The whole story is about as original as if someone took every visual novel ever made, ranked them from best to worst, and then let ChatGPT summarize the bottom 500 in that order. It’s not even the fact that the story is “about nothing” – a good story doesn’t have to be about saving the planet or fighting villains, but it should offer something compelling enough to make you want to turn the next page. Unfortunately, the story Rachel is writing within this narrative perfectly encapsulates her own: “It’s about a woman, there’s not much to tell.”
The main plot revolves around how the MC and his GF handle NTR, while everything else feels like filler clumsily cobbled together to stitch specific scenes. The lives of all the characters feel like they hit "pause" whenever they’re off-screen, just standing around waiting for the camera to cut to them so they can laugh together, share a meaningless conversation, or reminisce about something someone just said. My favorite bit? The guy who’s supposed to be “hanging out at the park.” MC shows up, and there he is: standing, staring, at the literal edge of the park. Most of the dialogue topics feel like they came straight out of Alien’s Guide to Human Small Talk, Volume 1.
As for the NTR/cheating theme, yet another storyteller fails to grasp that real-life stories in this vein don’t revolve around couples suddenly cheating because they got a fleeting rush from seeing someone else’s genitals or because someone conveniently undressed them and offered oral out of the blue. Real stories involve a deeper process – a beginning, a seed that grows, evolving within the characters’ lives. They don’t rely on coincidences like, “Wow, you didn’t tell me your cousin was this hot!”
Then there’s the narrator – a completely useless addition who either states the obvious (“Rachel smiled” when her face on-screen is as expressionless as a brick wall) or describes things you can’t see (“Kevin put down his phone” while Kevin’s still clearly holding it). It’s like the narrator exists solely to plug the gaps where renders are missing. Frequent character teleportations across scenes are clumsily explained by our robotic narrator to justify their multi-meter hops.
The exposition is laughably bad and utterly soulless. One of the first examples: “I’ll lie in the bath and reflect on how the world around me works.” Yeah, because we all do that, right? Whenever we’re alone, we start narrating the backstories of everyone we know for no reason. Key historical moments are relayed as follows: one character says, “That’s what happened,” adds “Do you remember?” and that’s that. Or my personal favorite: “Who’s that?” “That’s Frank.” “Oh, right, wouldn’t have recognized him.” The rest of the exposition is equally uninspired, consisting of characters repeating things they both already know.
The graphics of the environments themselves aren’t bad in terms of quality, but the obsessive overuse of depth-of-field blur is maddening. Some renders look like I forgot to put on my glasses over one eye. The worst is when there are windows in the scene – objects two meters away are blurred beyond recognition, while buildings hundreds of meters away are razor-sharp.
Character models, however, are a completely different story. Whether this is Daz or not, be prepared for a trip to the uncanny valley’s freak show, where the models look worse than wax figures sculpted by a drunk Karen. Naturally, all the women walk around braless and in the most revealing outfits imaginable. The wardrobe clearly lacks a woman’s touch because the clothing choices make zero sense.
The locations are as generic as they come. Most homes are completely devoid of personality. Bella’s room looks like an OnlyFans streamer’s studio and is probably the only place with a sliver of individuality. MC’s apartment, on the other hand, looks like someone took the Windows 95 maze screensaver, slapped on some bright red bricks on one wall, concrete on another, and called it a day. Furniture? Straight out of “Future IKEA Catalogue 2010,” designed in 1995. The funniest part? The characters supposedly pack up all their personal belongings when moving – which, they claim, are full of memories – yet in the next shot, the apartment is completely stripped bare. No couch, no kitchen counter, no bar stools – but, oh, they leave behind the one thing I assumed had sentimental value: the pictures on the walls. Seriously? And when they move into their new home, none of the furniture they allegedly brought with them shows up.
The sex animations are laughably unnatural. You can practically feel the keyframes grinding along a timeline. The backgrounds outside the windows are static, so get ready for a cosmic simulator experience while the characters jerk around like they’re having seizures.
After reading previous reviews, I can only assume they were written by bots or the author himself. Honestly, the only reason I downloaded this masterpiece was because of the glowing praise about the story and characters. I was especially intrigued by the “character development.”
Rachel (the MC’s girlfriend) is apparently unemployed and spends her days doing absolutely nothing. She has no life outside the story’s scope, no hobbies, no fears – she’s just there. One day, she’s madly in love with her boyfriend, and the next, a random dude gropes her at a gas station, and she finds it “weirdly arousing.” Naturally, her loyalty stat starts at 0. She quickly writes this into her book, where she has “the beginning” of her story, right after her BSOD-ridden laptop miraculously fixes itself.
MC Kevin is introduced as “a typical white-collar worker.” Literally. His entire life story consists of him living somewhere, moving somewhere else, and then moving back.
The story is currently short, but I can already see the glorious direction it’ll take: everyone sleeps with everyone, and when they run out of characters, they’ll just add more. I clicked through every choice the game offers, and the only difference is a few extra sex scenes and maybe three altered lines of dialogue elsewhere. Don’t expect any meaningful branching or deep emotional impact.
tl;dr: Boring story, bad animations, shallow characters, choices don’t matter (yet, but when they do, they’ll probably just unlock or skip a scene or two).
Graphics: 2/10
Story: 1/10
Characters: 1/10
Audio: 0/10
Originality: 0/10
Total Score: 1/10
btw this review has probably more words that the Harmony Haven story script.
