v0.28, 7+ hours of gameplay. Most of the bads mentioned above are indeed there, but they are not as awful as they look. Or maybe they are.
MC looks like an inflatable sex doll?
Par for the course in RPGM porn games (yes, I know there are RPGMs with realistic models... probably.... somewhere...). What's important is that she doesn't acts like one. Or rather, you can make her a cardboard cutout of a sex-crazed slut, the option is there, but you can just as well play her as good and almost-honest cop with a wild streak (in a city where literally everyone is a serial rapist). Things like no trauma from constant sexual abuse do require some willing suspension of disbelief, but I'm willing to cut the game some slack here - it's a rape/blackmail porn, not a psychological drama.
Most characters are completely one-dimensional (having one goal in life, to fuck the MC - both literally and figuratively)?
Well, MC's sensei does warn her the city is corrupt to the core, and while the premise is not realistic it is more or less internally consistent (or at least consistent enough for a porn game). After all, nobody complains about obligatory bar fight in a classic western or a highly impractical and unbelievable infiltration scene in a spy movie. Also, for once it's nice to see the MC being able to sometimes prevail against these attempts. Makes for a more believable character.
Writing is beyond awful (seriously, don't read the sex scenes' descriptions, you'll be too busy laughing to actually fap)?
This is much worse, but still can be tolerated. There are many MTL games with far worse text quality (and from several signs I suspect the developer in not a native speaker).
Gameplay intentionally made as repetitive as possible with constant routine operations bearing no significance to the plot, purposely slow transitions etc?
Almost a deal breaker... almost. For some parts of it, I can see the idea of making the player have a slice of life experience - similarly to some QSP games including obligatory and manually executed eating/drinking/sleeping/pissing/etc. It CAN lead to deeper immersion and IMO, here it was done better than in the aforementioned games. As for the slow transitions - ok, this IS a major no-no, but the gravity of this problem depends on how patient you are. I guess I'm pretty patient.
Tricking the player into believing his actions influence the outcome and luring him into moving mountains to win an almost impossible fight - and then overruling the results of said fight (and not with a semi-plausible save like "another enemy sneaks up on you and knocks you out" - just showing a losing outcome to a winning fight), like at the end of a lab run?
THIS. IS. UNFORGIVABLE. It's actually made more jarring by the fact that up until now there was substantial difference between winning and losing and winning was painted as hard to achieve, but more in-story rewarding (even if it eventually lead to the same outcome, the game acknowledged that you did try).
So, yeah. Manila Shaw will forever have a special place in my heart, as the first porn game I ragequit.
EDIT: Typos.
MC looks like an inflatable sex doll?
Par for the course in RPGM porn games (yes, I know there are RPGMs with realistic models... probably.... somewhere...). What's important is that she doesn't acts like one. Or rather, you can make her a cardboard cutout of a sex-crazed slut, the option is there, but you can just as well play her as good and almost-honest cop with a wild streak (in a city where literally everyone is a serial rapist). Things like no trauma from constant sexual abuse do require some willing suspension of disbelief, but I'm willing to cut the game some slack here - it's a rape/blackmail porn, not a psychological drama.
Most characters are completely one-dimensional (having one goal in life, to fuck the MC - both literally and figuratively)?
Well, MC's sensei does warn her the city is corrupt to the core, and while the premise is not realistic it is more or less internally consistent (or at least consistent enough for a porn game). After all, nobody complains about obligatory bar fight in a classic western or a highly impractical and unbelievable infiltration scene in a spy movie. Also, for once it's nice to see the MC being able to sometimes prevail against these attempts. Makes for a more believable character.
Writing is beyond awful (seriously, don't read the sex scenes' descriptions, you'll be too busy laughing to actually fap)?
This is much worse, but still can be tolerated. There are many MTL games with far worse text quality (and from several signs I suspect the developer in not a native speaker).
Gameplay intentionally made as repetitive as possible with constant routine operations bearing no significance to the plot, purposely slow transitions etc?
Almost a deal breaker... almost. For some parts of it, I can see the idea of making the player have a slice of life experience - similarly to some QSP games including obligatory and manually executed eating/drinking/sleeping/pissing/etc. It CAN lead to deeper immersion and IMO, here it was done better than in the aforementioned games. As for the slow transitions - ok, this IS a major no-no, but the gravity of this problem depends on how patient you are. I guess I'm pretty patient.
Tricking the player into believing his actions influence the outcome and luring him into moving mountains to win an almost impossible fight - and then overruling the results of said fight (and not with a semi-plausible save like "another enemy sneaks up on you and knocks you out" - just showing a losing outcome to a winning fight), like at the end of a lab run?
THIS. IS. UNFORGIVABLE. It's actually made more jarring by the fact that up until now there was substantial difference between winning and losing and winning was painted as hard to achieve, but more in-story rewarding (even if it eventually lead to the same outcome, the game acknowledged that you did try).
So, yeah. Manila Shaw will forever have a special place in my heart, as the first porn game I ragequit.
EDIT: Typos.