I have really struggled to rate this game, I want to give it a 1 or even a 2, just because the graphic design of the female characters were perfect before and after on timeskip. And also all the game's sound design, in the "Miami Vice" Synthwave/vaporwave vibe, shit that I enjoy all the time. so, okay, there's a lot of effort put into this, so I guess +1 for effort.
Consider this as 2 out of 5.
First, I must say that the story is creative, but it suffers greatly because its core is rooted in the power of friendship. "Power of friendship" anime trope, aspect of tropes generics that I loathe. I knew what I was seeing but I didn't think it would be so unbearable.
Unfortunately, I got pissed of with Victoria right from the beginning, after the shit she did, I'll explain why.
I know she went through a troubled time in her life when she lost her mother and was almost attacked by her father "he just saw the image of his wife in his daughter, I don't know if that can be called an attack" but man, when she tried to rape CJ, well all my support and respect for her went to waste. The character who actually did something to simply ruin Mc's life because she freaked out, and refused to tell her friends the truth in 5 years. In other words, she was the reason why MC was transferred to another country.
Anyway, the worst part of this is when MC returns, instead of Victoria going after MC and apologizing, it's the opposite. Mc "like a good lapdog" she simply despised him "At the reunion". The only good thing she did was admitting that she was wrong and also withholding the truth from her friends. Even with the tragic background of the death of mother, there is no way to sugarcoat it... I really liked it when Kieran "I think that's her name" told Leah about it or when Jaime found out why the MC moved. But the script of the power of friendship and a MC lapdog makes the player forgive her. One thing I hate most about anime, much more than the power of friendship. I believe that everyone deserves a second chance but not everyone deserves it, that's the real thing... unfortunately for victoria did there was no forgiveness!
Anyway, with that Victoria shit out of the way, let's talk more about MC
I'm not going to lie, when I played for the first time I loved the scenes (like CJ discovering that his father is Chad Thundercock) the MEME Chad of the Galaxies, I admit that I laughed a lot at the interaction between the MC and his father Gigachad of the Galaxies. I even agreed when he said the MC was such a pussy, a coward which was real. He's the kind of MC that encompasses a lot of the things I also can't stand in most anime and games. And thanks to Victoria's shit, MC came out of the eggshell to become a real MC, or at least tried, right! because I'm going to tell you, it was literally exchanging six for half a dozen!
I didn't approve of MC's appearance and personality after the timeskip, it was very ridiculous, he just got bigger with a feminine waist and shoulders and put on tacky colorful clothes like a rainbow flag and his personality became that of an idiot airhead!
I’ve never been a fan of the “air-headed protagonist” trope, as it usually leads to endless frustration and stupid contrivances for the good sake of the plot. This game somehow takes it to stratospheric levels.
Just so you can see that the protagonist is an airhead, not even to realize that Jaime was a girl in disguise. There's nothing masculine about that, unfortunately it's deplorable, but he went from being a wimpy to being a big clueless Airhead!
About the story;
This game has a cinematic quality in terms of its ability to use framing and editing to tell a story. Unfortunately, many of these edits (jump cuts, if it were video) are very abrupt, which left me confused from the beginning. And while the story itself touches on a number of serious themes that could make for a very compelling adult game, the way it's told is simply juvenile. I'm sure it's deliberate, and like one of those silly little Bollywood movies that plays an upbeat song and dance right after a death scene. this game had too many jarring tonal shifts for me to take it seriously. Some players may not care; some might even like it. But if, like me, it's unexpected and disparaging, you're probably better off playing something else.
The description of the game makes you think that this game is very good, I was attracted by the extremely positive reviews and praises like "fantastic story", "good writing" etc. so I tried it even the renders are good, the beginning is interesting, with all that supernatural ambiance, but for some reason after the first few minutes the game starts to fall apart. The introduction lasts around 30 to 40 minutes, depending on your reading speed with many renders of the same scenes but from a different perspective, the writing starts to lack because it is not interesting, a lot of description of places, situations, etc.
The game is practically kinetic, you can make some decisions but they are very far from each other, the game is kind of an open world, so you can make "decisions" about where you want to go and something like that, but it doesn't affect the story . because the game tells you where you have to go to continue the story, so you have no free will.
To elaborate on my reason for stating this, it has a linear story, there are no "game" altering choices or love points for the relationship to grow or decline, there are no paths the MC can take that are Divergent. No, this is a story that the dev created and simply guides us by holding our hands through the episodes.
See if you click on each frame or set it to automatic, you can skip dialogues by not choosing to talk to someone in certain locations. This is one of the biggest problems with Out of Touch, which is labeled as a VN but is far from being that. I was disappointed when I downloaded it and played it, expecting choices, routes to follow few girls or avoid some, or respond with different dialogue options.
I should point out that it's not labeled as a VN, but it's just about a kinetic romance. There are times when an erotic scene would refresh everything, but it just doesn't happen, it's very frustrating that this isn't due to lack of opportunity. it's almost as if DEV hated having porn and avoided it. to the sex scenes, there are few, plus they don't have enough emotional power to make them great and they're not good enough to enjoy, they're just there, as a reminder that it's also a harem game. See, then you're at the third party with a bunch of horny girls, you get drunk, an obvious scene happens... and everyone just falls asleep. Yep, you went through over 100k words just to get this as a reward.
If this sounds appealing to you... then I pray God helps you... because you like this... thing, whatever it is!
Slow-Burn Story Telling: My God, there is no excuse for more than 3 hours of text that could have been done in 1 without losing the plot!!!
A confusing and incoherent story, Melodrama that soared to stratospheric levels of charm and fell flat on its face as a "painful nail in the picture". Pretentious bulls*** metafiction.
Now, about why I wrote this review and why I say it's a weird VN. The problem here is really the adult content, or rather, how much (or little) of the game contains adult content. I think this hurts the game more than I said about the character and story of the game, in terms of relevance and popularity. The game has almost no adult content, so those who encounter it other than the ero content could potentially be extremely disappointed. Marketing a game as ero and still having almost no ero is not good.
It's not really an ero game, if you come here expecting that as the main focus of the game, you're going to hate it. Heck, I'm already several hours in (more than the amount I give to most VNs), but there have only been 2 scenes so far, and they were pretty lackluster erotically, as they weren't there for the eroticism, really.
I thought it would get better later and I'm also looking forward to some H scenes so I continued until chapter 15 or so. It's very difficult to do this because there is a location system that requires you to travel to 10 different locations just to progress through a scene. After hours of trying and I must have gone through about 100k words and dialogues, I am surprised to not find a single H-Scene, yes NOT H-SCENE AFTER HOURS OF READING 100K words.
So...Let me repeat, this game IS NOT an ero VN as much as it is a romance VN with some adult content here and there. which also seems to be there because of this. Which, in my opinion, is unworthy of the game, as only one adult scene makes it unsuitable for most audiences.
In my opinion, it would be better to just cut out all adult content entirely "Since that's not his focus!" and just sell itself as a normal romance VN with some heavy themes. Because the game certainly shows that it is insistent. If you remove what little adult content there is, what's left is a pseudo-vn with sappy romance! I wouldn't be surprised if they just cut out the adult content and released it on Steam without it.
This game is for those who like a "Truckload shipping" with massive text telling a story, it's not for me. I like a good, funny story with a good dose of sexual content, making me entitled to use this forum. but I can't like a silly story pretending to be serious and profound is ridiculous.
I wouldn't recommend this to my worst enemy. I don't know, what type drugs that people use when they overrate this game so high. This game had potential for something better but it was wasted in execution, and has potential and wasting it is worse than having no potential at all!