v 3.3
Story 4/5
Writing 3/5
Graphics 5/5
Audio 2/5
Characters 3/5
My Best Deal is a story on rails about an alleged good guy that dies, accidentally gets caught in the death spam filter, and is thusly offered the deal of a lifetime by the goddess of Love. In effect, as long as he keeps porking, his cells will keep on forking. Unfortunately re-life gets complicated, and since our beloved MC lacks the prefrontal cortex necessary for considering what may happen 24 hours later, he makes some questionable decisions that quickly turn his environment honk-honk.
The VN is focused on characters over main story, with a select few choices open to the reader. The setting is classic - college, living in a house with lots of hot women, and finding godlike powers centered around compulsive abuse of the genitalia. For a story-based VN, there is plenty of sexy stuff. The MC jumps between blank slate and established personality in a way that too frequently reminds the player that he (or she/they, it's current year after all) has no agency in the story development. The women look good, and they have a wide spread of distinct personalities. This is great in that you are sure to find one you like, though it also comes with the unfortunate side effect that you will find one or two that you do not like; and you have to make boink boink with all of them, happy or not. In my case that led to a significant amount of skipping as I found the personality of Molly (big-boobs McMILF with confidence issues) grating. The pacing of the story is acceptable, can be a little slow here and there but will mostly keep the reader interested enough to continue.
Story
The story is simple and works fine since the focus is on the characters. While it could be less overt, it doesn't really matter, as it's mostly a plot device to explain why women are suddenly throwing themselves at you left and right. The one thing that isn't explained well is why the MC, average sized as he is, also has genitalia more appropriately sized for a smaller blue whale.
Writing
The writing ranges from average to good, with many a pitfall. Writing is frequently frivolous, in some areas the writing is too stilted, and in some areas the writing has too much exposition to sound natural or organic. It should be noted that much of the text in the game works sufficiently or even well - this is not a case of all writing being bad, just some parts of it that appear from time to time. The overall experience is good as long as you hit that skip button when the tedious or Downsy sections appear.
For the text parts that aren't good - there's far too much text, mostly in the form of internal monologue, that takes away a lot from the conversations. The reader should be treated as at least of basic simian mental acuity, capable of connecting simple concepts and events. Putting everything into the text, as if it was a book for children aged 4 or below, is the opposite of that. Moreover, since graphics are well done, there really is no need to add a literal explanation for the scenery (id est "I can see her ass", "she looks great", "she's so hot when she's doing yoga"). Trust the reader to have at least 7 neurons firing off at any given time and everyone will be happier - readers can focus on the parts of the story that matter, and devs do not have to label every damn object in the scene as if they're practising for an ISO-9000 compliance inspection.
The stilted writing comes off as if the characters are reading a script rather than talking naturally. Combined with the heavy exposition from time to time (usually when in conversation with one of the goddesses) it gets tiresome rather fast. There is no need to explain everything ever and always, it is much more important to be immersed and invested. Trusting the reader to figure out the basics himself will improve the writing greatly, and immerse the reader by mental participation. It will also make the MC appear smarter, something this VN is in dire need of.
There are a bunch of typos and misses in the conversion from Patreon-friendly to not Patreon-friendly game version, with the three affected women switching relations to MC between neighbor, sister, landlord, and mom. Strangely enough the mental dysfunction on display did come off as sexy to me, and I have made a note to take that up with my shrink next session.
Graphics
These are great. The models are clean, making them well suited for a more stylized representation. An excellent choice. Since this is a VN without bells, the UI is non-existent (and would be unnecessary). Animations are solid as well, and surprisingly frequent. I did enjoy that the animations were so common that they felt inherent to the VN rather than a signifier of something important. The idle animations were generally immersive, but in some cases detract rather than help (if a girl is only tilting her head back and forth while the rest of her body is still it looks like she's having a mild seizure).
Audio
The sound in this game is meh. It's not good, but it does more or less convey the intended atmosphere for the related scenes in a general sense. More subtlety would be appreciated in the background music choice, but perhaps that is what the frivolous text is trying to cover for.
Characters
Characters are okay, ranging from acceptable (there are no terrible choices - well done) to great. There is a mix of different personalities: the main characters are displayed with some depth in various directions, while the side characters are one-dimensional and direct.
Given the array of different personalities, it is expected that the reader will enjoy some but not all women. The ones that stood out to me were Annie and Rin, as they were well described and coherent personality-wise, while the goddesses were on the lower end of the spectrum.
The bro is a strange one - always does everything wrong, and never understands what he's done wrong. There are no connecting points between MC and bro nor are there any redeeming qualities in bro, making the character feel like a wasted opportunity. Bro never helps, bro never does anything right, and bro tries to get in the way of MC smashing hot puss, making bro an annoyance and a hindrance rather than a bro. This is not a good bro. Bro needs to be written like a bro and not like an obstreperous little brother in his early teens.
MC is also strange, wandering back and forth between blank slate and established personality. MC has, from time to time, the standard (and dull) personality - you know what I mean. MC loves all women, wants to help all women, tries to not pork them (but fails as they all jump on poor MC's blue whale penis instantly), and even thinks (with that frivolous internal monologue) only in purely good and wholesome terms about women. Somehow MC has no qualms lying to women though, nor cheating on them, nor putting them in harm's way. This is only possible because MC does apparently not have a prefrontal cortex, a common failing in the MC personality. But sometimes,
sometimes, MC turns into a pervy and molesty Weinstein-grade offender and uses his powers for some down to clown BDSM with nary a thought. A jarringly discordant switch in personality, worthy of Dr Hyde. Why does MC make these choices? Because sometimes the reader is allowed some input (a simple choice between being kind or dominating). The points where the reader can choose the path for MC are the best parts of the story, and I wish there were more of them, as the devs have a great balance in their BDSM depictions - it hits the sweet spot in intensity.
On top of this, MC makes several bloody stupid choices (or non-choices) in the story, and since the reader cannot affect these choices, the divide between reader and MC personality feels even more distinct.
The issue here is that the reader can affect a small subset of choices, but only when it comes to women. MC is so thoroughly Downsy from time to time that it becomes a frustrating experience for the reader to continue when it is apparent that MC is making a terrible decision, or failing to grasp the obvious. Case in point, doing nothing about the thugs / not resolving Annie's father's thread, lying to Lin and then Rin with no consequence analysis whatsoever, only asking the dumbest questions of Hecate and not thinking at all about the answers, and the plot one:
When I cannot affect these actions I feel like I'm roleplaying the special needs kid that has to sit in the corner because sometimes he gets violent for no reason.
If MC had more personality all these sprawling points could come together as the reader would not self insert so easily, but using a blank slate personality without the illusion of choice does not work well, especially in a story based on character interactions. I can only ask the devs to choose a path here: either create a real personality for MC, or add the illusion of choice to the story segments + bump MC's intelligence up to at least 9. If you feel that the story would be too readily apparent at that point, you can always make the leads more obscure to compensate.
Summary
An overall enjoyable VN with a few kinks to work out. Graphics and characters make this VN great, while audio and writing lag behind.
