When you look for the perfect game in this genre, you want to see writing that wouldn't be out of place in a classic movie or bestselling novel, but with beautiful porn renders that you would never see in those mediums.
Unfortunately, this game delivers just the opposite. Porn-level writing and some brief vanilla lewd scenes that don't come close to moving the needle. The bad writing is a much bigger issue, so it will dominate this review, but the lack of quality H scenes is also a major factor, so let's just get it out of the way.
The lewd scenes in this game are quite poor. Most of them are short, barely or poorly animated, and usually extreme vanilla. They take too long to get to, often multiple chapters and hundreds if not thousands of slides of dialogue in between, and the payoff isn't even worth it.
The developer evidently realizes the issue, as he tries to remedy it by giving completely random, out-of-context still renders of lewds in between scenes. Let's just make it clear right now. These renders don't make up for the lack of content in the actual game. Not even close. If anything, they just highlight how long it's been since the last sex scene and exacerbate the immensity of the terrible dialogue and tropey, unrealistic anime scenarios the reader has to slog through.
The MC is as generic as it gets. Honey Select already has a problem with generic, creepy looking male characters as it is. But this game truly takes the path of least resistance. The MC is literally the generic model in Honey Select. And the lack of any effort in rendering him extends to the writing, too. The MC is as bland as they come, with a true lack of any spine or defining characteristics. He's the most milquetoast of milk and toast.
The writing around him fails to do him any favors either, as he's supposedly this great and upstanding guy despite doing next to nothing. He somehow has advice to offer to the girls even in their fields, but it's more annoying than anything when he goes and patronizes them from an unearned position of authority, Yet, if the writing is to be believed, they actually thank him for it. He's not so much a character as he's a creepy-looking canvas to project your personal desire for recognition and hero worship onto.
(I think Honey Select also has a problem with making visually distinct looking female characters, but this game at least attempts to give them all different hair colors, styles, and eye colors, which is about the extent of differentiation of HS girls.)
The game takes realism, pisses on it, and throws it through a blender. You have weird, vindictive seemingly omnipotent parents meddling with high school kids. You have high school burnouts becoming CEOs and then becoming homeless within the span of a few years. You have the spineless MC becoming the victim of an orchestrated bullying conspiracy for no apparent reason. You have teenage assassins and spies. You have outrageously powerful empire makers whose sisters run burger joints for... reasons, I guess (probably for the same plot contrivances as why a hugely popular rich girl streamer, Freya, wants to spend all her time there taking burger orders instead of... you know... doing her job).
All the while, the game insists on being painfully self-referential. The MC has "met" all the characters before, despite the fact that he's allegedly moved countries. Almost every character somehow, however unlikely and obliquely, ties in with each other. But none of these connections have any real payoff. They just serve to shrink the world. There's no awe over how expansive and immersive the world is, or the sense of kismet over how these people managed to find each other across a vast and challenging planet. You just get the sense that the universe in My Bully is My Lover is about 30 characters big.
No one in this VN talks like a normal person either. The dialogue in this game is more wooden than a George Lucas film. The MC even calls his mom "mother" in conversation with her, and that's not even the most wooden part of his speech pattern.
But the real issue is how abysmal the storytelling is. The storyline is bogged by gratuitously long and meandering flashbacks. None of which actually expresses what the author thinks they express. Apparently, the MC was badly "bullied" by these girls in school. By which it means they had the audacity of turning him down when he asked to date them, I guess? And then they made fun of him a few times and asked him to carry and gofer some items for him, which the MC willingly does.
I guess this qualifies as making the MC's life hell, because despite the gratuitously long and meandering flashback sequences, we never actually see anything particularly awful happening to him, at least nothing in which he was complicit himself. It's the MC that keeps pushing himself towards these girls that he's obsessed with, and never working to extricate himself from the situation. If anything, it seems like the behavior of someone who's into it. The only possible interpretation for why the girls are "bullies" is if you subscribe to some incel doctrine that being nice to a girl means you're somehow entitled to sex.
But wait! We later learn that not only did none of the bullies actually want to bully the MC, they're actually madly in love with him and were forced to do it by one of the bullies' jilted mother, who is supposedly this ultra-wealthy and powerful CEO type who is as influential and vindictive as the plot demands.
Worst of all, these girls are into him for the weirdest of reasons. One of them is in love with the MC because he literally said he'd be her prince when they were six years old. The other one likes his headpats (really). Another one likes him because he's... there... I guess, because she jumps him in a bathroom and they end up having sex.
Ostensibly it's because the MC is "nice." But it doesn't actually show the MC doing anything. In fact, it seems like any time the MC shows any level of common courtesy, he's basically made out like this knight in shining armor, despite the fact that these girls are supposedly insanely beautiful privileged young women who naturally would be having a bunch of boys fawning over them their entire lives. The story literally reads like an Incel NiceGuy™ fantasy.
(Just as an aside to any aspiring writers who want to write genuinely nice guys in their stories: having some manners and doing little courtesies does not make you a nice guy. Likewise, holding onto grudges while you outwardly say things are fine does not make you a nice guy. Expecting favorable outcomes because you do minor acts of kindness does not make you a nice guy, though it does make you a NiceGuy™.)
Obviously, if you hang out for a few days with a girl in a park when you're six, she'll be in love with you and reserve herself for you for the rest of her life. Because who needs women who are fully formed individuals with their own ambitions and desires, when they can just be one-dimensional placeholders for the MC's almighty dick?
Oh, I guess at one point he was overweight, but by the time the story starts, he's back in shape. Which means fuck all because apparently the girls were all into him even back when he was fat. So... chalk it up to another useless plot point that doesn't do shit.
The developer makes sure to emphasize that "this is not a revenge game" but at the same time refuses to allow the characters to develop past the alleged bullying that took place. The girls are still hung up on it. The MC is still hung up on it. But god forbid they actually talk it through rather than pretending like they're totally different people from their high school selves. Instead, the MC earns brownie points for... what... exactly? Shitty communication? Not going on a rampage and murdering them in their sleep? The bar is on the floor with this man.
Oh, and I guess there's some weird incest storyline with the MC's sister and mother, but no one gives a shit because they're exhausted by the overwrought plot.
Just do yourselves a favor, find some H renders and lewd scenes and invent a story in your head rather than reading through slide after slide of terrible writing. You're almost guaranteed to come up with something better, or at least something that's more to your tastes.
This one gets 2 stars, and that's being generous in rewarding the amount of effort the developer spent to nearly finish it.
of course, because this is one hell of a masterpiece if I am to say. TL;DR = Funny, cute, heartwarming, adorable, loving, touching, moving, you name it...
