Unity - Completed - Follower [v0.7F] [HoneyGames]

Wow, this one is really terrible. Writing is bad, which is a bad start. But the worst is the gameplay. Moving through menus is boring and tiresome, there are no guidelines about what you're supposed to do, nor the exploration and openness are fun. The content itself I can't judge much since I was so bored I left quite soon, but judging by the summary in the second season, seems like it could have been fun to play. I guess it's a pity I won't be doing it.

Render quality is very bad. Can't say about animations since I didn't get to any of them. There seems to be no sound or music either to create mood or set the scene.

So, all in all, I think this is a hard skip. Will see how the second season is, but the original is not worth your time.

Note that this is a review of the Ren’py remake of the game, the original Unity version is basically unplayable due to game-breaking bugs. Also, this was one of the very first AVN I ever played, so I gave it another go recently before writing this review. In summary, I still enjoyed it quite a bit, even though some aspects can be jarring after playing newer, more polished games.

Follower is one of those time-management games – girls appear in certain locations at certain times of the day, and you need to balance interacting with them with tasks like earning money and learning skills. It gets a bit grindy, but not more so than most of these types of games. The girls are a mixed bag, some have not been developed in much detail, but at least a number of them have distinct personalities. The render quality is not always consistent, some girls have the typical Daz3D photorealistic look, while others appear almost cartoony. However, the quality is good enough to support the story. The sex scenes were also well done for the most part, and at least the animations were not jarring.

The story arcs were also not all of the same quality, I found some to be really entertaining, others a bit boring. The developer likes to tease and most arcs are a slow burn, but I enjoy this pacing over the wham-bam approach. The story was typical for these types of games, with the protagonist pursuing as many women as possible while trying to get ahead in live (becoming a photographer in this case). The writing was okay, there were lots of typos and grammatical errors and it can get distracting, but not so bad that I couldn’t follow the story.

So why four stars, when I just described an average, older game?

Kirsten.

The seduction/corruption of this girl is still one of my favorite sequences in adult games. There’s just something about her looks, personality and the way her path was written that ticks all my boxes. She was the reason I persisted with this game, and she is the reason it earns four stars (without her it would probably have been two and a half). If Kirsten is not for you. there are a couple of other girls with satisfying arcs, but from the length of her story and the number of scenes she is clearly the main attraction. The other main girl (Irene) has a very slow and satisfying story, but unfortunately not much pay-off in the end.

So in conclusion, an uneven game with a lot of okay content and some significant highlights. Just remember, the Ren’py version is the only way to enjoy this game.

I'm angry and disappointed. The game has a brilliant story, about a selfmade man. It has beautiful renders. The girls are hot, BUT:
The game has a shameful technical implementation. The game is grinding, because of too small stepping in progressing (e.g.: in cash income). There is almost a 20 page long of walkthroughs, in spite of this, the gamer can not find a logical framework, from the beginning till the ending of the game. The events like mosaics, are not engage, and the game collapses because of it, or because of bugs. The game's saving possibility is primitive, slow and restricted. The game was unplayable.
So I had to erease the game. I suggest to remake the game on a more logical and up-to-date technical base.

This game has actually pretty nice renders... they aren't unique character models by any means, but the dev does seem to have done a pretty good job texturing them.
I also like the girls' characters the dev has created.
It isn't exactly linear (but some annoying design decisions mean you can't buy X a dress until you've scored with Y... or you can't find... a CLOTHING store... it's a recurring theme). It's a world where maps were never invented.

Sadly that is kind of the end of the good points of this game.

If it weren't for the "completed" tag on this topic header I NEVER would have associated this with a finished product. There have been images that hang and don't go away for the entire existence of this project.
The dev is also not a fluent English speaker/typer. This leads to some clunky googlese translations (though, I've seen worse... )
Oh and it's still fairly grindy trying to earn all the money you need.

All-in-all it had quite a bit of potential, but ended up being sadly average.

OK...

So this game had great potential. I would have given it 5 stars, but there were some serious gameplay issues for me that made the playthrough less enjoyable...Just based on the Unity version I would have given it even less stars (3 maybe), but luckily NightTrain wrote a Renpy version that made the game much more playable.

Story telling: Very Good 8/10
Graphics: Renders settings not 100%, but posing and models were very good so 8/10
Sex Scenes: I enjoyed them and the sex interface, so 9/10
Character development: This was star of the game. The two main girls were awesome (sexy Kirsten and sweet Irene, the bitchy Rebecca, greedy Meadow etc, etc.) I loved them all. 10/10

So the good:
=========
Pretty much everything about the game was enjoyable.
The girls, the story, the MC (Mr douche), The game play.

The big problem:
============
As this was a sandbox game, a key element of the sandbox game, is guidance on what to do next.
Unfortunately this is where the original Unity version fell totally flat.
There were no hints in the game and even with the walkthrough from the dev, I sometimes found it almost impossible to progress with the game.

Luckily, NightTrain ported it to Renpy from Unity and this version included hints that was crucial for this game and made it much more playable. Props to him for all this effort. Unfortunately there were some issues in the hints file as well, that caused me to play the very last section of this game without hints again. I got a bit impatient without the hints looked at the script files to provide me with hints to go forward in the game. This annoyed me quit a bit and breaks immersion . This is rather unfortunate, as the hints file was actually done quite well, but there were a few gremlins causing issues.

My final Issue with the game was the money management. Overall, the money were fine in the game but right about in the middle of the game the requirement was to pay someone $5000. The player can at the most make around $1000 per week, so it took 5 in game weeks for me to save up the amount. And then immediately after, I had to spent a ton of money on dresses and unlocking models from the agency. That was the final straw for me and I used the money cheat. (Something that I hate doing as it breaks immersion)

TLDR
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Game is awesome, but play the Renpy version, not the original Unity version. The Unity version does not have hints and with this game it is essential.

There is a couple of bugs in the Renpy hints, but using the Hints text as well as the Renpy walkthrough should be enough to get you through.

It has potential, but has gotten stuck in the kitchen very early on, on both of my first two attempted playthroughs. It also glitched and upped my money to 10,000 in the first playthrough, which wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but isn't a good sign of a stable, bug-free game.

Dev is attentitive/responsive to the thread, though, which is a good sign. (added a star)