VN - Unity - Noemi's Toscana Rebirth [v0.25] [beWilder]

This one is a pretty decent game but with some strong flaws as well. First of, the story. It's pretty decently written but for the longest time (specially if you include the prequel games) it has nothing erotic, sensual or anything like it at all. I like slow burn games, but for quite some time this one is not burning at all, and once it does it advances a bit fast when compared to what came before. There are few choices, but those have a real impact in the story, which is great, but it would be best if we could have the chance to name savefiles and more savefiles available, since it is impossible to see all content in one playthrough. Gameplay wise I find it a bit confusing, the management aspect is simple enough (maybe too simple) but the relation with Sal's actions and shield/sword actions sometimes works, sometimes doesn't and it's not really clear why or what things like reputation do exactly.

Render quality and models are really good. Unfortunately, it should have more renders, lots of the time the render on screen corresponds to an action that has not yet happened or is already in the past, since it should have more. And there are no animations at all, which in this day and age is subpar compared to other gaming offerings in the genre. No sounds that I found either. Also, no bugs, which is always good.

So, for all this, Noemi's falls somewhere in the middle. I would actually love to like it more and the things it does good it really does, but it falls short on some key aspects.

This was quite enjoyable. While the graphics are very dated, the writing is good and there are distinct paths that feel quite different, ranging from the classic 'being taken advantage of' corruption, to, refreshingly, also two paths where the FMC takes agency and does something for her own benefit and enjoyment. It has some what I think is original music (pre-AI), which fits the setting well. The gameplay is a bit grindy, but not the worst kind, i.e. with the guide or a little try and error it is manageable. One thing that irks though is that waiting tables is the only thing that is bringing in money, clearly helping in the kitchen or doing entertainment and promotion work should in some way also pay off and not just amplify the waitress tips.

Given the quality of the story and the agency given to the FMC, I would rate this 5/5, it was worth the download, and I don't want to penalize the game too much for dated graphics given its age. It is far better than many forgettable AI-CG phone corruption games.

I think Noemi's Toscana Rebirth would be a good game for a re-make with updated graphics and animations and will faster progression/gameplay.

3.5/5, this is a decent game that makes you work way too hard for what it offers.

The good:
- The writing is pretty good, with decent pacing. Nothing really feels rushed or like it popped up out of nowhere.
- The sex scenes are good, but there's too much of a gameplay slog before you can get to them.

The bad:
- Gameplay complexity would be good if this were a regular game, but seeing as it's an adult/porn game, it just comes across as needlessly tiring and tedious.
- The essence of the gameplay boils down to: pass time during work days, earn stats and unlock scenes during rest days. There isn't enough of an incentive to go through the monotony of the work days, which make up the majority of the gameplay. At least if there were more random events, and NPCs/cafe regulars/spicy scenes to unlock by putting the girls in different roles, it might be a little more engaging.
- As previously mentioned, the sex scenes (when you eventually get to them after grinding) are good, but that's about it. The lack of animations and sounds might set this game behind newer ones, which wouldn't be as much of a problem if this game at least had more spicy scenes to make up for it.

All in all, a decent game that seems to have gone a little too far in the direction of gameplay complexity, neglecting the main goal of playing a sex game in the first place.

Only got 3 things to say about this one.
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o To start I enjoy the mechanic that this game does try to implement a run your business type of thing, not even regular games do it really well so seeing basically an adult one do it concept wise good is nice to see.

However I've never once used the sword option on waitress/kitchen because everytime I do its a neg rep. I could reload the save 5-7 times with no stress on anyone and it would still be neg. Whats the point then?

Not to mention the amount of times Sal can 'attack' your business is kind of ridiculous ngl.
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o Okay so you're wondering if the payoff of wait is worth it, right? No it really isn't.. the music is the only sound you get. Theres no animation which isn't entirely bad but without any sound for them to fuck from its just pictures I could find on google.

Plus its dragged out HARD on progression with whoever.. it took 12 out of 12 scenes for her to nail her fiance's friend. Which takes forever to get there.

No doubt every character is like this, you think they're gonna do something but oops jking. It gets old. If I wanted to be blueballed after hours on end I'd just call my fuckin ex.
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o I mentioned earlier but sound is one of my biggest gripes in some of these visual novels on here. How you gonna have any type of handjob to anal with no sound? That should be any devs top priority idc what your excuse is tbh.

You could place a generic poorly done sound at first then improve later on but don't just leave it quiet as a church mouse ffs.

I would really love to like this game. The premise and plot is interesting, the characters seems interesting, but unfortunately, the gameplay is not. There is very little game in it, except waiting for the next scripted event. And even if that's your thing, these events are far between, with a lot of aforementioned waiting.

Very intersting game and so realistic story, i like this kind of plots. To be honest i have choose endless rout because it takes a lot of time to trigger scenes in the game. And it demands coordination also, you need to think before you click, Renders are very good, too bad there is no animations yet in this stage of update. Fix that and it will be perfect.

I guess the first time I saw the game posted I thought; oh looks like it could be fun, maybe some increasingly revealing uniforms or outfits, some increasingly risky NTR stuff during business hours, ladies discovering a wild side, you know.

That didn't really happen, which is fine it was just me making an educated guess on what content might be in an adult game with NTR in the title on an adult games forum. There is instead a sort of hyper focus on character relationship development, in a game that your average player might return to every 12 months or so when there is enough of an update to warrant a reinstall, so you'll have to do a fair bit of revision on the characters every time you come back.

And again, this is fine, character development is great. However, in this environment I've come to except the character development to usually be related to a development of some sort of sexual desire or curiosity in a character. The character development in this game is a bit closer to a drama title, that could be down to the large cast of characters, or the fact that every character seems to be required to interact with every other character at some point.

And again, I suppose this is fine, however when you combine the mental load of keeping all these characters, their motivations and relationships in your mind, the statistics of each employee at the restaurant, the defensive/offensive/neutral options per role per character each day at the restaurant, then trying to remember who needs what stat boosted on the weekend...

I guess what I'm saying is that I feel like I have to put a lot of mental effort into a game that doesn't seem to reward the player much for that investment.

It's a bit like... you know how in Karryn's prison once the novelty of the minigames wears off it isn't a problem because the minigames aren't required to progress and it is entirely up to the player if you want to participate in them. In this, the restaurant minigame is at the core of the game. And this could be fine, if the game encouraged or even let you explore the options more freely, however if you aren't paying attention on even one day you can torpedo your restaurant reputation.

This mechanic encourages the player to just stick to the defensive option on each restaurant role, instead of trying different options to see different scenes and outcomes. This limiting feeling just leaves me annoyed and wanting the game to be over with, increasing the likelihood I mess up my staff options on a day and wreck the business reputation, then have to spend weeks cleaning it up. I think Just after several years of it, I've had more than enough of the restaurant minigame.

The scenario is good, the art is good, the characters are good, the writing is... well with so many characters and relationships the narrative density is getting to be a bit weighty in a game that I'm assuming is meant to be played one handed.

It's a difficult review for me to write after some years orbiting the game, because this should be exactly the kind of game I'd like to play, and I don't want at all to discourage the dev, however I think the game just badly needs a bit more excitement. Whether that means some cliffhanger scene ends to make the player interested to see the next day, or more ultimatums from Sal (I think that was the name of the owner of the other restaurant), or the husband catching a strange text between Noemi and somebody she's been fooling around with.

There are quite a few games I'm excited to see updates for because I can't wait to see what happens next in them, I haven't felt that way about Toscana Rebirth for a while now. I'd really like to though!

Non-stop slow burn that lacks content delivery. As of recent development has slowed down immensely and group has not been transparent on delays.

Used to really enjoy the game at the beginning of development (4.5 year ago, let that sink in), however, the gameplay mechanics are boring and repetitive. Coupled with mild progression of storylines/sexual content makes this an easy pass now.

Still can't get over that this game has been in development for 4.5 years+ and look at how much content there is to show for it.....

This is definitely a game to check out if you enjoy stories of betrayal, and characters behaving somewhat how you would expect considering the city the game is based on. The graphics are pretty good, and there is a good variety of women from thick to petite.
This gets 3 instead of 4 stars because of the way the story unravels. The content for each character is good, with lots of spicy situations you want to see the progression for, but the triggers to see the next scene is just random. Sometimes you only have to wait a week or two for it to trigger, other times it's months of doing the damn restaurant assignments over and over just hoping to complete the story that's there for the update. It gives the feel that the Dev is padding the game with frivolous BS grind.

The game's got pretty good renders and character development, but it's held back by cumbersome and needlessly complicated game mechanics.
Normally, this type of management game wouldn't be a problem, but without the ability to cheat the MC's stats (like in all of Faerin's games), the game quickly becomes a chore and a pain to get through.
When I played it a while back, the sexual content was also sparse. It's probably changed now after a couple of updates, but I dread the idea of going back to find out. There are simply better games out there to spend your time on.

I like the game, in principle.

For the VN parts, using Unity is re-inventing the wheel, but it works decently for the most part. For the non-VN parts, it's probably an improvement, but ... more on that later.

I like the visuals, typical DAZ models, but presented in a distinct artstyle that is maintained throughout the game. No animations, but I don't miss them, personally. Overall a strong suit of the game.

The story is nothing to write home about, a decent corruption story, not very original, but also not too cliche and there's only a small amount of plot details/developments that made me roll my eyes. Slow paced, but once the ball gets rolling ,it gets rolling for real. And that's a promise the game fulfills already now, in 0.18, not a distant promise like in some other games.

My criticisim in this area is that dialogues and descriptive text are overly verbose and often not very interesting. I think they're quite good when the juicy bits roll around, but during the buildup, it often feels the game rambles on and on and on about things that could be described with a much smaller amount of words.

Overall, still rather a positive than a negative.

Why only three stars then?
Everyone knows the LotR quote about how evil cannot create, only corrupt - and in the same vein, grind cannot improve a bad game to be better, only bring down good games, and that's what happens here as well.

The grind gameplay loop is essentially only mindless clicking, which is not interesting nor really challenging. There is a very mild management-game-vector, but it comes at a tremendous cost, namely you clicking hundreds of times without noticeable return on investment.
To be fair, N.T.R.'s grind is fairly mild, but still mostly superficial.

If all grind was removed, the game would be better of for it (imo), but on the other hand, it'd be fairly short considering the time it's been in development.

Is N.T.R. still worth playing? I would say so, but just play in endless mode, and don't fret about particulars (especially your debt and your / the opponents restaurant prestige).

A final content advisory, some people feel a game is NTR when a female character admits having had a boyfriend years ago, but when it comes to ACTUAL NTR, there's hardly any in this game (yet). It's mostly cheating, so don't sweat if NTR isn't your thing (personally, I'm neutral on the topic).

This game was disappointing. The plot is OK nothing to brag or nag about. But the gameplay was a big let-down. It's too grindy & monotonous, You're gonna have to do boring things for hours to get a sex scene, The mechanics are not as simple as they should be, & the characters are nothing special either. I have played the developers other game & I expected the same quality but I was really disappointed.

This would really be a brilliant game if only animations and different detailed sex scenes were included. The story and renders are right up there. For this game you need to be patient and enjoy the pace slow and nice. For a quick fap, this won't do.

It occurent to me right when i started typing this rewiew that when you combine first letters of game's name, it makes NTR, so, yeah... you should be aware of what you're gonna get from this game.

Unlike most ntr based games on the site, this game does it right. Artwork has high quality and grind is on point. Although i always hated sandbox games, because they always makes you wanting more from looped scenes and games tend to lack giving it, at least in this game bewilder gave you the choice to skip them.

Story is interesting enough. Although i didnt see the point of introducing other characters in seperate VN, despite playing all of them you end up with only caring about Noemi anyway, at least personally speaking. Not saying other characters arent great, they are the flavours and spices of the game and makes it really colourful (looking at you Kriem)

Give it a try unless you're absolute NTR hater, game is good enough to at least worth it.

I just played through this again having forgotten about it long ago because it was in its infancy and felt like a terrible grind.

I just played through from the beginning and I have to say that, for the most part, it is a good story. Most of the characters are believable and likeable as well as well rendered apart from a few areas... (couple of scenes with Asana's ass are a bit weirdly rendered).

There is a bit of a grind to get to some of the starting points of story lines but that is manageable I would say. I did play on "Endless" so not sure if I am missing any content other than deadlines.

There are still quite a few typos and I have volunteered in the past to help out developers of games I truly like. TBH there are only a few games I have actually stopped to read and this is one of them.

Last criticism and advice that I would offer and I don't think it would be much of a code change to do but systems vary... some of the visual transitions are not quite synchronized with the text transitions and that can be a bit of a removal of the immersion.

I honestly love this game/story and look forward to future updates... although I could have sworn there was some sort of other shop owner lady that bedded Noemi but I might be thinking of another game.

Really like this one.

The strong point in it for me is that it feels real, the story, the characters with none of the usual cliche stuff so "popular" in most porn games.

The point that It's a bit of a downer is, in my opinion, the time between updates.

Cheating is definitely Not what I look for but I was fine even with that part of it.

Really enjoyed playing. I even started a new playthrough for this update.

Even without animations, which these days is a bit of a downer, I'm happy with this one.

Thank you and the best of luck.

Version 0.17

So, I want to believe there is an engaging story in the game somewhere but unfortunately the vehicle used to deliver it leaves much to be desired. Nothing grabs my attention and its not that I dont like reading. I enjoy story development. But thats just it. I felt bored immediately.

Good renders sure but there is no music,(dude even some background ambiance would go a long way. the whole game is in a restaurant) or animations, the UI feels clunky to me, no text speed options- its either snail slow or instant, both of which i do not like. Ugly text box, no transitions where it matters and where present, as in the day to day transitions, its unnecessarily slow, only to find out its just a generic day "oh u gained $10"....why? I have to re do the store positions everyday? It's so boring and monotonous.

I found myself holding skip all the way until I realized I should probably just stop wasting my time with this game and decided to write this review. If my review comes across as unfair, I would say you have a point but it is what it is.

There is also the fact that it seem the story wants you to dumpster Bradley(the fiancé) right off the bat. He's supposedly a great person and supportive yet the other male characters have over twice the amount of events that he does. The first event that mentions brad, he's too tired from helping out all week and the first thing Noe does is bitch about it to herself. Yea, she scolds herself afterwards for doing it, which normally is fine. Everyone says shit they don't mean sometimes but in combination with the rest, that tells you a lot about where the main focus of development will be. Hah even Brad's asshole of a "best friend" wants to steal his soon to be wife from him. What a nice guy.....smh.

I dont know what I expected considering NTR is literally spelled out in the title. I'm thinking I should have just stayed away but I was pulled in by the nice renders. and promise of engaging gameplay and non ntr route options.
(I recall the dev mentioning that in the prequel's game thread) Needless to say I am disappointed. Will Noe make it to her wedding day? Sure, if u opt out of 70+% of the content in the game.(at least there is an option. + 1 star)
At least that's the impression I have right now. At present I have little reason to stick around to find out.

But I will give it a chance. If my opinion changes I will update this.
*Hold ( X ) to Doubt*

Gotta say - I really liked the new update and it finally gave me hope that this game really is getting somewhere! If the quality of the upcoming updates equals the last update (v0.16) then we're really moving on here. Might even be faster then AWAM.

Dont get me wrong - I still think there is way too much emphasis on the gameplay in this game (just use the save files provided to skip all the gameplay shit and to get to what we're here for), but the update itself only added content and none of the usual gameplay stuff - only spicy and juicy scenes. Thats what I wanna see and what we need a lot more of!

So yeah - looking at the game in general, I gotta say that the gameplay is of course horrendous but the actual scenes themself, the set-up and the story are executed quite well - actualy they are really well and I would give this game five starts if there wouldnt be the rest of the game. For my taste there are a little too less shots for each scene so thats a minus but the rest is really up to 5 stars. So there is a lot of potential!

Two final thoughts/wishes:
- I hope that the corruption doesnt snowball to fast (like with Damon)
and the devs take their time in the stories of Sal and the others to develop a nice corruption arc and to flash out all the harassment, groping, blackmail on the way. This doesnt mean less sexual scenes - quite the contrary; I would love to see A LOT of sexualy scenes which flash out the corruption process as said before, just not immediately full-on sex.
- Secondly, I hope that the devs focus on content and not on gameplay and might consider an option for VN only - without any actual gameplay.

Hope the developments continues this way and I will come back to see how it goes. 4 stars!

Edit:
Sadly the development didnt continue the way I (or many others) hoped for. The devs are setting wrong priorities all the time (side characters, gameplay) instead of the right ones (character development, NTR arc, events and content). This is not working for me anymore. I'm out. -2 stars

Version: 0.16

Review:
What is the reason for putting so many tags when the game has no active sexual content? You will find one or two scenes and waste a lot of your time.
That's why sometimes I hate that you tag games where there's not enough content, you look at the screenshots, see some dodgy 5 stars reviews and try the game.

Gameplay:
It's BORING management that won't take you anywhere, don't think it's a game where you work in a diner and will have several harassment scenes.
Holy fuck, what an annoying game and waste of time.
Graphics & Sexual Scenes:
Good graphics? reasonable, not bad but not good either. Not all female NPCs are attractive, at least for me and as for the sexual content, it is even a bad joke. If you plan to waste your time for more than 2 hours to see just one scene, go ahead.

Why I did gave 1 star?
Is this game totally stupid, 2gb download for you to waste your time on nothing? I've seen bad games that at least had content, but this one, how bad. This management as much as you like this kind of mechanics is not fun.
Anyway, I don't have fun in this game, I could see that it doesn't have enough sex scenes or anything like that, I just closed the game and moved it to the recycle bin. I could have avoided it if the tags weren't such a lie or if there weren't so many 5 stars of lickboots reviews.

Interesting and excellent writing. Very different in the world of the same game doing the same thing. The characters are interesting and diverse and the build-up is not too fast nor too slow. In my mind one of the better games out there.