Ren'Py - Heavy Five [Ch.2RS] [Nottravis]

This is a very, very slow burn. Three chapters in and the most you can do is express how you feel about a particular LI, in a "sort of" romantic way. If you do try to speed thing along you are either literally stopped or it happens in an almost noncanonical VR sim. I'm all about the build up, it's why I play these games, and I am not expecting to dive right into the lewd scenes at all but this is something else entirely I think.

It wouldn't be so bad if there was actually progress that you could make per chapter but as it is you have one, maybe two, actions you can do with your LI of choice per chapter on account of the VERY limited amount of time you are allotted. The story plays out like a VN at the beginning of the episode then transition into a free roam in the afternoon for the second part of the story phase then a third free roam to do what you actually choose. Which turns into one available action before you are forced to the end of the update. One cycle every time, and just looking around rooms takes time away from the already limited amount, whether something significant happens or not.

For some reason the Dev has put an introductory questionnaire between every chapter that effectively does nothing but break immersion. It serves no real purpose at all. Everything that is talked about in the breaks are explained again during the actual gameplay. Aside from the combat controls which are very simplistic as it is. It could be done with just a quick tut the first (and only?) time a combat situation arises.

The story is fine by me, I rather enjoy the SiFi jargon personally but it go into to many details that are irrelevant to anything. I guess to me it focuses to much on the main plot, that as of right now is all but non existent, and the connection and attachment to the actual characters of the game are all but ignored. It is described as an engaging story driven game where your actions and choices matter but you have very little actual say in anything that happens, and even less time to do so.

Its disappointing really, on account of how well done some of the actual connections a portrayed. But again everything that has to do with romance and character development is put on the back burner, so much so that you can't rightly even form an attachment to anyone. Apparently the remake was done to improve graphics and to add new content as well as add removed content back in. I never played the original but if it had less content than this than it must not have had much at all.

Having said all of that. It's not a bad game per se, but it really needs to have more player agency and more evenly distributed content between story and LIs. Especially if the chapters are going to be so forcibly short. With a bit of work this could be a five star game for me but it's not quite there yet.

Its not bad but not good either.
The art is great, i dont know how it looked before the remaster but as it is now it looks pretty good, some nice animations, some pointless animations(like doors opening, or kicks or punches).
The writing is ok, the world it self seems pretty deep and well established, but the characters talk too much unfortunately, and most of the conversations lead nowhere, at least for now.
I generally hate games that require multiple playthrough just to see every available lewd content, there is already very little of it in it and limiting it this way just ruins the game for me. The choices you make have a real impact on the progression of the story which is nice, but also forces you to skip or abandon certain character paths by doing so.
The lack of lewd content is quite disappointing, and the chapters being constantly interrupted by the developer is also immersion breaking and insufferable.
For all those high ratings i expected a whole lot better, but still, im curious to see where it goes, if it ever gets to be finished, which seems to be really far away.

The game is multiple choice VN with some sandbox elements.

Pros:
Very good art on some of the characters (engineer/ensign)
It's a cool setting with lots of potential
The sandbox "maps" look really good (shame they are under used)
MC can be white or black/male or female (great to see that in a game but it works best in sandbox type games)

Cons:
The pilot of the ship is one of the most obnoxious characters I have ever seen in a video game
There's tons of redundant dialogue
There's no basic in game soundtrack, the few moments that have sound it's really low quality
The cutest character in the game is your sister
Chapters are very short and repetitive
There's no gallery
Little H content
The MC behaves likes a clown
The game is not even finished and already got a remaster

Final thoughts: Game has been in development for a long time and only circa 30% of it is done. The developer puts most of their energy into creating different paths for the story instead of first making a solid game. What this means is you're going to have to repeat the game a lot to try different options. If you play through the game once like most people will do, you will miss a lot of the content. I was really looking forward to play this, but it was a disappointment. The game should be reworked to become a sandbox, and instead of "paths" we should simply have side missions for each character.

Very good renders. Story is quite good. Interesting and mostly relatable MC and LIs (did not interact much with the bimbo stereotype, I assume she is less interesting). (Seemingly) meaningful choices (did not play more than one path, so not sure how much the story can be influenced. Also, I played a male MC, no idea how well the female MC works). No actual sex yet on the path I played, but that's OK. UI good, game mechanics fine if sometimes a bit confusing to me (the whole combat mechanics part seems quite useless, during free-roams I was not always sure whether there is a concrete objective to fulfil or whether you just have to take in the atmosphere etc; but it was always fine in the end)
Mediocre music (generic epic stuff)

Note: Review is from the perspective of playing as a female protagonist, pursuing lesbian content, which seemed sensible since all of the routes are women, right? And it has the lesbian tag? Well, it didn't turn out that way. I also followed the walkthrough and tried a few different options/paths while playing before finally giving up. I played through Chapter 3 remastered version.

I like VNs that try to push a bit beyond the boundaries, I like Sci-Fi, I like female protagonist games, so it seemed like a good game to try, but I was let down immensely from chapter 2 onward. Mechanically, I see little point to the "combat" portion, which only shows up in chapter 3 for one scene, but seems pointless to me. I don't understand why this needs unique mechanics and buttons and all that, it seems like it'd be easier to just resolve it with traditional Visual Novel formatting. Again, I'm all for pushing the boundaries, but not just for the sake of it, there needs to be a point in it, and it seems to me there wasn't a lot of thought behind this aside from "novelty". The searching mechanic is similar, while it helps offer optional world-building and enhances the investigative aspect of the narrative, it makes repeat playthroughs tedious and takes up a lot of time (and no doubt dev time/effort). And since none of it is required, it feels meaningless in the end. It's kind of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario, since engaging with it makes dialogue a bit more interesting, but the process itself is tedious and repetitive. This sort of thing is better for a top-down RPGMaker game.

The characters range from dull to awful. There are three main girls you can significantly interact with right now as a woman, and I chose Sarah first. Big mistake, she's the ditzy blonde stereotype taken to 100x. Now, this wouldn't be so bad, if it didn't make the parts where you try to interact with her through her VR and tabletop gaming absolutely insufferable. These segments struck me as promising at first, because hey, I like those things too! Then I actually got into the games and learned that trying to do anything with Sarah is a nightmare. It's like playing DnD with a horrible stereotype of "the worst DM ever". Mechanically they also have some RNG mechanics, which are annoying and tedious to sit through. Not to mention they serve as a vehicle for her rape fantasies, which is rather disgusting, but that's a personal taste thing I understand. However, it was very annoying that this was apparently the ONLY thing I could do that even slightly excited, there's barely any opportunities to flirt with her and what few you have do not get a good reaction. As for Annie, I don't have a lot of say about her except that I'm not really into trying to press myself on a girl who up-front tells me she's not a lesbian. Chris is tolerable, though honestly dry and dull at this point in the story, I was just not interested in whatever she was talking about at all. The other characters are pretty minor at this point, not much to add.

The narrative moves at a glacial pace, with only a tiny bit happening in each episode. You can control a lot of what you experience along the way. The art's very good. I just feel like there's nothing here "for me", even though it's the right setting for it, and it seems to be set up to try to draw people like me in. Besides that though, I feel like the character writing is pretty poor, because I'd need to be really invested in the characters/story to be drawn into all the minutia it tries to throw at me, and I'm not.

I don't usually leave bad reviews on games. If it's not what I like, or if it doesn't land with me, I just move on. But I felt like there's not enough warning labels on this repulsive work. And it really did seem promising for the first chapter, then immediately took a nosedive.

90% talking and chapters are shorter than my patience for it . Women all but say they want sex and to quote "Meet them tomorrow" only when you do you have to guess what line of questions and answers you give (None are pertinent to sex)to have sex, then there is the "Lets talk in broken Aussie or British slang" grammar errors. evidently this developer wants to make a AA game not a porn game. I wish I got the 3 hours back I wasted on this game.

The story behind review: I found out this game won review of 2020, so it must be good right?

Review warning: Sci-Fi is not my cup of tea. If you like Star Wars and Star Trek I can imagine this is one of those games you might want to try out.

So about the game. There is a lot of material to explore. Each character is individual in very visible way which you may like it or not. There are plenty of paths to take, you can befriend or blackmail characters, have sex or not. It is up to you. In total this game feels more like a novel than a video game. I believe it will take couple of times to explore every option.
I didn't play very far, as said Sci-Fi doesn't interest me, but it seems like there is some short of mystery plot will revolve around and you need to solve. Game is hinting all the time something is off, is it true or are you nuts? Go and find out!

Version - Ch.1 to 3 Remastered.

One of those games quite hard to rate. You can see there's a lot of work behind it, with tons of variations (you can play as white/black male/female MC and there are different content for each one, as relationships will grow differently) and an actual mistery plot, which is nice and refreshing for those like me who want something more from their games than just a bunch of sexual acts. You can discover 'clues' during the sandbox segments and some actions during those events are alternative, meaning there's a high replayability value. Also Dev says those events are fully skippable if you want (which means there would be another way to solve the mistery for those on the non-exploring side, I guess). Add the 3 crew members as love interests plus the 5 base personnel, all with different traits and interactions available (there are tons of convos and choices with them), and you get a quite complex and wide game that would keep delivering some unseen content replay after replay.

Which, of course, means that after 3 chapters and 2 years of development (although the game has experimented a great overhaul that explains that 'low' speed), when you reach the end of the available content you feel a bit dissapointed as plot hasn't advanced too much and lewd content is still on the short side (which is not bad, as relationships are developing after just 3 in-game days). But I wouldn't feel bad about it if I didn't notice all that 'filler' content: the hidden magazines and TV shows are generally a waste of dev's time and resources and the result is not as fun -for my tastes- as might be intended (although I guess there's some insight on the overall plot in some of them), and the 'Dev talk' segments at the start and end of each chapter are a bit annoying and not entirely skippable, although you can skip big chunks of them. I guess Dev's diehard supporters might find amusing to know something more about development and whatnot but for a casual player they break the game's rythm and, honestly, the brief tutorials to explain new functions could have been built in an in-game environment.

Which leads to me to the final 'meh' aspect of the game: the visuals. And I'm not talking about characters and environments, which are more than OK. But the design of the player's UI and working pad makes texts frankly hard to read: it's your old green digital text (in tiny size) over a small black screen - what 'futuristic' meant back in the 80's. I truly suggest a bit more effort to be put on changing that and a little less spent in interludes.

Overall, a 3 star game for me as it is, but it sure deserves a fourth star to reward the undeniable hard work and the story potential. Dev says she wants to create a game that players can play the way they want, and so far she's succeeding as she's creating a complex world that reacts to player's actions and show/hides info accordingly, which would lead to a quite immersive experience (if you can look past that fourth-wall breaking between chapters). Heavy Five would probably be a must play whenever it's finished, but it will be a long wait.

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Fell in love with the avatar, and the girl/woman behind it... never saw a game developer so responsive and present as Notty...
On top of that, great game all around. well worth playing (and supporting if you can afford it, wish I had the means)

This game stands apart form other VN's you've seen.

First off, the artwork and renders are fantastic. They're very well set up, detailed, posed, and executed. An absolute pleasure to look at, and the girls are nice too.... It's only the second game I've found where you can choose your gender and the first that lets you choose your colour as well. This sets you up with 4 different paths to start the story with. Added to that, each character has at least three "personalities" which opens up tons of more options. This brings a massive scope for replaying. The story and character development are excellent with fun dialogue.

The game also features unusual animations in places I've seen no other VN do them. There's also rudimentary combat, virtual role playing, and an excellent fem dom path.

The only cons I have are minor. I can't believe I'm saying this but there's almost too many choices and paths, it's hard to keep track. Fortunately you can rename the pages in the saves (don't forget there are more than 9) so you can keep track. The other minor gripe is that the game forum is on an old style web forum and not Discord.

This game is certainly one of a kind and doesn't seem to get the recognition it deserves. Notty is doing a fantastic job! Go and support her Patreon like I did.

Without a shadow of a doubt one of the top five games available here.

Pros:




Cons:

VERY highly recommended.

This is a review of the remastered section, I have not downloaded the old version.

I was a bet heistant to try this at first, but now I'm glad I did. This is a fun game with a few sandbox elements that don't detract from the game , the story is really interesting and I enjoy playing as a woman and then woo a Naive Ensign (but I digress). There's not a lot of sci-fi VN's around so I always enjoy them more as a sci-fi fan

The renders are always vey high quality and the animations as well. I'm told that there are hamsters to hunt around and find so I'll need to find them again sometime.
As someone who has never played a game of DND in his life I really enjoyed the DND or COC in this game with the Ensign and I like forward to corrupting her into liking women.
Nottravis the dev is a very nice person (although I may be biased because she's a brit) .

The game itself doesn't really have any sex scenes yet (or at least not on the route I'm taking) other than a description of an orc ravishing a character. However my inner pervert did enjoy the scene with everyone stripping down to their underwear.

TL: DR Play this game if you like a great story, don't play if you just want to get into the sex quickly.

This is a great game you can decide your protag race and sex which is rare. This sci fi word is interesting as well as the story. Choices are matters and conversations are good so the whole thing well writen. Render and girls are beautiful. Game is slowly with lewd content but there are some hot scene yet.

have you ever played a game so goooooooooood, that you are impatiently waiting for another slice?
for me this is the game... and also the reason I created this account.
The story is one of those believable sci-fi tales of what could happen in a distant feature, humanity colonising space and the struggle that comes with it.
I've played the remastered and the original chapters. And I'm pleased that niether protagonist feels neglected in the re-mastered version,,,
the superb quality of renders.... have you ever seen dames in game so gorgeous yet realistic and believable? and don't get me started about Becca, my pp was signing in joy when learning the ropes of the game.

assets and environment: those are heavily tewaked daz assets, but everything fits so perfectly.. the animations had me from the start... this game is definitly a labour of love

lewdness and sex: there hasn't been any sex in the remastered, but if there was, it wouldn't be believalbe. the writing is full of wit and innuendoes that make up for it....

To ophion we ride

An enjoyable start to a story of crazed space chaos. Strong at immersion, the characters feed of player choices which invokes vivid emotions through expression, dialogue and perhaps most importantly implications to the main story. (I learned the hard way what can happen when a thoroughly disgraceful and unworthy officer boards a space ship.) I feel the warmth put into the game through the attention to detail touching all aspects of the experience. It has been a pleasant surprise, highlighting what can be achieved when a developer who thinks outside the box is greeted by players open to new experiences. What an elixir of happiness I stumbled across!

A fun, well-made sci-fi adult vn. The writing is consistently good, the story is written with humor and heart as well as intrigue both in the plot and between characters, dialogue choices impact the characters reactions towards the mc as well as the story progression and the character cast is great, each with their own backstories and personalities that play out well between each other. The visuals, especially in the new updated version, are well done with some good animations thrown in there both sexual and story related.

The game looks fun! It appears it will actually have a story and the characters do have ... character. I certainly do enjoy that more than a perfunctory excuse to get different pictures of boobs.

The characters look good and the renders - well made. The game is in first person view which looks good, *but I am somewhat conflicted about.*



*Personal taste note: For my first playthrough I picked a female MC because I rather enjoy looking at lesbian content. I both don't want to identify with the female MC and I'd prefer to see her. POV might probably spoil some of the fun for me in the naughty scenes in this case.

Review based on Heavy Five [Ch. 1 Remastered]
The wait for the remaster have been worth it, I was adamant to not play the game until the remaster release when I found out about it a few month ago and I don't regret my decision.
The renders and animations are great, the writing is excellent and I didn't expect to like playing a female MC so much (I might even like it more than male MC).
I really liked the branching paths and clickables, I don't think I've ever seen a sandbox game done that well, generally it's an afterthought but here it feels truly woven into the narrative.
I can't wait for Chapter 2 to see the consequences of my choices and meet the staff on Ophion

Review based on: "HeavyFive-1.1-pc compressed.zip" (SHA1: 8c297df71c40cceb4c41b657de290c01bee48417) - the latest version available for Tier 1 Patrons as of Nov 5, 2019

## Graphics
3/5
Graphics is not bad, but it isn't impressive either. For me, it is at least acceptable, but if you are looking for high quality renders, you may be disappointed a little bit. The developer is kind of newbie when it comes to gamedev and doesn't know how to use light properly. It isn't extremely bad, but some scenes don't look to good. For example, sometimes you can get the impression that one of the character (Annie) is 10-20 years older than she really is. I believe that this is because of improper use of light.
But it is not only about lighting. Nottravis tends to combines good quality models with low quality models. For example, the Earth model is completely mistake. It looks super unnatural. Actually, poor lighting may save it, but when you add more realistic ones, it looks just horrible.
Similar thing applies to some textures. For example, a brake door in the ship is not only extremely pixelated, but it also lacks of tonal transitions. In the other words, it looks like graphics of the DOS era.


Example of extremely low quality textures

The worst part is the Bored Pilot magazine. It looks just awful. The dev really isn't good at DTP, and has no idea how to properly use colors, shapes and fonts. I would say that even an inexperienced user can produce something better using iWorks or similar software, so maybe this isn't only about her skills, but also about the software she uses.



Examples of unreadable (or barely readable) text

We have a similar problem with shapes in the tutorial - she doesn't even use antialiasing to make curves smoother, and light blue doesn't really fit there.


Graphic glitches on the left, low-res textures on the bottom, and really bad looking shapes without antialiasing in the middle

There is also no no visual effects, except to UI elements. This means that clickable objects (magazine, cup of coffee) are not highlighted when you hover the mouse over them.
Oh, actually there is one more thing! Animations. In chapter 1, they don't exist at all. She puts some in chapter 2, but literally no one was satisfied with their quality, so she abandoned them in the further chapters.

Let's talk about assets. It is common in this kind of games that DAZ models will be widely used. It shouldn't surprise you that some things may be used non-exclusively among various games. Sometimes it is a school building (School's Out by The AntFarm), sometimes it is a café (e.g. Cafe Luca by KindredArts, i13 Trendy Coffee Shop Environment by ironman13), park (e.g. The Forgotten Park by Oskarsson or Haven Park by Predatron), shop (Corner Store and Poses for Genesis 3 Male and Female by Fugazi1968), restroom (Public Restrooms Ubiquitous Interiors by FirstBastion), mall (Suburban Shopping Mall by FirstBastion), office (Private Practice Office by PolyPusher, i13 Loan Agent's Office Interior by ironman13), etc. However, any serious productions try to make its world as unique as possible. So, each city is in fact unique. This applies also to the main place of game (home, ship, space station, etc.).
Unfortunately, Heavy Five is different. I can't say too much about others chapters (although from what I've seen, the Ophion base is mainly based on Sci-Fi assets made by petipet), but the first one is mainly based on just two common assets. It is Spaceship Antares ($16.95) by petipet (Daz Originals) and Vanguard ($19.95) by Kibarreto. Almost the whole action is placed on just these two ships. And it is not just about the outer look. Nottravis used the default cockpit without any significant changes. She doesn't even change the ship name. So as you can see, she didn't work too hard on it. I mention about it not because I think that using common assets is bad, but because in this particular case, it has a huge impact on the game quality. First of all, Vanguard isn't a bad model, but it isn't suitable for everything. It looks pretty nice from a distance, but in some close-ups it looks just awful, mainly because of low-res textures. Secondly, it's a small ship. It may be good enough for Earth's orbit or expedition to the moon, but not suitable for interplanetary travel. It's not only too small, but it also lacks of proper equipment for a such task. That's why I think it doesn't fit the story very well. I will provide more details later in this review.
Of course, we can't say that Nottravis used just two models. There is Earth in the background as well as smaller things inside the skip, like cup of coffee or magazine. I am not sure about sofa and metal locker cabinets, but probably the whole electronics comes from Vanguard (or its add-ons).
On the plus side, character models are pretty much unique. I mean, it is obvious that she uses DAZ models, but at least they are not so common. I am not completely sure, but it seems to me that she uses Genesis 3, so as you can guess, the model quality is just average. Anyway, they lack some details that you can found in Genesis 8. As I said, it isn't extremely bad, but it isn't impressive either.

## Audio
2/5
For most time there is no sound except to meaningless background music. In my opinion, it completely doesn't match what is actually happening on the screen. The only exception is when the ship is experiencing some malfunction.
There are also a few sounds like starting the engines, but that's it. There are no sound effects e.g. for unlocking a new event or gaining some points. Items also have no assigned sounds.

## Mechanics
3/5
Mechanics in pretty much typical for Visual Novels. You don't have too much of sandbox here, although there is a small -pixel-hunting- small-object-hunting in chapter 1 (cup of coffee, magazine, etc.). Anyway, Nottravis decided to mostly drop this idea in the further chapters. However, she wants to introduce some mini-games instead. The one game that should be available in PDA is still missing. However, there should be one mini-game in chapter 2/3. I can't say too much about it because I haven't play it, but some other people have already criticized it because you can easily cheat in it using just a mouse scroll, so it is not a challenge at all.

Although I prefer mixed VN-sandbox gameplay, pure VN is not so bad. However, I am afraid of one thing. I chapter 1, Nottravis introduced 3 characters with whom we can establish various relationships. There are at least two paths for each of them (Sarah Sub path, Annie Romance path, etc.). According to the news feed, she introduces new people with each chapter. I am afraid that she will be unable to handle all these paths. Each subsequent chapter is getting bigger and bigger (she claims that chapter 3 is bigger that chapters 1 and 2 together), introducing new possibilities. She already spent three months on each chapter instead of just one as she originally planned, and yet she must move some events to the next chapters, because she doesn't have enough time to finish them on time. To be honest, it doesn't looks too good from my perspective.

You have to go through dialogues in the right order, because otherwise you will miss some content. For example, according to the walkthrough, you need to pick "Make smalltalk" before exploring the "Ask about the mission" branch if you are interested in the affection, lust and dom stats for Chris. Another example: "The weapons station" should be your last choice when it comes to the dialogue with Annie.
Many times your have to choose between gaining affection points or some respect. The same applies to the lust. What's more, you will have to choose between the respect of one girl and affection of another one.
It is really hard to get max score without walkthrough (and even with walkthrough it is not so easy) and what's worse, all points are hidden, so you actually don't know if your gameplay was successful or not.
The worst thing is that the game has several bugs that affect dialogue and scoring, so relying on your intuition is unreliable. Moreover, relationship status visible in PDA is very shaddy. It is hard to say if the girl really likes you or not.

Except to chapter 1, Bored Pilot magazine is reserved for Tier 3 Patrons ($10/month). As I said, I'm not satisfied with BP quality, at least when it comes to its form, so I could skip this add-on completely. Unfortunately, according to the one of existing walkthroughs (available on another site), you have to read it (in game) to unlock a special dialogue. This option provides not only unique conversation, but also will give you some points that you can't get otherwise (according to the mentioned walkthrough: annieevent29 = True, annielust += 2, annieaffect -= 1 or annierespect += 1, annieaffect += 1). Of course, you can play the game several times with different choices to get almost all scenes, but if you are interested in the best scenario, there is no other way to get it. Anyway, this is bad because you can try to reach the best path for several hours and then you realize that just use the wrong edition of the game that won't let you to succeed not matter how hard you try. So it is not bad because some kind of paywall, but because there is no information about it in the game, so you will probably lost a lot of time trying to figure out what is wrong.

There is one more thing that should be mentioned - the PDA. It combines character descriptions, mission info/notes, messages, hints, etc. with in-game menu (Save/Load, Preferences, etc.). However, it doesn't affect game mechanics in any way. You can't use it for controlling ship, unlocking doors, hacking, access cameras, communication or anything like this.
There is no inventory at all. You can use only what you see on the screen, and it's a rare situation.

## Characters
3/5
This is the most controversial part of this game. The characters try to be unique. However, I am not delighted with all of them.

### MC
To be honest, we don't know too much about the main character. There is some background story behind him, but too be honest, his personality is mainly defined by our choices. Or at least it was meant to be, because it doesn't completely work that way. Just like in Mass Effect, you can play as a good guy or bad guy. But to be honest, some path are unfinished or unavailable because of some bugs, and some will lead you to dead end. You can still play as a though guy, but maybe not exactly in the way you want to. And to be honest, these paths are pretty boring.

Your crew members look like a bunch of losers and outsiders. It doesn't have to be a bad thing (see: The Dirty Dozen), but in this case it seems to be just an excuse to lack of depth of character.

### Chris
So far she is the most interesting person. However, she is most controversial as well. On the one hand, she seems to be self confident, maybe a little bit too bossy, but she cares about her subordinates. On the other hand, she is impulsive and can't control her emotions. She acts faster than she thinks. Someone may even say that she prefers to do things the hard way. Personally, I think that she isn't really so confident, but she tries to look like that. Her offended pride (her husband cheated on her) makes her try to compete with everyone, just to fix her broken ego.
What kind of person she is, is a one thing, and what relationship can we establish with her, is an another thing. It's hard to say where this will lead us. This can lead to constant competition, which I think is quite interesting. However, it can also lead to some kind of strong femdom ("don't expect to be using that thing between your legs until I say you can" - WTF is this?! Even as a joke, it isn't funny at all!), which isn't really my thing.

### Annie
She seems to be an outsider. Insubordination, ignoring orders, disrespect for superiors - these are common things you can expect from her. She seems to be pretty smart, but maybe too confident and a bit egocentric. Personally, I don't think it is bad. It may be really good for a game like this. However, there is nothing behind it. Just some background story and that's it. No crazy but brilliant ideas. No bravery bordering on madness. Literally, nothing.
What is more, at first you may think that she a nice person, maybe a little bit introverted, but soon you will figure out that she has serious mental issues. If you want to play a tough guy, she will literally kill you without any doubts.

### Sarah
She is a stereotypical blonde with significant makeup. If you are looking for a partner for intellectual conversation, she isn't for you. If you are nice to her, she will flirt with you at any moment. In each of her sentences you will find some undertones. Anyway, for most time she will acts as a typical bimbo. Maybe it will change in the future. At the moment, I am not interested in her at all.

### Others
Can't say too much about other characters, because they appear only for a moment. However, natives on Ophion don't look too realistic to me. In the first chapter you don't meet them, but you can read about them in the PDA. Photo is included as well. Personally, I don't like such things. They look like cartoon characters and don't match the story very well. Although it is based on a Sci-Fi theme, strange races of aliens is not my kind of thing.

## Story
4/5
This is the strongest part of this game for now. I have to admit that the whole story is quite promising. You are the captain of the ship. Your mission is to investigate cause of power and communication failures on Ophion station. Sounds like pretty simple task, but soon you'll encounter strange coincidences. There is some kind of mystery behind it. In the meantime, you will gain some information about your crew members, cruiser, vessel, mission details, Ophion and other planets, natives, etc. So you have an interesting story with solid background. But this is only a prologue. Nothing more, nothing less.

Do you remember the original trailer of Driv3r (2004)? It was really impressive. Unfortunately, we can't say the same about the game itself. It was one of the most disappointing title ever made (we had several similar cases, like No Man's Sky or Fallout 76). I don't say that Heavy Five will end in this end. I am just saying that at the moment, we have only this kind of trailer. So, actual game may be pretty good, but it can also be a total disaster.

## Quality
3/5
We can say that this game is playable, for sure. Moreover, it doesn't contains serious bugs. You don't have to be afraid that half of text will be in Russian or Portuguese, or saves won't work. It won't happen. However, this game isn't perfect either. It contains a lot of unfinished concepts and several bugs.

First of all, at the beginning you will be informed that you can choose your gender and skin color... in the future, because this feature isn't available yet ("At first, In the final version of this game, at this point, you will also be able to choose your gender and skin colour, but for know I would like to know what your characters first and last names are please."). Color skin shouldn't have a big impact on the game. In the first chapter we don't see the main character at all. However, our gender should determine our relationships with others. For example, Chris want to challenge each man because her husband cheated on her and wants to improve her self-esteem, so she won't acts the same with women as she acts with men. This applies as well for others.

On the introduction screen you should be able to test mechanism that allow you interact with characters and things, e.g. by throwing water on cigarette. However, even this tutorial isn't completed.

Bonus games on PDA are not available as well.

When you finally get aboard, Sarah will inform you that we have showers and toilets on the ship. However, toilet door is jammed stuck so you can't actually use it. To be honest, I treat it as a poor excuse. Vanguard doesn't have any toilet at all. It is relative small ship not suitable for long distances. Nottravis chose this model probably because it was complete (it contains internal rooms with equipment - full interiors and exteriors) and didn't cost too much, but it doesn't fit the story very well. It's like using Space Shuttle for expedition to Mars - it doesn't make any sense.

Personally I didn't like mixing imperial units with metric units. I don't know if 3-4 feet of tall is a lot or a little. On the other hand, U.S. players may be confused when they see Celsius degrees. I think that in such a game two values should be always given. For example: 7.0 C (44.6 F).

Some paths are actually unavailable. According to the walkthrough, you can play as a tough guy, install some orders to Annie and express your disappointment with the condition of the ship to unlock a new event with her. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. You can't reach this path in the current game.

And last but not least - some of dialogues are buggy. You can repeat the same conversation with Sarah many times (small talk on the sofa). Of course, it doesn't make any sense. We have very similar situation with Annie. You can make the same conversation with her at least twice (when you say that you are interested with her), to gain more points that you should. To be honest, I think that score system is broken somehow, because you can gain more points when you make a girl sad and then apologize than if you were a nice guy from the very beginning. Anyway, similar situation occurs when you ask Annie about the mission - you can do this twice. One time can make fun of her conspiracy theories and another time say that she has a point. This is ridiculous.

These problems are widely known, but still remain unfixed for many months.

Some users reported some bugs in the further chapters as well (especially chapter 3 if I good remember). According to what they said, it leads to a dead end or RenPy error. I don't know if these issues were fixed or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are still present.

I am afraid of one thing - if the dev starts to fix bugs in current chapters, it can lead to the broken saves. And because the choices in this game are extremely important so you need to carefully analyze which option pays off the most (e.g. it may be worth to sacrifice some points with Annie for a good relationship with Chris even if you are not interested in her in a romantic way, or maybe it is worth to take advance of Sarah because in this way you can actually convince Annie that you are more interested in her than blonde - by making her a little bit jealous), you really don't want to go through this game over and over again.

## Summary
Overall score: 2/5
It would be 3/5 if the most important issues were finally fixed. It is hard to rate the game if you have only a short prologue. It was quite promising, but we still don't know too much about characters and story. It can develop in the right direction, but it can also turn out to be a complete mistake. Anyway, I am sure that I wouldn't give it more than 4/5, because it definitely isn't a spectacular superproduction. Average graphics based on mediocre assets, inconsistent quality, various bugs and shortcomings, overcomplicated dialogue tree, and characters without real depth don't affect this game very well.

Pros:
+ Story is some kind of promising (Sci-Fi theme with mysterious in the background)
+ PDA (character descriptions, mission info/notes, messages, hints, etc.)
+ No visible typos or grammar mistakes

Neutral:
* Mediocre graphics based on common assets
* Genesis 3 models that lack some details compared to Genesis 8
* Natives on Ophion doesn't look too realistic for me
* Typical VN mechanics without too much sandbox
* Mixed quality characters
* No visual effects (e.g. highlighting clickable objects)
* No animations
* For most time there is no sound except to meaningless background music
* No inventory
* No sexual content at the moment
* All points are hidden
* Relationship status visible in PDA is very shaddy

Cons:
- Quite a lot of unfinished concepts (unimplemented features)
- Several bugs in dialogue system (it affects points as well)
- Broken scripts (some paths/events are unavailable due to bugs in the code)
- You have to go through dialogues in the right order, because otherwise you will miss some content
- Dialog tree is overcomplicated, so it is hard to reach to the best path, get maximum score (all points are hidden) and unlock all events
- Some content is unavailable in the standard edition, but there is no information about it in the game, so you will probably spent a lot of time until you finally figure out why you can't succeed
- Mediocre assets that don't fit story very well
- Inconsistent style
- Some models and textures are extremely low quality
- Horrible DTP work, barely readable text
- For most time music completely doesn't match what is actually happening on the screen
- Mixing imperial units with metric units is confusing for players
- Distasteful jokes
- Lack of content at the moment
- Major issues remain unresolved from the very beginning

TL;DR
Story is some kind of promising, but after over a dozen months of development I would expect something more than just an unfinished and buggy prologue based on mediocre assets. What's worse, major issues remain unresolved from the very beginning.