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

Honestly really disappointed with this game. I had high hopes as I enjoyed Man of the House a lot, but the grind in this game is unreal. There are HOURS spent doing the same tasks over and over again, just to see a few brief scenes. In the beginning the gameplay was interesting, but it after a few hours it wears out its welcome and just becomes a hassle. The art is good for the most part, but there are a few facial expressions that are just bad, and really needed another pass. The game appears to be a sandbox when you first start, but you quickly realize there is actually very little to do in each area. Hell, one of the first areas you can explore has no purpose at all until you have the final girl, about 6 hours into the game, and even then it's only used for one scene and nothing else ever happens there.

Honestly just a poor showing, and I can't recommend this game to anyone unless you really enjoy the hotel management loop

Mystwood Manor [1.0.2 completed] is a grip in the toilet!
Sounds harsh, but the overal average rating of 4 stars for the time being is neither reasonable nor deserved - at least not for adult gaming standards.

I really liked the previous game of this dev (Man of The House), which already was grindy and had its flaws, but Mystwood Manor is a total lackluster concerning adult content. The game mechanics are super tedious and grindy and there are hardly any rewarding sex scenes. To put it straightforward: as an adult game this one is a disaster.

The story is rather average, a little bit of mystery is added into the mix, but overall it's not really worth bothering and failed to keep me interested. Overall the story didn't catch me a single time, while wasting several hours playing this, bevore I've decided to quit for good.

In addition the more and more revealing outfit game mechanic also failed to catch me, because of the heavy grind and that it had no impact on the rest of the game like different hotel guest reactions. The first few outfit level changes are barely noticable anyway - maybe some teenage boys find this arousing, but for me this mechanic was boring and a unneccessary grindfest. Certainly a few intermediate steps should have been skipped.

The cast is somewhat diverse, but I really don't get it why a young adult, one of your employees has got grey/silver hair? It's a silly design decision and adds no realism at all to this character. Some girls are hot, others not so much, but that's a matter of personal taste. The mc looks better than the one of his previous game, though. Unfortunately some facial expressions looked really odd. Daz3d offers a large variety of facial expressions for its genesis models, but some really look unnatural and strange. Don't know, why many of the most unrealistic expression sets were used in Mystwood. There are less extreme and therefore better ones to use in daz3d.

Furthermore the management aspects in general were alright, but way too grindy (employees xp & levels, fame points, guest levels, money, room upgrades and not to forget the points you'll need for the witch and her tarot cards). Nobody plays this game for its hotel management aspects anyway.

I didn't play the story mode, maybe I should have... The "game mode" is the one how this game is intended to be played according to the dev. I did so and it really sucked for me, because it turned out to be a waste of time!

Therefore I really can't recommend this game, which is a real downgrade compared to the previous one. If you have got plenty of time and low expectations for rewarding or hot sex scenes (like playing for approximately 5 hours before the first meagre handjob starts), give it a go, otherwise don't bother downloading it. Even with cheats it takes several hours to unlock at least the blowjobs. Shortly after unlocking the latter, I've lost interest and wasn't willing to invest any more time, so I've quit and really didn't regret it.

The few animations I've seen were either boring softcore bs or like the handjobs and blowjobs redundant. In general the animations are rather short and simple.

Hopefully Faerin will learn from his grave mistakes he made with this game and do much better with his next game. At least Man of The House has proven that he theoretically can create good games, although Mystwood Manor as his most recent game is a failure.

Edit: In the meantime I've got a 100 % completion save of another board member. Thanks for that. After checking out, the content I've missed, I'm even more convinced, that Mystwood Manor isn't worth your time. Sex scenes are all copy paste and happen way too late considering the invested hours of gameplay. Unlocking nakedness for your employees has got no effect at all other than optical ones - no guest will react or comment on them working naked, which is just disappointing.

I really like Man of the House (and it's my first adult game) but this game I feel like it's a lot of step back comparing to MoH. While it's true both game require a lot of Grinding but MM is very slow in term of adult content.

At first, I start to play without cheat before I give up around 6 hours mark. I throw a lot of cheat afterwards and found the first sex scene around 8 hours in which is pretty long. Speaking of slow, the progress is very tedious as well before you are going to unlock the next progress. you need this, you need that and some of them you can't cheat your way out as well.

The girls are nice, I really like render and stuff however the relationship building is very weak. Nothing really stand-out and I probably going to forgot about them later on.

Hotel Management part is kinda okay but it's getting boring really fast. Answer the question over and over again is not fun.

I do like the story though, I enjoy the mystery around MM.

All in all it's an okay game but I feel like it could be much better. for instance reduce among of grinding.

the best i can give this is 3/5 stars,
by now everyone and his dog have pointed out what is so overly great about this, but it really isn't for me.

the story is ok. not making waves and like the dialogue, hardly taxing on the mind. could have been better.

but the big let-downs for me, are all in the art. one girl is cross-eyed permanently, the slow glances up when viewing a girl are tedious in the extreme, and the scenes slowing down when switching screens is also tedious. add to this the lack lustre endings and quite average story and dialogue, and this becomes a very average game hardly any different from the previous offering by the same dev..

there is just nothing to hook you beyond good renders which soon become a bit boring. mechanics are solid but wasted on this project.

It hurts me to give this two stars. I like the dev and had high hopes. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not here for games, I'm here for long form non gonzo porn. But I'm here for porn.

I don't care for "gameplay", I don't want "gameplay" a no choice novel is, IMHO, always better than a sandbox. Heck, anything is. But you get my point. I wanna see fucking, but I want glue. A story to tie in the fucking.

This game has a story. I'm not going to say it's good. But it's not terrible. The gameplay is way too much for me, but it's not stupid. It's well enough done.

The game is grindy AF, but not in a stupid way. I play a lot of twisty games (wink wink) where there's a lot of sandboxing, and clicking, and stupid stuff that needs a guide and is unplayable without one. But at least there is a metric fuck ton of sex.

This? Almost no penetration. Just saw a rip of 200x40 - ish pictures. Not even 1/18 of that is penetration. There's a lot of strocking, blowing, posing, whatevering. But there's virtually no penetration.

Again, not gonna lie, the game was kinda hot at first. Buuuuut I was just spending hours and hours and not getting much from it. After watching the CG rip, reading some other comments, I can easily deduce that, in fact, yes. The game is devoid of sex. Maybe 2-3 penetration scenes per character for maybe 100 hours of grinding.

NO - THANK - YOU!

If you like outfit progression you're gonna love this game cause there's a lot of it! One thing I felt was missing was some shorts scenes for upgrading an outfit, like characters working in them and the guests' reaction as they get more and more revealing. But that's the only complaint I have! A good variety of characters with different personalities so there's something for everybody. Very fun game overall, had a blast playing it!

This game forced me for my first ever rating and probably the last. One of the best games I ever played! Very good gameplay and mechanics, nice and clean renders and pretty good animations. Story was good as well, nothing superb, but kept me interested. 4,8* ez.

Man of the House is one of the better games in here, so trying Mystwood Manor was a no-brainer.

Overall it's a very decent game, but rather mediocre adult game.
The story, gameplay and characters are good (I'd say it features some of the best models out there). But when it comes to actual interactions and scenes - it's just not enough.

Feels like a lot of wasted potential here as this could've been easily one of the best games on the site if it had more scenes, more positions, acts, and overall variety.

V1.01 complete

Game will take hours. Took me several days.
It's similar to CIVILIZATION where each turn is managed.

Very well made, with interesting story and a lot of sex. Personal gripe is that the girls were too easy, even if it makes sense why. The taboo, forbidden kink was lost.

Reducing the number of characters would have made them more distinct. Same trope over and over: damsel in distress eventually awards MC with sex for saving them.

Definitely worth playing, even if it doesn't quite make my top games list.

This is my humble opinion regarding this game.
First of all, pros and cons:
Pros❤
· Top tier character model design
· Intituive and fancy UI
· Interesting story
· Character's outfit keep changing as their lust progresses
Contrary to what people say about the game's grind, I found it entertaining.

Cons
· Character's relationship building lacked of interactions between the MC and them
· Lack of sex scenes, lack of angles in the sex scenes, lack of sex positions, lack of foreplay, lack of variations of sex scenes in general
· Practically the entire map and its locations were wasted, all the character's events take place inside the mansion which becomes somewhat redundant.
I understand that the whole game revolves around the mansion, but they could have made much better use of the town's locations.
· Lack of interaction between the guests and the characters regarding they outfits changes, I mean, they practically wear cleavage showing their boobs and nips, pantyless skirts and the guests don't react to that? come on!
· Again, lack of sex scenes.
· Story's end feels rushed

Anyway, I liked the game, its card system, the characters and their costume changes, but I finish the game thinking that it could have been much better.
Still it is a high quality game and I thank faerin for bringing us this game.

It's an addictive game. The gameplay is somewhat similar to MOHs, but the interface is new.

What I liked:

1. beautiful models (Laura is my favorite).
2. the game management interface. It's new and did not reach its full potential yet, but it's quite nice when you get the hang of it. I think it could be used in many games.
3. the game looks polished and beautiful and most of the time you know what to do.

What I don't like:

1. the way the grind combined with the interface affects the pacing of the game. At some point you are discovering something at each turn, then the discovery path ends, and then you're left with lots of dry grinding.
2. a lot of unexplored potential for the female models. The game could have gone one or two extra years easily.
3. the times you don't know what to do, because there are some hidden events not present in the interface guide
4. lots of locations are almost eventless.

Thinks I don't care about at all: the story, the characters' personal history and psychological profile.

TL/DR Mystwood Manor had all the ingredients to be a high quality dynamic game with kinks that I enjoy- but wiffed it so hard on execution of their sandbox/pacing that I ended up getting bored really quickly.

Pros:
Great female character models.
Somewhat Novel Management System
Fun system for upgrading your characters.
Somewhat decent meta-plot featuring some fantasy Noir concepts.
Beautiful UI.

Cons:
~So, so much empty sandbox. Tons of locations to explore that were only used for a single event.
~Annoyingly repetitive grind in the character development with not enough plot events breaking it up to keep an interesting pacing.
~Minimal relationship building in a game where that should be the narrative focus
~Clunky repetitive game-play.
~No indicator to show you had fully explored a location

I went in pretty hyped seeing that this was by the dev of Man of the House, but I ended up being disappointed for the reasons touched on in other reviews. At its core the main gameplay is classic hotel management sim stuff and the core execution of this gameplay loop works well - you have distinct girls and guests with distinct personalities, and you make choices that have them build their skills and that gradually awards additional scenes.

The problem though is not simply that the game is grindy, but it is both grindy and unrewarding. A common pitfall of games like this is that they backload the sex scenes because you're unlocking the same relationship tiers with all the girls at once as you move through the game. Man of the House managed to avoid this issue by having a variety of scenes with each girl and making some girls give up sex earlier in their routes, but this game makes no such effort and you're going to be playing for many hours before you get your first hint of a sex scene. And from there there's a very slow drip of content. Like, I love games that have girls gradually get lewder costumes as the relationship develops, but grinding for a couple hours for the same outfit with the top button being unbuttoned is just not much of a "reward".

And ultimately when you do unlock the sex scenes they're... usually short, bland, and uninspiring. Man of the House had its own severe grind issues but at least it felt like you were managing relationships with the girls rather than just playing a management sim with an increasingly horny staff. Also there are the telltale hints of incomplete systems... lots of locations in the game that are barely used, the skeleton of an item/personality management system that seems neat (tarot cards are done well) but isn't that impactful, and not much "late game" content that you see in harems where you have more corruption/harem content. Overall it just feels very... underbaked, I guess, like the game has a solid core but it should've gone through a few more design iterations before being considered complete.

tl;dr version -

+ Good core management system with some neat supporting systems, albeit nothing super original here
+ Decent but not stellar artwork, good animation quality
+ Good hint system to prevent blocked progress
- Simple relationships with bland girls that are developed pretty slowly in very generic scenes
- Backloading of sexual content in the late game

PROS-
- Great and unique model designs.
- Decent storyline.
- Decent characters.
- Great gameplay mechanics.

CONS-
- Gets bit grindy in between in story mode.
- Not enough sex scenes, as some of the night scenes of girls are repeated multiple times.
- Drags bit too long in storymode gameplay (10~15 hrs).
- Application stops responding multiple times while playing video but can be dealt easily by turning it OFF.

5/5
Can't say is this game my fav, but it's definitely gets in my top 20 for sure. Interesting storyline and characters, good renders and animations. Even the sandbox part was pretty entertaining (but got a little boring at the lategame and it is one and only downside imo). As stated earlier, you can fix it with cheatmode.
To be mentioned, dev(s) didn't slack and made decent updates on regular basis

The good stuff:

Great renders, great animations in sex scenes. Art is top-notch.

The gameplay is surprisingly decent too. It's certainly nothing thats been done a thousand times before - its a very decent management sim on top of the h-content.

And most importantly, the characters are well-written, and have their own character development and personalities.

H-Scenes are pretty hot.

The things that need improving:

A better fast-forward system for content you've already seen. No need to wait out the entire quality bar animation, for example.

The grind really messes up the pacing of the game. Strongly recommend downloading the cheat mod to improve the experience, or else the game will get quite monotonous for people with limited time.

---

Finally, a post-game suggestion - after you clear each character's storylines, I suggest giving each girl some "reward scenes" where you can H them across multiple areas of the mansion. Not just rewatch previous scenes of the gallery, but actual reward scenes where you check on them during the day and fuck each other's brains out during their job shifts.

The game is already very good in its current form but this would be an addition that would elevate the heat of the game and give us some fun reward scenes to watch while hunting the last few events and collectibles of the game. That extra degree of payoff is one of the things that would elevate the game above some of the best ones in f95.

+ nice model and animation
+ very polished, one of those games that set the standard for other H games
+ complete, again, not many of those around

- grindy gameplay, and the payoff , whether it's the ero scenes, or story progression, is not worth it imo.

More on gameplay: you operate a hotel, each guest gives you 2 currencies: one to buy cards, one to upgrade your hotel. The cards are used to buff your stats, but they are pretty boring, since they are all number modifiers (+5% here, +10% there, don't hope for any fun broken combos like in roguelite games). The hotel upgrades do more or less the same thing. The hotel staffs are your love interests. Each girl has 3 stats, which can only be raised by doing the corresponding activity, when there's a guest that partakes in that activity. In order to progress their story, you need to raise all 3 stats to the next level, which can be extra grindy in later levels.

This game has good H content, unique story, and passable gameplay, but it is just way too grindy. The dev even went out of their way to add cheats which helped a lot, but they either forgot to add cheats to let add skill levels to girls or I'm a dumbass. They also forgot to add cheats to let you unlock events with the girls too.

At some point you gotta ask yourself: Who is this game for? Like, the H content is GREAT... but it takes to damn long to get to really be rewarding. So why is it even there? Surely it's not there to masturbate to right? Because if it was, surely it would be more conducive to doing so with?.. But no, that IS why it's there, the dev just never stopped and asked themselves that question: "who is this game for", and make a game for that person.

Honestly the dev's abilities are amazing, both in art, animation, writing, and gameplay. This dev has all the skills needed to make 5 star games, it's just he's used them to create an experience that is lackluster overall, unfortunately. It's hard for me to recommend this game - You can't really use a save because you need to participate in the story to enjoy the content. I suppose the dev did add story mode, but he plasters this big "DO NOT PLAY THIS MODE, I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY I ADDED IT, YOU'RE LITERALLY A DUMBASS IF YOU PLAY IT" message all over it that really dissuades you from trying it... idk, maybe give it a go and tell the next guy if it's worth it.

My first time ever leaving a review here. I had played Faerin's previous game a while before this and played it as it's new versions came out. For this one, since I could tell it was gonna focus more on the gameplay and less on the "fun" stuff, i wanted to wait till it was final before I gave it a shot. Played through it the past few days and I do gotta say, the dev did stick to their guns that this was gonna be more of a game than a fap fest.

The gameplay is decent enough for a management sim. Sure there's a bit of a grind but I've definitely dealt with worse. I think my main issue is that some of the later game areas (club and yoga studio come to mind) are sooooo much more expensive in proportion to the rest that kinda took away from the experience until I sat down and focused on grinding some of those out. Maybe I was just unlucky on getting some of the cards that would make it easier (looking at you, Builder).

Renders are top notch which I was expecting, coming from MotH. Faerin has come a long way with models. Love all the girls, including the smaller bit characters. Wish there were a few more or at least more complex animations but won't fault the dev for it that too much, I know animations aren't their forte. The stills conveyed enough for me, just more of a personal preference thing. I like my moving bits lol.

I think the thing that held me through the most was the story. I did like trying to figure out the mystery of Mystwood and learning each of the girl's backstories and personalities. Though Catalina did seem a bit weak in comparison to the other girls. Unsure if she was the last addition or it was just the fact it took so long for me to unlock her (see previous gripe about building the damn club), but her story seemed very meh in comparison to the other girls. Her and Annika both seemed a bit shallow and was mostly there for smexy fun times. But I did still like them, just not as much as the other girls.

The ending was a great wrap up to all the mysteries in Mystwood. The epilogues, however, seemed rather pointless and I would have been more angry at them if I hadn't already spent the time to make sure I had everything before going into the ending so I could just see them back to back. If I had gone into the ending and only saw the first 2 epilogues, then went back and finished grinding out the love (though i was just like 2 or 3 scenes short with Catalina, again, club cost is absurd), Im sure I would have been more frustrated with the third epilogue and how lackluster it seemed.

Overall I did still thoroughly enjoy this game. Decent enough gameplay to keep me engaged, good story, beautiful girls, though with a few bumps and bruises here and there. Looking forward to Faerin's next project.

+ Good Renders

= Decent Animations
= Decent Plot/Setting

- Boring ( gameplay )
- Boring Character Development ( seducing women via a supernatural wingman becomes grating rather quickly as its the standard for this story )
- Annoying Scene requirements

Story mode will probably make this more bearable to play, though I can't will myself to try.