VN - Ren'Py - Marked for Eternity [Ch.5 v0.5.1] [Horn nii-san]

This game seems to have been written by someone that thinks Inception and such movies are good, but can't/won't put in the needed work/talent to make it work.

It ends up as a lazy set of tropes, copying a lot of other games and then throws it around to make it confusing in what i assume is the hope that it will then seem more entertaining/intriguing.

The graphics are not bad, but they are not enough to keep the game afloat. And with fairly few and generic sex scenes it's not even useable as a fap game.

I won't comment on the story and other details because I uninstalled the game as soon as I saw the first scene with your family. Turns out not only your "stepmom" looks exactly the same age as your stepsisters, but she even looks younger than the MC. Why someone would bother playing this past that point is beyond me.

I generally dislike Japanese style games because most of them are poor Koikatsu clones when it comes to models but dude, this is lazyness taken to the extreme.

for version chapter4 v04

pros: some of the models are good

cons: mc looks bad
storywise is a mess
the pace is fast and dont give any clarity till now
only 2 sex scenes after a couple of thousand renders
boring minigames and questionary
no inmersion at all..

a matter of tastes one will say but is not,this is a the best 1 star,after playing the only thing i can come is lazyness ,script is bad and repetitive we see this much in other games already,

This is a really good vn. The story is vey interesting, although it can be confusing in the beginning, but it will become clearer if you keep reading.
If themes like magic, time travelling or mystery are your cup of tea, you´ll love this one.

Ok, I just played for the first time (through to the end of episode 4), and I did something really weird; I avoided relationships with all the girls. I kept them as friends or avoided them all together. So I have no idea how the sex scenes are (except for one random hand job). I probably missed some story aspects because I know I missed out on at least one character completely.

But here's the kicker: I really, really enjoyed the story!

It's a very convoluted story, and it's intentionally so. I don't want to explain exactly what that means, because that will give away too much (but if you play it you'll work it out soon enough). Things slowly make sense more and more as the story unfolds. It's actually a tragedy that more people aren't discussing this game, because there's heaps to discuss!

And you know when people say about a good AVN, "I'd play it even without the H-scenes"? Well I did play it without the H-scenes, and I'm immediately hanging out for the next episode already, it's that good!

Horn nii-san gives inspirational credit to one of the best developers showcased on this website, and the game definitely has some of that vibe (Easter egg: Stabby Mike was the president! ), but yeah, I've really enjoyed this game so far.

And guess what? Now I get to go back and play it again, except with a lot more sex!

Review for Chp. 4 v0.4 Remake

Fair mention that I only played up until some point in chapter two and stopped because the game didn't hook me.

Being incredibly frank, the story telling just isn't very good to me. The game lacks nuance. Suddenly you're told very bluntly about a bunch of what otherwise would have been major plot points. "Hey btw MC you actually have no memories and know magic and also this person is missing but don't tell anyone ok bye." and then the MC just continues to kinda act like a bot with no real thought or introspection about anything. It's very clear where the game takes inspiration form, but it feels more like a subpar imitation. The "we have X game at home" essentially.

Everything just kind of happens with no build up, but more than that, events feel like they are thrown in just to have them? There's a lot of clichés here. The finding a girl masturbating in the boys bathroom scene, the shopping for swimsuits scene, the spying on stepmom scene, the random beach day, etc etc. But none of it felt like it had any real care or effort going into it in trying to make it somewhat unique from the rest. Very forgettable.

Beyond that the game just doesn't have a lot going for it. For AVNs these days, the renders graphically are dated and the music for the most part is lacking. Animations are just the standard, though one I seen wasn't looping properly causing it to look a bit jank. Choices are just gain a love point or lose one. I also hate that the MC's hair is always clipping through his head but that's more of a pet peeve.

The time travel/magical elements plot could have maybe been interesting if it wasn't so ham-fisted. I didn't really have problems with any of the girls but none of them stuck out much to me either. Nothing really keeping me here at the end of the day.

Reviewing V0.4 Remake(Release Date: 09/09/2023)

Pros
- The graphic is pleasant, someone may say that it's just HoneySelect 1 but compared to other HS1-based games, it's above the average
- The plot while flawed(for reasons that we'll see in the "Cons") has a good potential

Cons
- The plot may be intriguing is also very confusing, is it intended to be confusing? Then congratulation HN(Horn Nii-san) you nailed it, the problem is that it's hard to ignite a person's attention when you write something so convoluted and twisted in such a boring way.
- Which brings us to the characters who suffer from how chaotic and confusing the plot is, because while a story about time-travel can be twisted with people changing sides or doing something weird while the protagonists can't understand their reasons, a lot of stuff happens and you don't have the time to figure out the situation, it's like watching a movie with pieces of another movie that has a completely different theme. Ultimately the issue is, that i can't see who has which role, even MC doesn't feel like the MC because most of the plot so far, happens behind his back or while he is confused himself, it reminds me of the gif with a confused John Travolta.
- More often than not, the scenes feel detached from each other, because of the flashbacks or scenes where something weird happens, or timeskips.
- The references to another game(or two) while nice, feel like a desperate cry for attention.


Conclusion
Like i tried to imply, while the story has potential, is developed in a way that can confuse people, the second person that gets thanked by the dev in the credits, managed to still make a similar story but without all these twists and turns that this game has, making it a superior product. This is what this game lacks: a TRUE beginning, and players may say "but this game HAS a beginning", and i can agree on a technicality because the game has a matter of fact...begins, but we start with a MC without memories who suddenly gets thrown into a war that goes beyond time(but not space, because everything seems to happen in only one city), then he starts to recover them but they're fragmented, and at least from what i understood, disconnected from each other, creating several info-dump moments where you don't know what to do or think with such new informations, then we have the info-dumps scene where MC gets told other new infos which are supposed to be useful, but ultimately SO FAR, MC got in the future ONCE, learned magic, went back to "his present" and did nothing but dating people while all around him things are happening either through flashbacks, or people re-writing history or just casually finding the next bait that will keep us (the players) intrigued, only to fail miserably (if you ask me) because nothing really happens.

Given how little of this there is so far, take this review with a healthy grain of salt. In truth, I'm assessing it as much for its potential as for what is currently here. I'd also give it a 3.5 if I could, instead of a 4.0. But, as the only person who has review so far, I don't want to be TOO harsh on it. So I erred on the side of the higher score.

Graphics: Solid but not exceptional. The biggest negative is the fact that the protagonist is using a generic asset I've seen in a dozen games. That's just flat lazy. That said, the rest of the characters are decently diverse and the bare handful of sex scenes I discovered at decently animated.

Plot/Writing: Confusing but potentially interesting? Honestly, it gets more than a little rambly and I had a hard time not skipping parts of it. Particularly as it has similarities to several other games. Still, the writing is solid enough not to be actively a detriment. And there's plenty of interesting little details. Unfortunately, the sheer diversity of what seems to be going on is going to force the developer to tell one HELL of a story. If they can't follow through, than the various info dumps will become liabilities. There's a LOT going on here, and if it doesn't all tie together smoothly in some fashion, it's going to be a hot mess.

Gameplay: This was sort of the weak point. There was a LOT of talking and info dumps and very little actually happening. The developer would be well served to add some events you can actually influence. Or to provide a meter of some sort to show how you're doing. As it is, it was impossible to even guess if I was making the right choices half the time. Not just when I made them, but even down the line. It left me constantly feeling like I could have fucked up at the start and been playing a useless dead end with no warning.

Truly amazing game. There are not a lot of contents so far, especially with H-scenes - but I tell you what. At credits, Horn nii-san mentioned that he was inspired by a few developers, including Caribdis and Jestur - and it really shows in Marked for Eternity. The story hooked me up instantly, and the graphics are pretty damn good. Even the humor feels familiar, the vibes are the same to when you are playing Once in A Lifetime. Definitely a prospect game to watch out for for the next few years.