Rating of [v1.03.11]
I think the completed game may be better than a flat 4 for me, depending on where the developer takes it, and how far they go with some of the fetishes, and character developments. For now, it crosses the threshold and reaches the 4th star.
My review contains Spoilers, so be warned.
For those who may be curious, but ultimately worried about becoming turned off by the presentation of certain fetishes, I have good news and bad news.
Good News Regarding Fetish Avoidance
Pretty much every fetish scene I was presented with gave me some kind of option to avoid it. I was either able to avoid it entirely, meaning the story skipped that scene-block and jumped to the next time frame in the story-line, or it presented me with an alternative scene that didn't include the fetish.
Examples: Don't want this MC to be a Sissy? Alternative to become the dominant one - points awarded may or may not be different than the Sissy route (or could even be 0). Don't want to worship the feet of a Dominatrix character? Alternative presented where she leaves in a huff, and you receive a hand job from another girl who was present, and may be able to dominate her in the future. Etc.
The risk with taking the alternative paths to fetishes you'd rather avoid, has to do with the Bad News below.
Bad News Regarding Fetish Avoidance
The bad news is, the game does have a Game Over factor. Because the story-line has you earning Points through your phone's Fetish Locator app, if you fail to accrue enough points by each week's end, you receive a Game Over. Period. Done. Load a previous save where you could encounter a scene that awards enough points to continue, or start over.
Thoughts Regarding the Bad News
If you look at the list of fetishes in the game and have doubts, you may want to simply choose another game. There's nothing wrong with that! If you want to give it a shot, and find out you Game Over and uninstall, there's also nothing wrong with that. If, however, you think that you can skip 90% of it and still get through the game, you're only going to disappoint yourself. The game was made for fetishists. The title of the game, Fetish Locator, is apt.
Character Development
I played with the "patch/mod" installed, which gives a more interesting dynamic to both the character of Stacy, and the characters of Kevin and Chloe.
Now that there is a few days of the second week, some character development is occurring, and I've enjoyed that.
Case in point: Lydia. Early on some describe her as frigid, cold, and a virgin. Mike, for some reason, still puts her on a pedestal and does whatever he can to pursue her, "because storyline". At least, that's what I thought it was going to be. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there's more to her - a kink of hers that I can only describe as "cuckqueen" (without the humiliation often associated with it), because I lack a better term for it - but it's an interesting and welcome progression for her. I expected her to hate the MC after finding out about all the women he's pursuing and the fetishes he seeks out (or to suddenly go all poly/harem girl the way many other games do) - instead, she evolves differently. She's not ready to be physical yet, but wants to hear about what the MC does. I've not encountered that much, and it was a neat twist on the expectation I held for the character and the story.
That said, most of the other characters do progress how I'd expect in a game of this genre, with a couple other notable exceptions. Depending on whether you pursue certain fetishes, Min's story-line is interesting for me, given that she' s in a relationship with someone who is not into a fetish she wants to face head on, to overcome her distaste of it, so that she can "win" at fetishes. But she approaches this by keeping her day to day self, and her Fetish Locator App personality, separate. A nice touch.
Not all characters suddenly love and accept the MC, as in some games. True, an awful lot of them do, but some can dislike him depending on the player's choices, and that's welcome here.
Fetish Frequency
This is a bit of a debate point for players. Some like exploring as many fetishes as they can. Others wish there was more content for the fetishes they prefer. Hard to do a universal review on this concept, but here's my take:
The game hasn't even completed it's "Week 2" yet. I admit to not knowing how many days/weeks the Developer intends to include, but some fetishes are continuing to have reoccurring scenes with further updates. The Trans and Watersports fetishes, if chosen during the Week 1 playthrough, start receiving more frequent scenes. That said, other fetishes have only appeared once, never to be seen again.
I think this aspect will only be reviewable in full, once the game is marked as "Complete".
Gameplay
There really isn't much gameplay here. There is no Time-Of-Day, there are no Relationship Points to manage, there is no money tracking, and there is no free-roam or map-point-clicking.
It's a novel, where you make decisions on which scenes you want to see, and occasional dialog choices. Otherwise, you're watching and reading the story the Dev intends to tell.
I, personally, like that about this particular game. I think that if they tried to tackle this concept with an open world, location based story events, etc, that it would become A) too messy to navigate easily as a player, and B) to difficiult and time consuming to release consistent updates as a Dev, without sacrificing quality of renders.
Quality of Renders
Acceptable to Very Good. Not the best I've ever seen, particularly during animations, but overall the stills are of total acceptable quality. The animations are sometimes a bit jilted in terms of where they loops, making the loop obvious. That said, they're definitely not bad by any means.
Overall
At the end of the day, I'll give it a 4/5. Some fetishes are only presented once, and while I may not mind that as one of my favorites is presented multiple times, others will find that disappointing. The renders are good to great but not truly top tier. The characters are well written but some can lean toward the one dimensional side (Note: this may simply be because there isn't enough content yet for a believable progression of character) - that said, some of the main ones are evolving with time and I look forward to seeing where their development takes them. I'll definitely be checking back in with the game after a few more updates.
