Ren'Py - Hikari: First Interlude [v0.03.09p] [Hikari-Comics]

It has a couple of updates now and I didnt thouht it would survive even one, but here were are so perhaps this will survive long enough for these who enjoy it. What I realized the game describtion portrays the game better now, which is:

- This is a "Harem" Visual Novel with strong NTR mechanics
and own devs words getting into more details:
- The player who skips all that is gonna think this thing is really very short.

And that was my own experience with it, as about 70%/80% of content is about NTR, voyurism, sharing etc. However, on the bright side - MANY - not all NTR scene is avoidable/preventable in some way - which isnt a hard thing to do here as most stuff just dont happen except one scene where you stand up for yourself and one scene she sucks him off infront of you. Sadly this LI is a plaything for the antagonist so sadly the claim every single one is false.

The preventable "in some way" varies between being soft locked in previous attempts or outright not obvious to see which choices leads to, where some outright dosent make sense at all, but for the most of them currently make sense -> for this setting that is of course since you have to make cuts on rational thinking regarding the fetish and how it plays out.

The Harem is, well lets say its there but not really. Its basic stuff. Plays and reads like many of the various media it is already portrayed but this one isnt its selling point sadly, mostly because the characters are 2 dimensional and the growth between them dosent show any potential, as either they already love him already or they just fuck buddies and thats it (depending on which path you are).

The models are ok-ish for me taste, but there are much better ones out there. Renders, lighting and such are also decent, but nothing to brag about. The main problem, except the big elephant of having a supposed Harem x NTR in the room, is its story, or what you wanna call it. Its very...lets say strange. Its on the tops of weird sci-fi but goes above it where things gets more weirder. What dosent help this case the comics which its based on are cannon, so thats that.

The way I see it:
Play for it for the Harem - Nope, not worth the time. Lacks passion, steeamy sex scenes and fails from the beginning with a unavoidable scene.
Play it for the NTR/NTS - Probably, mostly because its for these who want to lose their Harem girls to other guys.
Play it for the Netori (which I was also interested) - Sadly no, its very superficial currently but also not many girls are aviable for it. Speaking only 2 girls and it seems we have to pick one of them.

I very much enjoyed this game as it aligns with my likes/dislikes.

Great visuals and the variety of the girls are nice.

If you enjoy the NTR of (shit, we have to do this for us to live) type of thing, this is definitely a game to try out.

It's an alright game so far.

Like others have mentioned it does feel like you've missed a lot of important context to really understand what's happening, but it's not too hard to piece together and the general concept is good. Not many harem NTR/Netori games so it's nice to see an attempt.

Maybe this will be less of an issue when the game is complete but as of now there is wasted potential for different routes; if you pick a choice you think would be significant enough for one you instead get an underwhelming bad ending. So while you do get the choice between NTR/Netori and smaller choices like which girl to get a scene with it's pretty on-rails beyond that.

[v0.03.06p]

This one is hard to rate. First of all, this seems to be a continuation story from this dev's comics. Although you can mostly piece together what's what eventually, you are just kind of dropped into a situation with characters you have no idea about initially. And the game acts like you should be familiar with their backstory, or at the very least understand the significance of the MC and Hikari's relationship (which I'm still not quite sure about lol).

That's the main issue with this one. The start is rather rough, and the nonsensical choices at the start doesn't help matters. You have some affinity score for each girl, and the choices are usually "be nice, be mean, or be retarded."

From what I could tell, it's not all that hard to maintain high affinities for all the girls and find a route that avoids most (all?) of the NTR. More or less, picking those obviously good guy choices seem to lead to the canon(?) story that have some semblance of a cohesive tone.

And that's where my gripe starts. I do enjoy NTR so I naturally went for suboptimal choices. I figure you need to NOT max out affinity, so I intentionally pick some dumb choices from time to time. And these choies always lead to some stupid comedic moment that just takes you out of the story, not to mention the MC becomes a comeplete fucktard when you pick these joke options that are necessary to stay out of the "optimal" path.

While playing, I did see glimpses of legit world building and even some moments of real character growth and nuanced writing. That said, at least my run didn't land on a consistent tone and it was a bit of a jumbled mess.

As for the NTR, there is something there, but it will remain to be seen if it will be satisfying in and of itself. The story ain't bad once you get past the initial hurdle, so I can see myself playing this not just to get my rocks off on NTR. But as it stands currently, there is only some bad endings that don't even have a good payoff in terms of scenes. It just kind of ends with a few lines of text.

Personally, I would have preferred a bit more serious tone, because the world building is there, and it could be gritty, dystopian, and kinda fucked up if they addressed it with some weight. But the tone is mostly quite light hearted and silly, especially if you pick the outlandish choices. Obviously an intentional choice by the writer, but one that I think holds it back.

The game is confusing and you have the Impression that you missed at least 1-2 complete games because it Shows some Flashbacks of past Events.

The writing is servicable at best and riddled with typos and errors. The whole plot is all over the place and it feels more like a collection of randem events than an introduction to a story and characters.

On the technical side its fine - the renders are very basic and feel dated, but it does the job and is not my main issue with this.

The game is top among all harem/NTR games! It has grown noticeably and turned into a super good game, with variations of poses, animation, and POV that realistically raise the game to a new level.
The gallery is well-made.
The plot is very deep, IMO. It's like that movie about sandworms and spice. When completed, it should be an excellent game.
I would recommend the game to anyone.

This is just an initial review but so far the game looks promising and is enjoyable! The characters are fun and the story in interesting as well. As more updates roll out it would become a lot clearer what direction this game will go.