Review of v0.8.3 using multimod tool.
The sex scenes are pretty spicy and I enjoy the relationships between the characters but there's too much going on plot-wise. Definitely interested in seeing where this goes.
Story: You've just graduated college and are returning home to live with your dad* who has remarried a much younger woman while you were away. She's very cold towards you and you have the option of romancing her or putting her in her place. She's also in the process of hiring a new live-in maid, an Asian-American who everyone is casually racist towards for some reason. The maid has a little crush on the wife as well.
*He's technically not related to you and you keep trying to tell him this and getting interrupted but I don't even know why it matters other than to make you feel better about seducing his wife.
So that's the basic story: romance or dom your stepmom and the maid and decide what their relationship is to each other (are they both your slaves? does stepmom get to dom the maid, too? or will you make her serve the maid? or do you just want to charm them both?). I love it and would play this game six times or whatever. I will say, though, that the maid content is lacking compared to the stepmom content. You really get to interact with stepmom but with the maid it's a lot of peeping on her (she's claustrophobic so keeps her doors unlocked and showers with the door open
) or making her climb the pool ladder in front of you type stuff.
So that's a whole story, right? But there's so, so much more. There's also a neighbor girl who's just turning 18 as the story starts and her stepdad's a dick and she has two friends and one of them is part of the criminal element that is running rampant across the city so you decide to investigate and stop the crime for some reason and that brings you into contact with a crooked lady cop. Then, finally, there's the daughter of your dad's business acquaintance. She works as a nurse at the local hospital and also as a waitress at the local bar and feels very out of place with everything else going on.
I know I tend to complain that plots are "messy" but maybe devs should stop making them that way. There's a tendency for first-time devs to shove every story and fetish they can think of into one game. Dad/Stepmom/Maid/You quadrangle is a story. Neighbor's daughter "is all grown up now" and how you deal with her and her problems and her friends is a story. Vigilante crime investigator is a story. Whatever's going on with the business partner's daughter could be a short story. The problem with mashing them all together is that the reader is constantly wondering what happened to the story they care about during the other three.
The writing's good enough (engrish notwithstanding) that I'm willing to wait and see where this goes.
Gameplay: Pretty standard VN. I did use the multi-mod as a walkthrough (because life's too short) but you don't really need it. Most dialogues are either informational--where you just want to click everything before choosing the "end conversation" option--or you'll have three options: a dominant one (that raises the person's submission score), a romance one (raises their affection), and a neutral one that raises neither. So very straightforward. No complaints here.
That's it, if one of the plots appeals to you, it's worth checking out.