VN Ren'Py Friends in Need [S1 v0.85c] [NeonGhosts]

[Liftoff7073]

After playing through rework's dark path, not gonna lie I feel disappointed. Slight rewriting and change of story direction is subjective so if dev feels like it would make the whole thing more streamlined and coherent then why not I guess, but a couple of scenes that got changed/added have lost quality or were subpar, imo.

Nikki's first dark scene had much less tension, the original one felt like she was there to seduce you but not really, like she had very mixed feelings herself and you could go in three very different directions which felt great. The new one toned down the rudeness you could've had, even on the darkest path Guy is still almost romantically kissing her and it would be fine as an option, but it's all you have here. Scene itself is also significantly smaller, only one position, very few angles (and the one we have is weak one, wow we can see her back so hot), no additional interactions like slapping, it's overall a massive downgrade over what we had pre-rework.

I was super hyped about Ashe's date dark path without sleeping pills, previously Guy said something like "our encounter in the alley would feel like easy mode compared to this" and it went to black screen... And now instead of the black screen we have like 2 renders, sex in one position (doggy), bad angles where we almost can't see the good stuff like whole body with face and such and it's very quickly over. Bottle could be fun, but it's also disappointing tbh b/c no additional interactions, different poses or stuff like that. It's funny that giving her sleeping pills gives a better scene with much more variety and options, I think it even has more Ashe's reactions than having her awake lmao.

The new scenes left a mixed feeling too, the spanish speaking girl on the yacht was fine but so unnecessary (like Dash in pre rework version) because she's just a random character we have no connection to (while the game has PLENTY of characters/scenes which could've usen that dev/rendering time instead), Jun's stuff is very hot in theory but for the most part they are just 1 picture flashback, which also makes it feel half baked. I'd rather have one full scene of their first sex for example where Guy would be convincing her to have sex to save her business, with different degrees of cruelty and some interactivity ofc instead of the yacht scene. Or a better and more varied Ash date night, or a new dark path Viola scene, or a full dark path scene with any of the girls who still don't have one...

The downgrade in quality regarding interactivity, positions and camera angles in h-scenes feels very jarring because this is the game that exceled in this areas from the very beginning, back when there was only the first Nikki scene. Many other games give you like one stupid angle of pussy closeup and another where you only see girl's back and call it a day, and here we had so much variety and actually good h-scenes for the most part. Makes me worry for the future updates tbh

 

[MohammadrezaDH]

After playing through rework's dark path, not gonna lie I feel disappointed. Slight rewriting and change of story direction is subjective so if dev feels like it would make the whole thing more streamlined and coherent then why not I guess, but a couple of scenes that got changed/added have lost quality or were subpar, imo.

Nikki's first dark scene had much less tension, the original one felt like she was there to seduce you but not really, like she had very mixed feelings herself and you could go in three very different directions which felt great. The new one toned down the rudeness you could've had, even on the darkest path Guy is still almost romantically kissing her and it would be fine as an option, but it's all you have here. Scene itself is also significantly smaller, only one position, very few angles (and the one we have is weak one, wow we can see her back so hot), no additional interactions like slapping, it's overall a massive downgrade over what we had pre-rework.

I was super hyped about Ashe's date dark path without sleeping pills, previously Guy said something like "our encounter in the alley would feel like easy mode compared to this" and it went to black screen... And now instead of the black screen we have like 2 renders, sex in one position (doggy), bad angles where we almost can't see the good stuff like whole body with face and such and it's very quickly over. Bottle could be fun, but it's also disappointing tbh b/c no additional interactions, different poses or stuff like that. It's funny that giving her sleeping pills gives a better scene with much more variety and options, I think it even has more Ashe's reactions than having her awake lmao.

The new scenes left a mixed feeling too, the spanish speaking girl on the yacht was fine but so unnecessary (like Dash in pre rework version) because she's just a random character we have no connection to (while the game has PLENTY of characters/scenes which could've usen that dev/rendering time instead), Jun's stuff is very hot in theory but for the most part they are just 1 picture flashback, which also makes it feel half baked. I'd rather have one full scene of their first sex for example where Guy would be convincing her to have sex to save her business, with different degrees of cruelty and some interactivity ofc instead of the yacht scene. Or a better and more varied Ash date night, or a new dark path Viola scene, or a full dark path scene with any of the girls who still don't have one...

The downgrade in quality regarding interactivity, positions and camera angles in h-scenes feels very jarring because this is the game that exceled in this areas from the very beginning, back when there was only the first Nikki scene. Many other games give you like one stupid angle of pussy closeup and another where you only see girl's back and call it a day, and here we had so much variety and actually good h-scenes for the most part. Makes me worry for the future updates tbh

I partially agree that the game definitely needs new content sooner, and I agree that the dark paths are getting weaker in terms of writing and renders in the remake, but I think everyone here agrees that NG is an amazing writer, and his renders have been very decent. The majority of people drawn to this game are people who are attracted to darker paths in these types of games, but the vast majority of games in here (at least the Ren'Py VNs) that haven't already been banned are vanilla af, and the ones that include darker paths have such dogshit writing and even more dogshit renders.

NG stands out in here for actually writing good and engaging paths (specially dark ones) and for a while the game was actually on a roll each update that came out made me so excited on how this new dark path that we just got is gonna develop in the future but it seems to me that the momentum is gone with the new content and i would be fine with it if the remake would add to the previous ones but it looks like the remake actually reduces the amount of content that was in the game before the remake (and i don't mean the chapters later in the game that were mostly teaser content im talking the remade portion at the begining of the game) like i agree with NG that the game starts without too much building on Nicky and her past but man is it worth it to remake it and add that and lose so much interactivity with the scenes? I don't know, but I just hope that he realizes what made the game so enjoyable in the first place and starts balancing the remake and adding new content, like man, I was so excited for the plot with Lucian and how the MC was going to handle it in the dark path, and potentially betraying Risa. I don't even know how many months ago this was.

But I overall trust NG on this; I first left my review on this game years ago and in it i said how i loved that this game gives me so much freedom of choice and the path of the game for a VN and the remake definitely dissapoints me a little but he's a good ass writer no doubt, and hopefully he'll start progressing the story that I love so much and adds more variety and interactivity back into the game.

 

[DatGuy20]

& that what kill the interest of this game imo, in sooner version you was able to go neutral/good or neutral/bad & still have the choice to rape or not, now this game do exactly the same shit that any others "dark" game do... they see life as Black or white...
You can't be a manipulator anymore & lure your prey into your web, just the basic white prince parangon or the evil shit-fuck beyond redemption.

No you didn't. You have to build up dark points in order to get the options.

 

[stumpy007]

game will never be the same without that original first hate F&*k scene with Nicky

 

[DatGuy20]

These are porn games, they lean into fetishes... lol

Not really a good enough explanation for me imo. Overall while porn is a main focus it's not just a porn game and unless Dark Guy is just the dumbest person on planet earth he has to know raping literally every woman on sight is not sustainable. Even Lucien isn't that dumb. Story wise Dark Guy just feels worse than Light or Grey Guy. (Though Grey Guy is pretty obviously just a smarter Dark Guy if you really think about it his actions are not Grey at all they're pretty Dark)

 

[Pixillin']

I like all of Neon's changes so far. He hasn't said as much, but I get the impression that he's read a lot of the arguments here and redone some text that people were misinterpreting, or at least that were causing people to misunderstand characters. FiN is absolutely an S tier game and nothing that's happened so far changes that at all.

 

[Ropyl]

I really hope for a ton of more scenes with Brit in the near future. She s one of the hottest characters in this game, imho! I wonder why she gets less screentime than most other NPCs. The girl is struggling,

She'll be struggling alright, hehehe...


On another subject : what I don't get about the discourse regarding the remake is that people seem to think NG is going to continue remaking the other chapters when we are in fact at the end of the remaking cycle. I get that not everybody reads every page of the thread but this has been said often enough that it shouldn't be misunderstood anymore.
I know, people are going to say "yeah but he remade the beginning and then he just worked on the rest so that's still remaking the other chapters" but, and that has also been said often enough I think : the code needed tweaks, variables needed adjusting (or whatever the technical term is for variables) etc, and that's "small stuff" compared to the real remake so that has enabled him to continue working on Season2 while finishing S1.
At this point I'm waiting for S02 just so the thread can go back to normal "hey my girl didn't get scenes in the update, unfollowed!!!"-F95 discourse.

To summarize :
- No, NG is not going to remake every other chapters, it's not in a "remake loop/hell" or whatever.
- Yeah the patch is empty that's normal, the game just checks if it's there.
- No the game has not become a woke romance with roses and ponies (hey there's an idea! No wait, I can't spend the day thinking about Gabby getting gifted a little horsie but she has to tame it and...aaah shit I'm in it now...)
- You're all wrong and I'm right except for those that are right in which case I'm wrong (but I'm not!).

See you in three pages for the same information, people!

edit : actually, couldn't the information about the patch being empty be on the front page? It would help new people or those coming back after a long time...

 

[HelpfulSunglasses]

why are we still kicking out to mega for a 0-byte file?

Thanks for that note - I'll admit, that's something that I put in as kind of pause/chapter break, to accentuate the time-jumps. It's a result of being a little nervous people wouldn't read closely enough, and wonder why there was so much happening in such a short span of time. I'll try to be more cognizant of that in the future.

If people are upset about swapping to mouse/keyboard it's trivial to add hotkeys to renpy choices.

Put this in screens.rpy and it updates them all. Since you tweaked it already you'd change yours to something like

screen choice(items):
    style_prefix "choice"

    vbox:
        $ hotkey = 0
        for i in items:
            $ hotkey += 1
            textbutton "([hotkey]) " + i.caption action i.action keysym str(hotkey)

I often make that patch to renpy games I'm playing because I prefer using hotkeys.

Chapter break is still distinct but people can play without needing the mouse.

 

[Ragnar]

We have many pages talking about the changes storywise but what about the new visuals?

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[Lolas Razor]

so ...dont know what all the gaslighting here is about? there content missing at the end.
the last time i played this, you went with risa to lucien - he leaves you alone with the the girl, where you get the choice to try to help her. doesnt work out -> you go with risa to her home and you get a scene there with her, her dad is being an asshole, you leave. theres more, though i cant seem to remember from the top of my head.

all that is missing. the version ends with the brent scene at ther beginning of chapter 10.
my question : what happend with the missing scenes?

edit: there also a gym scene with alex missing, aswell as a scene where gabbi meets brittani at your "studio" (old apartement)

whole chapter 10 just poofed away

 

[Joshy92]

so ...dont know what all the gaslighting here is about? there content missing at the end.
the last time i played this, you went with risa to lucien - he leaves you alone with the the girl, where you get the choice to try to help her. doesnt work out -> you go with risa to her home and you get a scene there with her, her dad is being an asshole, you leave. theres more, though i cant seem to remember from the top of my head.

all that is missing. the version ends with the brent scene at ther beginning of chapter 10.
my question : what happend with the missing scenes?

They are being added back in the next update, I'm pretty sure.

 

[Lolas Razor]

They are being added back in the next update, I'm pretty sure.

the question is: why remove chapter 10 in the first place?
I mean... its content thats already there, could you explain that to me,
NeonGhosts?

 

[HelpfulSunglasses]

the question is: why remove chapter 10 in the first place?
I mean... its content thats already there, could you explain that to me,
NeonGhosts?

scripting broke most likely. chapter 8 and 9 were basically complete rewrites, so the setup to ch10 would be broken.

I only replayed to... ch4? but I do mostly like the new intro. Gives Nicki a better backstory, skips the betrayal for brett which poisons their relationship, makes ollie not come out of nowhere later on, etc.

 

[zzxxcc111]

Can someone who played answer - v0.85c is true *end* of season 1 or somethink else?

 

[Mesmerizet]

Ok so just to double check, did the rewrite remove like 1/3 of the game? I swear tons of scenes used to be longer or exist that just aren't here anymore

They're slowly readding the scenes from the old game, I guess there are 1-2 chapters of content missing in the latest version.

Sucks, because this just paused any future development for a few months while the game is being reworked.
Although I gotta say the new game seems better than the original.

When can I have my scenes with Wren? T_T

 

[Mesmerizet]

Currently running

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to decide what this minor character should look like.. I'd teased her appearance in some Patreon promos, but she'll be making her first proper appearance in the next installment. A and B are neck and neck at the moment!

View attachment 2295375 View attachment 2295376 View attachment 2295377

I'm glad we selected A for Wren, none of the rest seem good for her.

Hope we will have some scenes with her too.

 

[Ghost'Xo]

Wtf happened to the alley scene and the allergy pills content with Ashe?

 

[Echoesinthedarkness]

Wtf happened to the alley scene and the allergy pills content with Ashe?

...nothing? they are still in the game, without any big changes

 

[Tojjya]

Wtf happened to the alley scene and the allergy pills content with Ashe?

yes alley scene is missing ☹

 

[Ropyl]

yes alley scene is missing ☹

It really is not though? Like Echoesinthedarkness said, neither scenes were removed. Did you install the patch? Those two scenes are obviously on the dark path.