VN - Ren'Py - Ravenous [Arc 2 Ep.16 Beta] [Lament Entertainment]

I'm giving this one 3 stars because I'm very much on the fence with my opinion for it.

Starting with the character models. They're pleasant on the eyes, whether it be cute or sexy, but nothing that stands out. My real issue here is that it's actually quite offsetting when nearly every female character in the game pretty much appears in their mid-30s or is a loli. There's like zero in-between. The MC himself does seem to fall somewhere in the middle but even he looks and sometimes acts younger than he's portrayed as being in the story. Worse annoyance for me is it asks to set the girl's ages as soon as you meet them before you have ANY clue what their personality is like. So given they nearly all have nearly the same height and body type, you're either gonna leave their ages at default (typically 18) or base it on their looks. But then some go and act way older and some way younger. It just screws with the brain and makes it hard to actually immerse yourself in the story.

In regards to story, it's another one of the usual tropes where almost every female the MC meets immediately falls in love with him and throws themselves at him. I mean, I guess at least it's not because of the horse sized dick syndrome of far too many VNs... but it's still dull not to have any significant buildup. That being said, it's not a terrible read. I just didn't find it all that engaging either and I never really found myself caring about any of the characters.

Technicals. Pretty decent. Animations or okay. Sound is a step above most VNs. Menu is pretty typical. It's a purely kinetic VN so zero choices to be made.

Summary: Not bad and not a waste of time...just nothing to rave about either.

Another one in a long tradition of games on this site that looks amazing but drops the ball on everything else.

A game with girls that (for the most part) look this good had every opportunity to succeed, if it just decided to focus on the porn.

Instead we get a needlessly convoluted story where not even the characters living it manage to pretend like they care, so why should I?

The premise of the world that is painted isn't scary, it's silly and ridiculous.

For how many updates it has, it has very few sex scenes and the horror story is at best forgettable, at worst totally cringe-inducing.

The lesson here is that looks aren't everything and if you want a winner you need substance in at least some department other than just having good models. This game could have focused on having really great porn, it could have focused on having an actually compelling horror story, it could have even gone for broke and tried pulling off both. Sadly, it delivers on neither.

Let me start with I hate kinetic. I use it as "dose not" filter. But by the fortune of lady luck her self I accidentally downloaded this one a long time ago.... I was upset when I go to the end and didn't make any choices... but then almost a year later I forgot to filter and again downloaded the update. I knew going in there wasn't going to be any choices but remember enjoying the story and since nothing else was available atm thought what the hell.... OMG... I will be following because I feel like I'm back in the 90's waiting for the next season of incestuous teenage rob zombie x files to come out. 5 stars!!!!

This game is visually stunning with super attractive models, yet it's super disappointing. How ?

Well, let's start with the story - long lost family, you come back after X years and after few days you find out your own sister is eating out your mother regularly, no biggie right ?

Also yeah - she has to eat her out because your mother is a cannibal who will start eating people unless she is satisfied and it's not safe to go out at night because most people are evil cultists who kill and consume people to satisfy a copy of witch who has survived during 17th century. WTF is all of this overly complex and hilariously stupid story with NO BUILDUP whatsoever, everything is dropped on you RIGHTAWAY.

Now possibly the worst part - Ravenous is basically blueballing sim and no, I don't mean slowburn. Every scene seems like it's leading to something, characters are behaving like it's gonna lead to something, dialogue is written in a way which signifies it will lead to something RIGHT AWAY - BUT IT NEVER DOES.

The few sex scenes that are available as of v0.092 are seemingly rushed with few renders/animations (but you get like 20 renders just walking through your house to another room) which wouldn't be the end of all.

The worst part is sex scenes virtually have no dialogue during them, yet you have insane amounts of dialogue about the story (most of it doesn't make any sense - a slog to get through) and the "finishing sequence" is like 0.2 seconds long with 3 renders which pass by at light speed (no satisfying finish/cumshots) and back to 100 more renders which will take you from one place to another.

I hope I can give this game 4-5/5 someday because it can easily achieve that quality by changing a few key things.

Ravenous [v0.092 beta]

Pros:
Good renders
Good character models
Decent Animations

Cons:
No in-game options menu with a skip and auto function
Many blueballing moments
Storytelling
Writing
Pacing
Most Sex Scenes feel pretty dull
Unlikeable MC
Boring Characters
Mostly boring sex scenes

Conclusion:
Jeez, this was a rough playthrough.
I don't know if this was the developer's first project, but this one feels way too overambitious.
The storytelling and writing doesn't make any sense and is a chore to read.
And to add insult to injury, this game doesn't offer a menu at the bottom of the screen with an auto function, so you'll either have to play a clicker game or skip through walls of text.
The storytelling is terrible and makes you lose any interest in this game pretty quickly, and I won't waste much time writing about it because other reviewers have already done that job.
I can't tell you exactly how long this game is, but it's looong. So you'll have to read through mind-numbing conversations of hollow characters.
The MC is portrayed as such a pussy in this game that it's incredibly infuriating.
He doesn't question much of anything, and there are so many situations, especially in the first half, where the game teases the shit out of you, and shortly before sex could happen, he or others just decline.
That in itself made me go down from 2* to 1* because that is not only horrific writing but also insulting my intelligence.
The render quality is pretty good, and the game offers a huge amount of girls who look really good.
But the way they get introduced is bad, and you get bombarded with one after another, which doesn't make you care about any of them other than just waiting for the sex scenes.
There are some of those and some BJ scenes; the animations have been fairly well done, but I thought the majority of scenes were just boring.
Instead of just showing multiple angles of the same sex position, you could've added more positions to choose from and made the animations faster and more impactful.
This game just feels like the developer wanted too much and overestimated himself.
When you don't know how to write a story and characters, it's better to keep things simple.
There are many erotica novels out there with many themes, where you could look up how to write conversations and have a story that is somewhat interesting.
And the most important thing of it all is that the "game" must be fun to play and can't insult your intelligence by having a terrible MC get blueballed repeatedly.
You already have the tools, such as good models and being able to create animations, but the rest must be better.
I, for one, cannot recommend this game.

I am not the biggest fan of kinetic novels. I like to have some degree of control over what the mc does, and that is the main reason why I am not giving this 5 stars. Visually, it looks good. It has a solid story and you have a good variety of girls. Overall it's an enjoyable experience.

oooof. This was bad. The story is absolute torture. I believe that this game could have been something good but the creator lacks any ability to write. The characters are absolutely terrible, they act and speak in ways that no human being would ever act. It takes you out of the story the entire time.

The x scenes are far and few between. Give this game a hard pass.

I know people have offered their reviews and I'll basically be echoing similar sentiments, but felt it was enough to justify a review.

I try and offer positives in a negative review and vice versa, so I'll say that the modelling and posing in the game are well done. If the quality of the story was as good as the visuals, it'd probably have a 5 star score. Now, the negatives:

The most important aspect for this story is the writing, because this is THE main aspect of the AVN. You're meant to want to uncover the mystery of the classic 'sleepy American town where everything is not as it seems'. The only issue is that this dev *cannot* write to save their life. Every initially interesting concept or aspect becomes worse the longer it goes on. One example of this is the MC discovering that his sister and mother are having sex. He reacts in a natural way and is rightfully angry, and storms off. That's good. Then, he wanders off and finds a blood ritual with a decapitated hobo, gets knocked out, finds a stranger in lingerie who holds his dick and casts a spell that 'protects him' and makes him 'more open' (doesn't actually do anything else sexually), then comes home and just goes "well it's weird, but I'm cool with it", and then discovers his mother used to eat people, and apparently now "needs other bodily fluids to survive", despite the fact it was his SISTER eating out his MOTHER, which means she wasn't actually consuming ANYTHING. The same level of moronics is applied to every single issue: an interesting problem is created, a stupid and nonsensical explanation is used, and then we're expected to just move past it 'just because'. It's idiotic.

This is paired with the fact that there are also artifically created mysteries. The mother knows a lot about the town, but refuses to explain anything to the MC, purely so we are left out of the loop. Literally everytime she does this, a negative consequence arises, and yet she continually refuses to tell him anything. He accepts MAGIC as reasonable, and yet she REFUSES to elaborate on literally anything. This act of dragging out this story and then delivering an incredibly middling response is just ridiculous. It happened so many times in such a short span that I just started jumping ahead to see if it continued, and IT DID. With so much utterly inane dialogue, it's a shock how many different variations of "I don't want to overwhelm him" can be said, despite MC finding magic rings and wooden mannequins come to life and blood magic users and literal dead bodies. The fact is that there's even a character that POINTS OUT the ridiculousness of the characters more than once: Amelia. So clearly the dev is aware of the poor writing, but either thinks it isn't an issue, or an issue that he can chalk up to 'character flaw' rather than 'developer flaw'.

So a kinetic novel that has a mediocre story. At least if the sex scenes are good, it'll be worth it, right? Well, at time of writing, there's all of maybe 4 sex scenes, and 3 blowjob scenes? It's pretty amazing to me that the give you the ability to enable and disable content at the very beginning, introduce dozens of women, and then you have to meander along the tedious and repetitive writing to see the amount of content some AVNs release in 3 updates. I mean the writer quite literally had the MC be affected by a magic spell that not only makes him accepting and HORNY, but also has the same effect on people AROUND him. The dev put in a deus ex machina to explain away any real human reactions and focus on sex, but still tries to have use believe that these characters aren't just sex objects.

Overall score is 3/10.

Animation: Solid, a few weird poses but very well made
Story: Well this definitely has the horror aspect! Slowly teasing out the main mysteries and I want to see how this ends
Scripting: Generally the characters work well together and give off personality rather then flat characters.
I am easily pleased person and I enjoyed this game. The only thing I worry about is the rate of new character introductions to content. It's a hard line, I enjoy all the characters and the potential lewdness they bring with them but I also know that i means a long long time before we see action.

Pros :
Good Renders

And that's about it...
Cons:

3k+ images and only 12 of them with actual sex. There is no sexual content besides a few kissing scenes at start and then after hours of silly conversations you will get a weird/out-of-the-blue quick 5 render sex scene.

Ignore the guys writing a good storyline ! Dunno about previous versions but this game is just a tease over a tease and with nothing to show like the dev has a problem of showing penetration or even oral.

Pros
The Renders are good.
The actual base storyline and setting are very cool.

Cons
The MC is completely unbelievable. A young man who puts on the brakes with every girl he meets and delays sex? Yeah. Not happening unless the guys a complete waste of space and air. He'll probably be crying about wanting to wait to get married and only be with one girl. Watching the mom play with his dick and then stop and say too much too soon? Yet she's been wanting him since the start and he admits he wants her. Retarded. If you're going to build sexual tension and take things slow fine, but that's not the way. What's been done is stupid as hell and no one likes it. The developer thinks he's being cute by stretching things out but he's making what could've been a fun game to play something to be deleted and tossed aside instead.

Another massively dumb thing is how everyone who knows some important information about the craziness going on in the town and stuff that could possibly protect the MC keeps giving him info piecemeal. Yeah, I know some important shit that just might keep you alive but I'll tell you in a few days because I'm dumber than a bag full of bricks.

"Don't go outside after dark!"
"Why?"
"I'll tell you some other time!"

"Be careful around your Uncle Charlie!"
"Why? I'm going to go meet him."
"I'll tell you another time!"

None of the characters act anything like a real person would. It makes it annoying and impossible to get into when everything is so unbelievable and I'm not talking about the magic but the personalities and their behaviors.

I could've overlooked the dumb behaviors if the sex was at least happening but the combination makes this game a waste of space. It's a shame because, like I said, the base setting and storyline is interesting.

Edit*
One major dumb thing I forgot to add. The mother explains how the father runs away with the son for 10 years because of his evil brother Uncle Charles and his plans for them within the 'family' yet doesn't explain why the hell she stayed behind with their daughter. Why didn't they all leave together? MC sees a decapitated body. No one cares. A wooden mannequin comes to life and attacks a girl. No one cares. Let's just keep living here pretending that things are mostly okay. Why don't they all leave now? Fucking dumb. At least make the shit realistic.

2/5 stars.

What an absolute mindfuck, like, oof.
Honestly, I was just bored and wanted to try this out, but wow I just pulled an all-nighter because of this game.

Very likable characters written with a lot of depth.
The story pulled me in like, it´s 6 in the morning. I wanted to go to sleep around 5 hours ago.
And as if that wasn´t enough, the models are just glorious.

Not sure what else to say, absolute 10/10.

Oh and thanks for the haircut if you get what I´m saying.

v0.089
I like and dislike this VN.

I like the theme and story it is going for. I like the art and the sex.

I dislike the dialogue, pacing, and number of characters.

Calling it a slow burn is inaccurate. It isn't that it is a slow burn, it's that like 80% of the dialogue is fluff and you aren't told anything of substance. That isn't slow burn, that's poor writing.
And I don't mean grammar and spelling. This is perfectly understandable english, and is almost decent to read. If it had substance.

I held skip more and more until I was mostly getting the gist of things via the imagery. Which was not bad, since I really could understand things with minor skimming and the visuals. But it wasn't very interesting.

And in case you were wondering, there is no real sex between MC and "Smols" yet. Just a bunch of titties. Which is nice but pretty lame for the length of writing so far.

At this rate, I'll probably check back either when it is finished, or when there is at least 2000 more images. Because there are a lot now, and little is really said.

Do I recommend this?
Currently, no.
It feels like a few prologues to the story and not the chapters after. It's oddly put together imo. I've seen worse, this just failed to keep me interested.

Just my cup of tea. overall decent quality. only negative from me would be i would like it to have abit more buildup. and less "young" girls., and more milfs. Story is ok, english as far as i know good.

Simply saying this game just bad. Very bad writing, weird conversations between charachters, unlogical conclusions, improbable reactions mc to events. Really the most annoying thing in this game is mc (meak and pathetic human being) and how he and others interact between each other.

He's annoyingly understanding and have "Im always wrong" syndrome, always apologize for everything, cant stand up for himself speaking with women. "Sorry" is the most popular word in his vocabulary. Zero masculine and strong-willed person qualities. *Hey man leave her alone* meme perfectly represents his personality when he deals with women.

Once again about bad writing. If this story was writen by middle schooler it would be okay, but its not. Dev skips a lot of scenes which need to show how characters develop, their conclusions and suggestions about what happened in previous scenes and their interactions between each other. They always do smth that contradicts their own words, or just create misunderstandings from thin air.

Charachters around mc know a lot about what is going on, they care for mc and they know that this info is very important for his understanding of situation and most of all this info can keep him safe. But they dont tell him bcause of "reasons" which in reality is poor dev writing skill which makes this story and charachters so retarded and unlikable for people with brains.

Lewd content consists with a lot of unlogical teasing which should lead to sex but it ends with mc being blueballed with brainded explanations why they cant do this right now and mc hapilly accept being teased and left with blueballs bcause he's "nice guy and all that shiiieeettt". From plot we know how badly mother wants her son and she knows herself how bad it to be left sexually unsatisfied. And then we have situation with mother when she after revealing her fellings in bedroom, kissing mc and stroking his cock, just leave him blueballed (not even completeing handjob) to sleep with her just bcause shes tired and want to firstly explore more, lol) This scene was apotheosis of devs delusional attempts to prolong their bad written relationship longer before showing sex.

One thing good in this game is renders and thats all.

GREAT start. Sexy Girls (some gorgeous, some cute, some THICC, only one kinda "meh"). Unique Story, like good Science Fiction plus Porno. Is Kinetic Novel (no Choice yet) but MC is not bad-guy or blank-slate. Dialog is not perfect, but better and less clunky than most. (Grammar much better than mine...) Cannot wait for next version. And Vanessa!!

PS: Boobs actually move/sway during Movement, so look more real! Dev knows what Gravity is

The story is overall pretty good but when your not into lesbian stuff you cant really play it since every girl is forced to lick their mothers pussy and thats just a no go for me and i am not really a fan of kenitic story lines since you have 0 options to who you want to be with, i was hoping it would be better in this one since you have the option to say no to MILF and GILF when starting the game but that really means nothing, you just dont see the scenes but the game still plays out as you have fucked them all, like whenn MC lost hes virginity it skips the sex scene but you still end up in bed next to her saying that wasent bad for your first time, i was hoping the story and text would atleast change to show you dident have sex with them when selecting no to MILFs, since i am really not into that stuff.

To make it even worse it still forces shit on you after say NO to it at the start of the game, i said no to milf and lesbian and sure enough it forced milf and lesbian shit on me anyway.

Girls look good and animations are pretty decent but that alone cant save the game.

When/if it gets completet ill give it another go and adjust my rating, but for now and for me this was a waste of time.

2 years later and i tried it again and belive it or not it has only gotten worse, now you cant turn off shit you dont like insted your given a skip option to not see a scene but the shit still happens, so in other words still as kinetic as always.

Absolutely beautiful renders, great presentation with great characters. The story itself is interesting enough to have want to know more, though the writing and relationship buildups could be a bit better, but they are decent even as they are, but ill be honest i skimmed most of the conversations.
Overall its pretty good, especially presentation wise, and do look forward to see more.

What an interesting, and ultimately, so far DISAPPOINTING game. Beautiful renders, decent character development -- but after a year, I come away with LOLI TEASE! A lot of dark horror metaphor, and glimpses of erotica, but apart from a couple of vanilla-type sex acts, it's a middling 'horror-fest' masquerading as an edgy, loli-filled adult VN. Too bad; seemed so promising, but fear and politics seems to have derailed this piece. Not worth the DL.

Horror isn't usually my thing, but the girls in this are some of the best I've ever seen. A+ for models and outfits, and all the personalities feel unique. The girl/girl content is super hot too. Looking forward to more for sure.