VN - Ren'Py - Heliorise [v0.2.0b] [JBReverse]

This is a fantastic, story driven game. There is also lot of content for a game thats been out less than a year. Models and writing are good, the story is interesting, and the characters have some depth.

There is a ton of player choice in the game - to the point where it might be overboard, in the sense it creates too much branching, which requires extra development pace.

It would also be nice if it was more clear how choices impact character decisions - you shouldnt need a guide to tell you that 6 drinks gets a AP point but 5 does not for instance.

Overall great game that is in the top tier category so far.

This game is great so far and has a ton of potential to be one of the top tier games on this site. Few others have done better with these models, though the limits of these models is the thing holding them back.
The story is intriguing, and I've honestly been starving for some good corruption stories. The characters are entertaining, and what was a major flaw (the MC and Brian being terrible cockneys) has been pretty much completely fixed, and is way more reasonable as an accent/dialect.
Main flaw right now is the lack of any real threat I can see, but that could easily change next chapter.

It's good, keep it up.

Great renders, great scenes but mediocre writing.

The scenes and the characters are really good, nothing to say about that 5/5

But the writing feels off, and the characters are just unatural, you just meet them and 5min after they trust you like no other, and you become the center of their world, there is no real progression, and events seems to be forcefully pushed.

Awful mix of too many themes put together without a ounce of sense or reasoning.
On top of that you have>
- Unavoidable fendom
- Unavoidable town bicycle
- Sandbox (without hints and you cannot end it without going with the aforementioned whore)
- A pointless point system without consequences.
- A "best friend" that's there just to ruin the scene.

There's not much more to say but that the ever growing Ignore List grows again.

Damn! That felt like watching a full-blown movie—another AVN masterpiece on the horizon. There’s drama, politics, betrayal, secrets, mystery, thrill, action, romance, sex, music—all blended in the perfect ratio. The moment you start the game, it pulls you right in. The sound design is top-notch, and the cast? Absolutely brilliant. There are so many perspectives and angles that it’s hard to decide which thread to follow. We’ve got vampires, cops vs. monsters, the Italian mafia, the tangled mess of government politics, and right in the middle of it all—the MC. It’s pure chaos, and this world is begging to be explored. Every new girl, whether she’s a love interest or not, somehow feels better than the last, each with her own story. Brilliant stuff!

But I do have one gripe—the choice and personality system. I think this part really needs some tweaking. Of course, the dev knows best, but here’s my take: the choices don’t quite capture the range of what the MC could be. The personality-based options could’ve been handled better; they feel a bit forced and not as intuitive as they should be. I couldn’t really grasp what “Structured,” “Rebel,” “Savage,” or “Wholesome” truly meant. “Wholesome” came off as “beta,” when it could’ve easily represented a ruthless MC who’s just gentle with his family—a momentary softness, not a personality flaw.

I personally wanted my MC to be “Savage,” but those options made him sound like an arrogant, try-hard alpha instead of a witty, street-smart badass—which is what “Savage” should mean. “Rebel” felt the closest to what I wanted, but it was inconsistent—mixing traits of both alpha and sigma types, with most answers leaning toward “Savage.” Meanwhile, “Structured” should’ve felt like the disciplined, rule-following nerd type, but weirdly, those were the second most fitting for my playthrough. I aimed for a balance between “Savage,” “Structured,” and “Rebel,” with “Wholesome” reserved for family moments—but somehow, my points got scattered everywhere without me understanding why.

The “Good” and “Evil” sides also confused me. At first, I thought “Good” represented maintaining your humanity—staying powerful but restrained—while “Evil” meant embracing your inhuman, ruthless side. But it ended up feeling like “White = meek” and “Dark = Savage,” which kind of missed the point.

Still, all that aside, this feels like the next big thing in AVNs—a true masterpiece in the making. Best of luck, dev!

4.5/5 for now
I like it, one of the highest quality game here currently. The story is interesting, the mystery and all. I hope there will be an improvement to the lewd scenes tho, right now it feels like it cuts to a video instead of flowing with the game, kinda break the immersion.

Heliorise is one of the best games you can find out there.

PROS:

• Beautiful girls, normal boobs, big boobs, bigger boobs
• Interesting story, unexpected plots
• Lewd scenes are sexy, animated, can be viewed from multiple angles
• Choices are matter
• The characters have different storylines and with different characteristics.
• Enjoyable music, each song for each scene
• Has built-in gallery
• Built-in walkthrough by hovering on top left window (when a certain progress is reached)
• Author has a great sense of humor

CONS:

• Hard to jump to an old save file because my current save file is on page 82 and there is no pagination

I'll just copy my comment into a review:

I don't know, feel like this one tries to be too many things at once - a slice of life college story, mafia family crime drama, cyberpunk "big evil corp is doing evil", vampire angst, some apocalyptic backstory with blown up planets. Also as others mentioned - a lot of focus is on femdom, and if the mc isn't subservient to the girls and doesn't let them walk all over him (yeah, let's be kind to the vamp lady that tried to kill you just the night before, without any remorse) then everyone simply hates him. Story also jumps all over the place without any explanation, this clearly tries to emulate eternum more than badik, but fails to deliver.

This game is fantastic. The story is engaging and well-crafted — the prologue sets everything up perfectly, and Episode 1 pulls you even deeper into the mystery. I really enjoy the short sandbox segments too; they’re simple, fun, and not irritating (which is great since I usually dislike sandbox gameplay).

You can choose to play as a kind or more savage main character, and so far, it doesn’t feel like the game forces you into any specific path. I just hope we’ll truly get to see how powerful the MC can become as the story progresses.

Overall, it’s an insanely good visual novel, the updates are nice and fairly big too. The characters are well-written, the story flows smoothly, and the cliffhangers keep you hooked. Amazing work, dev — please keep it up! I’m really looking forward to more.

V0.2.0b

lets start with the fact that this is NOT even remotely a visual novel. the moment you add free roam, hidden images, anything that is aside from just a read, or choices that branch the story in a differing direction, you turn a VN into a game. there is a difference. a pinup is not a comic and yet...

the design not being as advertised aside, the writing here is the type of slang language we used to speak in school, before we realised we all sounded like twats. pretty standard when in a group of lads though so it fits well to the narrative. the downside to this is that it will lack appeal to those outside looking in as it is quite heavy and there are a few terms that make little sense to what they mean. again, pretty normal but not great for this medium.
the plot is decent enough and is well delivered and aside from the childish banter, the dialogue is not the usual teen read normally found here.

Visually this is nicely done. it does enough to enhance the writing. what more is required? not the best and far from the worst here.

had i not been looking for a VN i may have had a less sour experience with this but sadly i used the search function for just that and quit this during free roam. an annoying design choice that seemed out of place to me

Great quality game with really nice graphics and animations. Also the corruption storyline is really thrilling. I can't wait for the next release, it's like a better version of Eternum because the characters are awesome but the whole monster transformation thing is superb.

Enjoyed this game a lot more than I thought, so far a pretty interesting story and nice renders. I am personally intrigued to see where this goes down the line and hope to see more from the creator and that this isnt another abandoned game.

Overall: 2/5

This VN has ambition, no doubt. It throws demons, mystery, and monsters into the mix of sci fi, aiming for something grand and genre-bending. But instead of feeling grand, it ends up feeling disorienting. The plot tries to do too much at once, and the result is a narrative that’s hard to follow and harder to connect with. Every time I started to get a sense of the world or the stakes, another twist or supernatural element would be introduced, pulling me in a different direction. The pacing suffers because of this—there’s no time to breathe, no time to emotionally invest in the characters

Plot: 1/5
-Suffers too much from overreaching plot elements demons, mystery, sci fi. monsters and it becomes disorienting for the reader and player.
Visuals: 3/5
- Could use a bit finer tuning in the post processing and textures in Studio.

This game is very very good. The visuals are great, the writing is good (possibly a little too British for my taste, but no big deal), I'm liking the story a lot. Animations are great, h scenes are very well done. The main girl is awesome, character designs are top tier. Great incest game with a lot of potential. Is it perfect? No. But any fan of these types of games can enjoy this one a lot.

This actually seems like a solid game with a load of potential but I just can't stomach the horrendous accents. If the game was written without all the British slang it'd be a genuinely good game. Fingers crossed this happens in the future.

[Reviewed Version: v0.2.0 / Chapter 1]

4/5, A great start overall.

Pros:
1) The character renders are well-done by HS2 standards. Every girl in this game has her unique design that resonates with her personality.
2) Every main girl has her own distinct and recognizable personality. Throughout the story, you have plenty of chances to connect with them. In my opinion, the most important task for a porn game is to make the LIs feel alive AND connected with the players. I think this game fulfills this task almost perfectly, which alone already merits at least 3 stars for me.
3) The overall story is fantastic. Normally, I'm a bit lukewarm toward vampire stories, but this story manages to hook me in right away.

Cons (though mostly just nitpicks):
1) Sex scenes are a little bit short.
2) The point system can be quite demanding to manage (honestly my least favorite part of the game, the dev should really tune down the complexity of routes and points allocation).
3) The story is a bit crammed for a new game. Too many storylines to focus on at once, and it's a bit tiring to do so.

Overall, a fantastic experience for me, can't wait to see how the story goes in the future.

How are the reviews for this so high? It doesn't make sense. The accent everything is written in is very annoying. It's straight out of an Andy Capp cartoon - "Toodaloo, I'm off to see a bird innit" - who talks like this. Its not an English way of speaking; its a parody/pisstake of English. Accents are incredibly hard to convey to a reader, so why do this, it just makes it hard to read. The story bounces around and is confusing. Why would he go and stay with a family he has never met, when his best friend is going to the same university and is staying in the dorms? Surely they would live together and he would visit or meet his sister on campus. Is this a college story, a family slice of life, a detective murder / monster story with some sort of bat thing and vigilantes or a demon story, a ghost story, then there's some sort of religious cult. WTF is going on here!!! Too many themes are thrown at the reader all at once, with no time given to work out what's going on. The final nail in the coffin is the option to say poetry to a girl to impress her. FFS! The only positive is that everything looks okay, so a bonus star for that and I'm out.

Excellent first episode. There aren't many games that start out so good from the first releases, they usually go through multiple rewrites to get to something decent. This one seems to be properly structured and have a direction from the start, not some half assed story. Props to the dev.

The visuals are very good for what HS2 can achieve, on par with the more popular HS2 games out there, the dev seems to have a very good handle on what the engine can do.
Music/ sounds are somewhat average, not expecting much from it. Would like to have some sex sounds added to have more immersion (hopefully on a separate slider from music, for people that just want to mute those)
The story grabbed me pretty easily and I wanna know more, so the hook is there. Also it seems the dev has at least the broad strokes figured out, which is nice.
I don't much care about incest/non incest, so not much to comment there. I would even prefer non incest since it doesn't clash with supports sites and the dev can focus on actually developing the game instead of trying to invent clever use of game mechanics to dodge the rules of Patreon and such.
I also don't understand the hate on forced scenes some people seem to have. Sex scenes can be used as a plot device and making all of them optional can be a headache if you want to tell a certain story.

If I have something bad to say about the game is the freeroam parts. They seem to be a bit too many and unnecessary. For example the freeroam where you just need to talk with Helaine and Sophia...why is there a need for a freem roam there ? The party one or the bar ones are not that bad, they make the game a bit more interactive and it also helps that you have an objective tracker. The biggest issue with freeroams is that it detracts people from wanting to do replays of the game, due to the amount of time "wasted" to get through them. And this game has replayability, since there are moral choices and such that directly change the story.

TLDR: Game looks very good, the girls are sexy, story is also good. Tone it down with the amount of freeroam or get rid of them completely and this might be a gem in the making.

Amazing, the game is superb, wasn't expect such a gem, characters are interesting, and you don't have to be a good guy you can be blunt and honest, you choose how to act, that was well implemented, the only thing I would like more is have longer sex scenes, but this game has huge potential and already has a lot of content.

Ah, I forgot to talk about the plot, well build, good pacing and intriguing.

Thoroughly enjoyed the story and found the comedy entertaining; looking forward for what's to come in the future.

*In my personal opinion (from a non-technical standpoint):


Wishing you the best of luck, dev!