Chapter 3 Review:
This is a hard one to review. The things it does well it does really well, but there are definitely some major points that hold it back. I think I'd give it a 3.5/5 but I'll round that up to a 4/5 just because I do think it has the potential to improve as the chapters go on. I'll go over my thoughts below:
Visuals: 5/5
The visuals are all spectacular. Be it character designs, environment, weapons, or those more intimate scenes. The visuals are honestly top notch.
Audio: 4.5/5
Sound effects are great, and the dialogue is voiced over. Now I'm not normally a fan of having voiced character lines in AVNs, but only because they are usually terrible. The voiceover here is surprisingly good! Think like Witcher 1 quality, maybe even a bit better. Also having almost all the character lines voiced is impressive and I want to give the dev props on putting in the effort.
There is one slight issue I have is that the MC doesn't have any of his lines voiced. What this means is that the listen/read transitions feel really off. You'll listen to two conversations have a conversation, and then it's just silence when your character has something to say. No characters having voices is fine, but if you're making it so that the players can just listen to the dialogue - they should be able to listen to all of it. MC being the only character without a voice (while still having a ton of lines) just makes the flow of the conversation super awkward.
Story: 3/5
The story isn't particularly unique or original. I don't mind a story full of cliches if it's done well, but there are a lot of things that just don't make sense even within the world. They are mostly story related and I don't want to add any spoilers here, but a lot of the stuff is completely ridiculous. You heard of "show not tell?" This game doesn't do that. It just states that something is the way it is even if it makes no logical sense, and moves on. Right at the start of the game there is this dramatic buildup to a big important event, and then nothing really happens. No challenge, no risk, no threat, just a few lines of dialogue and a surrender. Considering how great other parts of this AVN are it just feels like a lot more effort could (and should) have gone into this part of the game.
As for how it is presented, the story feels more like a bunch of cutscenes from a game with all the gameplay in between them removed. There is not much glue holding things together. You're here and a thing is happening. And now you're somewhere else. And now time passed and you're elsewhere. It just doesn't flow between sections particularly well, especially farther in the story.
Writing: 3.75/5
While the overall story is rather weak, the writing is good. I couldn't decide between a 3.5 or a 4.0 here so I just went halfway. The writing could do a lot better job setting up the scenes and the story, though the actual characters themselves are written pretty well. Dialogue between characters is above average for this site.
Characters: 3.75/5
The characters are all unique and have great character models. They interact with one another and speak naturally enough, though they are pretty shallow overall. Even though we don't know much about their backstories, there isn't much intrigue or mystery. Everyone just seems like an open book, which is a bit of a shame. Still, what little is there is good.