This review was written for Ch3V.04.
I'm kind of disappointed with this one. I won't lie and say it was a masterpiece or even had a lot of potential. But there were some sparks that caught my interest, despite the flaws. However, those sparks failed to get a true fire ignited, and so I'm left looking at something that is honestly just a mess.
To start, I'll say what I liked. The character dialogue for the first chapter and a half is actually pretty solid, with some realistic banter and fun quips back and forth. It set the stage for a fun rival-like dynamic between MC and several of the cast members, both male and female. Some of the school sections actually feel like school, a part oft overlooked (keep that in mind). There are a couple of group assignments you do with your friends that were actually incredibly well done and I thoroughly enjoyed the amateur analysis of poetry. It has a genuinely high school/early college feel to it. There's also a large variety of fetishes you can enable or disable, such as NTS/Sharing, Incest, Gay, and even forced feminization (to a degree). These are well signposted so you can keep what you like and toss what you don't. There's also a mechanic that seems to tally your choices and enable/disable certain scenes from playing out. I cannot say how well it is implemented, as there are problems with the core content that did not motivate me to test further than I did. But I can say that it exists, and appears to function as intended, which is a plus in my book.
And that's where my compliments end. Next I'll detail the minor flaws I noticed, of which there are a few.
Spelling/grammatical issues, while not plentiful, are present. That's forgivable enough to me, but it shows a lack of polish, which is a theme with these next few points.
There's a note when choosing a characters gender that they do not have any scenes yet, only for the next sequence to be an extended sex scene with them.
The character models are very standard koikatsu characters, with no mods or extra work being put into them. Most look good, and older men actually look like older men, not teenagers with facial hair as I've seen in other titles. However, the proportions on some characters are really awkward. There are several weird muscley stick men which go up vertical and have abs, but do not have any width to them. Honest to god it looks like Slenderman knocked up some women from the previous generation and now his progeny have taken residence within this town. There's also one female lead who has a noticeably and distractingly smaller head than everyone else. It's really bad when she's positioned next to another female character, because it somehow makes it look like both girls are simultaneously correctly and incorrectly proportioned. There's also some light clipping with models and objects, and a lack of care to make it look like things were actually being held a lot of times. Most egregious of all, was the very poorly timed looping animations. The simply start and stop again with absolutely no effort put in to make the transition seamless. I didn't notice this in the sex animations, but it's harder to fuck those up since they come pre-packaged with koikatsu.
The H scenes are generic koikatsu pre-programed poses. If you're playing for this alone I'd look elsewhere.
The music choices often include lyrics. This may not bother you, but there's reasons most visual novels do not use songs with words. Most obvious is when the lyrics do not match the tone of the scene being played. Additionally, there are enough songs that are almost certainly not commercially licensed to be used in this project. If the dev reads this and changes nothing else, please browse Dova Syndrome or NCS or any free use music library. There's a lot of really quality music to chose from that won't result in your game getting deleted for copyright infractions. You can't slot "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel in and expect no one to notice. Not to mention it cheapens the experience and destroys the atmosphere you built up. Obligatory "Fuck the U2, big fat lesbian Bono (woman of the year, 2016[yes, really])".
Now the part that motivated this review was the sudden heel turn away from school life. I've seen this subversion done well before, so it can work. But it did not here. Elements just get dropped in without much fanfare, but are expected to be dramatic and impactful. There's clearly a vision here, but we've jumped the gun and didn't spend enough time setting up the world, its rules, or its stakes. That leaves me without an investment into the story. Additionally, the characters that were once interesting and vibrant are left blown adrift now that everything has become "serious". Your experience may be different, but the quality of writing took a nosedive and did not recover enough for me to want to invest any more time than I already had.
Ultimately, I found this to be a charming game that quickly got in over it's head with misplaced assets and unrealized potential due to the writer not having the skill to pull off what they were attempting to do. I do not recommend this game, and would strongly advise you skip it for the reasons I outlined above. 2/5.
I'm kind of disappointed with this one. I won't lie and say it was a masterpiece or even had a lot of potential. But there were some sparks that caught my interest, despite the flaws. However, those sparks failed to get a true fire ignited, and so I'm left looking at something that is honestly just a mess.
To start, I'll say what I liked. The character dialogue for the first chapter and a half is actually pretty solid, with some realistic banter and fun quips back and forth. It set the stage for a fun rival-like dynamic between MC and several of the cast members, both male and female. Some of the school sections actually feel like school, a part oft overlooked (keep that in mind). There are a couple of group assignments you do with your friends that were actually incredibly well done and I thoroughly enjoyed the amateur analysis of poetry. It has a genuinely high school/early college feel to it. There's also a large variety of fetishes you can enable or disable, such as NTS/Sharing, Incest, Gay, and even forced feminization (to a degree). These are well signposted so you can keep what you like and toss what you don't. There's also a mechanic that seems to tally your choices and enable/disable certain scenes from playing out. I cannot say how well it is implemented, as there are problems with the core content that did not motivate me to test further than I did. But I can say that it exists, and appears to function as intended, which is a plus in my book.
And that's where my compliments end. Next I'll detail the minor flaws I noticed, of which there are a few.
Spelling/grammatical issues, while not plentiful, are present. That's forgivable enough to me, but it shows a lack of polish, which is a theme with these next few points.
There's a note when choosing a characters gender that they do not have any scenes yet, only for the next sequence to be an extended sex scene with them.
The character models are very standard koikatsu characters, with no mods or extra work being put into them. Most look good, and older men actually look like older men, not teenagers with facial hair as I've seen in other titles. However, the proportions on some characters are really awkward. There are several weird muscley stick men which go up vertical and have abs, but do not have any width to them. Honest to god it looks like Slenderman knocked up some women from the previous generation and now his progeny have taken residence within this town. There's also one female lead who has a noticeably and distractingly smaller head than everyone else. It's really bad when she's positioned next to another female character, because it somehow makes it look like both girls are simultaneously correctly and incorrectly proportioned. There's also some light clipping with models and objects, and a lack of care to make it look like things were actually being held a lot of times. Most egregious of all, was the very poorly timed looping animations. The simply start and stop again with absolutely no effort put in to make the transition seamless. I didn't notice this in the sex animations, but it's harder to fuck those up since they come pre-packaged with koikatsu.
The H scenes are generic koikatsu pre-programed poses. If you're playing for this alone I'd look elsewhere.
The music choices often include lyrics. This may not bother you, but there's reasons most visual novels do not use songs with words. Most obvious is when the lyrics do not match the tone of the scene being played. Additionally, there are enough songs that are almost certainly not commercially licensed to be used in this project. If the dev reads this and changes nothing else, please browse Dova Syndrome or NCS or any free use music library. There's a lot of really quality music to chose from that won't result in your game getting deleted for copyright infractions. You can't slot "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel in and expect no one to notice. Not to mention it cheapens the experience and destroys the atmosphere you built up. Obligatory "Fuck the U2, big fat lesbian Bono (woman of the year, 2016[yes, really])".
Now the part that motivated this review was the sudden heel turn away from school life. I've seen this subversion done well before, so it can work. But it did not here. Elements just get dropped in without much fanfare, but are expected to be dramatic and impactful. There's clearly a vision here, but we've jumped the gun and didn't spend enough time setting up the world, its rules, or its stakes. That leaves me without an investment into the story. Additionally, the characters that were once interesting and vibrant are left blown adrift now that everything has become "serious". Your experience may be different, but the quality of writing took a nosedive and did not recover enough for me to want to invest any more time than I already had.
Ultimately, I found this to be a charming game that quickly got in over it's head with misplaced assets and unrealized potential due to the writer not having the skill to pull off what they were attempting to do. I do not recommend this game, and would strongly advise you skip it for the reasons I outlined above. 2/5.
