- Aug 24, 2016
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You're not wrong, i've already seen a few here, and to be honest, they suck.
- Thread starter xןʞ
- Start date
- Jun 28, 2017
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5 years of development and theres no skip text button.
The joys of non-renpy gaming. Guess no one will ever replay the game after losing save file.
The joys of non-renpy gaming. Guess no one will ever replay the game after losing save file.
What is actually new in 0.94? I've been everywhere but there were only a couple scenes added from 0.88...
- Sep 30, 2017
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- Mar 31, 2022
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- Aug 24, 2020
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to be fair i think a lot of people like myself just stopped caring about the game, it ended up being too much story and not enough animations
- May 18, 2022
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i don't want to cause trouble by discussing controversial topics, but I'd say the reason why it has been rated lower in the last couple years is because of the shift in the political climate. in 2018 talking about trans issues was definitely controversial, but it usually stuck to certain niches. over time though, it's a lot more known and divisive, so I can see why more people would take issue with Hardcoded's premise and dialogue if they aren't already attuned to queer/trans issues.
i don't agree with the mass of 1-star ratings though, this game's quality is leagues above half of the other adult visual novels out there.
I find the game insulting, according to the game queer people are all incapable of respecting personal boundaries and have a very loose grasp on the concept of consent. Couple that with the way the whole trans thing doesn't fit at all when you can just freely modify your body (most trans people I ever met would have given up a lot for the chance to just fully swap their bodies) because you are an Android + the way the protagonist is just constantly complaining and bitching about irrelevant nonsense without ever even trying to improve their situation is just ill advise. Replayability is also cloose to 0 because the game doesn't respect nor care for player's choices.
It is absolute generic stuff (Edit: garbage was too harsh), just generic within it's own niche of content which is appealing to online activists without any care or regard for people who actually live with being trans in real life and a place where it isn't as accepted as it is (or at least used to be before said activists pushed the button) in modern western societies.
Games like this do the exact opposite of what they at least claim they are about, which is allowing people a glimpse into the struggle and the edge that is being queer (more specifically trans here) and being surrounded by other people who didn't get dealt the easiest hand in life in regards to their sexuality and identity.
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- May 18, 2022
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i can agree that the game is very idealistic (socially) and doesn't really go too deep into actual real world issues related to trans people. part of which being that this takes place in a sci-fi future world, but it's missing something. i think the main reason it doesn't fully work is because most of the main cast is trans or gender nonconforming, so they all are already on the same wavelength as HC/us, so the stories with those characters just end up pretty boring. go to trans character's house, hang out, have sex, repeat. i think the game would've benefitted from more cis or android character storylines, those were the ones i enjoyed the most (Heather in particular, i was actually having fun going through her story, Joi was also very interesting and was surprised it didn't really have to do with sex or trans people at all).
my experience with this game is a bit strange, i played through most of it back in 2019/2020ish before the lockdown happened and i was still hanging out with all of my friends irl, who were all like-minded with queer issues. flash-forward to this month and i don't really have any friends irl, i went through most of the new content in Hardcoded. it's enjoyable to the point where i can imagine i'm hanging out with trans friends, which makes the "perfect world where trans people are treated perfectly by ordinary people" a nice sentiment, but i still think it would be better if HC and the main cast had more character growth besides "gender and sexual exploration". i like the idea of HC being an android that is "hardcoded" to be male, and breaks her own programming to fit how she feels. but i agree it's extremely surface level and could say so much more.
unorganized crappy post, but just want to give my experience of this game. ive enjoyed what ive played through so far, but wish it went deeper w/r/t trans issues. particularly, i hope this game inspires other indie devs to do exactly that.
The game has some good parts, I will give it that, mainly the lovely neighbor (as far as her content goes without the intrusion of other characters) and the setting itself. Some of my issues are also related to design choices that just don't fit with the premise (e.g. the fact HC could just do whatever she wants with her body, a luxury trans people don't have & for that reason it feels strangely ungrateful to not only not make use of that option but to instead even complain.
It's nice you overall enjoy it & I wouldn't want to take that away from you. I just feel like this game is getting way too much praise (i can go with a 3 out of 5 being still in the range of a fair rating even though I gave it 2), it's not exactly advocating for a positive and optimistic approach, which in my experience is the only way to solve issues for good, though I'm sure the Devs have good intentions.
As a person who is not interested in queer politics, but is only interested in enjoying porn games and after finishing the version I was playing at the time, I would like to revise my previous statement.
Once again from purely the perspective of a porn game, this starts out very promisingly. The art is amazing the city is interesting to explore, characters are hot and plot lines get more and more exciting. Unfortunately it feels like the author later decided to invest way more into the dialogue/story (which I don't care for that much) at the expense of the porn. So even without going into controversial trans issues (honestly I skimmed/skipped most of the dialogue) and as a person who is neutral/apathetic on those topics, I can still see why later reviewers dropped their scores.
Perhaps if the author was actually good at creating an interesting story and treated trans issues properly they could have at least appealed to that demographic, unfortunately for them it seems the consensus is that they have not succeeded.
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yeah this is exactly it, i havent played the game in awhile but last time i played it was too much story for not enough reward, as you said the art and the city are great and its interesting to explore for awhile but eventually the game just devolves to opening the story menu, going through a slog of a story that a lot of people dont really care about and then realizing that you've been through like 10 different stories without any sex scenes or CGs which is fine for any normal indie game but its already been made clear this is a porn game, most people are here for the porn and if they dont get it then they lose interest
In porn, "gender mixed" characters are usually (or that has been my experience) treated as a more sophisticated version of that shown in typical Futanari Japanese Hentai. So, when I played the game back during lockdown, I never even considered these characters to be representative of anything or anyone. Just in case someone doesn't relate to "Futa Japanese", google Futabu!
I would check the updates but I only have linux and links are extremely outdated. In any case, the game is not rewarding. I really like stories, drama and world building but for a porn game it is my opinion that all of those have to be supported by cg's and "hands on" scenes. This game, again my opinion, did not have enough cg's for such thick narration/dialogue. So yeah, as a porn game It fails in such a basic rule. I also believe, as the game started and people were fascinated by how innovative and good looking the game was, they decided to overlook this as they probably thought the cg's were in mass production for the future. At least that was what happened to me. It saddens me to read it was not the case.
I would check the updates but I only have linux and links are extremely outdated. In any case, the game is not rewarding. I really like stories, drama and world building but for a porn game it is my opinion that all of those have to be supported by cg's and "hands on" scenes. This game, again my opinion, did not have enough cg's for such thick narration/dialogue. So yeah, as a porn game It fails in such a basic rule. I also believe, as the game started and people were fascinated by how innovative and good looking the game was, they decided to overlook this as they probably thought the cg's were in mass production for the future. At least that was what happened to me. It saddens me to read it was not the case.
- Aug 24, 2020
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or... its a porn game in a dystopia.
i mean, it'd be like slamming a game with beastiality with PETA levels of critisism or something. or any game where someone gets raped starts to like it, or NTR shit being taken as serious political commentary rather than a poorly veiled gimmick to get off to.
might have a bit of a point, but i figure the point about just not enough content to keep people interested is apt - it's an issue a lot of devs have, even when there's like 2-3 fap worthy new scenes a month.