Ah, porn VNs, where the only three options for the father seem to be:
1. He is dead
2. He is missing
3. He is a massive prick who treats everybody, especially his hot wife like shit, so you can claim everything that was his without having a bad conscience... you are still a perverse incestuous fuck of course, but what can ya do?
Well the models are great and the story is fine, looking forward to see how the story will go, putting this game into the playing list.
Although I want to say that there are no choices to make in the game, better to put some in the future updates that can affect the story or this will be like looking into a novel and thats boring.
Besides that, it will be better if we can change the mc's name, but that ok if we can't, just a bit hard to remember all the japanese name if you are not a japanese.
I prefer the sister to have a long hair better than the short hair, will it be changed in the future update?
The renders are good, but honestly, the story felt wrong, the mc (who by the way has this 'power' that is never mentioned/covered or explained in any way shape or form, but still uses it and successfully) evades every swipe of the blade/punch of the fists, yet still acts like a wimpy weakling who backs down when verbally confronted.
Then you have the Aya chick (the blade-wielding girlie) who upon seeing the scene, immediately assumes the worst and then after attacking unprovoked, decides that even after the mc saves her from being abused, she's then going to blackmail the mc, and of course, the mc being the weak-willed, simple-minded moron that he is, does not even comment on it or tell them to f**k off, I'm sorry but that's so far fetched that it just drags you out of the story.
Nobody in their right mind would just give into some 'self-proclaimed hero' who claims to help people and protect innocents while at the same time blackmailing someone to not only keep them quiet but also to force them to work for them, that is what I would consider totally vile and villainous behaviour. If she is meant to be a hero then that kind of action is only going to force people to hate her character completely.
I wanted to like this story because it has potential, but as it is right now, it's simply not there. Well, the story is ok, up until the alley scene, then it all goes t*ts up and loses its pace and plot.
Renders and models look great and have a nice theme and feel to them, but the whole rape-blackmail thing ruined it for me.
It's the initial release and I already strongly dislike one of the main(?) female characters and the MC - Whose spine was apparantly not included in his construction.
I wish there was a tag for wimpy/weak willed MCs, it'd really save me a lot of frustration and disappointment.
Name Change: While I strongly dislike not being able to rename the MC, URM rename and some code editing makes that a lot easier. If the dev reads this: Using a static family name is relatively common, but using a static given name is not appreciated by most fans in harem games.
Ayase: This part, I don't agree with the common complaints in this thread. She blackmails the MC specifically to keep her identity a secret at school, which I kinda get, since her secret identity is pretty important to her. Everyone who says the MC just bends over and doesn't push back is just flat-out wrong. The literal very next line from the MC is "Are you threatening me? You're fucking crazy." and ends with "I just don't want anything to do with you and all this mess." He's directly hostile about the whole idea and the whole blackmailing thing until she mentions knowing something about his father, so the complaints about him being wimpy/weak-willed are not accurate. When he accepts the formality of her offer to work together, he also makes it clear that it's under duress, and only to find out what happened to his father. He strikes me as angry, but feeling like it's more important to follow this single clue than to be stupidly hostile to people who could ruin him AND lose the only clue he's had about his father. The other factor here is likely the dev not being that good at getting more angry expressions out of male characters in HS2 without making them look weird, which is just an experience issue that I know is common to a lot of devs just starting out with HS1/2.
(Also, the MC's relationship with Ayase is going to get more complicated: the girl in the MC's mind who tells him to wake up is Ayase's sister that she mentions disappeared around the same time as MC's father, according to her full name used in the code. She's also the girl at the start of the game being experimented on. I suspect she's been turned into an AI by the MC's father and got implanted in the MC's mind somehow. She's almost definitely responsible for the 'power' he displayed during the fight.)
The gang name in kanji: This is a common shounen/seinen trope that is almost always dropped when things are professionally translated to English. It's not particularly bothersome or abnormal, if you've read a lot of shounen/seinen scanlations.
The rest of the gang: I agree it'd have been nice to have an option to eyeroll at the rest of the gang's introductions. To the MC, there's no reason they would matter, and I as a player don't give a shit about them, either. That may change as they get some real characterization.
Ayase/Ayame/Ayumi: For English-speakers, these characters' names are way too similar-sounding. It is next to impossible to remember the differences without having written down a guide to remind me of the name differences. English-speakers pay attention to given names rather than family names, and having the names be so similar is unwise for a game being released in English.
So, fundamentally, I've got some quibbles, but it was passable for now, and it's got some potential plus some really great LI renders. It wasn't offensive enough to stop playing. I'll probably hop into the Discord and give this feedback in case that helps it improve for next version, then watch for the 0.2 to play to see if it's improved. Overall, it's a 0.1 like many another a 0.1. It's not one of the rare few 0.1s that is worth supporting immediately, like Stormside, The Fiery Scion, or Cosy Cafe.
Response from the dev in Discord confirms a few things people here should be happy about:
* Dev agrees that Ayase's original plan with Waka was weak, and he's rewriting the script for that section.
* Details about the MC's ability will be revealed later (I still suspect my theory is correct)
* MC name change is being implemented, planned for the next update.
* Choices will be in the game next update.
Basically, the current release here was a demo and should be treated as such.
Also, the dev is nicely responsive to feedback in his Discord, which is a positive in my book. Upgrades this one to "definitely watch for next update" for me.
Response from the dev in Discord confirms a few things people here should be happy about:
* Dev agrees that Ayase's original plan with Waka was weak, and he's rewriting the script for that section.
* Details about the MC's ability will be revealed later (I still suspect my theory is correct)
* MC name change is being implemented, planned for the next update.
* Choices will be in the game next update.
Basically, the current release here was a demo and should be treated as such.
Also, the dev is nicely responsive to feedback in his Discord, which is a positive in my book. Upgrades this one to "definitely watch for next update" for me.
The scenes with Waka and Ayase in the alley weren't the worst I've seen, but I'm glad to see that the dev is at least taking a look at it.
I'm happy to hear that we'll finally (at some point) learn more about the mc's ability, although it's still weird to me how it's not mentioned yet the mc still knows how to activate and use it, maybe I've just been spoilt by other games.
Name-changing in games is always a welcome addition unless, of course, the name of the mc is intrinsic to the plot of the story.
Gotta love choices, let's hope these choices at least give us actual choices, too many times I've seen games give you choices which are either blank or lead to game-over/dead-end screens (those choices do serve a purpose but it's a rather niche one)
Either way, this news is good news and thank you for sharing this with us.
I thought it was pretty clear how the MC's ability got activated, given Ayase's missing sister Mai (the girl in the MC's head) spoke in his head at the start of that scene, telling him to Wake up. Given the running theme of AI, and the events at the start of the game, I feel that my theory about where she is now and what's causing the MC's ability has some support.
Oh, and while I didn't necessarily agree about people's concerns about the MC being "wimpy" in his interactions with Ayase in the gang's hideout, I did convey those complaints to him, so he's aware of the concern, and I gave him a few suggestions for ways to satisfy people more with a slight rework of that scene.
After replaying the game, I checked the events at the beginning (twice to be sure) with the vision/dream that mc had after being knocked out (possible concussion or other brain-related visions that might not be real (the 2 'events' do not seem to match visually)
Perhaps he has some kind of telepathy that allows her to mentally communicate with him. If he had some kind of AI implant, it would surely be more apparent in his speech patterns/ability to communicate better and actions (AI has in the past in both movies/games and other media, being able to positively affect the host's brain to allow higher cognitive functions such as the one's mentioned above)
Just my theory anyway, guess without confirmation it's a wait-and-see type of deal.
It was starting to get interesting but after a short while I got bored. Plus too, it was really hard to pronounce the names. Should change to names to something EVERYONE can pronounce.
It was starting to get interesting but after a short while I got bored. Plus too, it was really hard to pronounce the names. Should change to names to something EVERYONE can pronounce.
Out of curiosity, which names were hard to pronounce for you? I already gave the dev some name-related feedback (and he confirmed we should be able to rename the MC next release), like three of the names being very similar to each other.
That said, Japanese names are actually really easy to pronounce. Syllables are extremely consistent in their phonology, so the same syllable is almost always pronounced the same. Japanese syllables are always a consonant sound and a vowel sound together (e.g. 'soo', 'kee', 'yoo', 'wah'), or a vowel sound by itself (e.g. 'ah', 'ay', 'ee'), or the consonant sound 'N' or 'M' by itself.
For this game:
Surnames: (of characters who matter and aren't American)
Hirase - "hee-rah-say"
Yaezaki - "yah-eh-zah-kee"
Kimura - "kee-moo-rah"
Sumikawa - "soo-mee-kah-wah"
Takezawa - "tah-kay-zah-wah"
Sakurai - "sah-koo-rye"
Kaguya - "kah-goo-yah"
Fujioka - "foo-jee-oh-kah"
Shimizu - "shee-mee-zoo"
Yamaguchi - "yah-mah-goo-chee"
Given names: (of characters who matter and aren't American)
Tatsuya - "tah-tsoo-yah" (the "ts" is like the last sound of the word "let's")
Yuka - "yoo-kah"
Hiromi - "hee-row-mee"
Yuusuke - "yoo-soo-kay"
Ayase - "ah-yah-say"
Mai - "my"
Waka - "wah-kah"
Miharu - "mee-hah-roo"
Ayumi - "ah-yoo-mee" (called out as too similar to Ayase/Ayame)
Ayame - "ah-yah-may" (called out as too similar to Ayumi/Ayase)
Eri - "eh-ree"
Yuuichi - "yoo-ee-chee"
Kazuya - "kah-zoo-yah"
Hiroyuki - "hee-row-yoo-kee"
And the other relevant name is the gang name:
Yoroshiku - "yoh-row-shee-koo"
And now that I've thoroughly exposed my shameful weeb past, I'll see myself out.
This is bound to be subjective, so I can understand your point of view, people will have different takes on how it plays out and that's perfectly fine.
I guess I'll try to elaborate my perspective and why the current turn of events is problematic, I apologize in advance if it becomes too long. (It became long )
I also want to preface this with that the dev is OBVIOUSLY and absolutely free to make and create their story however they want to in whichever way they want to. This is simply my subjective opinion, which anyone is welcome to agree or disagree with.
------ The reason that I find the current turn of events problematic ------ (Essentially the blackmail ruins it)
This entire sequence of events was directly Ayases (and her teams) doing/fault.
Their carelessness throughout all of it, with using her best friend as bait to catch rapists, and then with her and her team not even being there when their friend/bait got taken, and three of them because they helped some old lady cross a road who gave them cookies that they just had to eat. (I get that this was intended to be funny, but really? They didn't have something more important to focus on...?)
Ayase admits later on that without the MC her best friend would've definitely been raped, and if he hadn't come back the second time she would've likely been raped aswell, atleast until her team arrived.
Despite being perfectly aware of that, Ayase still choses to immediately blackmail and threaten the MC with a false rape accusation.
And not just to keep her identity secret, but to force him to cooperate with whatever she tells him to do, and was being highly condesending while doing so, smirking and belitteling the situation while apparently enjoying demasculating the MC "You have no power here, so shut the fuck up and sit down or this will get ugly" with the goons threatening to "break his bones". (His reward for risking his life for them)
Emphasizing that the MC is now, essentially her bitch and will do as he's told or else..
This alone is uncomfortable to accept for a good portion of players, because it's seriously unfair considering the circumstances and makes Ayase look like an absolute massive and unreasonable asshole.
- She's essentially blackmailing the MC to cover up for her own fuck-up, which led to her being unmasked.
After that we get some happy music and they just go into "You have no choice, but you're one of us now so let's all be friends", with everyone revealing their identities and just casually introducing themselves like the MC just joined their book-club, followed by a casual and friendly conversation in the car with Ayase and ends with her showering and sleeping at his apartment..
Because all of that are perfectly normal things to do for/with someone who in return for saving them from being raped, is threatening to destroy your life unless you obey, with a false rape-allegation which they can only do because you jumped in to save the friend they used as bait from being raped in the first place....
The absurd turnaround is inevitably going to be off-putting to a lot of players because the dissonance is just too strong and happens way too quickly, the way the MC and Ayase just seemingly completely forget and move on from what literally just happened.
It's a bitter pill the dev is asking players to swallow and immediately forget about, and one that I think unecessarily poisons an otherwise very promising game, and certainly turns Ayase into an highly dislikable character, which is problematic due to the obvious "main-girl-vibe" she has.
In that scenario, everything that follows would be perfectly fine, because Ayase and her team are not the antagonists like they currently are (or atleast should be) the eyes of the MC/player, and any following cooperation/friendship/romance would easily make sense.
In that scenario you reduce/remove Ayases unnecessarily smirky and arrogant power-trip, and you have an opening for the possibility of an believable reconciliation between MC and Ayasae where she APOLOGIZES and admits that she fucked up, which again makes the future friendship/romance believable and redeems Ayase as a character.
------
As it currently stands with the blackmail and how it played out, any positive and friendly relationship between MC and Ayase makes absolutely no sense, to the point that it just completely pulls me out of the story, and the entire interaction from getting into the car to falling asleep at the apartment becomes so disconnected that it just made me sigh.
I'll keep an eye out for the rewrite mentioned, and I'll reserve any further judgement until then as the game absolutely has potential.
well, the gameplay looks normal and the plot itself of course there are pros and cons here, but I think the developer should correct it in the next update, and so we are waiting for what will happen next
