Shambling through the cobbled alleys of ye olde lewd games, I happen to stumble upon the antique shop showcasing a gem from long past. Upon further inspection is it's bedazzling glint still holding up, or has it truly served it's purpose in merely showcasing the past?
Maybe, but before we inspect that just some biases before we get onto the review. There's a built in cheat menu that for all intents and purposes was abused during my playthrough after remembering what the initial grind of this game is. On top of this, further settings to help churn down the grind were also utilized that the game provides, so, not a truly pure playthrough from my end but I have done so in the past. I think one should opt for the former but that'll be addressed later on in the review.
Anywho, lets get on with it yeah?
Glassix...is an old game. Much like car's eventually becoming vintage, same goes for Glassix in the sense of knowing that this game at one point was the shit. But like restoring a classic, or driving in one, you start to find all the little things that have made cars so comfy now (like not having guzzoline fumes absolutely blast the drivers seat). Glassix is much the same in the sense of knowing that harem corruption rpg's have come a long way since it's debut despite perhaps being the pioneer in having such an expansive game push the limits of the genre.
In spite of that Glassix too can remind a lot of people of games even still being released nowadays, where you find 0.3 on a bare bones structure promising you lewds with 15+ gals you meet, and story, and an open world, and maybe even blackjack with hookers. However where Glassix differs is that it delivered, then kept going, and now is this weird elderly being in the modern world that still shambles along occasionally sprouting another update to remind you it's still alive, albeit suffering from both dementia and cerebral palsy when you open it up again.
But, what is Glassix? As mentioned, it's perhaps the first game to really pioneer many of the tropes you now see when you open up a (albeit) soulless sandbox. I think this game gets a pass since technically it was the boots on the ground with the first wave, but for all intents and purposes this game is sandbox to the core. You are a degenerate MC with a modicum of personality that happens upon a pair of glasses sporting perv lens. You can have xray vision with them (hence, lewd), but it also comes with a certain power of both hypnotizing and corrupting anyone you come into contact with (hence, corruption).
From there you meet Lily who explains to you she's the succubus that essentially powers the aura of the glasses and that your ugly bastard father was there before you doing much of the same. Inheriting his pervertedness you are now the next in line to feed her sexual energy by corrupting women and bringing them to her for lewd delights.
That's basically Glassix in a nutshell, that's the most amount of story you're going to get from this game without spoiling maybe a paragraph's worth more of what changes gameplay-wise. So, no real overarching main plot. What's more so involved with Glassix is what you're going to be doing on the daily, which is the good ol' vintage stat hell grind.
If...if you go the masochists' champion's path on not wanting to engage with the cheat menu and instead participate in what the gameplay is, you're in for what these games where like in 2016-18. Many games wanted you to go through hours upon hours of minute gains, such as the affection and obediance stats to then get to the next phase with each and every character. What that then translates to is opening up the interaction menu with every character you meet, talking to them with the same repeatable lines to gain affection, to then use your glassix to ask them to follow you to further their obedience (all being +1 stat gains once per day that have to eventually meet a ceiling 15-20 usually) one by one until you get to their next obedience/corruption level up scene.
This does get easier once you can get past their initial glacial entrance quests (as you get more repeatable sexual encounters to replace the above), but it is insane how aged that mechanic feels in having to waste hours of your life leading people to nowhere, on top of mind numbingly pressing the talk button with each and every gal for lewds. It was rough back then, and that's still the majority of the game now.
Hence the two things that make this aged entity still playable in 2023, auto leveling (just by bumping into a LI in any location will automatically give you the stat gains rather than having to go through the interaction-related stuff), and the cheat menu.
The cheat menu in my opinion is needed if you don't want to suffer. You can just ride with the auto-leveler but get ready also to have to level up your academics (yeah you go to school), strength and other meaningless stats to get past certain thresholds all on the raw end of things. Cheat menu dashes that away, level up everything to max, level up LI's obedience to your whimsy's, tanked a gal with a bad scene? Crank that affection to max since you can't be arsed to navigate the maze like map.
Oh and the map, that's another thing the cheat menu does that should've probably be integral to the game in the first place. This game treats it's open world semi-realistically, to the point of going overboard like many of those aged harem games. Unlike fast traveling through key points of interest, this game has essentially modeled out a functioning city, with every street, neighborhood and house being something to travel/interact with. And it's horrid, it's a maze landing in an intersection and seeing five different waypoints pop up saying street names, or even just rooms to your house that disorient where you're facing as the next room transitions blasting you with several other options on where to go. Cheat menu lets you just teleport using the map anywhere. Sure it can break some things but my God it's an absolute slog to utilize the game's cacophony of options as means of traversal from the get go.
But that's a lot of critiques isn't it? What does Glassix do that still lets it hold a shaky rating of 4ish? How is it even still alive?
Lewds, and lots of them. And again, vintage. This uses honey select models from the ye olden times, so get ready to see a bunch of porn with a healthy dose of jank and barebones lighting. The majority of characters feature a unique quest to obtain their lewds and has a repeatable menu that most corruption RPG's model themselves after, such as starting off with kissing, then second base stuff 'til you just start banging for the most part for the main cast of characters.
There are also a bunch of mechanics, scenes and repeatables (unique ones that is) in this game, such as wardrobe management for the majority of characters, all buried under this weird, old, aged engine. And for the most part it's pretty good in spite of the graphics being rather dated. Unique scenes are hot, random repeatable events are pretty nice, you get a decent feel for characters that do feel barebones at times but do shine through quests occasionally, and tons of that with the absolute plethora of LI's you have. It's like crusty Russian QSP games, bursting with porn but a horrid UI sans the bugs. This game's pretty clean on bugs or sequence breaking, not too much of that here so far, even with the cheat menu's godlike potential.
And that's pretty much Glassix. It should've been finished really three years ago, but it's still going. I don't know how. I don't know why either, and unfortunately Glassix 2 doesn't seem all that hot either. This game already feels finished in many ways and should've been left in the era is spawned out of but there's still scenes being added, still little touch ups here and there and somehow whales patrons still pay for it so kudos I guess?
On top of that Glassix is a lot to swallow in the modern era where games are much more streamlined in their mechanics without needing to dumb down what they're going for, hence this game to me in spite of it's lewd achievements is a constant flux of feeling like a 2 star game with a 4 star heart.
So take my 4 stars with a grain of salt, know that you'll have to bust out the wiki for this to also realize the schedule of gals, where they go, how to interact with them properly to then get to their next level up even with cheats. And know too that if you can stomach all the archaicness that this game holds then sure you can have fun if you don't mind, but if that's too much of a turn off then steer clear as this really is the culmination of mid/late 2010's harem mechanics. 4/5, really more like a 3 star game that was a hero back in it's time.