VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Friendship with Benefits 2 [v1.2.0] [TwistedScarlett]

I have mixed feelings on this one.

On one hand, it has excellent art, well written dialogue (an actually believable harem set up? Wow!), and genuinely hot prose. There's also a ton of customization options for each sex scene (although most of them are only cosmetic and don't really change the scene's progression itself; still, it's better than nothing).

Usually those things by themselves easily lead to a great adult game. But on the other hand, the overarching story is pretty much the same story TwistedScarlett puts in all of their games. Something something harem of girls, something something misguided powerful figure wants to take over the world, something something excessive and redundant anime battles happen and hooray everyone is saved!

Every time Scarlett tries to implement a more "serious" overarching narrative into their game, I have a harder and harder time taking it seriously and not getting bored halfway through. The only aspect of this story that I found mildly interesting was the alternate universe stuff explored. But then it goes away from that and instead gets into walls of text describing political drama and kings and queens and lore and battle training and I just don't care. Sorry.

If this game's runtime had less "serious story" and more just interacting with the girls in various settings, more gradually and naturally growing in your relationships with them, and exploring different combinations of characters in fun events, I'd have closed this one feeling a lot better about it. But as it stands it just feels like TwistedScarlett is one of those devs that is - of course - supremely talented, but is currently struggling to find a consistent and secure identity, at least for their video game work.

Regardless, the care and attention to detail with Scarlett's work is always clear and appreciated. Because of that, I continue to wish them the best on their future projects. This one just wasn't for me in quite as much of a way as I had hoped.

This feels more like a glorified gallery more than anything, and the tag that drew me in, pregnancy, isn't really a mechanic or something. Personally, I was expecting something like, the player character cums inside enough, there's a chance that the receiving character gets pregnant, but no, it's just an appearance option, which is incredibly confusing. In universe, there's apparently a, "pregnancy," potion that temporarily causes the drinker to... Be pregnant? Have an inflated stomach? Womb? To simulate visually pregnancy? It's very silly, especially considering a pregnancy mechanic would be incredibly simple to implement in this renpy game

For example, PC cums inside and pregnancy is enabled? RNG, if it succeeds, the character gets impregnated. A few days later, switch their CG with the pregnant one, have a few lines from the character on the pregnancy. A few days after, turn off the pregnancy CG, a few more lines, increase the child counter by one. It's not a hard procedure

This would be 2/5 if it weren't for the relatively good quality and quantity of CGs

Story is serviceable for a glorified gallery

Would be nice if there were variations on girl moans but whatever, better than silence, I'd say

Im not crazy about furry neither i enjoy most VN games, i prefer when there is any form of gameplay. I gave this one a try however since artstyle is really good.

- story is around mid, aka power rangers assemble with furry girls that wants to have sex all the time, i tried to follow it for most of part but gave up around middle of the game. Some people will love it, some probably like me prefer to skip and just see H scenes. As with any VN game if you dont follow story and just see scenes you lose most of "gameplay" so game feels empty

- artstyle is really good, although most of it looks like AI generated with some tweaks, i enjoyed butts and boobs for most part then got bored and rushed to see ending. While variety is nice in H scenes they got boring pretty quickly after early game excitation.

- there is no gameplay or choices, there is a bit of boring money grind for some reason (didnt enjoy spamming water plant > skip to next day for 30 days)

- every girls is super horny, while it sounds cool it gets boring very quickly since you dont really need to do anything besides reading text lines, i would much more prefer if you had to do anything or at least try a bit to get to H scenes

Overall i would give this a 3 but since artstyle is carrying so hard its a solid 4.

Opening notes/TLDR;
Basically the same as the first game.
Easy girls and you help them come to terms with themselves.
The plot is improved and the stakes are more apparent.
Characters feel more shallow because they are.

Pros

• JRPG plot (can be a con, depends on reader)
• Good art
• Decent scenes.
• Decent dialogue, minimal typos, but even those are manageable.
• Enjoyable characters.
• Mildly interesting philosophical introspection into self/reality.
• Keeps to the spirit of the original series where themes go, with a grittier perspective, though only because it explores it slightly more.

Cons (some of these may be considered pros!)

• Characters are pale imitations of their original counterparts, much like the first game.
• There are no real choices. (not a big deal to me, just mentioning it if you care)
• Sex scenes, while pretty, are very simple, tame and feel really unearned. Also generally it's like 1-2 . (not that I'd prefer a grind for it, but expect it to feel too easy, too fast)
• I forgave this issue in the first game, but the characters all feel too similar, aside from a handful.
• Despite being perhaps deeper with its introspective than the show, it never actually tackles any real conflicts, making all the grand words spoken feel shallow. This game wants you to have an easy, conscience-free happy ending.
• The philosophy is not that deep. /r/im14andthisisdeep, but taking itself seriously.

Final notes
Feels like a mix between a classic JRPG and a Harem Isekai, where writing is concerned. I enjoyed it, but I'm aware it's not stellar.
It does a good job of making me feel comfortable, but when it tries to introduce stakes into a story, for the same reason I feel comfortable, I don't feel the weight. I know there will be none.

As to why the cons are so descriptive, it's because I think the game presents a decent starting point for many who wish to write well.
While I don't want more games to go this way, this is still the best example of 'above average' and on this site, rightly deserves to be listed as 5*, compared to most of the slop.

It's basic, but it's *very polished* and basic. Unfortunately, it commits the biggest sin I have for games of this nature. It forgets its own purpose. I rate games most heavily by their intended objective. I do not claim to know the intent of its creators, but I want to believe it was to create a compelling experience, but it falls just short of that.

I'd sooner give a worse (be it by price, polish or scale) game a higher score if it accomplishes its intended purpose. If a game tries to indulge in porn and only porn, I judge it that way.
If a game wants to be introspective, but opts to take shortcuts, I judge it for that, too.

It's satisfying, but shallow. It's week-old reheated pizza in the microwave. Rather dry and lacking, despite its generally great flavor and my nostalgia for it. That said, it's still pizza. Even mediocre pizza is pretty decent.
I'm still interested in trying more of the author's games to see if they improve upon themselves in the future. Also props for actually -finishing- the game. A rarity.

The spoiler below includes spoilers. It's just me ranting about some details.

You like furry, well here you fucking go. Beautiful CG and plenty of girls to choose. What's that, you're not into furry? Well try it anyway, the art is still amazing and there's actual dialogue and story that is at least entertaining to read through.

Not into Mlp:FiM? Well... That stuff was awesome and I don't care what anyone says. But seriously check this game out, it's good. Actually just check all of TwistedScarlett's games.

When I started this game, I was not expecting philosophical discussions on existentialism, the right to rule and the butterfly effect but it happened! What also happened was a fun and endearing story packed with memorable and horny anthropomorphic mares. The method of replaying scenes is a little complex and I wish that more scenes got the pregnancy treatment, but all in all this was a great VN which I recommend.

This is objectively a nice experience, but compared to the other TwistedScarlett games this one felt very... phoned in. A few thoughts on this:

- On the plus side, the CGs are good in this game and there are some good QoL improvements such as the phone system that helps you track progress.

- The relationships felt very shallow, basically you met girls and fucked them immediately, with a few exceptions for the girls that you have to chat with once or twice before fucking. Basically every girl wants you and the only control over the relationship is whether you say "yes" or "no" to them, with very little character development or buildup. I mean, it's hard to have character development when this is a sequel to a game that's already based on a known franchise.. all the girls are basically known already, even if yes there's an in-world reason for why your relationships with them are sorta getting reset.

- Related to this, the sandbox elements of the game really did not add much value and were just side content. The built-in hint system would just guide you through all the main scenes, none of which required any progress to unlock, so the default sandbox experience is just to have it be a useless scene select system. Additionally, there's a lack of meaningful player agency over the story - as far as I could tell you literally just chose whether to fuck girls along the way through the story, and that's it.

- The previous point leads to my biggest issue here: TwistedScarlett games tends to have good worldbuilding and complicated plots, but it's just too tempting to skip through the walls of the text in order to reach the coomer payoffs. There are no meaningful choices that require you to pay attention, so you can just skip through everything easily and enjoy the sex scenes. Even if you wanted to follow the plot it'd be difficult to separate out the essential stuff from the random fluff, since only a few critical scenes have any visual indication (CGs, VFX, etc.) where the player will know to slow down. UtU and MG1K avoided this problem by having RPG systems that would require some focus, and FwB1 had more meaningful sandbox management I believe (needing to manage resources to unblock progress, etc.)

At least for players like me, this biggest issue is something that I hope to see addressed in future games: You have to find a way to reward people for paying attention, like it'll help them make progress more quickly or unlock optional scenes, etc. Obviously there are a ton of risks in making things grindy or just trying to pad out game length, but plenty of games have managed to figure out good balances between sandbox/management aspects of a game and coomer payoffs. You cannot just throw walls of text at coomers and expect them to appreciate it unless they have a lot of patience, which I don't. So basically this was just a bunch of CGs for me, like a quick epilogue to FwB1.

It's still 4 stars despite my negativity - the scenes are good, the game is complete, etc. and that goes a long ways. But compared to previous TwistedScarlett games the experience is a step backwards, and the lack of "meat" around the core content of the game which is trivial to just skip through is disappointing given his other games.

Just played through the 0.10 update, and would say this has been my favourite so far.

From having played the original FwB, I think it's clear to see both the improvements in writing and artstyle. I really enjoy the character of Umbra, and the way he interacts with the rest of the cast has really helped me see them more as individual characters, which at times I felt had been a bit iffy, might sound a bit harsh but there are times where I feel like the MC is simply imagining how the ideal conversation would play out in his head, rather than a genuine dialgoue between two characters.

I do like the ambition shown with the story, and definitely don't think long texts in an H-game are a bad thing. There's a reason this is being presented in a VN format and not just as an imageset after all.

Artwise, yeah I'd prefer not to see any more AI-generated backgrounds, even if that would slow down the workflow a bit, I don't think I'm the only one in finding them just a bit jarring and cheap looking. What is hand-drawn though is unfalteringly very good, I could nitpick here or there about models being a little inconsistent scene-by-scene, but not enough to take me out of the experience too much.

I'd also maybe prefer some of the sex scenes to be a bit longer? I'd happily trade three 3-panel scenes for one scene with 8 or 9 panels, but that may be just a difference in taste.

Will definitely be keeping up with the game as it develops, and would like to say despite some of the recent reviews, the work you're putting in here is only getting better!

Highly recommend, it's definitely clear that care has been taken in crafting the world and its characters, so much so that sometimes I click through an H-scene just to continue reading and enjoying the story. (Not for lack of great art, trust me.

So this is my review as of v0.10.0a:
The game feels very off putting, to me it feels like a down grade to the first game. The story's pacing feels heavily rushed to where I don't even know what even is going on. Not to mention the giant walls of text, which makes sense since it's a VN. Yet it's more reading and less interacting. Another issue about the story is the plot. The first game's plot was understandable: get back to your dimension while dealing with mares in heat due to mating season. This game's plot feels very lackluster, and I don't even know what the plot is supposed to be about since it constantly shifts. First were trying to unite the virtues, then we have to stop nightmare moon and now we have to stop sombra. Another thing is the characters, FwB1 executed the characters way better since we got to see them develop. Yet in FwB2 we barely get to see any form of character development making them seem very dry. So far the only good thing about the game is the art, I mean twistedscarlett's art is amazing and is by far one of my fav artists. I'll keep playing the game to see if it improves but so far thing's aren't looking good.

After enduring another shallow surface level Ship of Theseus discussion because of cybernetics for the umpteenth time in my life I was then told that cyber pony girl was then so horny that she gave a footjob and her first blowjob and I was so mad that I closed the game.

Played the first game, played this at various points of its development, held on a bit, but I got tired of waiting. And since I'm fairly certain not much will change my opinion anytime soon, Im just gonna review this at it is.

Short summary of the story without spoilers; youre playing as the same person from the first game but transported into a parallel universe where all the characters are the same (with very small exceptions), except they dont know you. Simple plot device to reset everything so you can write a story using the same characters but dont have to bother about relationship dynamics.

But let's be honest here, we're here for sausages and cream, not to read another chapter of war and peace. So how's the fresh porn? Well, its alright. Kinda like what youd expect given the first game, but there is a lot of girls and a lot of variety. All in the typical VN format, so spacebar away at that sausage to make things happen.

Artwork is objectively better than the first game, so at very least it seems the dev have not merely been sitting on that pile of money, so hats off to that. If youre gonna play this game at all it'll be because of the artwork is splendid.


But now here's what I really think....Conclusion

I'll not beat around the bush; I probably wont be finishing this game, and that's because the massive wall of text that is this game makes it a somewhat sour experience, very akin to pulling teeth. Dont confuse the word count with quality - this game disgorges so much fluff you can literally cut 80% of it and nothing changes in world building, characters, or descriptions. Every character in here is like some sort of involuntary hermit who will talk at you for hours at the slightest provocation, and the MC of this game cannot and will not stop describing every little thing around him in painful detail. The end result being that even the sex scenes seems to drag on forever, like counting sheep while you plow away, and your partner verbally counts with you.

If youre gonna fill the game with 50k worth of text, then it definitely needs to be balanced out with more artwork. Would help relieve the tedium if the characters actually change poses to suggest their internal feelings. Show more than tell, that's the whole point of a VN. Otherwise just write a novel, because that's exactly what this game, and its predecessor, feels more like.

But I suppose the game's rabid fans probably seen this coming a mile away, hence the many, many glowing reviews to what I can only describe as ok even at its best. And I suppose the dev is definitely not hurting given the patronage of nearly 12k per month. Recommended for fans of the first game. For everyone else...well, you'll probably know whether the games for you 5 minutes into the intro, as your finger unconsciously motions towards the left ctrl button.

Played the first one and had a blast, second one is just as good so far! Hoping that it will have just as much to it as the first one if not more! Can't wait for the full version to be out in the future!

Every update just shows down well this game was made and how much care was put into it.

MLP taken into it's own new porny take on it all. While some of the structure and backstory was used to help frame the basics in the story and setting, It feels like a genuinely fresh take on it all. Take Moxie, while she shares some common roots with the character she was based off of, her personality feels more earnest and playful. She feels more mature and developed (not in a sex way).

If you want a good story, art, or a MLP parody, give the Friendship with benefits series a shot. it excells in each aspect imo.

I'm about 75% through version 0.8 and having a blast. A really fantastic successor to the original. New takes on the characters, great artwork, options for adjusting the sex scenes, the addition of the phone to-do and gallery, all of these elevate the game to be even better than the first one. Highly recommended for any anthro clop enjoyers.

Amazing game, I love the different styles that I can choose on certain girl. Is it Possible to have this for more girl or more option ? The skin color and clothes chages everithing. Is it plan to add BDSM ? Keep going I love the game <3

Big fan of the first one, one of my favorite games of all time. This one? Ain't it.

The idea is a bit...jank, but the new world is genuinely interesting, gives me Shadowrun vibes, love it. But the writing never gives you a chance to breathe in the new atmosphere, doesn't disclose anything interesting about it, doesn't try to worldbuild even a little bit. How can you have such an interesting setting and do fuck-all with it, running through the nonsensical "story" at a breakneck pace.
Everything resolves in a snap. We never even see the shadows and nightmares that are a supposed looming threat. The characters could be interesting with how their lives turned, but, again, we learn fuck-all, one sex-scene and trauma-dump, and in the next they are all fixed, forming a super-girl super-friends team with people they never met before.
The "twist" is seen a mile away and happens SO FAST that it holds no weight, basically just copying season 1 of mlp.
Music is jarring at times, the lightning-fast chipmunk mumble in the middle of a sex scene had me in stitches.
The art is nice. I prefer the first game's art as it was warmer and softer, but it works. Scenes are hot and written good, though sometimes are too short.

All in all - a disappointment. The idea could be executed way better, but the author got lost in the sauce per their own post on patreon, and this is not a "return to form" as they had hoped.

TwistedScarlett scores again with a shockingly wholesome, character-driven porn game. The main plot arc is indeed pulled "straight from the Blu-Rays", but the main arc in the first FwB was very nearly so. I think the game could use a bit more drama, but other than that, I'm looking forward to the post-game routes!

With how many great reviews I wanted to try this even though Furry was not a kink for me. The biggest issue for me is that this is a sandbox game but does not have the tag for it. Below is my pro and con list.

Pros:
- The artwork for its type is well done and is rendered very well.
- Each LI has a good well rounded personality that is different from the rest.
- The story itself is fairly sound and you can understand the basics

Cons:
- I understand its - There was no Sandbox tag and this is definitely a sandbox. I very much do not like sandbox games and had the tag been there I would never have tried this or reviewed it.
- Being a sandbox the story jumps around to much and at some points is hard to follow.

This is a great sequel to the first Friendship with Benefits. It's great to see the old characters and some new ones added to the game. I love how the choices that you make affects the outcome of the game, and the pregnancy option is a nice addition.