VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Friendship with Benefits [v1.20] [TwistedScarlett]

"..what you have here is a book.." gasp, visual NOVELS are books?? Lmao

The game is great if you want dialogue. The game is fleshed out, takes a while, has built in cheats to not worry about money issues, and has a ton of H scenes with all the main characters, and even the side characters get a lot themselves. Had a good time, a great few whacks, and I don't think I'll be forgetting a few of the characters for a minute.

I think it´s really boring.

The characters are all pretty flat, and the MC is just boring and too nice I would have liked it more if he was really perverted or dominant but that´s just my opinion, he could have probebly interesting even if he is just a nice guy but sadly that´s not the case here.

The gameplay is nothing special. but the UI is veryb bad and too small.

The dialogues are boring, too long and not comfortable to read because the UI is bad.

The art and sex scenes are both very boring and vanilla looking, the dirty talk is also just boring.


Not my type of game but it isn´t awful so I can still kinda recommend it.

Under normal circumstances I wouldnt really be playing stuff like these. H games inspired by cartoons tend to either be really big and expansive, or shallow as fuck and not really worth the bother. So where would this one lie?

*I'd caveat this review by stating that I didnt finish it. So there's always the chance that this turns into solid gold at the end, but I couldnt be arsed to go round more unskippable dialogues, so fuck it.


PROS

- The game is actually finished. Given how many of these stuff tends to get abandoned, Id have to praise the dev for actually finishing it instead of leaving it to rot for years whilst commanding huge patreon support each month.
- Simple gameplay, simple storylines. This game is unlikely to baffle any players aged more than 8.
- Sex scenes are decent, well and entertaining.

CONS

- Well, let's start by stating that this game is a massive timesink of repetitive motions, inane dialogue, with choices that dont really matter. Every citizen of this world does so much small talk its amazing they get much work done at all. Average novels spurt every last piece of thought into their pages while great ones focuses what's important and summarize the less important bits.

So essentially what you've got here is literally a book. A book that goes through every tiny little painful detail of your (as the protagonist) thoughts and that of your partner. Whiff past a girl in this world and she'll tell you her life story in ridiculous detail, while you endlessly click spacebar to make it go away. Only about 20% of the dialogue Ive genuinely read, the rest of the 80% might as well not exist.

- H gameplay is nonexistent because its a VN. You essentially progress the story to get the scenes, and the game sometimes allow you to choose what choice of fuckery you'd like and that's about it. You click spacebar to continue the sex until it stops.
- All the dialogue, first time, cannot be skipped with the usual left ctrl and I cannot for the life of me understand why. A case of developer hubris perhaps? All it did was turn me off from the game.



Alright, so here's a short summary of the story. And dont worry, its not going to be a spoiler because chances are good you'll speed through all of it without even noticing. You are a human that has been summoned to be a familiar in this human/pony hybrid world. Your job, as your summoner informs you, is to be a male sex machine that'll be humping her day till night without question. The problem is that she fucked the spell or something fucked up resulting in you being summoned with all your faculty intact so you retain your free will. You then proceed to...well, be a male sex machine because this is a world where there's few if any males and everyones in heat. Jesus. So you basically proceed to 'help' out the citizens by more or less fucking their brains out. Whatever, the story is just a placeholder for sex. More or less everything is about sex, and storylines are either all resolved by having sex, or ends with you having sex.

Far as the characters go, its just decent. There's no real standout. True to the VN style, you choose who you like, progress through their storyline and then you fuck them.

Artstyle is just average, tettering on the edges. Only thing that comes to mind is that their heads looks suspiciously too small for their bodies but whatever. A look at the dev's patreon reveals that he/she is making close to 11k a month piling up average artwork, so what do I know about art?


So, all in all. Its just a fine VN game about human/pony hybrids of which bear striking resemblance to the MLP franchise. I'm not into such things myself, but that may account as to why I didnt find any of this very interesting. I was meh when I went in and I came out exactly the same. A few boners to be gained but it's unlikely to make you blow your load.

I am impressed that the game is finished at all, and it would seem that the dev is hard working, and tends to actually deliver, or at very least not abandon projects. So that's one thumbs up at least. A recommendation to MLP fans, but perhaps little else besides that.

To be blunt-

I'm not done with this game yet...but I don't need to be, I'm halfway through all the routes, and I know what my review is gonna be-

This dev, this author, is an absolute loon-

A good loon, but still a loon.

Absolute bonkers, complete banana brain, out of their mind-

THEY DID THIS NOT ONCE, BUT TWICE-

Anyways....it's a great game I give it 10 Creams out of Taco.

Maybe save the bakery for later in your playthrough, it's a doozy.

Edit after 100% completion: Definitely stand by my rating. Though, I don't know how you could possibly get 11 endings out of this, I got 2 at the most, one bad and one good end, but maybe that's just because I genuinely did 100% including secrets which may just lock you into the best ending?

Not entirely sure, but still, I'm satisfied with what I got, looking forward to the sequel, as the dev has mentioned they plan to revisit this in a sequel after they finish their current project "Unveiling The Unknown", curious if maybe the sequel would allow for more legitimate romance options, rather than just a pseudo-friends with benefits harem.

Edit 2: Apparently a lot of the old endings got trimmed out, since this project changed a lot over time. So yeah.

Lighthearted, wholesome 10/10

Been a while, but this struck a chord so i wanted to leave my appreciation here.

The 4th wall breaking made me a bit sad but really impressed me.
I never wouldve guessed, such a game would confront me with theories of quantum physics (if i remember correctly) props

If you're looking for a quick clop, you could do much worse than this game. There is no real story or character progression - it's just trotting from one pony fuck scene to the next, but at least the game gives you the choice of which ponies to target and in what order. Personally, I find the art off-putting. I wish the artist would have either mimicked Equestria Girls or dropped the anthropomorphism entirely and just gone with the MLP look. The hybrid halfway-between art style that they chose just doesn't quite work for me.

Game was really nice. The ponies were a combination of adorable and sexy. Moxie best girl, come fight me. Though sometimes their faces got a bit skewed in some of the sex scenes. Story was great as well. Loved the final battle and outcome. Impressed by the multiversal plot.
9.5/10

I have just finished Friendship with Benefits. I'm not even into MLP but wanted to see a completed game before getting my hopes up for Monster Girl 1000. FwB surprised me multiple times, especially with the story which is actually pretty nice and thought through, as well as the character development, namely Butters and Cream. Well done, 10/10.

Gorgeous art and a generous amount of content, but tedious to actually play through.

This is a simple, light-hearted "seduce every girl in town" sandbox VN. There's no real challenge or risk of defeat. Just a few dialog choices which don't make much difference. Very casual and relaxing.

The writing is actually pretty interesting and has some creative scenarios. But it really doesn't compliment the game all that well; it feels like half the development team wanted to make a silly porn romp, while the other half wanted a serious exploration of the politics, practicalities, and physiology of the MLP world. So every time you go to seduce some character, you first have to read half a novel's worth of interesting but misplaced fanfiction.

It's a shame, as the visual side of this visual novel is fantastic. Tons of appealing characters, and numerous lush backgrounds. Unfortunately, the numerous sex scenes are relatively mild and underwhelming. Cute and pretty, but not especially sexy. Given that the entire cast wanders around constantly naked, the sex scenes just aren't all that rewarding.

Ultimately, it's a pleasant and charming game, but never entirely satisfying. I recommend giving it a try, but understand if you drop it.

I have to say, I'm glad I came across this one. It's easy to get into, lighthearted, and I enjoy the art style. Not a bad game to play at all. Lots of varied girls to explore with. Definitely worth a look.

Great game. Decent story. Great art. Overall 10/10
Now I'm not a brony, but this game managed to awaken something in me. The game had great art and a very interesting story. It took the whole idea of MLP porn and made it something that anyone can get into and not feel weird about porking horses

Expected degeneracy, got a really wholesome and good story. A couple of solid references to the show, enough independence to actually be good on its own. Isekai is usually pretty hit or miss, but this is a good one.

To preface this review, I've never particularly been into brony stuff. However, after saying that i can say even with no interest in that subculture at all this game was still very much enjoyable. The art is what you would expect from Scarlett, it's all fantastic. The story is quite good and engaging. Overall I would give it a 9.5/10, but in this case I'll round up instead of down.

the game is incredible but it does drag a little less story more gameplay other than that amazing sex is hot the cast is there even if name censored copyright but the art is great the developer has a great track record for games to me.

You are a random human male who is Isekaied into an anthropomorphic variant of the world of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Legally Distinct Original IP.
The unicorn who summoned you intended to summon a mindless automaton for a masturbation session but accidentally brought you over instead, and you are stuck here forever.

She is in heat and it seems pony pheromones affects humans too as you quickly (one day) end up having sex together, giving each other your virginity in a sweet and wholesome scene.
She then asks you to share your wonderful dick with her thirsty friends who are all in need of a good interspecies dicking (because guarenteed no babies).

The art is absolutely fantastic. Truly some of the best I have seen. At first things seem quite wholesome and sweet but you quickly run into a problem. You have no agency, the game looks like a sandbox but you actually only choose where to go. Once you go somewhere the scenes happen as they will, you are usually powerless to change anything (with few minor exceptions).

You are often given fake choices that will give you an extra line of dialog and then put you back on the rails. Rarely can you make a small minor change via the choices given. You are also not allowed to skip scenes, not even of contentious fetishes. For example:
There is such a huge disconnect between the veneer of wholesomeness and the actual content. I am just super disappointed overall because this could have been an amazing game if there was just the tinniest amount of flexibility written. It wouldn't have even been hard, don't need any new art or scenes. Just a handful of opt-out lines of dialog. So that you could only go with the sex acts you wanted to happen.

This should have been a 5 star game.

After reviewing Tuition Academia and mentioning this game (which I played first), I checked my reviews and realized I'd never reviewed this game. So here I am. This is the best smut VN I have played by a significant margin, and even long after completing it, I can come back to it for an afternoon.

10/10, would recommend.

extremely hot, surprisingly believable and thought out for what boils down to a MLP smut game. Characters are fleshed out in their portrayal to give them depth beyond 'here's a character that looks like Twilight Sparkle and she wants to impale her pussy on your dick'.

I will say if you're going into this hoping for a significantly high amount of accuracy to the source material, it's more that it resembles FiM in broad strokes- but the dev has put in work to fill in detail to make this world vibrant on its own, to allow for the story to take place.

Highly recommend.

I liked the game until I got to the Cream's\Surprise's\Pinkie Pie's route. For me, it became a great disappointment, breaking the fourth wall should be in moderation, but here the author clearly went too far. This is just bullshit. This is even worse than the "it was all a dream" plot twist, it literally devalued the main character and all the characters for me.

Legitimately one of the best anthro games on this site; heck, probably one of the best games on this site in general! Art is top-notch, writing is good, dialogue is great and can be pretty funny at times! The gameplay is simple but not in a way that it's boring because you're constantly exploring new areas, routes, and secrets! There's so much content and I'm really hoping that the dev will continue to update it every now and then even if they are focused on other projects at the moment because there's still a lot of potential to be had.

All in all, if you're into anthro or you need something to scratch that MLP itch, look no further than Friends With Benefits!

This is a review of version [v1.20]

This is one of the few times I find myself unable to write a full review in my usual format, so this might end up being more disorganized than usual.

The game is great, the art is top-notch, the story is well written (I think it's funny how most of the small grammar mistakes are during sex scenes) and fleshed out. The UI is simple and works flawlessly, The sex scenes themselves are well done, excellent use of sound effects and the text matches the picture ( I know this is simple, but it can be surprisingly uncommon). Each character brings a unique aspect of living in a new world to the table, I didn't find myself disengaged from the sub-stories at all. The free-roaming isn't tedious or excessive and having the binary 2 phase day system made deciding what to do easier. while parts of the economy seem daunting at first, the game gives you more than enough money to buy all the items and therefore isn't an issue. Repeat scenes with characters, as well as all scenes (except secret scenes for the most part) being repeatable with different dialogue was a nice touch.

There is very little bad, and just some stuff I would like to see expanded upon before this is marked [COMPLETE]. The bad end with morgan, Kinda wish you could play through some of that, experience all the characters as mindless breeding drones, and end it when you wanted to, maybe even play out most of that "2 years" between you making the choice and seeing the end. I know this isn't that kind of game, but I would like to see what the developer could do with the idea. The side characters also have very little content, their content isn't shallow, and it's not unsatisfying, but you feel that a character is a side character very strongly and I would like to see them fleshed out a bit more since it's optional content technically this is more a wish and not a suggestion.

I also want to address the controversy around this game. some people called the dev a "sellout" for putting this game on steam and "ruining the game" for not having the tattoos and correct colors/names for the characters. I'm not a My Little Pony fan myself, so this didn't bother me at all, and how aggressive members of the community got about this is unwarranted. This is a really good game, the dev deserves to make money off of their work, especially when it has as much effort put into it like this. there is a recolor and rename mod, the MLP fans should be happy with that, it's better than getting DMCA'ed or Sued over copyright infringement. people who complain about the setting having sporadic technology levels, characters having different personalities, and everyone being horny constantly need to calm down, it doesn't hurt the plot, it doesn't hurt the sex scenes, it's all background that superfans need to accept isn't the big picture.

In conclusion, this is a great game, I hope they expand on some of the side characters some more in the future, and the superfans that hate the game for its inaccuracies need to appreciate that it exists at all and stop harping on the small things.