VN - Ren'Py - Jamie [v0.10.1] [MoeMoeGames]

The review below mine sums up a lot of the problems with this game pretty perfectly. Decent idea, but for some reason the dev wanted to push Melanie into the game at every given opportunity and she's just a terrible person.

Pros:
-decent models and the sex scenes are fairly hot.
-The way Sarah reacts to the MC's fetish of being a sissy is fairly well done. She's clearly surprised and not necessarily in a good way at first, but she doesn't berate him or belittle him for it, she tries to understand it and deal with what it means for their relationship. This is probably the best part of the game, and what I wish would have been focused on more.
-Optional watersports I'm used to, but optional scat is pretty rare in games. I'm pretty iffy on that fetish usually, but this game does a decent job straddling the line between kinky and nasty. The scenes aren't super long or disgusting, just a bit of very kinky play every now and then.

Cons:
-Melanie is manipulative and controlling, she has zero redeeming qualities and anytime she's on the screen I enjoy the game less and less. I don't know why the dev wants the players to like her, she's a terrible person. Pushing Sarah into directions that she is clearly uncomfortable with for her own amusement, trying to trick Jamie into cheating on Sarah to create a rift between them and so many other things that deserved to be called out on how terrible they were. Instead they're just handwaved away and no one does anything about it, letting her get away with her shit again and again. The snow-bunny tattoo situation really pissed me off honestly.
-It's not really optional NTR if yuri NTR is unavoidable... this really pisses me off. Once again, Melanie just has to come in and ruin the game a little bit further. Want to have a wholesome relationship with your GF as a femboy MC? Too bad, her manipulative "friend" will muscle her way into the relationship and you have nothing you can say or do about it. The whole reason optional NTR appeals to people is it gives them control over how a game is going (especially on such a hot topic as NTR) even if a player is planning on going for the NTR route, the forced NTR with Melanie can still rub them the wrong way.

TLDR:
Decent idea for a game, but one character ruins the whole thing. Really bummed about this, because I like quite a few aspects of this game, and it has a lot of fetishes that I like that not many games pair together, but damn, Melanie really made playing this thing a chore. If the game gave you a chance to call Melanie out for her bullshit and made her content optional I'd love this game, but as it stands I just can't recommend it.

So I thought I would give this game a try after seeing the tags and I am rather underwhelmed with mostly the characters and how the story progressed.

So, the character models and the scenes are okay, nothing special but it's fine, nothing else to really note here.

The story starts out pretty good, about a man who wants to become a "sissy" and be more open about his sexuality, I think Jamie, Donna and Rose is for the most part good, what I really didn't like was Melanie and to certain less extent Sarah.

Right from the start I think Melanie really comes off as quite the douche, she is really controlling, manipulative and really pushes Sarah in directions she's not really comfortable with and the author hides this by playing Melanie off as a risk taker that is trying looking after Sarah while wanting Sarah to be more open regarding her sexuality.

Melanie made this game really difficult to enjoy, it became creepy how she would push Sarah further and further while trying to convince herself that she is doing this for Sarah's sake and it started to become obvious that she was pushing Sarah to be more open because she wanted to be together with Sarah and it was just getting creepy, I have no problem with lesbian couples, but, how Melanie went about this was really weird and off putting, like texting Jamie and pretending to be Sarah to get Jamie to "cheat" on Sarah.

When Melanie finally confessed to Sarah I was really hoping to see the author giving Sarah and Melanie some character growth, but, instead we get that Sarah is completely fine with how Melanie tried to cause issues between Jamie an Sarah and then Sarah and Melanie starts dating... Like what? This is where I decided to just stop playing this game.

Jamie had just started his transition to become a "sissy" and having a bomb dropped on him that Melanie and Sarah started dating and he is now a "part" of that, it happened way too soon, if this was after a couple of months or weeks in-game then I would not have minded it as much.

Melanie played the long con here and Sarah is very oblivious and very forgiving and Melanie got what she wanted, I know this is a game, but, making good characters is part of it and Melanie is a horrible character and maybe Jamie could have broken off from Sarah and Melanie after this and maybe started hanging out with Donna and Rose instead, and then after a break Jamie, Sarah and Melanie could have reconciled and started dating.

In conclusion.
Models, Graphics, Scenes, - 2/5
Story - 2/5
Writing - 2/5
Characters - 2/5
Music - -/5
Gameplay - -/5
Melanie - 1/5

Playing this game generated for me some mixed feelings, that I will try to put into this review. This mixed feelings mostly touch on what the current experience of the game deliver and what is potential is.

Visual style and Animations - 3/5

The characters models are good and with plenty of details given to them. Just for the character models, I will give 4 stars. Unfortunately, what drags the game down are the animations, they are quite crude and sometimes feel unnatural, with a strange overlay between still images that have an animations layer added over it. I am confident that with time, the animations can evolve to be much more detailed and natural.

On a personal note, I find the character model of Jamie on the unrealistic side of things. For me, Jamie character mode seems to be created just to fit the role set for him in the game and takes away from his depth as a character. What I am talking here can be resumed in a way that his character model is well too suited for his role in the story, I would have liked for Jamie to be more androgynous and of an average build. The way it is now giving the impression of an underdeveloped teenager.

Music and Atmosphere - 3/5

There is only one track for the music at the time of writing this, it would have been nice to have more tracks, but it is common enough for visual novel games to not have music at all.

Generally the game manages to create a suitable atmosphere and build up before the scenes or though the dialog in a scene. Unfortunately, most of the work put into creating that build up goes nowhere, because either the scene does not follow through or the story shifts to another character before any outcome ca be reached.

Story, Setting and Characters - 3/5

The story is overall interesting, except some plot points, and it managed to make me invested into it. Nevertheless, the story is a slow burning one, which takes its sweet time to develop and at times it seems to be going nowhere.

The plot does not make it hard to predict was going to happen next, visual cues and references are usually made quite clear and explained by the characters in game. Well, I do not think this is a bad thing for the story, it certainly makes it clear for the player where the story goes. Or the dev is just baiting the player into thinking about an obvious outcome and lead the him to a plot twist

I would say that the there is a 50/50 changes that the story might just bait the player into a plot twist.

The characters are personalities and motivations are above average. For the most part, the characters are two-dimensional, but this can change with some creative writing. I find the characters likeable, but a bit bland.

The most interesting character for me is Donna and her pet. Sarah and Melanie are fun to follow, they are not that unassuming. And between Jamie and Valerie, I would go with Valerie from the perspective of character writing.

The setting is definitely the most creative component of the game. I pretty much like all the settings the game uses, and I hope this to carries forward to the characters once the story build up is done. There is real potential story wise for it to go 4/5.

Gameplay - 3/5

There is not something unique in terms of gameplay, for the most part it is the average visual novel gameplay experience. There are some choices to be had during the game, but it is not yet clear what impact they will have in later part of the game. For now, the choices you can make are only determining if you will see a certain scene or not.

Content ratio - 3/5

The content ratio to play time is on the modest side. I think the content ration somewhere between 70/30. Where 70% of the CG are SFW and 30% are NSFW. I think this is mainly caused by the slow burning story and the dev not wanting to spoil the player in the early stages. With the given story and setting, there is real potential for the dev to create some excellent NSFW scenes and change the content ratio to at least 55/45, but time will tell.

All in all, the game has some real potential to get a solid 4/5 rating once the story can dig herself out and stand on its legs. This game is one of rarest ones of this genre which manages to provide good content and I hope the dev will continue with the game.

way too much talking almost no action. All the fetish scenes are very short, vanilla and uninteresting. i don't mind NTR but MC gets ignored for most of the game as the story constantly jumps around to various females characters.

Just when you think a hot scene is coming all the characters fall asleep and wake up the next day or the story jumps to another set of characters that are talking, talking and more talking. You are supposed to blue ball MC not your audience lol

If you want a slow almost romance like realistic sissification story with subpar sexual content, you might enjoy this. If you want a lot of fetish action implied by all the tags, this is not worth the bandwidth.