Ren'Py - Pill King [v0.27] [Effx Games]

{This VN doesn't deserve 5 stars but There is a reason I gave 5*}

Now the VN is all over the place.
The story is very engaging at the beginning if you play with incest patch. This reminded me one of my most favorite games "Milfs Villa". Vey similar vibe at the beginning but loses it's way after some. I was really disappointed. The sandbox mode doesn't help either, some events feels like random and out of place. It just like many of them out there, pretty average story and mechanics with lots of screw up.
..
Now lets get to what I liked........ ... ...
The realistic looking MODELS...
This is where it captured my heart and I deeply believe is the future of VN industry,.
The models have realistic face. The renders at the beginning were simply superb. Even some animation from earlier were superb. I don't know what changed, the quality dropped later. But not as bad as some reviewers described below. Some animations are good and some animations have awkard motion as expected from AI. But I really liked some fluid movement of body parts which is a great challenge even for a seasoned animator. Even the top games have bad fluid motion.
Overall I gave it 5* to present my solid support for this kind of renders. The realistic render is the future.
..
I hope the dev gives it a little more try.. He should make batch of them and chose the best one from them. I believe this is what he was doing initially but later became lazy.
Overall not a 5 star overall but just for the render style and for the push of trying extra hard in the future just as he did in the past.

A beautiful combination of Daz3d and AI models seems promising at the start of this game. Ladies look fabulous because of this feature. Although they are one dimensional and flat despite their top tier looks, but different from each other whatsoever. So simply they are much like the real world: Hot but nothing to show inside!

Story is nothing to ride home about; only a framework to keep the porn going. But no complains in this matter because minimum expectations are met. And I like the fact that it doesn’t try to prolong play time by pointless dialogues and walls of text.

Gameplay feels grindy at first but after exploiting the “Purple Pill” mechanics to print money you have nothing to worry about anymore. After that you can maximize all your stats and buy everything you need for the rest of the game in a single in-game day, so you can solely focus on the story and LIs. And you’ll get used to the gameplay really fast because everything is simple and the built-in walkthrough is one of the best you’ll ever see in any game. Also having the freedom to choose the time of the week and the day saves a lot of headaches and really helps the flow.

There’s something fishy about the sex animations: in most of them you can’t see the girl’s face. I don’t know about the technicalities but it might stem from the difficulties in combining pre-rendered models and AI faces during the animations. But aside from that animations look fresh instead of using pre-built animations and place holders that you repeatedly see in a lot of other Daz3d porn games. Although they need a bit of polish, specially in boobs physics section.

You can clearly see it doesn’t try to be a hardcore top tier porn game. It’s like a fast food – simple, fun, comparatively short and doesn’t take itself seriously. It knows its limits and tries its best to be good at that anyway it can. And that’s why I like this game.

A technically well put together harem incest game.
There is a good amount of management and repeating tasks for stats, which i personally don't mind but if you are looking for a straight VN then this is not something you will probably enjoy.
There is, however, a detailed walkthrough section that tells you what events are available for each character and what you need to unlock them if they aren't. It also allows you to jump right to the event if it's available. This is a great feature that negates the "waiting for x day" stuff a lot of these games run into and lets the game play a bit more like a VN.
The narrative and characterizations are middle of the road for a porn game, which means comparing them to regular media like TV or movies isn't going to be favorable. They do the job though as far as holding the game together and presenting a framework for the sex.
The visuals are very nice and the models look great for the most part but they are fairly expressionless. This is a problem particularly in sex scenes, where the writing is decent enough for porn but the expressions are often very flat.
overall a game i'd recommend to anyone who likes incest games and doesn't mind sandboxes and management of stats

Animation is pretty cool not very good but good, Designs are one of the best very hot and all, story is fine the only problem is that incest here is like without any reaction wow... lizy wanting to have sex without problems even if im her brother so like nothing happened... the mom is the best and most natural but the rest are wtf... we were growing up with them together and we are sick ones by experiments but all of these family female are more pervert, ecchi and incest than us XD for some stupid game will lose their virginity taking our cock inside their pussy for 2 minutes like nothing happened or touch them or do blowjob wow...

Nice CG, story is is not much but sex scenes are nicely made and feels good
Each sex scenes are easily accessible from gallery
There will be lot of grind to get game essential and money which makes it very boring during that time
Due to this start may feel bit off or grindy but believe me all those sex scenes are worth it
Sarah in this game looks hella good

Short summary:-
Cons:
- too much grind
- story not much impactful
-takes a lot of time to reach a certain level to start sex scenes

Pros:
+ Awesome CG especially sarah,kira
+ Sex scenes are genuinely good
+ Gallery features

Good Points
+ Sex scenes are animated and animation physics are not bad.

Bad Points
- Grammar is not the strongest suit of the developer it seems, because there are lots of grammar issues in the game, and they are making the story even weaker than it is. Proofreading and better translation are needed for sure.
- Dialogues are not really well-written.
The story is kind of boring.
- The placement of textbox and text looks weird and kind of makes hard to read.
- Thanks to the developer trying to imitate characters faces with certain people they look emotionless and robotic, and that alone makes all sexual content the game boring and unattractive.
- It's a sandbox with no handholding at all.
- MC is not really likable.
- The game is quite grindy.

For The End
The game tries to do a kind of unique thing, but it fails quite harshly.

I would say they was potential, but the face of personage are so "conditioned" to be like known person you Have no real expression.
Also the story is quite flat and the "explanation of his job is just ridiculous".
Finally the sandbox is horrible where you literally have to "work" to play, I play to pass time I already have a real work thanks

[v0.23]

It has potential. But right now its a nice looking candy that tastes like paper. There are just a few sex scenes that are heavily conditioned to trigger.

Most of the time you will have to read the walktrough, grind for money and buy coffee for everyone. This kind of "gameplay" is boring and unnecessary, its only purpose is to waste a few hours of your life before you get to the sex scenes.

Pros:

+ Models are great! Best faces and hottest girls I've seen in a video game.

+ Simple short dialogs, easy to read through any scene.

Cons:

- Every action should be checked in walkthough. There are no hints in dialogs, what you should do next. You have to follow the walkthough or keep walking randomly without any progress.

- More vouyerism than sex. Dev made a ton of opportunities to stealthily watch some girl doing anything around the house, but the same girl has just 1 condition to have sex with her once a week.

- Jerking off in a shower. Another disappointing game mechanic. Instead of having actual sex, MC is imagining he has sex with someone. Thank god, there are no images of MC playing with his dick.

- MC is a toy of his boss. He's not in control of what happens to him. Personally I hate this kind of plot. I wanted to break her neck when she starts manipulating MC. I dont care how hot she is, if she is practically killing MC with her mistakes and manipulations.

I love this game. Because of the updates, I 'had' to play it for the third time - and I'm really in love with the girls! Sarah and the other girls are sooo pretty! I don't think I've ever seen such enchanting actresses in a game. I really want to sit down at the table with them to eat, talk and laugh. Unbelievable. But now comes the 'but': the animations of a blowjob, for example, are very sobering. I was looking forward to the physical contact between the protagonist and Sarah, but this degenerated into a strange-looking exercise. Here the game lacks the credibility and magic that the characters convey when no sexual acts or movements are shown. One exception is the scene of Sarah with David: Wow, just wow. Here the tingling eroticism is created by Sarah's hot (in this case very large) breasts and pretty face - not by the couple's crazy positions. The girls with small or 'normal' breasts all look great - all dream women - as long as they don't move.

im not sure what the "game is too grindy" reviews are about. im just going to assume the game used to be way grindier and was updated. you can easily max all of your skills in a couple minutes if you wanted to by just going to work, skipping a day then repeating.

the pacing is good, the scenes solid, the models are pretty good albeit a little odd looking at times, and theres a good amount of small chested girls which is nice.

my only complaint would be that the graphics are a bit grainy

This has POTENTIAL the concept is good. Everything else is MEH to bad.

The worse thing is the GRIND, the asinine navigation system to try and pick the next step to continue the story. Grind repeatedly the same content over and over and over again until something new happens.

I usually like to finish a game before rating it, but this was such a bloody chore I gave up after 3-4 hours. I just can't take anymore.

The renders are OK, the Wife render is good, the boss (Morgan or whatever her name is) was good, Ashley was Ok, The rest are not great, facial expressions are wooden and there body types are mannequin like and so very fake looking.

It's a shame because I would like to know where the story is going and the writing seems solid, but the horrible grind killed it and I can't take anymore.

I'm a fan of your games. You created the characters beautifully. and has a story that is easy and accessible to everyone Thank you for spending your valuable time creating games for us. And I hope you will continue to make it to the end completely. Thank you.

This game would easily be a solid 4 or perhaps a 5 if the game didn't have fundamental errors in the game mechanics regarding progression.

I don't mind grinding if it has a purpose and mean anything.
Money sure, to buy stuff or otherwise or stats with the women.
In this game you grind money to train how to pick locks and sneak perv, different levels for some different time of day and when it comes to sex you lose points when sex is initiated by a woman so you have to grind the stats again...
The time of day is also an issue, you miss an opportunity one day and you have to wait sometime another in game week to try again. The worst being the "masturbate to x woman" you have one go at this per week and there are a lot of women!

The renders are good but the women doesn't have any expressions and by standards of today the animations aren't that great either. The animations are too short basically.

The game if the failing mechanics are changed would be great as the other parts of the game has potential.

v0.20

pros:
- the models are excellent
- the gui is decently designed

cons:
everything else:
- while the models are excellent, their facial expressions don't change. ever. wax statues are more emotive

- the animations are substandard, low effort loops.

- the game loop itself is exceptionally grindy and repetitive (even with cheats). you either have to check the ingame spoilers constantly or have a timetable written out next to the "game". else you miss any form of "progress"

- there is little agency, everything is strictly on rails, but if you blink, you miss it and have to slog through another ingame week to have another go

- way more voyeurism than being involved in any tittilating activities

The characters are very attractive, and the adult content that exists is above average. That said, this is definitely following the usual obnoxious development cycle for hentai Renpy games.

We are six months in, and there is basically no sex yet...like one HJ and one BJ and the usual boring voyeur filler.

In another 6 months we might finally get to a bit more BJ content and maybe the first actual sex scene...with a secondary character. But it will be 2-3 years before most of the characters have completed sex scenes.

I kind of like this game. The girls are very beutiful and the mechanism is easy to understand. Hints are easy to follow even if the green or yellow sign not always show correctly if the quest is open or done.
Would have got a 4 or even 5 if it was not for the hopeless grinding.

It's not a terrible VN but damn is it grindy, I mean not only do we have to go to work dozens of time to get the $$ to buy the "perks" and pills but we also have to study the perks 3 times just to learn them.... I mean I wouldnt mind once but 3 times after I just got done having to pick 5 pills 12+ times over 12+ days to make $10 each time is a bit much.
I like the models and their faces are top notch but the grind just kills it for me, they need to add a VN mode or something for those of us that do not want to spend 90% of their time playing just grinding to progress

+ Amazing models. This AI renders of popular celebrities look gorgeous. I wish the dev utilised the art better.
+ The sandbox interface is not bad. Pretty simple and intuitive.

- Dumb and poorly constructed dialogues.
- Monotonous grindfest even for a sandbox game
- Story is 'meh'.
- The interactions with characters are lifeless and boring. There's no expression and no connection with any of them.
- Poor single frame looping animations.

Pill King is a great game with very good looking characters and an interesting plot that keeps the game moving at your own pace. The game doesn't force you do any actions on the characters unless you want to interact with them and just focus on one girl at a time which is a nice way of pacing yourself and not wanting to rush things. I really do like the faces on the characters as they do feel unique to themselves and look "realistic". The animations are also really great and very polished as they are smooth animations that don't really have that "stuttering" feel when they move. Overall, I give the game an 5/5 stars.

Absolutely love this game, very nice visuals, characters are sexy, nothing too big in terms of body proportions and Sarah is absolutely stunning!
Very early in its development, but still some great content to see and even a guide and cheats so the grind isn't something that turns you off the game too xx