so much, yes, I stopped halfway through the second episode because I was so tired, but whoever played all two episodes and completed all available scenes, a psalm of congratulations to you, because frankly, the game needed to get more attention so I could continue. I'd like to play something more perverse, something that would make Monica could prostitute herself or something like that, something that would make her like it. I could get into the porn industry or something but the game wasn't about that, so I don't see this as a bad thing or something else like that.

I would like to say about the graphics of this game, but there are so many reviews that you better not waste your time on it. But Monica's rendering is great, your face, hair, body, breasts, pubic pussy hair and even your pussy-grill. Every little detail, but even so, I felt like I wasted time downloading this or even playing this. But it's not because the story is bad, there's controversy about it, but it's because of its gameplay, which could be much more sophisticated and better.

It doesn't have autosave, if something happens that makes your computer shut down or even a problem occurs that makes the game close, you will lose all your progress if you didn't save manually. This is so bad!!!

History: ✭ ✭ ✰ ✰ ✰
Gameplay: ✭ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰
Graphic: ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✰
Sex Content: ✭ ✭ ✭ ✰ ✰
Creativity: ✭ ✭ ✰ ✰ ✰

History - Not bad at the same time boring
Gameplay - Grindfest and exhaustive
Graphic: - Melaine and Monica are the best
Sex Content - Good but it could be better
Creativity - This sandbox looks like shit dude

This game is so good that after playing it you you don't want to play anything else because compared to this quality all others looks low profile. And not only the game looks good, the story is interesting. You really want to read the dialogues. To be honest this is my first review and i never read dialogues, usualy i come only for a quice fap. DecentMonkey is making a masterpice, as soon as i get out of this pandemic back to work they got a new patreon.

Well, i wasn't that fan of episode 1, because you could do nearly nothing but follow the plot line. But i love how the great Monica is made the Bitch of so many people. The bitchier she is, the more often she gets degraded and humiliated.

The art is wonderfully done in my opinion and i love the style.

If i had to criticize something, it would be that there is nearly no BDSM, but i hope that will come in the near future.

The problem with this game is no real option all options leans to prostitution or anything like that even if you play it clean if the creator means to do that he should never have the less bitchy system or anything like that i play 2 chapters the only 1 that have a different ending or actions is the first chapter after that don't bother playing clean since all leads to the same had potential for a real good story but ruined it with the practally no option theme might as well say its almost a kinectic novel since all options leads to the same thing

The game is good. I'll start with the pros.
- Graphics
- It's interesting to watch the plot of the game
- Action options in the game
Minuses
- The dialogues are so boring, they are not interesting. It becomes boring to read at 30 minutes of the game. I just skipped them before choosing and that's it.
- All interesting activities are limited.
- I went through all parts of the game and the main disadvantage is the illusion of choice.
Monica will end up being a whore. There is no option to make it CLEAN.
- Characters in the game are not interesting. They are quickly forgotten.
If this game takes the example of DIK game, then it will become much more interesting.

For quite some time I've seen this game and wasn't too interested in NTR, but I came to appreciate this kind of game when you are not playing a cuckold.
And I must admit this one is a master peace !

Monica character is such a bith, it's a real pleasure to corrupt her
Graphics are really good
...and overall a very nice experience !

Grind the same scene again and again: the game.

It's unplayable. I don't know if the dev just want the gameplay to feel as tedious as coding/debugging the game, but unlike that, there's no satisfaction knowing you did something right when you're just grinding the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Would've been a 1 star, but the very few scenes I managed to see before giving it up as a shit game looks good enough, so Fashion Business at least has the that going for it.

Pro:
- Great character designs and renders are very well done

Con:
- The most useless UI in a ren'py game ever
- Gives you the illusion of choices that matter, but what you really are choosing between is how "fucked" Monica is. No redemption arc here. If I had known that going in, I wouldn't have bothered. False advertising.

Overall: 1½ stars. The renderings would give it 4 stars alone, if not for the UI and the fucked up 'plot'. Rounded down to 1 star. You are better off ripping the renders than playing this abomination.

Great design and animation, such a slow boring gameplay that you want to shoot yourself.

I dont get why you waste your talent in creating a torture game.

Have to play and grind for an hour to see a single scene.

And Bardie shouldn't have gone.

edit: Fashion Business is not a bad enough game to get 1 star. I think I misunderstood. Bardie definitely shouldn't have gone.

Hi everyone,

I will do my best with my english that is not so good to explain here why I'm really disappointed about this game.

The characters, the renders and the animations are really beautiful and the story in episode 1 started really well and was really innovative ! Being Monica as a b*tch or trying to redemption was just sooo cool!

Concerning the interface, well it's easy to use and UX friendly so congratulations for that too!

I quickly got attached to Monica and definitely wanted to "save" her from that bitchiness she used to be and choosed the redemption way. So I tried to do all the best choices to decreased her bitchness attitude but more and more, and especially in episode 2, I have been forced to deprave her in order to move on in the game by making her doing things she didn't want or fucking stupid and annoying others characters even if I didn't want it to happen... As an example, the first moment like that was in the jail that was sooooo long and frustrating that I almost stopped there... I hoped that she could just start to raise again slowly but without being just a "whore" for everyone who crossed her way but ... well it looks like it's impossible? Or tell me if i'm wrong? Some people will just say that she deserves it but that’s not my point of view if you’re doing your best to make her better. It becomes just frustrating and I don't understand why everyone is so dark and corrupted in this game.

As a conclusion, I would say that this game has a lot of potential! But I have been disappointed to see how it goes for Monica so fast and without being able to avoid such annoying fucking scenes with bastards when you’re trying to “save” her!

That is just my point of view and I still want to thank DecentMonkey for this game and wish the best for Monica in the future because .. hey! I really like her as a character and want her to succeed of course!

Thanks for reading my review and good fun everyone!

Neat artwork with lots of content. That's what drew me to this game in the first place.

Stopped playing after a bit of Ep 2.1.

Terrible terrible character writing - Monica (and other people) are forced to do things they don't want but it defies belief that no one's personality or view of the world is ever affected by these life-altering events.

Monica's personality is basically a million ways of expressing "I'm the baddest bitch" - but this CEO of a high profile magazine is somehow also completely unable to adapt to any scenario outside of her existing life. I could see someone in that position not knowing about life on the streets - but the same businesswoman unable to sweet talk her way out of hard situations, or to scheme better than the average unsophisticated smuck, or to call on her network of friends that must have existed given her position? Unbelievable.

And the entire premise for jailing her was... let's just say so far-fetched that it took me right out of the game.

Also, personal preference on the world construction - everyone is so dark and twisted in this game, that it can't be helped but to feel sorry for Monica despite her "bitch" label. The balance doesn't feel right.

Admittingly a bit of a slow burner in the first act but then it quickly ramps up and has continuous waves throughout. Love the multiple pathways and options to take the character through. Mains characters renders are some of the best I've come around, camera angles, lighting and animations are of high quality. After playing this a lot of other games seem dated in comparison .

I played this for about an hour before calling it quits, it takes some real talent and hardwork to make navigation in a ren'py game as painful and as tedious as this. Absolutely nothing in this game made it worth my time, story is as basic as it gets, all the characters were annoying, etc. People keep praising the renders and scenes but ive only managed to see 3 scenes(none involving the main character) with all of them being so awfully boring and bland.
If you have the patience of a monk then by all means play this game, I definitely won't though.

This game used to be good but became more and more diluted with boring and frivolous story content of annoying characters. The game navigation is below average and slow with annoying fade transitions and unnecessary (and fake) menu choices. The story progress is slow confusing. Also the sex-scene to blabla ratio is very; VERY low. This is sad since I liked the original story setup. I quit playing.

Well the game has lots of good points mainly the main character and Melanie that are something else so amusing. The game can become addictive making you want to see more and more.

However why they thought having to click constantly is a good thing? Walls of text that is unskippable if you haven't seen them. And often making you replay scenes and lines you already saw dozens of times cause you reload the game in another day and didn't go to certain parts of the map in a while. There are lots of text that could just not have been there. Or they should have a skip even unseen stuff, is easy to spot when there will be only talk for quite a while.
It becomes so ridiculously long it is easier to speed click the left button make the wall of text pass than go to History to see if you miss anything that important

The second thing that annoys me is the micromanaging. going to kitchen to eat, bath and toilet there should be a way to skip the animation ahead after the first couple of times. but for me the worse is clothing, why it asks to change in certain places and others forces you to waste time going back to change clothes, I can't understand. For example why needing to go all way back to your house or apartment to put dress or whore custom when it could just skip that like in other times, I know some are part of "punishment like those when you are a maid but the other make not much sense when you get the apartment

TL.DR:
The game is amusing, but if you don't want to spend hours clicking like an idiot and do some silly micromanagement cause you get bored easily, than skip this one ahead or try just a way to check the gallery or something. The tedious parts of text and grinding are the ones lowering my note to this game

if this had just a "skip unseen" and automatically do some of those microactions it would remove the tedious parts by a lot

Beside the animations and high quality renders, there's nothing else good about this game.
1- Terrible story, a woman who was rich and out of sudden she became poor that she even had to work as a maid because she didn't have legal documents? In which country does this happen exactly?
2- The engine is supposed to be Renpy, however it works like something from the 90s! The game is always slow and always bugged with lots of glitches
3- Overused blackmail with no story progress, you literally humiliated Monica in every way possible but somehow, we still get more blackmailing content.