The Gateway starts with our dashing young protagonist at a family dinner. We assign character names and various familial relationships, then he is teleported away and his family is not mentioned again for quite some time. A couple of different strange disembodied voices warn us about various vague threats and then are not mentioned again for quite some time. What we _do_ get is a scene where we literally have to assign Lacy Lennon to research "fancy toilet paper" technology to improve our resource-expensive public toilets that we just had Molly Little build for us.
Overall, the Gateway is an unnecessary "search-for-the-event" interface around some decently-written world-building and well-integrated lewd scenes. There are pretty detailed short-cuts available to find the events needed to advance the various quest-lines and built-in cheats to skip the grind. But really, why not just discard the unnecessary sandbox and grinding all together?
The game uses a wide range of models for the lewds, and some of them are intriguing, but others are uninteresting and put me off from following their quest-lines. While generally technically well-written, the characterization is mostly undifferentiated and unearned hero-worship of our mc cypher. The weirdly extensive family relations are also kind of a put-off. It's not really a 'taboo' anymore when the mc's 2 mom's (?), 3 sisters, 2 aunts, and 2 cousins are all young porn starlets that are desperately trying to fuck him for magic-related reasons. I was interested in the lore and underlying mystery of the mc's male-fantasy-super-powers, but that was doled out sparingly.
This is obviously a mixed review. The game has a decent concept and story-execution, but it is wrapped in unnecessary, unbalanced mechanics that don't really serve the story and are frankly just weird. Our sister, Anna Claire Clouds', story-line won't advance until we've had Lacy Lennon's mom, Vanna Bardot, build her a farm and research the "cute animals" technology? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Update: I thought I was coming up on the end of the current version when I wrote the previous review. Hints suggested quest-lines were wrapping up. Then I pushed on a bit further ... and suddenly the game became literally twice as big, developed some intriguing subplots, locations, and characters, and presented tons more of the well-integrated lewd scenes that are the game's main strength. On the down side, continued proliferation of mostly-forgettable characters and pointless grinding mechanics, and some narrative silliness with the existing characters changing into other forms to match models from different shoots.
And weirdly, through repeated exposure, I, the player, eventually came to actually accept Vanna Bardot as my main confidant and wingman. I was so amused by this that I was inspired to come back and bump my review score up.
Overall, the Gateway is an unnecessary "search-for-the-event" interface around some decently-written world-building and well-integrated lewd scenes. There are pretty detailed short-cuts available to find the events needed to advance the various quest-lines and built-in cheats to skip the grind. But really, why not just discard the unnecessary sandbox and grinding all together?
The game uses a wide range of models for the lewds, and some of them are intriguing, but others are uninteresting and put me off from following their quest-lines. While generally technically well-written, the characterization is mostly undifferentiated and unearned hero-worship of our mc cypher. The weirdly extensive family relations are also kind of a put-off. It's not really a 'taboo' anymore when the mc's 2 mom's (?), 3 sisters, 2 aunts, and 2 cousins are all young porn starlets that are desperately trying to fuck him for magic-related reasons. I was interested in the lore and underlying mystery of the mc's male-fantasy-super-powers, but that was doled out sparingly.
This is obviously a mixed review. The game has a decent concept and story-execution, but it is wrapped in unnecessary, unbalanced mechanics that don't really serve the story and are frankly just weird. Our sister, Anna Claire Clouds', story-line won't advance until we've had Lacy Lennon's mom, Vanna Bardot, build her a farm and research the "cute animals" technology? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Update: I thought I was coming up on the end of the current version when I wrote the previous review. Hints suggested quest-lines were wrapping up. Then I pushed on a bit further ... and suddenly the game became literally twice as big, developed some intriguing subplots, locations, and characters, and presented tons more of the well-integrated lewd scenes that are the game's main strength. On the down side, continued proliferation of mostly-forgettable characters and pointless grinding mechanics, and some narrative silliness with the existing characters changing into other forms to match models from different shoots.
And weirdly, through repeated exposure, I, the player, eventually came to actually accept Vanna Bardot as my main confidant and wingman. I was so amused by this that I was inspired to come back and bump my review score up.