First of all, because I've seen this heavily ranted over and bitched about in the Discussion thread; THE PATCH WORKS, THERE IS INCEST IN THIS GAME. Yes, fellow haters of all things 'Step', the real deal. Extract the patch. Put it in the Game folder. Proceed with the story. You will read things that your innocent, perverted mind will get angry about. Keep going; it will sort itself out. Relax. Do not quit early and leave an angry comment in the thread. You're just relaying false information and causing undue stress to your fellow degenerates. Please don't do that.
As far as I can tell currently,
Okay? Right, enough on that for now.
The predominant MC archetype in incest-focused AVN's is the son/brother. Throw a rock in the Updates category and you're likely to hit a horny, gropey, naïve college student with a dearly departed dad returning home to an equally horny bevy of sisters (this one's the slut, that one's self-conscious and nerdy, and the bitchy one won't leave her room until the next update) and a hot-to-trot mom who desperately needs to be told she's still good-looking. Not a complaint, those games are just fine, but as personal fetishes go, my favorite is the somewhat underutilized father/husband figure. Any time I see a game featuring that I'll snatch it up immediately and give it a try. Having said that, I don't think I'll be sticking around for Episode 2. The Rands and their Family Values ended up not aligning with my own, but, and this is important, this is not a bad game.
The renders are very nice. The models look good and body proportions of the characters are neither so small as to be smol, nor so thicc they clearly had ass, thigh and breast implants or suffer from elephantitis of the everything. Your mileage may vary on Dad (his stupid pout gave me the giggles every time he made that face, which made the speech about his dead wife a little less emotional than it probably should've been) but everyone always has a problem with the dad model in these games, and I commend Jack Redd for actually giving us a model instead of keeping him POV for the whole game. Furthermore, the interiors are fleshed out and well lit. Everything in this game just looks good. Very professionally done.
Stylistically, RFV follows Japanese visual novels in the way it places its characters. While many DAZ/Ren'Py games will be framed like a movie or graphic novel, with characters interacting with the scenery, here the characters aren't actually a part of the scene unless its special (like a sex scene). They're superimposed at the front of whichever room they're 'in', and they pop in and out of existence when they enter or leave a scene. This saves on rendering, and allows for more dialogue. A LOT more dialogue.
Thankfully, Jack Redd cares as much about his words as he does his renders. The writing here isn't perfect, there are a couple of mistakes a spellcheck wouldn't catch along the way, but it was damned near perfect, and refreshing to read so much dialogue in a new release that was polished and interested in character-building and plot/route-structure. And HEY, there's music. In every scene! How about that? It even usually fit the context and emotions of those scenes, once even changing mid-scene during a dramatic reveal! There is a reason why this game has so many five-star reviews. It's got a talented dev who gives a shit and really, really put in the effort.
So why am I rating this three stars? To be frank, story-wise, I didn't like it. Any of it. From the first scene to the end of the episode, I was waiting to have fun. It never came. This game simply wasn't made for me. Every character bored me. The twins have their plotlines going on that will continue to get fleshed out as the episodes progress, and Addison will figure out what she wants to do with her life and her break from college, and maybe Erol will land that Streaming Service gig and be at home more often, and maybe some pure souls out there will hook him up with the family maid/nanny. I just don't care. For all of its well-polished dialogue and well-rendered characters, this story and its cast had the personality of an expired vanilla wafer. It's all very progressive (Addy's writing a dissertation on the dangers of climate change, pink-haired twin is in a gay, interracial relationship, the other twin is a pot-smoking hippie) and inoffensive; remove the incest, and this is shot-for-shot, line-for-line an ABC Family or Hulu show. And because of that, it made the mountains of dialogue somewhat of a chore to get through. One dinner scene saw Erol asking ALL FOUR GIRLS (three daughters and Rosa, the maid/nanny) three questions each, with a conversation from each question. That's twelve full-length conversations. About grades, and their dating lives, and their homework. Shoot me in the fucking head.
(I used a potentially dirty word up there. *Progressive.* Don't worry, this is not a game that hammers you with woke talking points or attacking the male gaze. I don't mean it like that. It's just normal, baseline (again, inoffensive) modern progressive. Someone needs to be gay, someone needs to have weed, there must be interracial romance, someone needs to be a social activist. There's even a coming out scene where Dad is supportive. All boxes checked.)
And frankly, the music thing, which I list as a positive because I know many will love it, and undeniably it was a nice addition, was not to my liking. The tracks were aggressive ("It insists upon itself, Lois") and they never ended. From beginning to end, there is music. Pushy, aggressive music. Like a waiter that won't leave the table. No, thank you. Check, please, I'll eat at the fucking Huddle House on the way home.
Finally, at the beginning of this review I defended that Patreon workaround/patch the author implemented, and I still do. But the fact that this is a problem in the first place is because A.) People don't read and are to quick to anger and B.)
This may get sorted out later, but the fact that this is a storyline to begin with not only bores me, it kills 99% of the fetish. This whole thing takes up valuable time that could be spent coaxing the player's libido. For me, there was no coaxing. At no point did this game turn me on. I never even got the impression that it was attempting to.
So, on an enjoyment level, I would've rated this one star. Dead on arrival. But THIS IS NOT A BAD GAME. A lot of work went into this by a talented dev. Five stars on production quality. I just didn't like it. So, Three Stars from me. Give it a shot. Most everyone else loves it. And use the patch and play to the end before losing your shit, please.
As far as I can tell currently,
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The predominant MC archetype in incest-focused AVN's is the son/brother. Throw a rock in the Updates category and you're likely to hit a horny, gropey, naïve college student with a dearly departed dad returning home to an equally horny bevy of sisters (this one's the slut, that one's self-conscious and nerdy, and the bitchy one won't leave her room until the next update) and a hot-to-trot mom who desperately needs to be told she's still good-looking. Not a complaint, those games are just fine, but as personal fetishes go, my favorite is the somewhat underutilized father/husband figure. Any time I see a game featuring that I'll snatch it up immediately and give it a try. Having said that, I don't think I'll be sticking around for Episode 2. The Rands and their Family Values ended up not aligning with my own, but, and this is important, this is not a bad game.
The renders are very nice. The models look good and body proportions of the characters are neither so small as to be smol, nor so thicc they clearly had ass, thigh and breast implants or suffer from elephantitis of the everything. Your mileage may vary on Dad (his stupid pout gave me the giggles every time he made that face, which made the speech about his dead wife a little less emotional than it probably should've been) but everyone always has a problem with the dad model in these games, and I commend Jack Redd for actually giving us a model instead of keeping him POV for the whole game. Furthermore, the interiors are fleshed out and well lit. Everything in this game just looks good. Very professionally done.
Stylistically, RFV follows Japanese visual novels in the way it places its characters. While many DAZ/Ren'Py games will be framed like a movie or graphic novel, with characters interacting with the scenery, here the characters aren't actually a part of the scene unless its special (like a sex scene). They're superimposed at the front of whichever room they're 'in', and they pop in and out of existence when they enter or leave a scene. This saves on rendering, and allows for more dialogue. A LOT more dialogue.
Thankfully, Jack Redd cares as much about his words as he does his renders. The writing here isn't perfect, there are a couple of mistakes a spellcheck wouldn't catch along the way, but it was damned near perfect, and refreshing to read so much dialogue in a new release that was polished and interested in character-building and plot/route-structure. And HEY, there's music. In every scene! How about that? It even usually fit the context and emotions of those scenes, once even changing mid-scene during a dramatic reveal! There is a reason why this game has so many five-star reviews. It's got a talented dev who gives a shit and really, really put in the effort.
So why am I rating this three stars? To be frank, story-wise, I didn't like it. Any of it. From the first scene to the end of the episode, I was waiting to have fun. It never came. This game simply wasn't made for me. Every character bored me. The twins have their plotlines going on that will continue to get fleshed out as the episodes progress, and Addison will figure out what she wants to do with her life and her break from college, and maybe Erol will land that Streaming Service gig and be at home more often, and maybe some pure souls out there will hook him up with the family maid/nanny. I just don't care. For all of its well-polished dialogue and well-rendered characters, this story and its cast had the personality of an expired vanilla wafer. It's all very progressive (Addy's writing a dissertation on the dangers of climate change, pink-haired twin is in a gay, interracial relationship, the other twin is a pot-smoking hippie) and inoffensive; remove the incest, and this is shot-for-shot, line-for-line an ABC Family or Hulu show. And because of that, it made the mountains of dialogue somewhat of a chore to get through. One dinner scene saw Erol asking ALL FOUR GIRLS (three daughters and Rosa, the maid/nanny) three questions each, with a conversation from each question. That's twelve full-length conversations. About grades, and their dating lives, and their homework. Shoot me in the fucking head.
(I used a potentially dirty word up there. *Progressive.* Don't worry, this is not a game that hammers you with woke talking points or attacking the male gaze. I don't mean it like that. It's just normal, baseline (again, inoffensive) modern progressive. Someone needs to be gay, someone needs to have weed, there must be interracial romance, someone needs to be a social activist. There's even a coming out scene where Dad is supportive. All boxes checked.)
And frankly, the music thing, which I list as a positive because I know many will love it, and undeniably it was a nice addition, was not to my liking. The tracks were aggressive ("It insists upon itself, Lois") and they never ended. From beginning to end, there is music. Pushy, aggressive music. Like a waiter that won't leave the table. No, thank you. Check, please, I'll eat at the fucking Huddle House on the way home.
Finally, at the beginning of this review I defended that Patreon workaround/patch the author implemented, and I still do. But the fact that this is a problem in the first place is because A.) People don't read and are to quick to anger and B.)
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So, on an enjoyment level, I would've rated this one star. Dead on arrival. But THIS IS NOT A BAD GAME. A lot of work went into this by a talented dev. Five stars on production quality. I just didn't like it. So, Three Stars from me. Give it a shot. Most everyone else loves it. And use the patch and play to the end before losing your shit, please.
. It is great to see a developer who is invested in their story and who wants to share it with us. Jack has a story to tell, and he is doing it his way which i greatly respect.
