Edit: A couple of additional notes after the game received the complete tag as follows.
First, about the visuals, I don't know if I played windowed originally, but I'll have to add that there ARE a couple of grainy renders when playing full screen. It's not horrible, but very noticeable.
Other than that, what I wrote pretty much stands throughout the full game.
There are some pretty high quality animations in the late game, but not many, and one, while impressive, has the downside of invoking the common Daz "rotten teeth" lighting issue. Still not a cause for massive complaints nor praise overall.
As for the story, my criticism stands, but the cliche innocent girl plot takes a little bit of a back seat overall. Whether the damsel in distress plot in the later game is much better can be argued, though.
I don't know if the text was revisited or if my expectations have changed in the meantime, but through most of the game, the frenglish was noticeable, but not TOO bad. Except during the endings, which are terrible and feel machine translated.
The sandbox is still pretty superficial.
About the humor, the fight scene is still there, but it seems to have been toned down a notch later in the game, except for that one scene it didn't bother me all too much this time around.
Finally, the endings. Well, they're not too bad, though unfortunately horribly translated, as mentioned above.
In conclusion, the game was brough to it's conclusion, which is an achievement in and of itself. I'm tempted to award an extra star, because I feel the game IS worthwile of being played, but on the other hand, I still stand by my verdict: Even completed, the game remains pretty much average, maybe a tad above. Imagine it having three and a half stars.
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The original review:
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A solid game. Which is sad, since it could be so much more.
The most obvious thing is, of course, the visuals, and I really like that part of the game. The author has picked a solid collection of models, especially the main love interest Lucy is just very sweet in my opinion.
I'm not an expert in daz models, so I don't know how much SecretGame tweaked, but even just picking the right assets already goes a long way.
The renders are not spectacular, but generally high quality, you won't see a lot of grain or artifacts as in some other games here.
They're not that important for me, personally, but there's also quite a few animations and they are brief, but well realized for the most part.
The story fits the genre, I guess, but unfortunately it's been done in many, many other games already. Very attractive young girl moves in with an older guy for some constructed reason. Turns out she has a boyfriend, but has mostly been blueballing him for a prolonged time, but our older guy opens her up, and soon she gets rid of her boyfriend and realizes she cannot live without being humped by our protagonist every five minutes. Soon enough, she is open to everything and cannot restrain her own desires any more.
Extremely cliche, but at least competently realized.
The script ... is bearable. Russian games often have this particular flavour of english that screams "non native speaker", and here we have something like that, but of the french variety. As you probably noticed from reading this, I'm not a native speaker in english myself, but there were quite a few spots where even I thought "this doesn't sound right" - btw., there's also a few lines that haven't been translated at all.
Next, there's superficial sandbox elements. Some of the reviews argue this heightens immersion, but I disagree - there's not enough to the sandbox to justify how it hampers replayability with different choices. It's mostly just "explore" until you found x, then find y, then go on to z to continue with the story.
Another unfortunate thing is the immature humor which completely breaks the suspension of disbelief. There's a brawler hommage minigame that's downright cringeworthy, and later on a young hot girl fires off a RTS reference. Cool story, bro. This kind of stuff just drags the game down.
Finally, there's the pacing. It starts out promising or at least par for the course, but then quickly dissolves into fast lane "sluttification" of Lucy, which kinda undermines the storytelling. I realize, the intro already establishes that the game will only span not even two weeks of time, but in my opinion, there's only so much that can happen to a personality in such a short amount of time. Maybe I'm naive.
Anyway, for these reasons, I cannot award more than three stars.
Ending on a positive note, most everyone should still be able to find something to like in the game, so by all means, do give it a try. Just don't expect a masterpiece.
