My Pleasure is a mish-mash of the good and the bad, and while the good is currently winning, it’s a tough ongoing battle that could tip poorly at any moment. The game gets off to a good start, but while well-intentioned, the poorly staged animations and meandering story that, in the last few updates, has almost completely disappeared and been replaced with some weird fantasy angle, have taken a toll to the point where the dreaded skip button is being applied more and more.
There are a lot of points to go through, and so to avoid an overlong essay I’ll go with The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly approach.
The Good:
1. The renders. A strong use of shadow and light filters (that probably drastically increase the rendering time, so kudos for the extra effort!) are used frequently and to great effect. Adult and non-adult content are staged well. The characters also frequently blink which is a nice feature I don’t see often enough in games that aren’t in the Top 10.
2. Spelling and grammar are quite good. There are errors here and there but they’re infrequent, and the dialogue is short enough that the game rarely feels laborious while being long enough to flesh out the story (and offer motivations for the adult scenes. This isn’t just porn after all!)
3. There’s a significant amount of adult content. While there’s a focus on quantity over quality, there are still some good scenes that “work” quite well.
4. The music. There’s not a lot of it, but it’s there, and that alone is a good first step. The opening instrumental that plays over the Menu is pretty catchy.
The Bad:
1. The adult animations are pretty bad. They’re smooth enough, but the author hasn’t quite figured out how to make the models move believably, so to account for this the camera is usually staring straight at the genitalia in a way that it’s the only thing you see. More than enough for a 16yr old boy to use, but once you pass 25 this isn’t going to cut it. I rather enjoy seeing authors improve their animation work as the game progresses and they learn more about the craft, but sadly this has not happened with My Pleasure. There are so many animations and probably over a hundred scenes at this point, but they’re just not showing me what I’m interested in seeing.
If I were to offer some advice, I’d recommend a lot more renders in-between the animations, or even throw out the animations altogether. Great renders and good writing, which the author excels at, are more than enough to carry the adult content. Unfortunately, the current cycle is undress, insert, genitalia at regular speed, genitalia and double speed, one or two renders, different position staring at the genitalia at regular speed, then double speed, then finish. It would be far more satisfying if the animations were replaced with a couple dozen renders and a more free-flowing as opposed to formulaic layout. The renders done in-between the animations have, for the most part, been far more alluring than the animations.
2. The story. It’s not terrible, but the pacing is kind of a mess especially in the most recent updates where it doesn’t seem to exist anymore. I feel like the game should have ended about 5 updates ago, but the game has shifted from dealing with familial drama to some weird “we’re sharing the same dreams” shtick that feels out of place. The current updates have been focused on the MC getting into different threesomes with different love interests in myriad different ways, which isn’t a bad thing, but the current state of the story feels like it exists just to give an excuse for why the game hasn’t ended yet. It’d probably be better to make, as some other popular titles have, a “non-canon” gallery as a kind of DLC for the game and just stop the story now that its run out of steam.
The Ugly:
1. Honestly, I can’t think of anything. The game has its flaws, but none of them are game-breaking or ruin the experience. The experience could use some significant improvement, but it’s still in my bookmarks list that I check every week or two for updates.
If the author manages to improve the adult scenes and wrap up the story (sooner rather than later), I’d probably check out his future projects assuming he makes another one. At this point, I’m kind of phoning it in on this game. Not outright skipping story dialogue but I am skimming it, and going through 6 or 7 different adult scenes and not getting anywhere close to “wrapping up” is a sign that either 20 times a day is too much (hehe) or these scenes need more attention. One really good scene is worth ten shoddy ones, and I think we can all think of some titles that have done the former quite memorably. With a little luck, My Pleasure will alter course and end the game with some seriously memorable, well staged content that blows everything that came before away. Lock the doors, update the GPU, and put two full months into just one scene. Really knock our socks off! If you can do that, it’ll make all the flaws seem trivial in comparison