VN - Ren'Py - re:Dreamer [v0.17.0] [Dream Team Studio]

This is one of the most divisive games Ive seen on the site review wise, with a significant amount of people feeling strongly enough on the game to actually fucking review it, while fluctuating between 5 stars and 1 star.

Every complaint I've read from said reviews are truthful. The game is verbose, it has a LOT of reading to be done in between the scenes people care about, and a lot of it might seem pointless. But it also never repeats itself, it details the feelings and day and thoughts of the protagonist to an excruciating level that personally left me caring about the little asshole to a degree that's frankly embarrassing on my end considering its a porn game.

The MC is also off putting and weird, pedantic, distractable, and fluctuating between overly concerned and flippant about the situation they find themselves in. It can be hard to sympathize with them at times, you'll get frustrated with their choices, and its almost impossible to relate. But at the same time the protagonist feels incredibly human, maybe not a human you like, but one at the end of this you'll understand.

This is a VN with multiple routes but not a lot of choice, in fact most of your choice comes in the arrangement of stat sliders you pick at the beginning. If you want a VN with endless route you wont find that here, and I can understand why some players feel lied to when it comes to the importance of the choices, like they're illusions. But while each route of the story ultimately leads to the same places, the motives and dialouge of the MC change to a frankly absurd degree based on every tiny stat equation and choice. And when we are getting so deep into their head, into their day, even when the routes lead to the same place in my mind these choices end up feeling more consequential than any other ive seen in a porn game. You wont find extra scenes based on your choices, but your choices will completly change the dynamic and life of the people your reading about.

The point im trying to make with this, is despite the bad reviews this game gets, theres something to love here. This is by far my favorite game on the site, and comes across as a deeply personal labour of love by the devolper. The distress, the hope, the love, and the fear Zach experinces when it comes to their gender change comes across as a deeply personal, human, and unique exploration of idenity and sexuality, and theres frankly some fascinating philosophy at play informing the gender dynamics of the charecters in this piece. This was the type of game that left me feeling broken when i was done with it like only the best stories, porn non aside, do. If you play porn games to feel a deep connection and understnanding of the charecters in the scenes, or if you just want an extremlaly compelling novel on a perosnal journay of gender and sexuality, than i implore you to give this game a chance.

The art is beutifall and detailed, the dialouge is funny and methodical, and the chareter work is nothing short of inspired. This is the type of porn game that when you play you get reminded why you spend so much time moving through the usual slop just to get off, I can not praise it enough.

Even in its incomplete form this game is just excellent. I was especially intrigued by the Mother route as it really explored the personal struggle of Zach and his mother. I´m looking forward for more!

Feels like author was dared to make game as pointlessly verbose as humanly possible. Half expected game to go: "sike you just read all of it for nothing, thx for your time sucker."
For example, this game has world-info about alternative WW2. Relevant part can be summarized in 2-4 sentences yet it drags on and on. Why do i need to know about Neil Armstrong and how he became a president? Why do i care about Soviets having nuke before Allies, they don't even use it? It is pointless information there is no value in it.
In the game it is hardly better, you can skip 9/10 sentences and you would loose nothing.
While art is good, it is written way to self indulgently.

Can be very cringe at times, but other than that this game has a very real trans experience coming from the heart and journey of an actual trans person (shocker) and it can be funny, emotional, and horny which is just what I expect from a 5 star rated visual novel

In terms of quality in contrast of the usual standards for western ren'py VN games. this game is surprisingly stellar. Great execution and writing. can't wait for Rich route to be worked on.

Love the C.H.E.A.T.S system. there's so many games in this genre that has the MC being the most limp dicked person in existence, creating a dissonance between the MC and player, this system rectifies that and adds even more replayability.

One of the more thoughtful and well written adult games out there, and one of the few I don't mind setting down and spending literal hours reading through relatively dry optional lore dumps for because everything about the story and world scratches an itch in my brain.

The only issue I have with the game is that it cracked my shell and I have not processed it all that well. 10/10 there's yolk everywhere and I blame this game

I love this game, CaptainCaption has worked so hard in it over the years and deserves love for all the work they have put in. The art is beautiful, the story has a lot of emotional depth. If I would call out one thing, it would be the tangents, something obscure will get brought up, like lets say the fact the character has red eyes. And then a short answer will be given before going into a very deep scientific explanation. I don't have a problem with it, but it happens for quiet a few things where it just bogs down some of the scenes. But I still love the game and I'm sure there are people who love that sort of thing.

The game itself should receive 5 stars, but the development of it is all over the place to the point that I am forced to lower its score.

First, the praise should go entirely to the writing, Britney route, and scene variance. The C.H.E.A.T system is a marvel. For the writing, while it is true that it can get a bit too verbose at times even with the correct C.H.E.A.T settings, it is undeniably of good quality. The HCG scenes are also fairly well done and written.

Then, comes the slew of issues... everywhere else. First off, HCGs feel like they bounce between two completely different styles, which makes for a jarring experience when the girl in the HCG doesn't even look a lot like the MC in a game that is trying to be as immersive as reDreamer is. Both art styles are good, just the inconsistency is a bit of a bother.

Now, while the writing is of good quality, how it is being structured and developed feels all over the place, particularly in any route that isn't the lesbian route (There are three routes: One lesbian route, which is Britney, one male route which is Keisuke who is an old friend, and a different male route which is Rich). Maybe the lesbian route just gets more patreon backing, maybe it's what the dev prefers, I don't know - but it's clear that most of the care and development in this game goes into Britney's route. Not only that, but the route development itself feels really weird. I've been following this game since September 17, 2021, when the game was at 0.8.6. It's been two years since (well, a year and a half give or take, but still), and the Rich route doesn't have the slightest stub, and the Keisuke route has had an updated introduction scene and a time-skip workout scene that takes, at best, 30 minutes to read. In fact, here's a fun thing: if you open up the changelog for this game, and then press ctrl+f and try searching for the following keywords: "Keisuke", "Rich", and "Britney", and "polish"...

Britney shows up 156 times, Keisuke slightly behind at 125, Rich shows up 7 (!!!) times, and "polish" shows up 23 times.

By skimming these it's immediately apparent a lot of the Keisuke route is mostly being "polished" (aka editing the writing or reworking on sprites or et cetera with very slim to none actual new content, such as the workout scene), where as Brittney gets the heavy load of actual new content, and Rich doesn't exist, and it's been this way for the better part of well over an year.

As such, while Britney's route is interesting/good, and the overall game is still a very good read for anyone who's into gender bender stories, the fact remains that this game is mostly a yuri/lesbian game. If you're here for other types of content, then you'll be waiting for a while. And, with the speed of it all, I'm afraid that some things will either be entirely scrapped or never finished. It's infuriating to read something that you like only to be constantly met with short ends to scenes or be told that you can't see that and constantly read "Hey, this next scene is done taking in mind that X happened in the last one. We haven't written that yet, so keep that in mind!". It absolutely destroys the flow of the game. Playing Keisuke's route will always inevitably end up at this, and it makes for an awful reading experience where you're reading disjointed portions of the story, with the more interesting bits feeling like they were taken out entirely.

All in all this is a very good game with a lot of care being put into it, but I feel like the sheer scope of the game stretches things too thin and they're not structured enough to make actually following the development of the game worthwhile unless, of course, you're in the Britney route camp. I check the game about once every six months to see if the content I'm interested in has shown up, and it STILL hasn't after nearly two years, so I can only imagine how painstaking it must be to follow this any closer without an interest in lesbian content.

Has incredible potential and some very very detailed writing. Hopefully we get to see this story go to its conclusion with all the routes and the artwork polished up. I'm really interested in seeing where the other routes go for the MC (Rich and Mom?!). Good Luck Devs!

Yes, the writing sometimes goes on for longer than it needs to. Dialogue could probably be cut by a third overall and the story really wouldn't change.

But everything else about the game is gold. The scenes, the art, the premise, it's all done incredibly well. Even the story is really good despite how long winded it could be.

So ideally I would rate it a 4.5/5, but I would feel worse about giving it a 4 rather than a full 5.

Its a gender bender story. There are 3(2 with content at the moment) paths.

The graphics are very good and the design of the characters too.
Some will say that it has too much text (and maybe it does) but i think is good for story building.
I think it can become the best gender bender game out there.

Everything is fine other the writing. The game is so long it feels like an excuse. If it was literally 10x more concise it would not have been too short. The author should try to understand the medium better, he's writing, not directing a movie. Even if the reader will misunderstand something or not perfectly understand what the author was going for, that's a much more desirable outcome than whatever this is.

Gender bender fetish visual novel style game. As a fetish game it fulfills its role quite nicely, there's multiple routes (completely different paths) you can choose.

Unfortunately game is still very incomplete but I love the Keisuke route - also since there aren't enough genderbent best friend romance games around here.

5/5 to counter the random 1 star ratings given, but overall the art is kinda of inconsistent so 3/5, story is well written with proper grammar and spellings 4/5, the characters are quite well written, or atleast the MC is very well written with their introspective monologues everywhere so 4/5.

The animation of the game is not very interesting, and the developer chose to prolong the project for too long, there is nothing really new or that can hold the player. It turned into an endless loop, to get us nowhere, with a lot of unnecessary dialogue, I expected more from this project.

the truth....a very boring game, and if we add that it is censored, I don't see any interest in it. Just pointless text messages for hours to get you nowhere.
Bad writing, wrong decisions.
Since 2019 when the game started, it could have already reached some point, but I see the game the same as in its beginning, just stretch the updates more

It's a solid visual novel with a good amount of content to it. The story really has only just got started as of 10.2 but what's there is enjoyable. The art is pleasant and has a good amount of hand drawn scenes, though currently front weighted. I'd strongly recommend using the CHEATS system to minimise the main character's awkwardness though, otherwise he can be extremely verbose.

I personally really love this game. I actually enjoy the long winded conversations and socially awkward MC. Do not play this game if you just want to get off, but it's not always about the porn for me.

Considering the length of unnecessary conversation and many of the branching out don't make coherent sense. It's a big jump from previous version but won't really waste time with this. At least for the moment.

This ones not gonna appeal to the majority of people, and can be VERY hard to tweak correctly to suit you. Its also currently minor variations of on rails for only 2 paths. One trait of the "cheats" system is the primary determining factor of how the game is presented, so try each of the 5 levels, but be warned dropping it to minimum to make the game less verbose can impact your outcomes due to stats checks on some paths.

Other people have complained about a lot of text, when I don't think it's the length of text that's the issue, it's the content.

The biggest offender of this is the main character. By default, the game will set his awkwardness stat to 3, and this will make him essentially autistic. For example, if he goes on a date with the female romantic interest, upon seeing a Mrs. Pac-Man machine he will go into a several paragraph diatribe about the history of Mrs. Pac-man and the importance of the game to video game history.

Other characters are also awkward. The Female love interest, upon making a joke about pleading the 5th, will explain to you our inept protagonist, what pleading the 5th amendment means.

These things drag the games pace to a crawl and will make the average person dislike the characters. If you have a high tolerance for socially awkward weirdos then you might enjoy this game, for everyone else I would skip.

(Version .10.0)