Ren'Py - My Early Life [Ep.27.02] [CeLaVie Group]

It's a pretty good looking game but story and pacing was nuked from orbit.

Good:
- Graphics is pretty decent
- It feels like the creator at least tries to make something good.
- I'm trying my best here and can't think of anything else.

Bad:
- Characters have no personality. All girls are the same person with different looks.
- Characters does not develop in a measurable way.
- The game is very grindy, unnecessarily grindy to a fault. Often you have to do the same thing, over and over, and be "rewarded" with nothing or an extra frame.
- Pacing is not present. I gave it 6 hours and all i got was kissing one girl.
- The story does not develop at all after we get the starting premise.

I would have given it 1 star but somehow i feel it is at least trying to do something, so I'm being generous.

I would have some positive things to write about the game, that aren't bad at all, like the high quality renders. But it doesn't really matter because the MC just grosses me out. It's not that I'm not trying to just ignore his lines. But the mix of being forced to grind through it to progress, which basically means grooming everyone as if money and manipulation solved all issues. Yuck. There's also no consistency in the story. You grind towards a point, and then in the next chapter, you have to start over again. I don't mind grinding, but this MC reminds me of a certain antisocial "soft bully" type I encountered in my school years.

So don't expect a story where love or intimacy develops genuinely. It's completely manufactured based on manipulation, and the female characters gradually fall into their victim roles, based on the reliance on MC's money. It's not like MC wakes something up in these characters, their natural kinky, perverse, or corrupted traits. That's not the kind of relationship that develops. The kind of relationship that develops is "You can't survive without my money, so I can ask for intimate and sexual favours" and they gradually do more and more, pretending to like MC.

I feel no BB vibes in it, meaning MC as a creepy brother but not changing the personality of his sisters to manufactured and artificial shapes, empty dolls who have no understandable motivations. For example, they don't masturbate. So what's their motivation for their interest in MC? Their love interest can only be pretense, because MC is like a bully. And initially they have a natural rejection to this abusive behaviour. This only changes due to the reliance on MC's money, which isn't really his own money. So it's just impossible that they have a genuine love interest. They would move out if they had the means to, and if they didn't become more and more the victims of his grooming. Sexual interest? How would they have sexual interest in him when they act more like children who're just generally curious about the anatomy of a man. They watch porn, MC gets a boner everywhere, and all his sisters do is be curious, but no arousal or masturbation ever. I'm excluding his older sister here because she is like a mother role that's squeezed into the body of a younger sister. There are no coherent archetypes like BB uses, meaning one clear MILF, one clear big sis, one clear younger sis and big bro relationship with different subjects that naturally lead them to attraction. You could replace the characters of this story with an old dude who invites some homeless drug addicts and the relationship wouldn't look different. According to other reviewers, you eventually have to play an old guy if you like it or not, so I guess that's just the final reason for me to stop, after 10 hours of grind.

Uncle Bob has done it again !

Would you like to play a game that requires searching through this forum thread like an ex FBI agent for any possible clues ? Great !

While still requiring a mod that will tone down the grind from 150 hours to "barely consequential" 75 hours (and also make the game "playable" since it crashes a lot) ? GRREAT, this is the GAME FOR YOU !

The girls have substantially more complicated schedules than AAA celebrities and even bigger budget requirements... Seriously, is this the "Pay your sisters enough money and they will fuck you" simulator ? I generally like games that require player to earn new scenes, but this ? Each step progressing relationships to the next level feels like another layer in hell.

If you are lucky enough to progress to the next relationship step, pray that your are lucky enough it will actually happen under the condition that the walkthrough mod provides (it didn't for me).

At least the girls are hot, right ? 3 stars since Instagram taught me that loooks are at least 60% of the success.

Please dev, at least provide an in-game walkthrough with coherent English, since this game requires you to have a major in budgeting, shifting through clues, pointlessly clicking and most importantly - Heavenly patience.

I have never seen so many people mildly like a game yet give it 5 stars because they think the one start people are wrong. Seriously go read them. "This game wasnt the greatest, but it was okay" 4 stars
"This game is a buggy grindfest and a slow burn" 5 stars
We as a community should just be better about admitting things we like are all 5 star masterpieces.

While I do not think this is the worst game ever, it is buggy af. Also the unnecessary grind is done literally to just pad updates into hours of gameplay. I do not hate this game, but it does have issues. For one I like the female models and the story makes sense. However between the grinding and the "slow burn" whats the point? I will not make assumptions about why a dev would want you to crawl through glass for their okay story, but one comes to mind. You can't do both and think its a feature. You either make it grindy and give people what they want for doing your hoop jumping or you write enough story so the slow burn doesn't seem like a milking tactic.

There is so much to work on here especially when it comes to bugs. At points where you hit one, it becomes unplayable. So the reality is this.....its a solid premise with solid models and a good idea where it wants to go. The dev however thinks you should crawl through bug ridden molassas to get there. This is not a 5 star game by any objective standard. Its also not a 1 star game because there is effort shown. The execution however is up for debate.

I am writing this review after playing up to episode 8. Believe me I want to play the rest of it but I simply cannot. It's not because of slow burn, I like it. It's not because of grind which you can bypass with mods. No, this game DOES NOT WORK starting with ep7. There are too many bugs and that is with me using a bugfix mod. It got so bad I had to ask the modder for help and then had to use multiple console commands. Then it got worse in ep8 with half of the events bugged.

So why 3 stars instead of 1? Because what I played up to ep7 was very enjoyable. If you are a fan of home of incest, slow corruption, voyeurism etc. there is a lot to like here. Out of 3 main girls, two of them have great models. The other one looks like a loli, a midget, or a 40 yo in different scenes. Don't expect graphical consistency.

I played the dev's other games and this has the best graphics by far, sadly it is also the only one where I experienced bugs. He has the vision of a genius like Tarantino(minus foot fetish), but the coding ability of a blind capybara.

I still encourage you to try the game.

Another reason not to trust ratings. The game is good. Not great, but decent. Perfectly balanced, not too fast and not too slow. Good graphics and a non-schizophrenic plot. It's sad that games like this are hard to find.

I don't know why I keep coming back to this game, The slow burn is frustrating, but I think it accurately portrays the situation a grandpa would be in with a girl 1/3 hos age. The girl (and the hints give very little help; but I guess that a grandpa (even a player) wouldn't really have much of a clue about what's really going on in the girl's head. The graphics and animations are better than average on this site, so it's a nice surprise when the old fart makes progress.

It is definetively a slow burn, but the reward pays off in the end.

Some bugs and annoyances in earlier episodes so URM52 is recomended.

Some of the game mechanics early on might be annoying and the developer got rid of them in latter episodes (-26).

Well worth a playthrough and a replay or two.

I want more games like this. It is not a fap game, but very good story with a slow progress. But the girls are very nice, the step by step teasing is nice. If you only want to fap asap, stay away. It is a teasing game. You will have to do a lot of things to go forward.

It is a slow burn game and you need to withstand really slow pace and repetition in 90% of scenes since they unfold bit by bit. This drives some players mad and its definately not the game for quick fap.

+ Renders are in nice quality
+ Dev has good amount of clothing/accessories for the models
+ Animations are getting better
+ Ambient feel is nice in scenes
+ The tease and build up in story is nice when the story flows smoothly

+/- slow pace

- Animations (cant skip, looping via reverse is unnatural)
- Player actions are quite limited
- Balance between grind and reward isn't always there
- All other male characters seems to be bad guys in every game (harem tag?)
- Hint system is there but it doesn't always point you in the right places making progress quite tedious (usally happens when you are close to the end of the chapter and missing the last few scenes)
- Reuse of renders --> causes the grind/repetition feel that many player hates

I really like the slow pace, hard to earn rewards. The grind is not a boring grind, there is usually some small reward between each repetition and it makes sense in the story. I like the female models and the overall gameplay.

I am currently at aboutchapter 8 or 9 I cant remember and about 9 hours into the game. And I have basically only a single gripe that I dont really understand why it is in the game.

Why are there 3 female characters, where one is a mom character. She has the personality, and the role, and the actions,and the lifestyle, of a mom character but for some unknown reason its not a mom milf model. Thisgame would be so much better with an older woman in that third girl role (Anybody who plays this knows which character is the mom character.) I even renamed it to mom, just because it makes more sense than the current characters name. Then it breaks when the game keeps calling her sis. But still.

This would've been a near perfect game, even getting around the concerns about implicit incest with having that sister a milf.

There's grind and there's whatever this is supposed to be. I actually usually like a slow burn, but the amount of "hunt the small difference in this event that happens after 10th repeat" is insane.

On top of that, progress is 2 step back then slooowly 3 step forward during the chapter. Repeat for each chapter.

Add to this events that doesn't seem to work, hard locking you (and good luck figuring out if you're hard locked or just need to see same event you've seen 10 times 5 more times to progress)

Playing this feels like the Dev hate you

I'm only giving it two stars because it has good renders. Unfortunately to get to those renders you will have to slog through some of the worst "gameplay" to have ever been created.

No amount of ranting about how you have to have patience will excuse this "gameplay." How is it bad you say? You will have to repeat the same sequence over and over again with only some slight change. Some changes so slight that you will struggle to know what was different. What makes this even worse is that you cannot use CTRL to speed through the parts you have already seen. Yes, you read that correctly, you have to click through the repeat sequence every... single... time. That is the game play loop. Don't worry though, once you've completed a sequence the appropriate number of times you'll be given... yet another sequence to complete. GAMEPLAY!

This "game" needs to be completely reworked before given that title, otherwise it's just busywork for the sake of extending play time. Utter garbage.

Consistant dev, both on updates and updates(once a month).
Interesting to play almost each episode. No story, but who cares(was in S2 actually), when game has nice detailed events.

S1: 4 girls, noice, S2: the previous ones + 4 new

For 3 season:
Short version:
By 23ep - Leveling fixed less dressesDead ends feel very nice now

"Long":
I actually liked 19-20 dead ends, but would felt MUCH better if it didnt need a confirmation from a 21:00 web call. Coz you have to molest and harass Thea(and after a call she will agree to your move) So it was both unnatural/was breaking the immersion(esp. in 21) and mega hard to figure out, even with the guide system. It would be nice if you would need to find her these bad reactions, and go try different ones where she will allow you(i re-roll back the bad ones usually) Like it actually was in 23(especially in the shower, in the end of 22 at pool)

And above that was unexplained dress "bar", (+ where you have to peep that she changed the dress) which also felt nice in 23(but with much less dresses after 20(alas)(after 20 you're in charge of changing her dinner dress only)

I would bring back dress choosing for 3 events(for future girls) (but without requirement to peep and consult via web calls + for previous used dresses, something like turning into grey, for less confusing)

First of all, this game is interesting because it's quite long and the female characters are pretty. The MC is a benevolent manipulator, shall we say, and the humor is present!
Many complain about the excessive grindiness of the game; this isn't entirely fair because we're warned about this from the start.
However, the problem stems from a few errors and bugs, and to play relatively smoothly, it's advisable to use cheat mode, which has a debugging option when you notice that the game is no longer progressing through the event series. BUT YOU HAVE TO BE PATIENT
because that's the point of the game.
The story is fun and evolves well; the "grind problem" improves significantly after the second season.
On the other hand, episode 19 leaves me extremely frustrated because after so much time, we find ourselves with a different MC (Uncle Bob) and different protagonists. It's disturbing, and I dare to hope that this is just an interlude in the original story because after all this time, we want to see the MC and his sisters and their conquests again.
We can also dream of a possible pregnancy; that would be excellent news, as well as a refocusing on the sisters.

I'm giving it a 3/5 because Episode 19 is an unpleasant surprise, and the usability of Chapter 19 is less good than previous versions, in my opinion. Otherwise, the rating would have been a 4, since I very rarely give a 5 before a game is finished or fully developed.
On the other hand, the girls are superb, and the sisters are each magnificent in their own way.

This game is terrible. It is a grind hell and even, if you put hours into one game you can get bankrupt and than this game is over and you start over. This was the biggest wast of time I have ever played. I have played a lots of grindy games and I usually like them, but this game is terrible.
Also you cannot manipulate save games for money. They get flagged as corrupt and you also have to start over.
The grind and the loseing hours of gameplay for nothing makes this game unplayable. I only came to episode 8.
I don't know what the dev smoked, but this game is not fun. The dev should pay me for the wasted time.

It was a decent game up until episode 18, then all of a sudden, Episode 19+ now playing as Bob's grandpa as MC, and sexual stuff with a girl because the young MC wants his grandpa to be happy?

The game is very grindy in early updates, with repeating the same thing over and over to progress to new scenes.

Halfway through the game gets better because not as grindy
I was enjoying the story between Episodes 12-18, and now I'm just going to stop playing

Why did the dev change MC all sudden to horny, man child old man?
wasted all this time playing it just for a change in MC

This game is beyond just being a ridiculous grind, hell, it takes 45 seconds just to get to the starting screen of the game because of ridiculous unskippable load messages that occur EVERY time you load into the game.

Wonderful game. With very good graphics, engaging and not boring.observations. There should be fewer repetitive scenes.For example, just dresses are boring. You should make it so that, for example, the girl gets angry, or goes out to a bonfire in the evening.There are also 4 episodes missing sex scenes and no scenes even with LIN.There is a lot you can do when creating a game script like this.and it doesn't necessarily have to end with sex scenes.This game has great potential.

The exagerated grind made me stop playing after 30 minutes. I checked on the potential rewards looking at the images folder and I decided without any hesitation to delete the game folder. Model are good but the game... Good Luck.