VN - Ren'Py - New Beginnings in Japan [Ch.2 v.0.7] [Shikharsfree]

Boring gallery simulator that jumps from character to character with no direction and the only choices being "See scene of creepy guy doing things to X character? Yes/No", typically after moments that are supposed to be intense/emotional and I just genuinely could not care less to see.

Plus some minus points just for all of the obvious "this person has never been to Japan" moments that kept pissing me off. Maybe it's nitpicking and other people wont care, but it happened enough to bug me.

"wah wah it's a porn game who cares if it's realistic" Porn game or not it's trying to tell a story (and i don't just mean the text) so when shit happens that just wouldn't happen it kills the vibe. You could drop the entire setting back into a random US city and it would feel no different and to be honest, you should. "New beginning in California/Los Angeles" and you wouldn't have to change a thing.

TLDR: Pick a character and stick with it, add actual choices or gut it entirely and make it a linear story, stop telling me the thoughts of every random guy on the street because I really don't care, pace the events in ways that don't nuke the impact of your story if you actually care to tell one and don't introduce the setting like it's important but in reality doesn't actually matter and it's all just cookie cutter like instead of just "place" it's "place, japan" because you're obsessed with Japan coz you like anime or whatever.

It's not a bad game, but it has too many characters and at the beginning they have more prominence than the protagonist, who feels like she's in the background, and when you expect to pick her up again, a new character is introduced. On the other hand, I understand that the dev wants to create a story in Japan, but it's too clichéd. It's not necessary for the Japanese aunt to know martial arts because she's Japanese.

The MC is the only that have a good design, cute with realistic touch and the rest are more on the doll side however the content , corruption or sexual content for MC is very low/nule after more than 2 years and the characters that get more scenes are the ones that dont generate interes or design is bad.

The game was very good at first, but then its just tons of characters, tons of their memories, tons of different POVs, making the story a total mess, long and boring.
The MC sex scenes are few, and some are locked behind a paywall.

I just wish we could've focused more on MC POV

There are too many characters and a load of uninteresting side stories. The dev should have focused on the FMC instead of making tons of characters. You feel lost in the story with so much BS about the other characters, having to play their roles and make decisions for them. What a confusing annoying plot.

Ok I have to stand up for this game because I'm seeing some shit talking in the other reviews lol this game has an interesting enough story that it's ruined a lot of other VNs for me because they are way more basic.. Not going to shit on other games here but after I finished the content on New Beginnings, I noticed a short update and usually I'd wait but I immediately downloaded it to get more.. I cannot wait for the final version of this whenever it may be. Aunt Xia is such a good character she almost beats my love for corruption, though I also have to support John, imo the epitome of corruption.. Frankly not many VNs have the balls to go in so dark so quickly but I love everything about the story, it almost reads like a soap opera with multiple characters getting their time and scenes, sometimes I even forgot about Kiara in Japan.. And the boring vanilla characters you really can just romantically ignore, Damian and Azumi no offense are at the very bottom of the list for me lol but there's so much to look forward to.

Hopefully we eventually see John or others get to every character more or less, and I already see potential for Kiara to be his apprentice and corrupting the girls and relatives (evil laugh) although a tear is shed for Taka losing his drip and Yamazaki losing his hair lol don't be fooled by the dialogue Kiara is ass at cutting hair (those are my only nitpicks and see how they aren't even real complaints that's how interesting and absorbing this VN is). If you don't like slow burn corruption what can I say, there's a million VNs out there that have boring mid stories, this is for people who want something actually interesting on top of hot scenes

An excelent game, fantastic renders, some of the best there is. The story is also great, Kiara is stunning. I highly recommend the game to anyone that likes gorgeous renders and a good and coherent story

The game was buggy from the start 1st of all ive never played this game until now and when i went to play it, it already had saves as if i had so i thought that was strange and i think that bugged my game to begin with.

2nd i have missed out on so much female character lore from being intoduced becos they never showed up in the profile list after their intro

Alright now for my actual feedback

I hate the corruption system it seem to be the same as the pandoras box game where you avoid a pervert and down the line theres a lesbo scene oh wait i dont have enough corruption let me go back to old perve neighbour and get molested just for the lesbo scene. That shit just straight up pisses me off and a shitty system, never payed the game again.

anyways yeah the system is stupid oh you wanna grope and have a abit of fun with NATSU oh no you dont have enough corrupion to have fun with her??? like wtf whats the fucking fondness points for then??? like EH i have like 4 of them why do i need to gp back to get corrupted more just have fun with my cousin even tho my fondness points are high enough as it is??

oh yeah another thing dont make sense is ya watching a pov of a another charracter yet kiara still get corruption points like HUH??

the system needs to change not for my benifit but for game itself it just becomes a joke, maybe not to other people it seems to be a joke but to me it is, it is a BAD SYSTEM.

johns blackmail ok you can avoid thank fuck im glad the dev does not force you into these scene so thanks for that anyway.

yeah ok i said no to him but she continues to see him heard a man get ripped in half and she says im doing for eve and whoever else but cmon man tell evelyn ignor the cunt he is going to goafter evryone no matter what becos he a vile CUNT.

so she needs to stop these stupid vists fuck the poker game he going to probably cheat somehow anyway so im not sure how thats going to work out for veronica even tho you will make a wayout but right now i do not see it she needs to get the fuck out now,

LI/ROMANCE LESBO

PFFFTTTT what fucking romance???? azumi has the most romace scene in the game let me rehrase she has more screen time than rose does and i want rose so i avoided azumi as much as possible, dont get me wrong god shes gorgeous and sweet but she is not for me i want rose.

actaully at 1st i wanted lana but then rose cme along and i dont even think lana is a LI at all.

Also christ there is hardly any sexual content with kiara at all on the lesbo route i was bored outta my bollocks brains.

There is wayyyy to much story content than anything sexual with kiara i wanna see her licked and her licking, kissed fingering and so on just way too much story man.

something bad needs to start happening to john now tho he is getting too cocky and think he is untouchable

he has already started to go after veronica and now he has hired fucktards ninjas to kidnap XZIA amd failed BADLY and i loved that scene cos she such a fucking hot powerful dominant woman and put those cunts in their place and the face john pulled was priceless scared shitless, YEAH NOT SO FUCKING TOUGH NOW ARE SITTING IN YA MANSION GETTING SCARED OVER THE PHONE

that was the best scene in the entire game to honest so i really enjoyed that alot

Some postive

there is alot of heart warming scenes with some of the characters that got my emotions up i enjoy those moments in the game i get a soppy and its even worse becos i am not well at the mo so i am more sensitive tham usual

so yeah keep them scenes coming dev theyy are very beautiful to read and very heartwarming so i thank you them

review on version Ch2 v.0.6.2:

MASSIVELY overrated!
What once started to be a 5 star game with plenty of well done corruption scenes, turned into a mess.
Since several updates there's one textwall after another. Barely any lewd content compared to the obnoxious amount of "pure story" lines, which don't even tell a propper story at all - at least i didn't see the story, if there's one.
Even IF there's a good sex scene, it's now hidden behind a paywall (first updates have had NO paywall).
So despite the few ammount of good scenes, player will be left with blueballs.

This is another game which started great, and now turned into greed and boring updates, which leave the feeling to be there just for the sake of having another upadate out there.

Female protag games are normally some of the raunchiest and most fun to play. "New Beginnings in Japan" bucks that trend by being unbelievably wordy, incredibly linear, and extremely dull.

It's like someone took the idea of setting a porno in Japan, but forgot to add in all the NSFW elements. Add in incredibly unlikeable male characters, almost no meaningful choices, and (worst of all) LOOOOOOONNNNGGGG meandering word-dumps about side characters, and you've got a waste of 3 or 4 hours of your life.

Okey i must say i'am rather confused by the ratings and reviews on this game.

Let me explain why i'am personally confused about that kind of high rating for this "game".

Story:

Gonna be cryptic (cause i want to avoid spoiler)

Here is the main problem imo about the game, the situation the background and how the MC acts doesn't make sense even with the lame excuse given why .

There are a huge and i mean fricking huge amount of side characters that know about that fact and still act like the best thing to do is to try getting a romantic relationship with the MC (gaslighting much).

It's a whole much of the i can fix her scenario.
The MC herself just is a plain canvas, which shouldn't be a bad thing if you are in control of here, but there is not really something there to actually paint a picture.

What do you have is either get her corruption (which you get by watching scenes that doesn't involve the MC - wut ?) up or just go along for the ride while watching a large amount of other characters without the MC involvement.
It's just convoluted and doesn't make sense....

At this point i would suggest adding the Multiple Protagonists tag.

Graphics/Development:

The game looks good the renders have a rather high quality and you can be sure to get steady updates from the Dev.

Porn:

If you like other " unimportant" characters getting it on than you have found a goldmine, because that's most of the content you get (rather yanky animations - yes there are animation i don't know why there isn't a tag for it - but a lots of it which is a plus!) in this game!

Sure there a some scenes with the MC, but most of them are behind a route or not accesible because of rather low slut corruption level...

Romance / LI's:

Oh god whatever, there are options for either straight or lesbian content but it all seems so unimportent and just thrown in, just like a afterthought.
And yeah if you are going for a straight route (same for lesbian btw) you still have to deal with the other LI's most of the time.
Which wouldn't be a problem ( which is fine cause the MC identifies as being BI), if you could just close those paths off rather quickly.
But even if you ignore that said LI's you don't really fond of they are still play a big part in the story and try to get the MC to fall for them.

I don't get it... it shouldn't be that hard to just get rid of those characters if you set a variable that you are not interested in them.
In the end it just gives the feeling you are not in control about what your MC does.
Which brings me to the part where i said"nah this game is not for me !"

Decisions:

Okey you can avoid forced scenes through upgrading your fighting skills in the game ( train with your aunt and all that), also you can avoid some of the scenes where the MC is not present, by either skipping them or just "take control" of the char in that scenes and stop the approaching person ( Sadly this also means your corruption level won't be enough to get scenes with the MC later on - even on the lesbian path).

So yeah a rather 50/50 Kudos for that, but that's about it...

When talking about the decisions in the game i would like to go back what i wrote in the Romance/LI's path and just say don't except you are in full control even if the game seems to give you that impression ....

-------

Anyway if you are okey with that said premise and being more of a spectator than being a player that shapes the MC to your liking you should be more than fine with this game.

I love this game so much!

Kiara is one of my favourite female protagonists, and the world built around her is so beautifully made.

The renders are exquisite, and the writer has a really lovely story to tell.

The reviews here are something else. You can't possibly be serious. Praising this game for its "story" is like you are giving a glowing review to a Happy Meal (unless you take McNuggets naturally).

The characters are completely inane, the MC is barely even a person in the way she sleep walks through the story. Choices are almost completely reduced to: "Do you want to get harassed by some random guy in a completely contrived situation? Yes/No."

Even if you had a lobotomy, there's no way you can actually consider this good.

So, TLDR: Play it for poorly done p0rn scenes if you are that needy.

i cant describe how fun this game is first of all the story is amazing and the story telling as very good chacters in the game with a good back ground the style of the game amazing as well i did not expect this game to have such a good story almost made me cry sometimes ihope you keep working on it and finsh it and i wish the best of luck

- mediocre renders
- story is all over the place
- very silly dialogues
- if u don't pick the correct option u get locked later
- tons of characters and its not a good thing

I really wanted to like the game, theres few "times" I think now we are talking, but thats not enough to make it playable. its so silly that its irritating. DEV should hire a writer that know how to make a good story, because this is a disaster.

Overall: Average game with tonal whiplash= big life lesson psychological dialogue followed by "Tits! Man... Tits!"

Characters: Metric shit-ton of characters. Yeah it's in the dev notes. Still too much for me.

Graphics: Some are great. Some... are horrid: Some (literal) assholes look worse than the eye of Sauron.

Sex: As of [Ch. 2 v0.4.9] 3ish sex scenes. There rest are groping, oral, etc...

Feet: No foot fetish tag. It's accurate. But a LOT of close-ups of feet (see previews). That can be a big plus or minus to some.

Sentences: Hey Dev. have some: ... ,,, ;;; but in return, less random spaces, esp. before a comma.
Best ex: "youc ans ee" which, for a second, I thought was a name... because Kiara is often kiara.

Fantasy: If you're going to do "special surgery that removes specific memories", I'd prefer a Sci-Fi, Fantasy or Super-Hero setting or its jarring.

Pet Peeves:
1-scenes like: Class ends after introductions? Just write 1 Line of text "Kiara teaches her first class." That's it. Otherwise, makes it another game where the MC's can't do their jobs.

2-characters like: Agent Wong. Jake. Don't introduce them as shitbags, add a tragic past/motivation and expect us to 180 on how we feel about them.

3-coincidences like: "Her name was..." and here comes an interruption at that precise moment. Then again, Hollywood does it all the time...

Final Verdict: The game is a 3...+/- 2 depending on how you stand on feet.

EDIT = Holy fucking shit! I actually didn't mean to make that verdict pun... but I'm SO keeping it now...

GLAD I GAVE THIS GAME A CHANCE BECAUSE OF THE POSITIVES FROM SOME POSTERS ON THIS FORUM
WOW, an adult VN that's story based, not sluts, no gangbangs, no rape, no blackmail, just a game that shows the female mc in a more positive manner which is long overdue, that has real love interests, real family issues, real life emotions, it has got me hooked in a good way

RENDERS LEAVE ME SPEECHLESS
The renders / art work for this game, are beautifully made, the camera angles, everything has been thought through perfectly

STORY HITS YOU HARD AND THAT'S NOT A BAD THING
Started off interesting, followed the story, no complaints from me for the build up what so ever, it just made it that much better when you finally get to play as the mc, to have a adult vn that makes you feel heart broken because of her past, that's heart breaking, and i do agree, John is an ASS and I want to stay and watch Kiara life playout in a positive manner and make her father if you can call him that, pay big time

I have literally no complaints on this, really am enjoying it, keep up the good work dev and team

What impressed me most in this game, which I think is rare in games with female MCs is a female POV or at least there is interaction between the writer and the devs.
This makes it more realistic in terms of the emotions, feelings, excitement and thoughts a woman has.
The plot is compelling, the characters are well described with their history, the graphics are excellent, even for exteriors, and the frequency of constant releases is very timely.

this game is great in all aspects :
Great Story and great Story flow that makes you can't stop playing till you finish it all.
Great Character build to represent the story effectively
Great Render and artwork
Really Amazing dialogue lines lets you involve in the story
Hoping for more choices in the future

[Ch2 0.45]

Pros:
-There's already a lot of content (story and renders)
-It looks like the author(s) used the face transfer feature in DAZ studio (or something similar) which allows modifying faces using photos of real persons. Whatever he used, it gives all characters a kind of unique look over the regular DAZ models, which works quite well.


Neutrals:
-There are *a lot* of renders and it's clear the dev went for quantity over quality. Posing of the character models is often crude and camera setup sloppy. I feel this is not really a "con" though as the large amount of renders still makes the game somewhat easier to digest then VNs who solely rely on avatars to visualize the story / plot.


Cons:
-The amount of choices is on the low side and it seems like the dev is not willing to let the player influence the plot. All choices seem strictly limited to picking a romance path and upping (or not) corruption points -or what's even worse: are non-choices ("do you want to see the following smut scene or nahh?". Seriously? In a porn game? How are these type of "choices" still a thing?).
-The cast is too large. Like way too large. It feels like only about 20% of the game is about the MC, while you are along for the ride for the remaining 80% of the scenes. These scenes mostly don't even allow for any player input at all and pretty much form a kinetic novel inside the rest of the game.
-Bugs. Several scenes with missing images and some choices with wrong text prompts.


The game has potential, but the dev needs to work on the weak points (lack of choices, engrish, cohesion of the story, bugs) to realize it. Depending how it goes the game might end up being a solid 4 or a disappointing 2.

As of now this could still go either way.