Ren'Py - Fashion Business [Ep.4 v7.01 Extra] [DecentMonkey]

The graphics are pretty good, everything else is horrible.
The game is slow as hell, you have to grind and grind again, the plot is lazy, and the UI is so bad.
Every little thing you have to do takes so much time because you have to wait a day in the week, but you have to eat, but you have to change your clothes, but you have to go to a precise location, but you have to go talk with another character before, but you don't have enough money, but you have to change your clothes again,...
And after you go through all of this trouble, the sex scenes you get once every 5 hours are boring.

Let me start with saying that I very rarely write any reviews, so this is only the second time I write a review of a game at all, of any sort. But I feel I have to, the game is so good and it has given me so much satisfaction… Of the 100+ adult games I have played hitherto, this certainly belongs to the top five, perhaps even in the very top. It has so many unexpected and quite extreme scenes that I much to my own surprise find very arousing. That is how good the game is.

So what is to like? A very beautiful, sexy, and very selfish female protagonist that thankfully is not that supersize breasted and superhorny stereotype that is so common in adult games. Her indifference or even aversion to sex is a real turn-on. The sometimes quite ugly guys just add to her humiliation, even though she herself doesn’t really care about guy’s looks, the are all ugly in her book.

The outstanding rendering of places and characters, the great animations, with such great detail. The scenes are extraordinary and the humiliation and difficult choises are very arousing, along with the music and sound effects. The photoshoots, danceshows, bar grouping, the extorsions by her ”best friend and Bardie, jail training…, just wow.

The gameplay is great, with very little grinding in my mind, and what I especially like is that one really doesn’t need a guide, the dialogues are in most cases entirely sufficient to guide you. It is just to play along. But nevetheless, there is a very good guide on DM’s homepage that one can check if stucked or to ensure that all scenes are covered. Surely, there are some (yet unfinished) forks, but there are clear warnings in the dialogue and with the proper saves that shouldn’t be an issue.

The story that takes so many unexpected, and very sexy, turns. It is a quite dark but very arouising world the developer has created to immerse in.

The developer show an extraordinary fast, productive and regular output, so...even though I know DM has left this site: thank you so much, for this amazing game, and please keep developing it for many years to come!

Pros:

-Good scenes
-Good story
-Good character development and progression
-Good graphics overall
-Repeatable scenes

Cons:

-Can't forward text and there's no option in the game, had to use unren
-Few unnecessary clicks to get where you want, like if you want to go the office, you have to first click in the building and then in the elevator, nothing happens in those places, could as well be removed and save some time
-Some hints for the quests could be clear
-Could use more repeatable fetish scenes

A game heavily invested in the fetishes of female humiliation and degradation. No positive emotions to be found within. Every character in this game is a horrible person. This is not a criticism, just a warning. If you have a tendency to impacted by negative emotion, avoid it.

THE GOOD:

• Beautiful art and settings, better than the vast majority of adult games.
• Somewhat internally consistent characters.
• Very attractive characters.
• Interesting world.

THE BAD:

• Open world as a disguise for linearity.
• Frustrating mechanics are that masquerade for gameplay (house cleaning and kebab job).
• Gamebreaking bugs.
• Dialogue continuously arbitrarily interrupted for no reason in order to make you click.
• Sex scenes suck despite high quality animations, due to the baffling decision not to loop the animation. You watch the characters jerk once from each angle and then become completely still.

I reckon this could be good when it becomes a bit more fleshed out. For now, it is a grueling humiliation revenge porn simulator which banks primary on misogyny and confuses mundanity for gameplay.

Someone should really make a visual novel version of this, cutting out all the crap and the stupid dialogue interruptions.

This one is a mixed bag, full of suprises and annoynances.

You play as Monica, an arrogant bitch and head of an fashion magazine.

Ep 1 is basicly a prolog with a few choices to determine your stats for Chapter 2. You also can adjust them right at the start of chapter 2, so there is no actual need to sit trough Ep1 if you are not interested. It has a few good scenes tho. No Rating for Chapter 1.

Chapter 2 : This is the actual game, with free roam elements.

Good: The art, as you can probably see. Pretty good renders overall pretty neat.

Writing: You can play in 3 different languages. Some typos here and there but overall pretty good.

Story: Monica wants to get her Power back but ends up in a Blackmail /consensual Rape scenario. She actually never got raped as far as i remember but she(the player) says yes because of her desperate need for money. It is avarage, somewaht interesting but nothin mind blowing.

Gameplay: You click mostly in the UI, swtitch places, do your chrores, earn money, go serving tables and more. Good is that you can click nearly every object that you see, the bad is, it basicly never does anything. I call it clickable decoration. Makes the world feel more real at first but makes the game feel empty, becauseit is not needed to click this stuff.

The thing that bothers me ( and the reason for 4 stars) :

It got that juicy "Corruption" path and thats why I usually play these games.
The thing is, even if you get her Corruption stat at maximum, she stays this bitch. This annoying over the top bitch. Her thaughts are always something like" I will kill this dipshit, when i got my power back" blah blah. It basicly doesn't even feel like shes corrupted, not in the slightest. It is the same Monica from Ep 1. No character Changes wahtsoever. It basicly just opens new ways to get blackmailed or get money. Hell she doesn't even has orgasms or masturbate. In every other game, she would atleast enjoy it a bit by now. But not here. We basicly can watch monica getting pressured in doing stuff but we never see her opening up a bit more to the stuff she does. Even during a lesbian scene where monica gets eaten out and starts to slightly feel good she justinterrupts it and says stop. This is such a huge letdown, since she deserves to drown in her pleasure until she forgets about her goals, atleast in the corruption route.

My hopes for the future: Let her experience some pleasure, give her oppurtunitys to cum and make her drown in pleasure.

Oh and, grinding:
It is too much, espcially the stripping part on the streets. At the beginning it is fun, but after like 40 repetitions with the same dudes, it just feels like a chore, especially because you can only flash 3 per day. Same with the table serving scenes, you can talk to 3 costumers per shift. So you just repeat this over and over again.
It is not terrible but, it could be easily possible to talk to everyone in the bar and just increase your pay for that.
Stripping and fotoshoots are also a bit annoying.

TL: DR: Pretty Long (Many scenes), filled with unnecessary Clicking and grinding. No Glimpses of actual corruption so far. Still worth a playtrough if you got about 8 hours left.

One of the greatest game out there. It has a slow corruption(but much more realistic compare to other games) and great graphics. Animations are top notch too. You should start with chapter 1 ues there is not much sex scenes in it but story is great so dont miss out abything. Add it to your list this is a must play.

Technically, this is one of the worst game I've played. This is due to the terrible design decisions and poor use of the Renpy engine.
This ends up in lackluster experience, with repetitive and awful gameplay that ends up feeling like a chore.

It's a shame as the renders are pretty good. The models are nice and body proportions rather reasonable. The story isn't very original but well developed with multiple paths possible. However those are ruined when it is so painful and annoying to get through the game, I didn't want to go throught any of it again.
I had previously played the first chapter and gave up because of the same reasons so it was disappointing to see this chapter 2 had all of the same issues.

If you can put up with hours of your time being wasted because of bad design, you may find something good in here. For others, you may pass.

This game is best porn game i had played till now the characters and and story makes this game completely fulfilled with all the requirement need to be a perfect porn game. More the animations and graphics of the game is superb.

Now I will explain why in my opinion this Ren'py deserves 5 stars and in doing so I will be very direct and concise.
This game is in my opinion the best Ren'py among all those that are in circulation on this site. The plot is fantastic, you play a woman of power who suddenly loses everything and finds herself in the position of having to start everything from the beginning ... without even having an identity.
Monica, the main character, will often be blackmailed and humiliated in order to achieve her goals. The game gives you the freedom to decide what actions Monica will perform and each action will have consequences later on. Every story deserves to be heard, I think you should give Fashion Business a chance.
The graphics and animations of this game are superb, in every scene you can feel the commitment of the developer and his passion in carrying out this project. DecentMonkey is a serious developer, it releases an update every six weeks or so and there is always a lot of content in every update.
Warning, this game has been criticized for being repetitive in some places, especially at the beginning of Episode 2 but as far as I'm concerned, I got so into the game that I didn't really care.
Also, the second episode is very heavy, make sure your pc has performance and space.
I was very fascinated by everything in this game and I hope I was convincing enough in exposing my experience with this Ren'py

Fashion Business is a cautionary tale of the perils of being a bitch. Monica really does earn that title and she never even blew the POTUS.

The game revolves around your character`s fall from power as a filthy rich fashion designer to on the streets, crack whore, literally.
Much of the game is about her humiliation and degradation, it can be pretty hard hitting at times if your a female. Everyone just wants to use or fuck her and the challenge is making enough cash without going on your knees. She never lets up being a bitch even after being used as a whore, girl are you dense or what?

The game has a shit ton of grinding involved and not just of the pelvic type, but repeating cleaning and missions everyday, like being the maid.
Still, overall I enjoyed trying to survive without being a crack whore and hope that future content may give her redemption.

The art style is really nice and overall the game looks good. The Marcus/Farm path is intriguing and feels ominous, cannot wait to find out what happens next.

Good game overall. Four stars from me.

As a person who enjoys female MC corruption games I think this game is... an interesting experience, to say the least. That's why this review is so long. If it was good, I would say it's good and if it wasn't I would say it's bad. Nonetheless, it's neither.

The Writing

You know the general idea about corruption games, you have a cute, innocent girl, generally inexperienced, and the conditions slowly turn her into a more sexually open, slutty girl who enjoys debauchery.

Well Fashion Business does quite a bit of these things differently. For one, the main character is a married mature woman, not a young adult exploring her sexuality for the first time. Two, the main character is not a pure angel. It's the opposite, she is evil, though a celibate one. And lastly, even though she gets "corrupted", she doesn't turn into a nymphomaniac right away. Or, at all. Yes, she slowly becomes more slutty, starts doing more sexual favors outside of her accord yet her character doesn't seem to really change that much. She is still a bitter, evil woman that uses sex only as a tool.

Now, the lack of character development is generally considered one of the bigger milestones of bad writing in any type of fiction. While I agree with that sentiment, I'd be lying if I said that FB doesn't have an interesting dynamic going on. Monica, as evil and annoying as she is, is a pretty likeable character to play as with her attitude and grudge towards people around her(who're as terrible as her if not more, if anything Monica is genuine). Every time she gets taken advantage of, she gets more bitchy and starts trying harder. The bets get bigger every time, she gets closer to having her victory while she has to let go of more of her dignity. It's not a one way travel downwards that's Monica's, it's a zigzagging route. I think this concept is interesting and surprisingly it works. Writing itself is a little sloppy, I mean the ESL is pretty noticeable in this one(not that my English is perfect) yet the tone of the game is more or less consistent with a slow but steady pace. There are some games in which the story turns into tragic crime stories from lighthearted romances in like 5 mintues. FB is not really like that, it succeeds in keeping a kind of dark, serious atmosphere with a sense of urgency for Monica's fate. Marcus is a pretty annoying antagonist, too. So, this is more interesting writing than 90% of these games even considering some cringeworthy plot details(the whole thing about the slave farm and animals, the prison part, LOL) and some absurd levels of suspension of belief required.

Now, I'm telling all these assuming that the game is going to end with a cathartic ending with Monica having her revenge against her enemies. Considering that the bad ending will be a separate thing, I like to think that there will be, I dunno. Anyway the writer has to decide about making this game either a story of falling from grace, or a story of revenge after falling from grace. If they choose to go for the first one and butcher the revenge ending, I fear this game will be just another mediocre corruption game for me. Well if they focus on the second option, I think it will be a pretty memorable work among the erotic games.

Graphics and Content

Character designs are cool. Monica is damn hot. There are a bunch relatively unique looking models for the side characters too, while most developers recycle the same 4 or 5 models. Not really any imperfections though, most characters look like supermodels. That's more of a design decision than incompetence, so it's okay for me. Renders, let them be story renders, sex acts or backgrounds, are good enough that I don't really notice them. I think the game suffers from the amount of renders and animations though. Not that there should be less, but they should be presented in a better way. I think there should be buttons to see the sex acts from different angles and a skip button instead of having 35 different images in a row for the same sex act without any dialogue. Like the photography minigame, I guess.

Half the scenes are vanilla and involves other characters than Monica and these are pretty meh. Monica's scenes generally involve some sort of blackmail/abuse/humiliation content so they're more interesting. As I said earlier, you won't find scenes with a girl getting corrupted in the traditional sense, so don't expect that. The MC is too proud to enjoy sex.

System

It's pretty bad. Not the worst, but close. Games with little roleplaying possibilities shouldn't be grindy adventure games. They either should be simple adventure games or visual novels. This game has too many mechanics without any uses. Monica should strip when she is going to sleep automatically, she should wear her maid dress when cleaning automatically, there should be a progress time button etc. Not to mention that the coding is shoddy, so there are stutters, right click is weird, the save thumbnails are wrong etc... and 9,7 GBs? Really..? Oh I almost forgot, that scream track is pretty annoying too. The developer should streamline the game, it's rough.

tldr Not great but different. Monica is an interesting MC. Character designs and renders are okay. The stuff like gameplay and grind is bad. I'll be following this game expecting the revenge ending and the slave farm ending.

The clicking needed single-handedly takes this from 4 star to 2 for me. Honestly it's that annoying, that much of a pace and mood killer.
Walk here, walk here, walk here, look here, touch here. Click, click, click, click.
Half of which is for pointless fluff tasks.
It's a shame because I like alot about the game.

A good VN lost in an absolute chore of a sandbox.

The Good

Renders are good, animations are quite good, writing is kinda ok.

The Bad

Interface is terrible, annoying chores you have to do every day, put on clothes, take a shower, eat food.
Also you have 3 types of clothes you have to change between for absolutely no reason. You can't do anything at home until you change into your "homeclothes" but you can't go to bed until you change into your underwear, BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! when you wake up you have to change back into your "homeclothes" BEFORE you shower, then you can change into your daily attire! Chores in porn games are not fun or interesting. Another game brought down by poorly designed unnecessary systems. Extreme fucking grind fest.

This is one of my go to games here. As for favorite characters she's my no. 2 besides the UK beauty I have as my profile pic

Episode 1 was pretty quick and a nice set up for Episode 2.

Ok episode two was a grind I'll admit but the more I played the more I got attached to this game. I love Monica and her expressions and her comments. As a
MC she's one of the best in game characters on this site.

Side characters make this game too. Claire the stripper that right now seems to be Monica's only friend while everyone else uses or abuses her.

Biff, Vicki, Bardie the owners of the Shiny Hole. I hope you all are sent to the Farm.

Speaking of the Farm. The Marcus scenes are some creepy dark shit. Not showing the Farm but knowing what goes on there makes these scenes.

The Revenge path I love. Finally Monica gets some payback against those that caused her fall from rich bitch to surviving her current situation.

Only pet peev is yeah it's grinding but it's still worth the time to play this gem.

By far one of the best looking female protagonist, artwork, animation, variety of characters and interesting plot . It can be a little grindy at first but it pays off later in the game the animation are top notch with POV shots every update is delivered with plenty storyline to explore overall i would definitely recommend trying this game !!!!

EXTREMELY GRINDY SEXUAL HARASSMENT SIMULATOR

There is only one real fetish in this game: humiliation. The whole game is about seeing a woman to lose her social status and doing humiliating things, only some of them sexual ones, ALWAYS AGAINST HER WILL, because she´s blackmailed or forced to.

SO, THIS IS NOT A "CORRUPTION" GAME. There is corruption when a character is pure, and then, for any reason, starts doing lewd things and slowly discovers, even in spite of him /herself, that can't live without that lewd and kinky. That doesn't happen at all in this game. At the beginning of the game the MC says that she's frigid and doesn't enjoy and even understand sex and/or love, and that's the way she is during all the game. So, the game calls "corruption" to something that is "willpower". They say the character "gains corruption" after the humiliating events, but actually she only loses willpower to defend herself from blackmailing and abuse.

Also, she was a egocentric delusional woman at the beginning of the game, and she's the same egocentric delusional woman after a lot of updates. There is no "arc" at all, no development or change in the character. In my opinion, that´s a pretty poor way to write a story.

Situations and characters are pretty cliche and cartoonish in their behavior. All men are lame assholes, and women are manipulative bitches or naive victims (except maybe Claire the stripper, that seems to be an interesting character). As already said, If you are into the fetish of humiliation of women, this is your game. If your prefer a real corruption game or just something well written, you will be disappointed.

Game mechanics are awful. First and principal, the level of grind is terrible. Hours of clicking and clicking seeing the same scenes in order of getting a new event, usually pretty disappointing since the game plays to blueballing the player most of the time. The interface, even if aesthetically pleasing, favors the grind too. Mechanics as the ones of changing the dress for every scene are a pain in the ass.

There are no real decisions. If you say "no" to another character that is trying to blackmail the MC, you just don't see that scene, storyline or path and there are no alternative. So you just say "yes" to all in order of seeing the scenes. If not, the game is really short.

The models and 3D art is pretty good, including houses, streets, etc. The MC is well designed and it´s sexy. Also other feminine characters, BUT all of them seem to have similar "Barbie silicone" type of bodies. There is even a character, the secretary of the lawyer, that looks like a 12 y.o. girl with breast implants! She gives me the creeps.
A trophy wife as the MC or a top model as Melanie can have that kind of insipidly perfect "playboy girl" body made of mineral water, salad and silicone, but "normal" women in the game should have more realistic and varied bodies made of flesh and subject to the laws of biology and physics (as gravity acting in their breasts).

At least there are some original realistic faces, like the one of the strip club owner or the one of Julia. Most of the masculine characters are fat and old assholes. Since the theme of the game is humiliation, the MC is forced to have sex with them. I suppose that, for people into that fetish, this is OK, but most of the players won't find sexy to see a lot of close-ups of old penises and hairy masculine bellies.

In summary: a game that could be really good with better script, characters and game mechanics but it´s not. And it's a pity since it's obvious the dev has put a lot of work in this game. At the end of the day, it's game that you need a hundred of hours of gameplay to finish until Ep.2 V0.14 (the actual one), but not funny hours like the one you have by playing "The Witcher III" for example, but hours of frustration and boredom. You continue playing it in spite of yourself just for the sake of seeing what happens next after spending a lot of hours before, like a bad movie that you see until the end even if you are bored just because you want to know who is the killer.

A piece of advice: don´t start playing this game unless you are heavily into the fetish of feminine humiliation.

27.12.2022. Since my review in 2020 the developer improved the game quite a bit:
1. EP.3 has almost no grind. You only have to visit certain places to see the events. That's all. No endless clicking.
2. The game has been improved visually significantly, both the pictures and animations. EP.3 is now one of the best looking 3d DAZ games.
3. The developer has implemented a quite nice walkthrough into the game. Now you just go into the menu and it says what you need to do. No more confusion.
4. EP. 3 is now much hotter than previous ones. More sex scenes and those events are much better made and interesting.
So, now I think it is the best female protagonist game on this site, at least among those which main kinks are corruption and humiliation. I highly recommend it.
But you have to play it until Ep.3 or close to the end of Ep.2 to see how good this game has become. Don't judge this game based on Ep.1 or early Ep.2.


Old review from 25.07.2020.
The game is controversial, that is for sure.
Pros:
1. The model of the mc. It is a rare case for a DAZ 3d game to have a completely unique model. Most of them are run-of-the-mill girls a little changed in the editor. Monica is beautiful - not too thin, not too fat. No unrealistic gigantic boobs or super wide hips.
2. The game revolves around two main kinks - humiliation and corruption. And the developer has done a pretty good job implementing them.

Cons:
1. The game is extremely grindy. From this point of view it is probably the worst Renpy game I have ever played. To see a new scene you need to make hundreds of clicks, especially early in the game.
2. Sometimes it is quite confusing how to make progress. There is a guide that tells you how to do it, but in my opinion, if you need to read a guide to play a porno game, there is something wrong with its gameplay.
3. Other girls, except for Monica, are quite ordinary. Some people may like Melanie, but her model can be seen in other games. More than that, she doens't look like a fashion model at all, just watch the Victoria's Secret show and see. She is caricaturish - too wide hips, too thin waist, even her face features are exaggerated.
4. The pictures and especially the animation are not so great for 2020. There are quite a few games that are significantly better from this perspective.

Also, it should be noted that the developers are quite assholes. It has nothing to do with the game itself, but still. You can see it easily from what and how they write in the thread, the business model they have chosen to use for their patreion and so on .

Overall, if you are into the kinks that the game concentrates on, I'm quite sure you will enjoy the game. But if you don't, I think you won't be able to wade through all the grind.

This game is great thanks to the beautiful artwork, animation, variety of characters and uniqueness of the plot. In addition, updates have been released regularly over the past year and a half. Decent game from a decent developer

terrible plot, terrible story ,terrible pacing and most terrible grindd
only thing not terrible are the renders and few animations (even though you have pay at least $20 every month to get the good stuff)