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VN - Ren'Py - Abandoned - Project SAGE [Act 1 v0.19d] [Paperwork]

  1. 3.00 star(s)

    Zippity

    The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs...

    (Review Update - March 2019 - Act 1 v0.14c)

    Ok, it's been about a year since I last played this one... I can tell there has been some improvements, which I'll get into... The improvements had me pleasantly surprised, for the first half of the current content, but then I began noticing a lot of trends, which I'll go over...

    Visuals are pretty much the same, as far as quality and type... There are some short animations that didn't exist before, but not many... The scenes are done fairly well, for the most part...

    The script has somewhat improved, but I still ran into occasional minor grammar errors, and several instances of broken English still, but not to the degree as there was before... There is a lot more dialogue and inner monologue then before... The small print, during inner thoughts and whispers, were hard to distinguish one from the other, sometimes...The difference between the inner monologue and an actual whisper should be made more clear to the readers... Sometimes it was easy to tell, based purely on what was being said as well as the context of the scene, but it should be made more obvious...

    For the first 3 to 4 hours of reading/playing, I was seeing some story elements that teased towards more meaningful and deep story telling, some of the time... Such as the grandfather knowing something about the protagonist's past, and so forth (and wanting to help the protagonist with her future), as well as how some choices allowed you to select non-sex based choices, that might add to the characters personality and development... But in the long run, not much is ever expanded upon... Sure a couple times the grandpa would show up, and you got a tiny bit more info, but it never really went anywhere... The choices that you would think, might strengthen her character, and not be just more corruption choices, didn't feel like they made much of a difference, all that often... There were also a few moments, where the game pointed out some new hidden stats... As well as some choices would be presented that might increase or decrease certain aspects, oh how content presented itself... And at first, it did appear that some choices made a difference in how a scene played out, but then you kind of never see any further choices related to those events again... It was as if those choices no longer mattered...

    You can definitely tell that the developers are trying, very hard, to throw in as many sexual trope and fetishes as they could, the further the story went along... Which in my opinion, began to feel a bit overwhelming and pointless... I mean, for the first half of this VN/Game, I was thinking perhaps things had really improved, as to the story elements, mixed with the erotic stuff... But then I noticed a pattern, that makes you sort of feel like the developers have it out for the protagonist... She never catches a break... Every single male, young and old was just a perv, outside of the grandpa and a few voyeur teenagers... They all seemed to have an agenda that was not necessarily in her favor... And the grandpa doesn't show up too often really... And anything that can go wrong, seems to go wrong for her, most of the time... Just one problem after another, and it starts to feel old and tedious, after a while... This poor girl has the entire world around her just trying to use her, perv on her, make life harder, and so on... Very few characters seem to be helping her in any real way, without some secret selfish perv motive/reason...

    For those first few hours of reading/playing, I was sort of comparing this VN/Game to something like other VN/Games that focused on meaningful choices... I tried to make a few choices that would hopefully NOT lead to her getting so messed over... But as soon as you think things are turning out good/better for her, some new crap happens to her... And that gets really tiresome and majorly hurts the story, in my opinion... The last half of the current content, I noticed the story elements began going down hill, and all the corruption events, along with her not getting any breaks, just got worse as the VN/Game progressed... More focus was placed on the erotic content, then any meaningful and deep story plot...

    So, the tiny fraction of moments, where you think the story and plot might be gaining strength, it is mostly just a tease, and really goes no where good, if anywhere at all... Just the introduction of more and more tropes, as you watch her personality take a nose dive, towards this mindless horny girl, where most prior choices to improve herself, no longer had any meaning... It just devolves into nothing, outside of sexual content...

    Lemme give you an example, in the first half you have a choice with the Air Conditioner Repair Guy, when he tries to blackmail her... You can either fight against it or sort of play along with it, and let it play out... If you choose to fight, it appears to work out, and the story plays out positively for her, for that moment... She took control of the situation, and you were proud of her strength... But half way into the VN/Game, suddenly it comes back to haunt her in very pushy ways... With a new blackmailer, with the same photos, and instead of being presented with choices that avoid it, no matter what choice you go with, she ends up doing most of the things he demands of her (she just complies), which involves all sorts of exhibitionism and so forth... Sure, one of the choices has her thinking about getting back at him, and possibly working out a plan to get back at the blackmailer, but she still does most of his sexual requests regardless of choice... Don't get me wrong, the scenes looked well presented, but it shows how the beginning choices (during the first blackmail attempt) no longer mattered, and any attempts to avoid it again result in her compliance with the blackmailer (regardless), as the new choices don't matter much... That is just one case...

    Overall, this VN/Game has a lot of content for being only a first act, that is still in development... But I began to get tired of a story that really wasn't going anywhere, other then just being more of the same... Too much teasing of a real plot (through the grandfather), with no real follow through... And too much crap just keeps going wrong for the protagonist, with no end in sight... Choices not really mattering all that much...The few characters you think might be romantic interests, are either not developed in that direction, teased without going anywhere, or just a perv she hasn't caught onto yet... The promise I thought might be there, from the first couple hours, began to slowly dwindle away... Which was very disappointing, as at first I was kind of willing to give more praise than criticism, in a follow up review, but it wasn't meant to be.... I kind of see this project as more of a porn fest in the making, just trying to cater to those wanting tons of sexual content, teasing, perving, etc... Rather then being something more balanced and meaningful... While there are definite improvements from the last playthrough, I just can't see any reason to raise the score that much...

    This VN/Game is just an average corruption story, with lots of dialogue/monologue, about a character that is pretty much screwed over, as a target for every perv imaginable... I wish the developers the best of luck, as I'm sure there will be folks who are looking for that... But don't play/read this one, thinking it's as high of quality as others in it's category... It's sort of in an average limbo... Better then some, but poorer then others... I don't see any reason/s to revisit this one at a later date...


    (Original Review - 3 Mar 2019 - v0.1)

    This visual novel/game has a huge amount of content for being so early in production, based on it's version number, but it is pretty much a porn fest...

    The visuals are all done with Honey Select, with a lot of backdrops that we've all seen before in other games... So obviously all the characters are hentai inspired, to include some of the scene themes... There are no animations that I ran into, which is unusual for a Honey Select based game...

    The script has some occasional broken English as well as spelling/grammar errors... The plot revolves around a female protagonist who has moved in with a family friend and his family while she gets prepared to go to college... Lots of things occur to her, but overall almost every situation she runs into offers up the choice of something sexual/erotic in nature... In fact, every single character she runs into, male and/or female, finds her sexually attractive, which is so unrealistic in every way... There is actually a lot of content in this VN/Game, and pretty much every time a choice presents itself you can either go down a sexual route or not... That also includes moments when you get to make a selection for the other characters now and then...

    The gameplay has an Arousal bar, which fills up based on choices, and it only goes down once she has willing done something sex related near the end of each game day... Not sure if it is used to open content, or what not...

    There are some story related things she does each day, but everywhere she goes and everyone she interacts with usually ends up involving choices for sexual content or trying to avoid it... Be careful though, because sometimes a minor choice to go through with sexual stuff lets it continue even further then expected with regards to further more intense sexual stuff... And because the protagonist is a virgin, there seems to be a repeating theme of sexual content revolving around either BJ/HJ stuff and/or anal stuff...

    When selecting the place the protagonist came from, be sure to enter a country and not a city or state... Because when it uses that choice in the story, most of the time it refers to the protagonists country of origin... I entered California and it kept saying now and then I came from the country of California... hehe... I think this whole story takes place somewhere in Japan based on both it's visuals, places, and situations...

    There are some moments here and there as well, where I felt this VN/Game was including some under aged characters... The protagonist is supposedly older then many of the younger characters she runs into, and yet she is under the age of 21 (which you find out during the beach event)... Even though the youngest male characters look like they are either in the middle of or just getting out of puberty, that doesn't make them adults in an adult themed game... It's just a bit borderline, and feels a bit suspicious now and then, especially when a lot of them apparently are still in high school grade levels...

    The dialogue has a lot of small font usage, when characters are whispering stuff to one another, which happens a lot... There were also some mistakes all throughout this VN/Game, where it doesn't use the chosen protagonists name, but instead uses the default protagonist name... There were a few moments in the beginning as well, where it sounded like the dialogue was coming from the protagonist, but it had one of the other characters names showing instead...

    Overall, this thing does not feel like a meaningful and/or deep visual novel in any sense of the words, as it is pretty much a back to back to back porn fest (if you select to go with the sexual choices rather then just flat out skip them)... All types of sexual fetish's play out, to include Japanese themed porn, such as train groping... If you select to ignore the sexual content, when making a choice, typically there is a lot of skipped content in the process... And it feels like 90% of the content in this thing is sexual/erotic in nature... So if you plan to avoid all the sexual stuff, might as well just stop playing/reading it at all, since the story isn't all that interesting anyways...

    I didn't play through all of the content, and there is a lot for being so low a version number... This mostly was because it was such a boring story, that pretty much just went from one sexual based encounter to another with very little in the way of meaningful plot... No realism in how the protagonists life plays out at all, since every character just wants to have sex with her, or trick her into sexual encounters... The protagonist gets used, abused, corrupted, blackmailed, etc... Avoiding the sexual stuff doesn't help the plot either, as it just goes to the next event after a very short scene, in most cases... Will i revisit this one? Probably not, because I can watch real porn videos with real women, rather then seeing hentai based characters doing all the same exact things you see in normal porn vids... There is no immersion in this thing, just like with normal porn...