English: 6/10
User Interface: 3/10
User Experience: 5/10
Art: 8/10
Dialogue: 5/10
Story: 7/10
Opinion: 7/10
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Avg: 5.86/10 [3/5]
This is a longer one. I like it, so I'm more critical, and as usual I'm spoiler heavy, so if you want the basics the first and last paragraphs are my thoughts and tl;dr, respectively.
Despite how my review might end up sounding, this game is an absolute breath of fresh air on this site. It's NOT a dumb incest game where MC returns home after X years to screw his family. It's NOT a boring open/linear sandbox that has a day/night cycle, crafting, grinding, etc before making a good or interesting game. It's NOT MC going to college to teach or play a sport with no story. Unfortunately it does sort of fall under the 4th and 5th banners of overused story tropes of Corporate espionage/mafia story and amnesia. But it does it in a bit of a different way. So I can forgive it. The only annoying parts of this are the fuck-boy tik tok look of MC, and the speed at which the story happens. (Which, I guess, follows the dangling keys nature of tik tok, so it's morbidly thematic? lol) And this is all based off what little I remember about this, so who knows, maybe I disliked or liked more. I'm also not one of those people that drool, captivated by the fact a character has red hair or loosely based off some pornstar. So, that overused gem isn't a selling point for me. But the basic synopsis of this is MC joins a gang, falls in love with the boss' daughter(rather fast), they get attacked by a rival gang, and then MC gets amnesia. Which is weird, giving the player character amnesia long after they start playing. But I'll get into the oddities later. What you SHOULD take away from this is, this is better than 90% of the boring lazy trash on this site. Give it a playthrough.
I do wanna say, this starts with the terrible "Heh. Yup, that's me, you're probably wondering how I got here." Dead narration trope. That was dead in the 90s, it's 2023. Just saying. But anyway, you play as MC Fish. Youtube prankster, Tik Tok autist, bottom rung mafia goon. Through sheer dumb luck, after getting kicked out of one mafia family for screwing the don's wife. Because you certainly wouldn't be killed for such a thing. Even IF the woman begs him not to, ESPECIALLY if, even. So the first thing Mr. B does is wheel out his wife to show MC her ass, and she asks for MC to take her out alone. Which gives a path altering prompt: Carol or Lexi. I choose the Lexi path every time because she has a more appealing personality than any other female in this, sadly. Although an Ice Queen that gets buttered up by two compliments is a bit more sitcom than mafia story. (even if "Her expression screams attitude" is just a DAZ model with raised eyebrows) I will also say that any time I have the misfortune of hearing MC try to flirt, I want him to get hit in the face. She also calls him on his shit right away with the womanizer comment. And yet again, DAZ fight scenes are never good, MC's slap fight with Rick is all the proof in the world. Then Lexi goads Mr. B to hire MC based on flirty comments and fracturing someone's skull. I will go back to see what happens in Carol's route, but it's probably something similar. More than likely "I totally didn't flirt with him, he's great at taking me shopping, hire him."
This is immediately followed by Emma, the sheltered daughter of the boss, completely infatuated by MC solely based on looks, "cleverly" getting MC to take her shopping. She has bad taste, but look at her environment. Upon getting there, she immediately gets taken hostage by someone everyone should have warned her about. And MC would have prevented if he did his job and guarded Emma. While this part gives emma a hero complex towards MC, and I don't want to get into how fast and contrived it is. It also highlights the issue of stiff or less than stellar English. Lots of phrases that aren't quite right, few to no contractions in casual speech, and some tensing issues sprinkled in. It's close enough to fool non-English speakers, but jarring enough to be distracting. Especially during this "emotional" moment, stiff dialogue just kinda comes across as funny. All leading to Emma continuing this "He's hot, I love him, give him to me." thing. So Mr. B hires a kid suspected of screwing someones wife to look after his sheltered daughter. Smart. They eventually get married to avoid sex out of wedlock? I guess. And he constantly lies about screwing Fazio's wife. (If you choose that he did it, and it's a sex game, why wouldn't you?) My issues with the romance are exacerbated by the time skips. Don't get me wrong, I hate when games have you playing through every second of every day. But cutting to black with a time skip and getting no relationship building to learn about the characters is kinda a slap in the face. All you ever learn about Emma is she's attracted to MC and is possessive. Which I hope provides drama later on, but that's never the case, sadly.
This has a lot of marriage talk and kinda feels like propaganda for it, which I hope fades away, but I just wanted to note that it talks about it a lot. This then leads to "The accident." MC and Emma are run off the road on a motorcycle. They're hit by an armored truck while they're on a bike. Really, the story should have ended, bike accidents are fatal at much lower speeds but SUSPEND YOUR DISBELIEF. This is when MC gets amnesia. Giving the player character amnesia and NOT taking away everything the player is familiar with is frustrating and shatters any "immersion" someone might have had. (Even though this is clearly about Fish, not a self insert.) To give MC amnesia and everyone tell him whats going on, and you, the player, knowing all the things gets frustrating. Because the MC acts completely different from how the player wants. MC forgets Emma, which is fine, she's hardly a character. All she's done is tell MC she loves him and convince him to date and marry her. Soon after, you meet Megan, sort of. She does the SAME "YEP THAT'S ME" INTRO. ugh. And her first introduction to MC is surgery and an erection. Fun. Ep. 2 is short and nothing outside of the amnesia and Mr. B and the mafia boys saying a bunch of trailed off sentences about some family that they won't name. WE DON'T KNOW THIS WORLD, TELLING US THE NAME WON'T AFFECT THE STORY. Aside from that all that happens is MC calling, and reuniting with, Mrs. Fazio.
It flashes back to when MC was in the Fazio family. The FIRST thing that's said is he's the most sought after name in the city. When? No one in the Benett family had hear of him and he's never done anything of note. He then acts like Agent 47 as if he's some badass and earlier acts like a lady killer. But one of his first lines was "Is this what a blowjob feels like?" You have to make up your mind on this character, not that I like either version of him. Pick a lane, scrappy virgin mobster, or agent 47 lady killer. And this section has worse English too, MC is trying to be professional and cordial, but even that's not gonna be as stiff as some of the things he says. And Lexi crying over MC is nonsensical as she's had less contact with him than Emma, and we've literally seen none of that outside the first date. And lines also get mixed up between Georgina and Lexi too. I don't know how or why, but it feels like a quality dip, in terms of dialogue, happens around here. Even if there's "finally" a sex scene around this point. Not that I care about them, but most others will. At this point about FOUR women are obsessed with MC for no reason. Analia was a bored horny housewife and just wanted sex, but suddenly is willing to run away with a fling. Lexi got two compliments and wants to keep MC for herself. Megan will probably be in love with him after two days. Emma has already been an infatuated problem. And I'm sure Carol's path would be no better. There's also this harem facilitating speech that Analia gives right after a big cliff hanger so there's no way Emma's jealousy, the only possible source of interest, won't be a thing.
So much after this point feels retconned and cheap. Suddenly MC is rambo and prepared for everything. Almost as if a bunch of insecure guys lashed out about an MC that doesn't act "alpha" enough for their timid hearts. Hm. He also seems to know what everyone's thinking and the perfect things to do after chapter 4. All the mystique and decent storytelling disappears here and It makes me sad. THEN DEVELOPER NOTE: "The protagonist's hairstyle has changed." Commit to SOMETHING. For your own sake if nothing else. I hated the dumb fuckboi style, but a change with just a developer note is frustratingly lazy. He even goes back to the virgin ruffian telling the doctor he's worried because his penis got hard. Seriously?Leading up to another cliffhanger. I dunno, I think I'm disillusioned by this playthrough.
To sum it all up, the English starts fine then gets distractingly bad. The UI/UX is stock renpy. The art is good, for the most part. The guys all look like they're made of clay and it's a little sterile, but it's good. The dialogue would be rated higher if it was consistent. Even up to end of content it feels like there's no concrete personality for MC and he swaps back and forth too much. The story is alright. I think too many truth bombs and surprise twists happen, but I'm enjoying it. If this customizes the UI, gets an editor for the English, and decide what they wanna do with MC this would be one of my favorites.