I like this dev's work. The women are among the most beautifully realized in all Daz-dom. Highly recommeded, this and their previous titles. Great stuff, some of the best teasing scenes you'll find.
Now let's talk about the problems, because that's more interesting, and what doesn't work with this VN is, I think, fundamental to creating good VNs.
The issues are tone, dialogue and formal structure. They overlap, but let's take them one at a time.
Tone. Balancing between the light and the dark is really hard. With VNs, all dark, all serious tends to be turgid and whiny, you know what I mean. Lots of examples. All light is my preference, but it's hard to be both light and memorable, and for the dev, maybe you may feel like you're just cooking up a quick fap-fest. Ephemera.
This dev deserves much credit for trying to inject dark into the light, but the shifts are heavy-handed and become tedious. The teasing, flirty conversations with the mom and the sister go on way too long, like, enough with the helium already. But then you get this very, very heavy moment with the father in the fitness centre, and it's like, where did that come from? The father relationship is problematic in general, and it almost makes you prefer to leave him as landlord. I don't know, for me, the balance is all off.
The story's dialogue is also very uneven. It tends to be better when it's light, you know, banter. But when it's serious, it's very awkward and unidiomatic. And it's hard to match the seriousness moments with the scenario. Like, they're broke, but they have perfect haircuts? GYm memberships? And the girls buy clothes like a Kardashian? When you're broke, the first thing you start doing is cutting your own hair. It feels like the concerns that face the family are... pretend concerns. And they talk like they're been told it should matter, but it really doesn't.
Formal structure. So, there are devs who use decision dynamics in their work. I don't mean the simple choices that extend a sex scene, I mean major decisions, you know, pick either A or B and the story becomes really different. But I think the number of VNs on this site that actually use decisions effectively this way can be counted on the thumbs of two hands.
Where I think where VNs can be really effective, I mean, memorable, is in how they use cinematic composition and dynamic effects of angles and depth in transitioning from image to image. Like comic books.
This VN pretty much sits in mid-range POV, a few closeups, but not many. There are some neat montages to show the passage of time and events, very effective, and the dev is skilled in that trick of pausing the action to allow a nice long, cool male gaze from tip-toe to top of head. But other than that, it's pretty episodic and the camera moves like in a soap opera. Two people have a conversation, the camera moves from one to the other, and then pulls back if they have sex.
On the flip side, there are some decisions in this VN that have big impacts on how the story will progress. Here's my reader experience. When images are used dynamically, it keeps me reading the VN, and the impression stays with me. When I am faced with a story-altering choice, I quit the VN and turn to unren to check to see what I'm going to miss. Which is better?
I guess these are bugbears of mine, and I'm using this review to rant a little. But there is so much good in this VN that it seems a real shame that it gets spoiled by these issues. And I'd slay dragons for Charlotte, that's for sure.