There's a gem buried somewhere in all this mess, and even though bob's games have been getting better as of late, I'm still afraid we'll never get to see said gem.
This starts of rather well, there's some problems that I will get into later, but overall I feel like chapters 1-4 of this game are his best work by far.
The models are great, at least to my preference, I'd give them a solid 9/10, the progression of the corruption is great, it goes at a perfect pace (getting prudish teenage girls that are for all intents and purposes your siblings to go around naked and slobber over your dick is not a fast-process and if it were it would not have been satisfying). That's most of what this game is and aside for the writing it's one of the better ones of the genre and that's because bob doesn't stray from rendering, there's a lot of them and they're quite detailed, bob's work ethic is pristine (about the only good thing you can say about him unfortunately tho)
If the game had continued at this level of pace and quality to its completion, it would have been good, but it doesn't and in comes chapter 5 where everything aside from the art completely falls apart, some of these problems appear in previous chapters as well but the egregious ones start here
All around:
- the MC's model is trash, it's unpleasant to look at even, he looks like scum, and I guess that fits because he is the most unlikeable scum too
- while quite nice, the models are incredibly similar (almost the same) and in a cruel statement bob decided that they will have the same name as well just use different abbreviations for it, for this I like to play a mini-game in my head where all the LI's are actually the same character with schizophrenia, because aside from looking similar and having the same name they show other signs of this particular mental disorder.
- the plot is just barebones and cliché. As much as I praised the progression of the corruption, it is within the bounds of the same old shit (family dead, step siblings from different marriages etc), it's extremely unrealistic but that's not the point of the game anyway. This problem is exacerbated by the complete absence of grammar, proof-reading and the insanely basic and robotic dialogue, bob desperately needs an editor (or more like a new writer)
- the grind, while not as bad as in his other games (as of chapters 1-4), it has the biggest problem of the studying. Now I know little bobby is probably a doctor in real life (or failed to be one but likes to larp) and I know becoming a doctor takes a lot of work, but the studying in this game does nothing, like absolutely nothing. If you don't do it however, you straight up lose. This is a problem because little bobby also doesn't go to school or university, but the reason to keep studying is to not get kicked out of it, you're constantly reminded by both your sisters, the in-game walkthrough, the narration text and even the fucking man himself to keep studying so you don't fucking lose. But then the studying has no benefit to the progression of the game, it's just busy work for no reason in a staggering example of just utterly miserably failed game design. And it has no reason to be there, because there's other shit to learn IN THE GAME: massaging, self defense, photography and other dogshit that's cliché but has a purpose. The studying is only there to suck his own characters dick which by extension his own I'm pretty sure.
- the man, the myth, the legend, bob himself is one of my biggest problems with the game. The amount of self-insert humor, 4th wall breaking to criticise the player by both the MC and the NPC's (poetic when we know how he feels about criticism on this forum alone), MC turning his head towards the camera when he does something that's "cool", it's the 2nd biggest offender of immersion breaking in this game that's all about immersion after the dialogue and I in vain will forever wish that he stops doing that. Nobody likes it and if they do they need help. Even the act of renaming your character is done in spite (my name's bob, but call me whatever you like cause it's wrong anyway). There's even instances of the MC's name being hardcoded as bob, it's just the worst.
Starting in chapter 5:
- the previous problem with the grind gets at least 5 times worse. You get scenes that have to be repeated upwards of 10+ times (sometimes even more than 20, no joke) with the progression being only one render, and sometimes the render doesn't even make sense to end on. The amount of money you need gets exponentially higher and the opportunities you get to make photos get lesser. Your best bet is to grind the money for the entire game in the first few chapters but:
- in chapter 5 we get a nice game-breaking anti-cheat solution, where in one day of the week you get teleported to your room to be notified of random damage that has been done to the house. This is unavoidable because it teleports you, this takes up a time slot and a very busy one at that AND this costs *all your money* - $500 every single time. Not only does this actually punish you even if you're not cheating, because if you play the game at least as slowly as I have you can definitely get past the "arbitrary cheat number that bob decided upon" easily and get punished when playing normally (also this doesn't stop the cheaters because they can just get money between the events, what a great example of modern DRM). This becomes game-breaking in chapter 6 where instead of just taking all your money, it asks for only $20 while still being unavoidable and taking up a very busy time slot, so you're stuck with that event and unable to complete the chapter until your money gets low enough to not trigger it.
- you can't skip the text anymore. Until a scene is completely done and you've seen all renders associated with it, you cannot skip the text up to the new render. There scenes that have to be repeated upwards of 20 times with 30-40 clicks each with no lewd render until the very end. You honest to god have to click 20x35 = 700 times to get a scene over with and it's not even a good scene, it's actually a terrible scene that highlights the next problem
- variable corruption levels (usually downwards). So the game does this amazing thing, where when you finish a chapter all the girls go back to being like they where at the middle of the previous chapter (and onwards from chapter 5 they go back even more). At first I was skipping the episodes when I felt like the grind for the last few scenes was not worth it, and I thought that was just bob discouraging me from skipping the levels, so I would go back and do them properly, but no... It's just hard-coded in there. The story progression is all over the place starting chapter 5. The girls go from having no problems being naked to wearing a burka to the beach from scene to scene. The girls show up in your room naked asking for money but then when you walk in on them partially unclothed they call you the scum of the earth. You'd get one of them to touch your dick of their own volition and then refuse to kiss you on the cheek. In later chapters the opposite happens, where you can give the girls a lot of money and they will instantly go up in corruption way over where you have them at that point in the story. It's all just random renders at this point with no continuity or logic and honestly it completely ruins the immersion and enjoyment of the previous episodes.
It's a shame really, this is already verging on good, maybe even great. And it could definitely be excellent, but is bogged down by some major problems that have plagued this series since the beginning. I hope an actual writer will be involved with these projects some day (maybe someone to do the game architecture as well)
TL;DR this would have been at 3 stars if it stopped with chapter 4, but the game is getting progressively worse as it's baiting more people in and such malevolent business practices don't really deserve praise.
