Version 0.8.1
A pretty well-polished and intense VN. Still rough around the edges for some parts, but overall the package is solid. Its presentation is really engaging, with beautiful character designs, and some of the cleanest user interfaces I've seen in a porn game. The adult scenes, for what little there is of them, are surprisingly really well-animated, even being able at times to fake 3D even though we're just looking at 2D images.
The actual content of the sex scenes though, is sadly very tame and safe (the "bible in the hand" kind of sex), are over in the blink of an eye, and come into existence a bit too quickly after you first meet the characters, I would say. Given what happens in the story down the road, I expected it to devolve into something a bit more raunchy and daring, but at least what's there is alright.
The games goes for a traditional Japanese-style VN in both its setting and its presentation, with a story unfolding in a kinda stereotyped Japan with its mafia and its archetypal characters, and while I'm not a fan of that at all, it at least manages to convey its story well enough to stay engaging to the end.
The "gameplay" in this VN, quite frankly, could be easily cut out. The game wants to be a sandbox-style VN, and quite similarly to what you'd expect in that kind of game, you go from place to place talking to different people, some of them having events at different periods of the day, and you start to make a schedule to meet as many of them as possible and increasing your stats, raising money, etc... And none of that matters, at all. This game being heavily story-focused, you'll be railroaded constantly from one specific event to the other with barely anything you can do to change the course. You get up, you train with some NPC, you work, you get a special event from time to time, rince and repeat. Added to that a hefty amount of backtracking each time you need to go back and forth between NPCs, and you just end up clicking the same two buttons over and over again when it could just be a short and smooth dialogue sequence from one event to another.
You can get money by working or picking it up from the ground, but it's never used and all your earnings are stolen roughly towards the middle-end of the story, so all your efforts were for nothing. And in the same way, raising your stats is never used in any way. I think strength is used at one specific event, but that's it. Just all in all, some very superficial stuff that isn't the end of the world, but some stuff that doesn't need to be there and brings nothing of value in terms of gameplay.
About the story itself, the first thing I have to say is... Boy howdy, does the MC live in a fucking ghetto. From the first 5 minutes of the story, you learn your sister hates your very existence and tried to conspire with some shady dudes to get back at you, you have thugs down the street who directly work for a crime lord, there's the fucking yakuzas involved, and everyone is trying to kill you... Fucking hell, the MC lives in a nice neighbourhood, but if I were him, I would just say fuck it and get the hell out of there. Especially with the even more shady stuff going down the line.
Now, the premice sounds interesting, and many side characters are pretty likable, but I think this story falls flat on a number of points:
First of all, as I said earlier, this game wants to be a sandbox game, but is very railroaded by its story structure and the way its presented to us. The dialogues often offer you branching paths to dictate how the overall story will play out, but apart from the very beginning of the game, where you can choose to blackmail your sister, many of those choices barely impact the specific dialogue they're presented in, some being just variants of some lines of dialogues boiling down to the same outcome, while others are just there to fake the illusion of choice.
For example, there are a few romantic interests you can get thoughout the story, but the game never lets you choose if you even want to start these relationships to begin with. I mean, sure, it's a porn game, but
Another example of this illusion of choice is towards the end of the story,
Apart from the dodgy story structure, another problem with this game's story is just that, in general, it doesn't really have anything to say. It doesn't really have any theme it follows, no message it wants to convey, and it seldom offers character development that doesn't translate in anything meaningful to us as the player. We learn that the MC regrets his past and tries to change it, and it's nice to see him standing up for himself and telling others to fuck off (when the doesn't take control away from you to completely negate that effect, that is), and it's nice to see him using his past to solve his issues, but overall, no one really experiences any character conflict that makes them grow. No much conflict between the love interests, nothing to spice up their intimate times together, nothing.
The character personalities are nice and convincing enough, but the story never uses them to tell anything. Overall, it's still a nice story with a lot of twists and turns, but a sandbox game it is not, and a thoughtful story neither. It somewhat tries to have a theme about teamwork and trusting others to help you solve your issues, but it also falls flat because you don't know why would some NPCs, in their context, go out of their way to help you in such a dangerous situation. But whatever.
Overall, it's still a fine package. The gameplay part is a bit of a chore, but never difficult or to the point of being annoying, so you can get used to it pretty quickly. I woudl still recommend this game, just don't come in expecting a great story, lower your expectations and you might still be pleasantly surprised.