“This game is gonna suck” are the first thoughts I had when I downloaded Paradise Lust. I knew from the art style and the trailer that it was gonna be garbage. Weak story, weak adult scenes, like so many other AVNs with similar artwork.
Boy was I wrong. The adult content can be hit and miss, but none of them are bad, and the good ones are some of the bests I’ve seen in terms of setup and payoff. The story is engaging, the music and sound effects are used effectively especially during the adult content, the grind isn’t tedious and is often quite fun, and in the rare cases where it’s not you’re allowed to skip it. While not what I would consider the GOAT, it deserves a spot in the top 10 or 20 games on this site.
Let me get the negative stuff out of the way. While there are 53 adult scenes in total, the game spans a solid 30 or more hours, so more would have been welcome. There were numerous opportunities for group content, be it threesomes or more, yet there are only three threesomes and two involve the same characters. More pairings would have been welcome especially as several of the love interests expressed interest in one. The story goes on for several more hours after you’ve unlocked the last adult scene and quickly outstays its welcome. It’s expected in an AVN that the final scenes will be adult ones with one or more of your love interests, but in this case the authors went with rather long-winded, “Gee, where do we go from here?” conversations that drag on and on and on. While grinding through these final conversations, I began hoping that I would run into hidden bonus scenes that weren’t included in the gallery, but that was not to be. I knew early on exactly how the ending was going to play out, yet it took the characters far more time to figure it out themselves, making the last few hours of gameplay rather tedious. I completed it only to say that I completed it. Finally, all of the adult scenes are unavoidable, so if you dislike one of the love interests you’ll have to work through their storyline regardless.
Now for the good stuff! The story’s premise is a simple one: You’re bartending on a yacht filled with beauty pageant contestants when the Yacht is suddenly grounded during a storm and you’re tasked with finding survivors as well as food, water, and shelter. Thankfully the island you end up on, while deserted, has a surprising number of amenities making your continued survival relatively easy. The gameplay consists of a series of free-roam conversations and mini-games where you do things such as cleaning up the wreckage on the ship, getting the electricity running, opening stuck doors, building small livable structures for other survivors, and in the process of this you end up endearing yourself to the various women you rescue which leads to the adult content. The other two men on the island are scummy (especially Rick) meaning that you’re the only game in town, so attentions quickly begin to focus on you. One of my favorite running bits is how everything (and everyone) you do ends up being discussed in a private chat that all of the women share, sometimes opening up further opportunities as other love interests get curious about whether you’re really “all that”.
Mini-game difficult is all over the map. Some are quite difficult, like some of the electricity puzzles and Wordle games, while others are tedious such as the sketches, the coloring stage of which takes far too long. Others exist only to give you the feeling that you’re a part of the story, and in that they are successful. It’s nice to feel that you have actual things to do, so the act of quickly removing leaves from a pile to find the quest item underneath, while silly on the surface, does give you a feeling of accomplishment, and makes you feel like you’re part of the story. All of the minigames can be skipped after 10 – 20 seconds or so, a feature I wish more games had, which allows you to play the ones you like and skip the ones you don’t (or when you get stuck) with the added benefit of keeping the game moving at a steady pace.
Love interest “quests” are straightforward. Grind a character’s score up to 25, 50, 75, or 100 to unlock the next quest which usually comes in the form of an early morning text where they set up a date, or need you to solve a problem etc. Grinding involves asking them questions some of which raise your relationship score by between 2 and 6 and others which do not raise it all if they don’t like the question. Nothing reduces your score, and after two or three days-worth of conversation you’ll have the score up to where you’ll get the next relationship quest. This is grind done right. It’s never tedious and fits well into the story of trying to survive and thrive on a deserted island.
Finally, there’s the adult content which is the real high point of Paradise Lust. Given the art style, I went in with low expectations yet was quickly blown away by the time and effort put into making them feel organic, coming as a result of the stories’ progression rather than merely a result of point-building (even there is an element of that as well).
We’ve all seen adult content done bad. Animations that are no more than 60 or so repeating frames, single camera angles, limited or zero dialogue, no music and/or sound, scenes that begin and end in mere seconds, and on and on. Paradise Lust not only avoids all of these stereotypical tropes but subverts them. Dialogue before, during after scenes are abundant. Characters kiss passionately before, during, and after scenes. Great attention is paid to the important moments after love-making. For example, there are tender moments after an adult scene where the characters continue to embrace, still coupled, and exchange romantic dialogue. In real life, those are some of my favorite moments, so to see a game recognize that and put effort into making those scenes a part of their game is a welcome and unexpected pleasure. That post-orgasm moment where you embrace, still inside her, is a precious and erotic moment that is sorely missing from most AVNs.
I don’t know the technique behind the animations in Unity games like this one, but the end result is adult scenes that feel closer to the real thing that most other examples I’ve seen in other AVNs. There are so many welcome nuances, such as the change in head movements, arm movements, and facial features as the MC slowly presses into them, which change further as the sex progresses, even being triggered by advancing the dialogue. Scenes are often broken into two or three parts (blowjob, cowgirl, missionary, etc) with three or more settings within those parts such as slow, medium, faster, hard, and harder. During each setting there are even more variations as you click your way through the dialogue. For example, a love interest saying, “I want it harder!” will sometimes coincide with her raising her legs higher, or a change in facial expression, wrapping an arm around the MC’s neck, pulling him closer, and so and so forth, and this will often happen several times per variation. The sheer quantity of different variations during each scene gives them a realistic (and sexy) feel that is missing from similar scenes in other AVNs. Finally, at the end of most of the adult scenes is the option to keep going post-orgasm. This usually results in the love interest’s surprise and joy that is, for lack of a better phrase, super sexy and yet another aspect of the adult content in Paradise Lust that you won’t find anywhere else. All of the adult scenes contain unique (not from porn) voice work consisting of various sounds and moans expected during sex, improving the immersion greatly.
Several tedious hours at the end of the game do little to detract from the thirty plus enjoyable hours that preceded them. Believable relationship building, “grind done right” minigames and free-roaming events, a story where it’s easy to suspend disbelief as you romance your way through the Yacht’s numerous female survivors, and adult content that ranks up with some of the best AVNs available, and the few critiques I have feel like feeble attempts to find something wrong in the midst of so much going right. Definitely a must-play.
).Ethnic variety of the foster is well appreciated.
