VN - Ren'Py - ImoTsuyo: If It's for My Young Sister, I'll Be Stronger [v0.19.1] [otaku_argento]

V0.11

Really loving the vibe of this game, like already mentioned our MC is like someone from a Anime where he is the unbeatable hero, but it is doesn't go overboard and I like the few moments he exhibits this trait.

LI's are all pretty good, each having different characteristics and are unique but my favorite is Kaori for sure and Hana too. But everyone is good.

The story is not bad, but is missing a lot of info which Argento told he will be telling in future updates, really want to know the back story.

Also the idea of having a VN with canon route, then multiple choices then having a Sandbox with a completely different character in the same game universe is really intriguing.

Eagerly waiting for Future updates, and one thing to praise is the UI, it is really good.

The translation is kinda weird but since i know some easy words used cause i watch a lotta anime it is ok for me.

So to sum it up,
Really Good and could become a MASTA PIECE in the future.

I liked it.

In what some say are just the MC is trying to be an edgelord I see scars of years of abuse from his father. F.ex. When he threatened Rena when she tired to slap him that was a defensive reflex he had developed from the abuse not that he actually wanted to hurt her, the fact that he didn't simple hit her back was him trying to hold back his instinctive behavior to defend himself from assault so the threat was also a warning that next time he might not hold himself back. The flirty, cheerful, carefree, wacky and pampering brother that is who he wants to be. The aggressive, murderous edgelord that is the result of the abuse which he is trying to suppress.


Yea sure it's kind of weird of all the girls fall for the MC but seriously how many Harem animes aren't there where you just sit and wonder why the MC gets all the girls. Don't demand real life logic into a fictional world. As far as I have learnt Japan works very little like it's portrayed in most anime and games.

I played with Romaji Enabled and I'm dyslectic so I didn't see any problems with the dialogs or grammar.

I like Slice of Life anime so I have no problems with the pacing in the story.

I have played games that look worse, I have played game that look better. Animations and sprites could be improved but it won't stop me from enjoying the game if they stay the same. I'm looking forward to future updates.

"Once upon a time, there was a peaceful and quiet Japanese city and school for the most part, until a pair of siblings burst onto the scene and disaster began."

The cover and title of the game suggest that the game primarily revolves around the sister, although the gallery offers a wide variety of girls (to put it mildly).

You are greeted by a tutorial and a variety of language options and preferences to help you immerse yourself in this Japanese-adapted story.

Gameplay and Graphics

The game starts with a point-and-click system and the option to go back scenes with the mouse scroll action disabled. This makes the save action more important than ever, to capture memorable moments.

Each day that passes in the game brings a new heroine or several in a row, overwhelming the player as they would in real life.

The 3D characters and environments are not great, but they work well with the setting and do not look like a simple 2D game that would only blink. They even allow for character customization and the addition of assets to your liking for the heroines and the MC, preventing it from being just another clone of the genre incest-school-daily life.

• The interface, menu, extras, achievements, and dictionaries are things that the average player wouldn't care about, and they don't even come to the forefront for some. However, they are a great triumph on the part of the developer, being very user-friendly and increasing immersion with a dictionary, glossaries, and entire wikis that are updated, making the setting full of details and not feeling empty at any time. The extras menu stores all the lore of a world that aspires to be vast and detailed, which leads us to...

Story and Characters

• The game takes place in vast locations such as Osaka and Kobe, respecting the dialects, accents, and culture, sometimes giving a scary amount of attention to detail on this topic.
• Now that we know that the gameplay is summed up in interacting and living with characters (for now), these, despite the number of characters, are unique in their own way and impact the siblings in different ways.
• They have their own conclusions, likes, ways of thinking, ways of speaking, accents, and dialects.
• The aesthetics and clothing of all 27 characters (as of September 2023) are very varied and enriched by downloadable content, whether free or paid.
• As a negative point, the anime stories clearly drag along high levels of cliché that you would see in any 12-episode anime series.

"However, this would not be possible without the protagonist, the character we control, who is possibly the developer Otaku_Argento greatest weakness.
And it is very necessary that Saigo have its section in this review, and not because it is necessarily something positive..."

Saigo

• Saigo, our beloved protagonist, makes a lasting impression as soon as he bursts onto the scene of his new school or other environments. He is excessively powerful and there is nothing that can stand up to him. Any obstacle or antagonist that is presented is defeated by a Saigo who is aware of his power. He brazenly destroys the competition and gets the results on a silver platter, even the heroines themselves. In the end, they simply orbit around him, giving the damaging impression that half of them exist only to be a second-rate plate for the protagonist. There are notable exceptions, with the heroine Gina being the one who resisted the most. She undergoes an admirable character transition and evolution.
• The balance of power between the protagonist and the antagonist or adverse situation is very unbalanced. Depending on the type of player, there may be discomfort or dissatisfaction from witnessing a predatory protagonist who liquidates an antagonist who cannot express himself or defend himself.

If the developer does not take measures or create an antagonist that is up to the level of the predatory protagonist, it could seriously damage the game for several players who are dissatisfied with the development of the story.

Music, effects, and sound

• The music is functional and accompanies the setting, although it can sometimes be repetitive. On rare occasions, the developer makes extra efforts to put in cinematics or moments of extreme tension with positive results.

Optimization

• The game is particularly stable, and it almost never freezes or has bugs. However, the excessive resource consumption can reach 2 gigabytes of RAM, which would affect any government PC. This is something to keep in mind, no matter how many 3D features or function calls there are.

Conclusions

• The game is still under development, and there are some minor translation errors and a protagonist who could use some improvement. However, it is an ambitious project that continues to add new content and characters, opening up even more possibilities and scenarios. What's more, the game's negative points could be fixed in the future.
• In other words, it is a game to kill time, as the hentai or hot scenes are scarce. However, each new heroine will give you another reason to stay in the world of Imotsuyo.

English:..........2/10
User Interface:...9/10
User Experience:..3/10
Art:..............5/10
Dialogue:.........2/10
Story:............3/10
Opinion:..........4/10................
Avg:...........4.0/10 [2.0/5]

As usual, I will have the original review below this one to show how my thoughts have changed. Fair warning, fuckle your seat belts, this is a long one. But my god, this game is an example in every way how not to make a renpy game. First of all, a game that takes this long to load need a presplash loading screen. There's so much bloated, over developed and poorly implemented code that it takes so long to load, I've opened two copies of the game forgetting I clicked on it at all. Third, my biggest headache, the English is so ungodly bad it shouldn't even be written in English at all. Unless you have someone to translate and edit, just don't. This is a visual NOVEL. You read this. So if that experience is absolute dogshit, you don't want to play the game. Fourth, the performance. The menus all run like crap. I know full well, after opening the code, it's because instead of making a hovering tooltip, the buttons and menus all run bloated poorly optimized functions to show a tooltip that is just a text description. Fifth, the game defaults to fullscreen on a hard-paused splashscreen that takes what feels like longer than a minute to get to the main menu. You have UNSKIPPABLE nothingness opening up your game, most people will ALT-F4 right then. Sixth, achievements(they can be hidden now, I think). I get it, you wanna put the game on steam and whatever. But getting an achievement for doing the only possible action(left clicking) is a joke. Seventh(I can't believe I made a list longer than three items) the lifeless neutral expressions on every character. There's no better way to make everything seem boring than to have none of the characters emote over the robotic translation. It really makes you feel like you're reading a conversation between a couple AI robots that are barely in the alpha testing phase. And none of this even begins to cover the writing. Which, because I'm a masochist, I guess, I'm going to re-cover in excruciating detail over the rest of this review.

This now opens up to asking if you want to play the tutorial. Which consists of LEFT CLICK TO CONTINUE and OPEN THE MENU TO CONFIGURE THINGS/READ TRANSLATIONS. Wow I sure am stupid, thanks for telling me. It also says all characters have one pose/expression and that will change in the future. Something the dev said to me wasn't going to change before. However true/untrue it is, remains to be seen. But I hope it will be, one day. Also, rollback, a feature that is THE REASON PEOPLE PLAY RENPY GAMES, is completely disabled. This REALLY wants to be an actual eroge. As mousewheel up, in most japanese VNs, opens the history and rollback doesn't exist. Either way, eliminating rollback is a poor decision. When you finally get to the opening, the literal first words of this are japanese romaji, which is ridiculous considering this is barely translated to English. It's a static image of a house. Who's house? Never said. But what happens here is MC killed his dad, probably in self defense due to abuse, but here is where the birth of the edgelord begins. All of that is in text, by the way. There's also multiple points where the game stutters to load the next few lines for no discernable reason, I have to mention this because less than 10 minutes in, this happened multiple times. It sets up MC talking to his dead mother at her grave, the only time any humility or softness is expressed by MC. On his way home, you see a girl, who you later learn is Mizuki, and this is the ONLY positive relationship building they have for MC and her. One passing glance. The rest is abusive, violent, or generally unpleasant. Then you meet Hana. As I stated before, she starts a a traumatized kuudere, but just turns into a demure brocon. It starts on thick with her straddling MC in her underwear for no good reason. If you're here for sex, first of all, why? But enjoy that because it's your only lewd-ish scene for quite a while. I generally have no issue with slow burns, however it would be nice in a story this taxing to read.

MC's introduced to the class, no one seems to care. The only note MC makes is "My teacher's hot lol." And you meet Hachiro, who MC immediately starts to hate for no reason at all. All he says is "Nice to meet you" and MC is just a constant dick to him. I do not understand it. It's set up I THINK as mc "respecting his teacher" but that illusion is quickly erased when he's one lit cigarette away from being some stereotypically comedic punk character. MC even beats up the school bully on day one with 2006 roleplay classics like "The bully throws a punch, but MC dodges." This whole "fight scene" plays out with a static image of the bully, making it completely uninteresting and makes it feel like it's all in MC's head. He dodges and knocks out the bully in one hit at the end. Then the whole cafeteria curbstomps the unconscious kid. Wow. Then Mizuki's love scene. "You aren't in love with me, why" to which MC says "What idiot would fall in love right away?" And she.... Blushes and falls in love? Come on. Honestly there's about 4 girls that all seem to have the story "We knew each other years ago, MC doesn't remember, but I've flicked the bean every night until this moment hoping we'd be together." Otherwise how, after knowing MC less than 6 hours, would Mizuki know anything about his past? It's mind numbing. Then the scene where the kids are beating the dog, all MC thinks about the whole time is how annoying and stupid everything happening is. He even says he doesn't want to deal with the dog(I think the translation is especially bad at this point) But instead of leaving, he acts the hero he literally said he wasn't and takes the dog? Make up your mind about this idiot. Every line is essentially MC being so over everything happening, Hana swooning over MC, or someone trying to talk but because MC is the best at existing, he ctus them off and says whatever he prattles on about. I am not seeing where any character growth might start.

I'm not gonna go through every bit of the girls' introductions, as I did it in the last review. But every person that approaches MC shouts their intentions, goals, and desires. None of that is natural, it barely even happens in anime. Nothing really happens naturally, MC is just the beacon of chaos and everyone's attracted to it. So the speedrun to newer events is: Mizuki publishes all of MCs dark history, even accuses him of molesting his sister. Rena used to know MC, still loves him, pledges loyalty for him for no reason. MC threatens Hachiro with death for being friendly. Flashbacks. [Naked sprites available to patrons.] << PAYWALLING CONTENT lol. MC gets job with Rena and Miori. Beats up Takeru again. MC murders(?) three attempted rapists. MC white knights for a girl he later threatens. MC is sexually forward with the president and she reciprocates heavily. MC and Mizuki have one decent interaction and MC goes from "I will literally kill you" to "Keep being nice and we'll be friends." MC somehow walks in on a nearly naked teacher and suddenly they're fuck buddies, with out the fucking. The festival introduces even more girls from MC's past that are in love with him. Where they all in unison say how much they love MC. All they know about him is he's a murderer, violent, an asshole, possibly is inappropriate with his sister, and never listens to anyone. What redeeming, swoonworthy qualities does he have? Hana is the only one with a reason to like MC, and even then they have brain damage for liking someone they're related to.

From here on, it's uncharted waters. I don't remember anything after the festival, even though I did come back once before to review again, but never fully did. This time around the hazy "Oh wow, anime vibes" has worn off and all I can notice is how by the numbers the story is and how awful it feels to play due to poor optimizations. From here on out you can pretty much just think of any major event from any and every slice of life anime. Sports fest, camping, lake visit, beach, onsen, summer festival. The only thing you can add in is minor sex scenes every 38 chapters. It honestly feels like a season of filler anime from a soulless studio that needs to make a quick buck for 12 episodes. Every effect MC has on all these girls he diminishes their character and makes them less interesting. Why on earth would you want to be surrounded by 14 of the same person who's only defining characteristic ends up being the color of their hair? It's boring. You get your first lewd image in the form of the doctor, that MC just met, crawling in his tent and she shoves her boobs in his face. It meanders for a longs while, until... What's that? Finally! A choice! Oh. It's just what title Hana calls MC. Wow. Then suddenly MC and Hana have an older sister? Zero mentions, references, or allusions to her. She's literally just something to add to make it harder for Hana to advance on MC and to add "big tiddy onee-san" to the content pool. The only reason some people are even playing this game, the IC, gets another roadblock to add slow empty content. Even the first girl to actually confess just says "I love you, date me but also date everyone else." They all just sit around talking about how all of them want to and will date him. No personalities, no consequences, no interesting things happening. It really is a shame.

Frankly, this is just not good. It wants to have anime feels. It wants to be japanese. While it has events that happen in almost every anime, it just feels like someone wrote a story with a list of events to include. And it will never really be japanese. This probably has the worst translation I've ever read. Only one other game in recent memory even comes close. It DESPERATELY needs someone to edit this. Both in terms of language and programming. The UI is good. It's all custom and I'm happy that it is. But this has the worst UX I've ever seen. It takes EFFORT to make renpy run this poorly. So much of the UI and screens have unnecessary and bloated code that needs to be refactored if you ever intend to release this for profit. Which you obviously do with the notifications of paywalls baked into this game. The art is okay. The mouth moving is too fast, the CGs are too few and far between, some of the images are broken and just have floating eyes over a CG, and I know for a fact KK can look better than this. The story is "Edgelord goes to school, girls like him for existing." That's a sentence, not a story. The dialogue is stunted by the abysmal translation, but even then it's all "Hello, MC, I love you and will never speak against you, please have sex with every woman you see my entire being is meant to make you happy." That's boring. I don't see me ever returning to edit this review seeing how things have turned out. It's disappointing. I'm sorry I have nothing but harsh words to say, but this needs to be improved.