VN - Ren'Py - Powers That Be [Ch. 22 - Accepting] [Burst Out Games]

V 0.3.2 I must say that a promise of a side character being in possesion of power seems refreshing. Shame that many characters seem to look not attractive. Main girl seem almost ugly. Sporty one is nice. Ex looks like shit and boss nice. Generally a nice concept to follow up on in later builds.

I've rarely cringed so hard reading the outrage in some of the reviews below. What a sad life must one must have to get so upset at excess slang in a porn game. Needless to say, it's not as bad as some contend. More on that later.

To the game itself, Powers that Be is a heart warming and entertaining tale of a man in his early forties who whilst successful in business has been less so in marriage. Divorced, both he and his ex still feel the pain of the separation. His teenage stepdaughter harbors feelings for him and to his consternation flirts heavily with him. But, that relationship is perhaps not the core of the game. He is Godfather of a young girl who also has feelings for him. And here the dev employs an interesting mechanic to spice up the narrative. Without giving away too much, the girl has a special gift the effects of which are at times intense, amusing and disturbing. It gives the story a lot of potential.

The rendering is competent and the sound landscape consists of mostly soothing music and in certain circumstances light female grunts. The dev has a predeliction for strong girls. Athletic or thicc. That describes the bodies of both love interests. Their faces while not classic beauties are imo on the pretty to beautiful end of the spectrum. Tastes differ. But remarks like "looks like an alien" are rude and off the mark. There are really weird faces in some adult VNs. This isn't one of them.

Now on the topic of dialogue, alot of youth slang is inserted. It's hit and miss. The dev should perhaps tone it down just a bit. IRL slang like this is used. when teens speak to each other. Less so when a teen talks to an adult 20-25 years her senior. Some terms work. Some don't. It's a trivial detail that hardly detracts from an otherwise entertaining game.

So, give it a go if you're interested in a father daughter(ish) incest tale with a twist. I found it both hot and charming. If you like it too, consider supporting this beginner dev. Beginners are often very uncertain of their game's reception especially if they're trying something different. This game is a little different, but it's good.

I enjoyed the game itself, but had to skip a lot of the dialogue because the constant efforts to sound cool and hip were "legit high-key cringe". Rather than getting invested in the girls' characters, I just wanted to drown them so they would shut up.

The dialogue is bad, like a boomer went hello fellow kids bad. Did someone run this through some kind of cringe translator? I am legit blind af now, after just a few minutes of this cringe af dialogue. The MCs pornstache and the random autismo faces characters have when they deliver these lines doesn't help at all either. Like the idea seems alright, you have some reject girl from Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, but she talks like she's retarded. Can you blame Charles Xavier for rejected this youth if every time she opens her mouth everyone gets stupider? It's not just her though, every character talks like they have never left the internet.

I get trying to make stuff sound more real and authentic, but unless you are hoping your audience all has autism, adhd, or are chavs, this ain't it bruh. An easy way to fix this would be to verbalize your dialogue, it's a basic speech writing technique. If it sounds off when you speak it, it'll help avoiding a trainwreck like this in the future.

This game is a stellar example of ruining dialogue with 'realism.'

In real life, people use a number of repeated words or sounds in speech, such as 'like', or 'um', or 'ah', and your brain filters them out, because communicating is the important part of speech. You listen to grasp a concept, not to literally hear every word. Additionally, when speaking to each other people often make pop culture references. This is usually because those references are from shared experiences, and the person making them knows that they will resonate with the listener.

But; both of these aspects of speech, although perfectly normal in everyday conversation, RUIN A WRITTEN STORY.

Every single character in this game, including the 40 year old adults, speak with some form of slang or pop culture reference interjected into almost every sentence. It could not be more distracting or grating. 40 year old men do not call each other 'bruh'. 20 year old girls may use the word 'legit' with frequency, but when you have to read it every single fucking sentence, the realism of it's use fades and it becomes nothing more than an annoyance.

Do you know why almost everything written avoids slang? It's because it ages any piece of writing almost instantly. Some of the slang present here is already old; given the length of development an adult game typically has, I expected literally every word to be cringingly dated by the time this is finished.

In case you're curious, I've compiled all the slang below:

legit. salty. flex. bougie. bruh. yaaass. fleek. woke, used absurdly. yeet. big oof. lowkey. highkey.

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These words are almost all used continually, and inappropriately. During the PC's first time having sex with a woman she says "yaaass", which would be fine if it was a comedic moment, but it was deadly serious, bordering on attempted romantic. It completely deflated any feeling in the scene.

The pop culture references are used just as ham-fistedly and inappropriately. No one, not one person on earth, would quote either Batman Begins or Star Wars to someone when speaking seriously about their recovery post-coma and the social castigation they experience afterwards. For. Fuck's. Sake.

And yes, all the references are ones a 30+ year old man would know, not a 19 year old girl. But hey! That's justified by a single line where the girl thanks the man for "introducing [her] to 9gag and reddit and all those old movies." Cringe. Cringe for days.

But enough about the terrible writing. The models are terrible too!

The renders in a general sense are decent enough, and the only body we've seen naked looks alright, but the faces are monstrous. The main love interest is supposed to be half white and half Korean, but she looks nothing like it. Forget European or Asian features, she barely looks human. And her orgasm face was actively horrifying.

Oh, and the PC has incredibly sparse hair all over him. I understand not wanting a 40 year old man to look as smooth as a Ken doll, but instead he looks like a cactus; single black spines stick up from his body at odd intervals.

All told, this game reeks of modest effort mixed with very poor execution. The entirety of the script needs a rewrite, and all the models need an overhaul. The plot as it stands is just the unjustified lust between a 40 year old man and a 19 year old girl. That's literally all that's here, and it's not enough.

Where to start? Well it has an incest patch that makes the game 100% incest. None of that "has an incest tag but it's like non playable characters who are cousins doing it like once".

So there's that. You into incest? It has that. You not into incest? Well I hope you're into 40-50 year old dating a 19 year old.

Me? I'm into incest so the game got me early on. I wish the niece's face were more attractive. Outside of that the models look well enough.

The writing is not stellar, actually it's cringe at bits. But it's in English, real English. So that's nice.

I don't know what to say. It's not great, but not bad. It's 0.3 but there are much better 0.3s out there right now.

The game is promising, if you ask me. This is mainly because even in 0.3 it has fucking. None of that "quick fuck in 0.1, then no more fucking till past 0.11 - even in 0.11 only some rub & tug".

So incest, some fucking, meh writing. It's okay. I'll be honest, the fourth star is simply because incest with no NTR and early penetration.

Is it worth your time? Only if you really wanna try a new incest game, imho there's no other scenario where I would play this so early.

its legit good but the dialogue could legit use some legit work.

feels more like reading a chat logs than conversations. other than that i liked it

also i think there are around 400 uses of the word Legit so far in the game, maybe like legit cut it back a bit?

Pros: good story, renders, and is overall pretty hot

Cons: The humor is annoying to me. It's just pop culture references and it's not done in a witty or particularly fun way. It just kinda distracting to me.

Edit: The farther I get in the more I hate the humor. It's just SOOOO bad. It's just old memes inserted in at random points and really breaks any flow the dialogue has.

This is actual dialogue from a scene that's supposed to be her confronting him and could be a sexy/emotional scene.

niece "Uncle [mc_name], look… I know you haven’t had sex in literally a super long time."
mc "Big oof."
niece "Shit, I’m sorry. What I’m trying to say is..."

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This is the quality of every single reference. It's like they had a game ready then decided they needed some humor, so they replaced some decent dialogue with crappy memes.

Then there's the word "legit". had the game decompiled, so I removed every "legit" from the game. It's so grating and forced.

I really enjoyed this game, it's witty dialog and sweet characters.

Plus

• Very nice renders (yes, some faces seems slightly distorted in some picture, but that's minor)
• Funny and witty dialog that I read without being tempted to skip
• Very touching characters, even the ex is a decent person.
• Models that are not generic fact/bodies re-used in so many other games.
• Adult MC, no bimbos… only smart ladies!
• Corruption meet romance, I like that.

Minus

• The sex scene feel rushed. I don't care for animations, but it was way too fast for such a crucial development in the story.

There is already 30 minutes of gameplay, and one sex scene. There are already quite a lot of feminine protagonists (it's probable the story won't be able to progress fast because of that).

I became a 'legit' Patron after completing this first public release!

These adult visual novels are always tricky, most are never completed, most fall short of their intended purpose, and most mean nothing to me.

However, there are those small few that end up capturing a special place in my heart. Like this one, for example, it's a slow-burn, yet a powerfully romantic story.

Burst Out Games, if you bother reading these reviews I just wanted to say thank you for this awesome first release, and hope you continue to deliver quality writing and quality content.

I agree with Pyrofox what's the point on giving us choices when the MC is still going to do what he is told by a jealous girl I mean don't get me wrong this game is good, but it would even be better if the MC sticks with the choices we make.

Quickly becoming one of my favorite games. I definitely recommend it.

Pros:

• Beautiful renders
• Lots of gorgeous girl and each with a distinct look
• I found the premise of the story to be very interesting, different from the usual stuff you get these days.
• The writing is quite good.
• I felt emotionally connected to both the MC and niece
• Some of my favorite lewd content of any game being made.

Cons:

• The animation was on the average side, it could use a bit of improvement

The mind control aspect (since it's not the MC with the power) may not be to everyone's taste, but I think the majority of people will really enjoy this game. I’m looking forward to future updates. Keep up the great work dev

There are a lot of things that I do not like about this game. For starters, the dialogue in this game is just absolutely terrible. I got tired of seeing the word "legit" by the third chapter. The models for the goddaughter and the ex-wife are both hideous. The only female render that stood out to me was Gloria's. I hope that relationship is developed further. Also, the MC lacks any agency over his choices. Most of the choices in this game either are of no consequence in this stage of the game or all of the choices lead to the same conclusion. Furthermore I do not like the fact that there is nothing you can do to get out of this. What is the point of giving me choices if none of them matter or change anything? Honestly, at this point in the game you're forced down a path so hard that it may as well just be a kinetic novel.