Unity - Completed - Mystwood Manor [v1.1.2] [Faerin]

A good, but grindy 'feeling', management game. Rewards are on the lighter side and may not feel like they were worth the effort.

Gameplay: 4/5
Matching employees to tasks based on guests. I didn't encounter any bugs, however the game loop for the sandbox is slow paced. If you click-spam, you'll feel like you're waiting for the UI animations more than anything else. The slow UI makes the game feel grindy, but the next step for progression is usually stated for each character.

While it doesn't seem to have a technical grind in the gameplay itself, as I didn't need to run extra weeks to progress, there are multiple repetitive slow elements of the UI design that makes the time between tasks take longer than the tasks themselves.

Visuals: 3/5
The renders are of good quality, with a good selection of off the shelf assets. Repeated use of slow-panning on static poses draws extra attention to the slow pace of the gameplay itself. Credit to the selection of the models used, as they mostly fit well together in the environments, however the quality of the models draws attention to the poor animation.

The animations appear stiff, as even off-the-shelf animations usually appear more fluid that what you'll see here. The speed slider for the animations has less influence than you'd expect, and the game draws attention to it by forcing you to adjust it to proceed in some scenes.

Story: 3/5
The narrative arc is good, but the delivery is a bit weak, so have a click-spam key ready. Note that you'll be tested on the information that you've skipped through late in the game. Also, I was expecting more interaction with the guests given how they are centered in the gameplay as much as the employees.

While I don't expect much from the narrative or dialogue in a management sim, the fatal flaw is putting in too much unnecessary dialogue. Cutting the dialogue in half likely could have delivered the same narrative while feeling like less of an anchor.

Game is decent. Could have been great but it was a very long grind fest to get to 100% with very little reward. The characters are all great and well thought out, progression is good all be it pain stakingly slow at times. I actually enjoyed the hotel management aspect more than I thought I would but the game runs too long to keep the management system enjoyable. By the end of the game I was praying for a skip button on the management aspect. Many of the renders and animations are locked behind specific jobs each character needs to make, and some are locked behind affection level of other lis and guests of the hotel. It tells you what to do to unlock those scenes thankfully but its such a painful and repetitive process that the reward you get for completing the scenes feels shallow in comparison.

Once you unlock each li and all their scenes, there is precious little involvement of them in the story after that. You can repeat the same scene with them every night, and occasionally you might get to see a render of them naked while they are working, but other than that, they all just act like robots doing their jobs around the hotel wherever you assign them. Really only the step sis and step mother lis have any really baring on the actual story outside of them being employees. Sure they each have a bit of a side story while you are unlocking their scenes but after that, no baring at all.

The story is decent, although I admit, I skipped a lot of dialog and skimmed even more of it rather than feeling captured by it. It's a mystery hotel management game with porn elements and the main story is about solving murders and mysterious supernatural things going on. To get the best ending, the game makes you 100% every li, which wouldn't be so bad if the process was less pain stakingly grindy. And there appear to be three endings. With the best ending being a few renders of MC involved in a harem sex scene. But other than that, a pretty shallowing ending I wouldn't say is worth the effort of 100% every li.

No complaints about the music or grammar. The UI was mostly easy to understand and I didn't experience any bugs or glitches. And I also appreciate that the developer tried to make this into an actual game over just a novel with choices to choose. But like I said management got boring and grindy after a while and the minigames on each job were just annoying trivia questions that didn't bring any enjoyment to the gameplay and made me glad that they were skipped once you achieved VIP status for each guest at the hotel.

Speaking of Guests. I liked what the developer did there. The guests were all interesting and different and nearly half of them ended up be lesser lis themselves after you completed their stories, but the guest lis pretty much had a one and done scene that I couldn't find a way to repeat. I wish the developer had done more with the guests cause I found many of their stories interesting, and one of the guests stories is essential to know in order to get to the ending of the game.

All in all the Renders were pretty good and I don't regret playing the game, I just have some minor complaints and the big one complaint about it being a grind fest from the start that lacked any worthwhile enjoyment for completion of the grind. I would probably give this game 3.5 or 4 stars. So I rounded up to 4 stars. And I appreciate the developer putting in a gallery for the main lis. I look forward to seeing future work done by this developer. Thank you for all you effort. And if you made it to this point in the review, you are a real one.

I'll rate for how it is "intended to be played".
I 100% the game and it IS NOT WORTH IT. The fucking time it would have taken without cheats edits (not cheats cause it is literally impossible to cheat in a single player game). Would have added many pointless hours of tedium that is not worth it. Anything to do with the tedium, grind and all that has already been written out in other reviews. So I won't bother going on about it. The setup and all, is nice. After a point however, I was just tired and just even skipping sex scenes (as there wasnt enough and not enough spice or variety anyway) just to finish the game faster and call it a day.

Amber, Annika and Riley IMO are hands down the best.

Super awesome game. I wanted to give it a 4.5 but I guess there's no option for that. My only complaint is the linear sex scenes. The animations are awesome, but I felt like the creator could have given us some control over them. Except for that pretty epic game. Give it a shot if you're bored.

This is a great management GAME. Sometimes people forget what a game feels like lol

Adult content was good, the girls were so hot that I wished it had more scenes with them, or maybe more complex animations

The story is ok, and the end is satisfactory

I liked the models for the most part but the animations are kinda stiff and the grinding for lackluster content is very obvious. Sometimes the faces were very uncanny valley and the endings are pretty disapoiting.

Well made game, good story and enough to keep you interested. Variety of characters and scenes to keep you interested and you do need to think a bit about your choices to progress. Save often to reload your bad choices to make it quicker to play or accept your mistakes it's up to you!

Straight up, this game is textbook harem sandbox junkfood for the brain. But that's not a bad thing. I found the gameplay loop addictive and the characters and art appealing enough that I've replayed the game just to get the final achievement, something I've never done with an adult game in my life. It's far from a perfect 5/5 and it can get grindy, especially towards the end, but I enjoyed it for what it was. I liked the music and art and the story, while over the top, was enjoyable in its own way. Looking forward to the completion of Faerin's next game, for sure.

TLDR mediocore game with mediocore short story padded by unenjoyable gameplay.
Hmm I would really want to give 2.5 stars.
Very average story. The story itself is extremely short.
-Mc's dad got killed and covered up as an accident after buying a hotel with the help of dad's friend whose own another hotel in the same area.
-Mc found out there's something magical around the area. pertaining to history of the 3 hotels own by 3 sisters.
-Mc found out the magical shit has something to do with his dad's "accident".
-Mc found out his dad friend's gf is actually the original 1 of the sisters and is immortal.
-Mc confront the sister and with the help of his dad and 2 sisters ghost managed to undo her immortal and killed her.

This whole storyline woldn't take you more than 10-20 minutes if you remove all the gameplay.

Gameplay is not enjoyable to say the least. The game promise you a management game that turnout to actually be a puzzle game. basically put a girl with appropiate ability to the task required. You have to shuffle them around every turn. It's a chore. you can circumvigate this by purchase an upgrade that give you a button to automatically put girls on tasks.

You also get an event with hotel guest during which you have to choose corret answer to proceed. a pop quiz basically.

Oh there's also a gacha card mechanic which basically give you a small bonus once equiped. nothing big or impactful in anyway. Kinda think it is a waste of time and resource putting it in the game.

"just use story mode" "Just use built-in cheat"
No. All game should be judge based on what's dev intend to be a "normal" represantation of what their game has to offer.

Scene is huge let down. very few scenes, take a very long time thank to the lenght padding by gameplay and the scenes itself also short. quality of rendering is average (by 2020 standard).

TBH I wouldn't recommend anyone to play this game unless they already exhaused the list of what I already recommend them. Think of it as TV series that you put on 2nd monitor because you have nothing else to listen/watch while doing other thinig. Like what Josh Strife Hayes said "It's not over- or under-, It's just -whelm"

Too many girls.
Lacks content, you can almost buy out entire store with a single visit.
You can (re)visit locations that serve no purpose, wasting time.
Sex scenes are badly designed, UI element is blocking the view, bad camera angles, no climax.
Can't repeat good sex scenes at night, no gallery for those either.
Repetitive scenes, (too many girls).
Grinding treadmill gameloop.

As a lot of other people have said, this is a hotel management game with some porn and a story stitched on.

The management is surprisingly fun and tactical, and makes for a genuinely good and addictive game. The plot that comes with the game is interesting and coherant, although the MC does occasionally act rather more naive and stupid than he really should.
The biggest weaknesses of this aspect are that the management suffers from difficulty variations. it's easy but tedious to start with when you're trying to gather enough money to do all the essentials the game throws at you at the start, and it's very challenging at the end when you have to literally min/max your employees for every shift if you want to get a good result. The middle bit's easy. The second issue is the plot does basically nothing for 70% of the game and then rushes through everything everywhere all at once. It really needs better pacing.

Porn-wise, the game is pretty meh. Sex scenes only show up in the last 20% of the game, and they're pretty much all vanilla and basic. Genuinely nothing to write home about aside from the fact they are well-animated and have moan sound effects. They are good, but still don't make the porn worth working for if it's your only goal.

Overall, if you're looking for something to get off from, there's much better. However, the game itself is a lot of fun anyway so I recommend giving it a go if it sounds like your sorta thing.

So getting first things out of the way first, this game is 80% hotel management game. So if that's not your thing be warned and pick "story mode" but know that's not my thing either but I stuck it out for this game and on the whole was glad I did.

The remainder 10% fun story and 10% sexy times.

Story mode makes it clear you will miss out on some content and is probably about 3-5 hours and the "regular" is probably 20-30 with hotel management making most of the balance.

I'm 4/5 because that ratio feels a bit too uneven for me. Sprinkling in teases throughout hours of hotel grinding doesn't compensate for that ratio, and regardless of how much hotel management you leave in both the characters and the story had room to grow which is surely the point of an AVN that is so measured in how much it doses the erotic content.

Renders aren't the cookie cutter renders though I feel they maybe went a little too far to portray a range of body types but they are all pretty satisfying even if none of them are perfect 10's ubiquitous in most games.

They are also are all fun if not very developed in personality, which is the othr thing that makes it less than perfect but they maintain their relative relationships at the end of the game unlike so many other games where they puss out the ending.

TL; DR
If you want to actually play a game and enjoy H content in it in the process, this one is must play.
It has its share of rough edges, but the overall impression is extremely satisfying.
This is the kind of game which is very rewarding if you figured out how to play.
But for me, Laura alone is 5* worth haha! XD

Positives:
- Stunningly beautiful girls
- Some sex scenes are hot, including a couple of anal scenes.
- Great outfits for the girls and nice to see the girls make their outfits lewder when you increase their corruption.
- Corruption in general is nice, although in this game it's mostly the girls throwing themselves at the stupid MC instead of the MC actually corrupting any girls.

Negatives:
- Absolute idiot, loser, weak MC. Why in the world do some devs still do this shit? What is the point?!
- Anime-style cringy and long inner monologue.
- Constant self-doubt, women throwing themselves at MC but MC refusing to understand. "But, uhm, no that can't be, she wouldn't right? Uh, but, it must be a misunderstanding, uhm..." etc.
- This porn game has very little porn.
- Far too slow progress towards anything even remotely sexy. The dev seems to think people actually want to play this game for the gameplay? (Which is ridiculous)
- Even with the cheats (I cheated everything possible) the gameplay is very tedious and boring. You have to manage the hotel but it's just like a basic mobile game, just meant to slow you down before getting the sex scenes.
- Limitations on what actions can be done at what times of day, to further slow the gameplay down.
- No interactivity during the scenes (except for animation speed, which is a nice feature).
- Animation speed is not remembered within the same sex scene.
- Sex scenes are generally very short and abrupt.
- Totally vanilla and boring sex. The only "highlights" are a couple of anal scenes but even that is done in the least sexy possible way.
- There's very little variety in the sex scenes.
- Clearly the dev has a thing for the cowgirl position because around 2/3 of the scenes feature only that position. It's quite boring.
- Obscure, confusing, and annoying way of unlocking the final scenes for each girl. You have to find some "special item", which is not explained how you can get.
- The writing overall is terrible and will really get on your nerves after a while.
- The MC absolutely constantly, meaning whenever he says a hot girl, uses the phrase "Holy crap!". It must quite literally be used at least 100 times in this game.
- The UI has lots of unnecessary and slow transitions and animations that slow down the gameplay. There's a setting to supposedly disable this and I tried that, but it has no effect. This is just another frustration that will take your time for no good reason.

I do not understand how this game could have this high ratings.
I tried playing the normal mode, after 3 hours I haven't accomplished anything. For some reasons my guests got angry without me knowing the reason. This is because the VIP quests did not have to have their ratings displayed. They were served by girls with sufficient levels and the rooms and locations they demanded.

Another try with playing the story mode.
1. Guest arrives.
2. Do nothing
3. Sleep.
4. Some interaction with quest
5. do nothing
6. sleep
7. do nothing
8. do nothing
9 sleep.
Goto 7 until guest checkout.
Goto 1.

The both modes had one thing in common except the do nothing/sleep.
There are only 1 interaction to get relationship with your staff.
Which rooms should I consider and why. I know I had to make sure I had the skills required but only ONE of the women could do either task in the reception and other.

Everything cost money to renovate obviously but you could accommodate any number of staff..

During my initial 3 hours of game time I saw one pair of titties, one vag slip and a perverts dirty mind which was a lesbian scene.

The story behind Mystwood seemed interesting but the game play and progression wasn't worth it!

One of my main biases when rating games on here is the question "does it also work as a game?" - which is absolutely the case here.

Mystwood Manor is a very decent Hotel Management Sim; the gameplay loop at its core just works very well. While playing, I found myself really thinking and strategising about which staff to use where, how to spend my money and also occasionally how to avoid "losing". The game has some instances, where it really challenges you and where there are consequences to failing. If you want to 100% complete this game, it can be quite a grind, but then again, 100%ing most games is.

The NSFW scenes are also quite hot and I found that the pace at which you earn them also flows very nicely. I also appreciate that the women have their different characters and body types, I always prefer a nice mix over only Milfs/teens whatever. The cast is very white, so if you are into black women, you'll be disappointed.

The story and setup are quite simple, but they were also very effective, at least to me. You, as the player, can relatively quickly piece together what is going on in the background. I like that the story is resolved by your player character also coming to the same conclusions, and there is no unnecessary twist just for the sake of subverting expectations.

Overall, I highly recommend checking this game out and want to thank the developer for combining a fun game with some nice digital lewdness. I'd take a game like this over the x-thousandth Ran'Py VN any day of the week.

It's a really good management game somewhat bogged down by the sub-par, poorly-paced, extremely-well-rendered, buttery-smoothly-rendered, generically-voice-acted (or should I say, store-bought) romance-ish and sexual content.

I like it though, mostly for the management aspect of the game, not so much for the break-neck crawl of the sex-adjacent contents. Highly recommended, even more so when you play on the normal mode because that is where the fun is at

Gameplay:
Visual Novel with a management game, Harem
So, there is this Hotel management where you have to level up skills of your employee to earn money with clients, expand, and so on. It's funny, but it's also quite basic without much challenge or strategy as you just have to repeat. There is no multiple path. There is a reminder included to guide you on what to do next (not much brain thinking). You also have to search for objects and explore a bit.

Story:
Silly porn, with some kind of investigation on the death of your father. It is well written. But the progress of the romances are a bit repetitive. So, not bad, but not incredible. I

Graphics/Animation:
The strong point. The renders and the models are really good. Also, there are some good animations.

Sound/Music
There is a background music. The sound effects are not good.

Overall impression:
On the whole, I liked it. It's a bit too long a repetitive. It takes a bit of time before things really start to develop. And was some potential unused. It could be way much shorter. Still, 4 stars because of the renders.

One of the best games I found in F95 in years.

Story is solid, models are fenomenal and mechanics were fun & challenging enough.

The game will push you to get the best possible score to access the best possible outcome as you finish the main quest which had me re-trying a couple of times to make sure I achieved the desired outcome.

There is no need for a cheat system or playthrough guide as the game provides enough information on the UI to know where to head next.

Two thumbs up for the developer and support provided!

I thought since this game is a lot newer than Man of The House (from the same dev) it would be a lot better, but after hours of playing it's not a very different game with basically the same pros and cons. If you like management games, add an extra star to this rating. But be aware that there is a LOT of management and a LOT of clicking before you get to any H content.

Pros:
- Mom looks like an actual MILF
- Management aspect is not perfect, but alright
- Completed game with a good amount of content
- Models are nice

Cons:
- Too vanilla, too boring, no kinks except incest
- MC is a beta loser
- Couldn't care less about the main story
- Some story scenes (the asian girl) are cringe as fuck
- Stiff animations
- Too grindy