VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Rebirth [Ep.1-5 All in One] [LikesBlondes]

Info: I played the game with an additional Music mod from KoGa3 from the beginning.

One thing before anything else: if you want to play this game solely for the sex scenes, skip this one. It barely has any, and the few it has, are short and mediocre. This game is really only interesting if you want to play it for the story the dev has to tell.

Well, unfortunately, the game turned out rather mediocre. As many people already mentioned, the premise and the start are promising (especially if you like the whole vampire trope). But the further in we are, the more the story seems to lose the focus and at some point, the whole plot just "ends" basically, and we continue with something that feels more like a subplot.

A lot of people complain that there are not enough relevant decisions to make, but I personally like those games more with less focus on making too many ends. I encourage developers to focus on the story they want to tell, as it takes a skilled developer to actually make multiple endings interesting and engaging, and in the end, unfortunately, I have yet to find someone to pull it off (and I am not only talking in this space, there are also a lot of AAA failures who suffer the same issue).


The character development is a bit weird at times and I really think there was a lot of wasted potential with the attempted systems, given that most of the "combat" mechanics really did not matter at all.

The ending does not feel like one, and it rather feels like it just ended in the middle of nothing. The overarching main plot ends somewhere towards the beginning of episode 5, and you have a whole episode where it feels like just some side-mission that suddenly is in the focus. As mentioned before, I think if the dev focused less on trying to give the players decisions to make and focused on the story, this could have had potential for a cool vampire story.

Fun premise, but wasted potential.

When people bring up Vampire the Masquerade, they really aren't kidding. It's a vampire series through and through, and if you enjoy media like Interview with a Vampire, What We Do in the Shadows, True Blood, and many others, you'll recognize a lot of the tropes and motifs in Rebirth.

MC is a newly turned fledgling vampire suddenly pushed into a secret society made up of the bloodsucking undead. It's decadent, indulgent, and not particularly original, but it does a decent job of setting up an interesting atmosphere. It plants the seeds for what should be an intriguing supernatural story.

Unfortunately, everything that follows ranges from borderline unsatisfactory to outright letdown. On every level, Rebirth fails to deliver on its promise and leaves you wondering what could have been.

The story is linear, essentially a kinetic novel with minimal choices. There's effectively three main character stats (stealth, prowess, and charisma) and a few other hidden numbers that are tracked, which determine if Sharon is willing to save Laurie and if Carmen becomes your lover. Every other choice is essentially largely irrelevant—and, truthfully, so are the aforementioned. Choices in this game really don't matter. There's very minor differences to how certain scenes play out, but they all get you to the same place.

The game also commits the cardinal sin of laying the groundwork for decent characters and dynamics, but ultimately failing to let them live up to their potential. You have Laurie, your childhood friend whom the MC stupidly ropes into this world and strips her of her right to live a normal life. You have your vampire caretaker/mommy, Sharon, and her thrall, Andrew. You have a vampire hunter, Carmen, who you capture and essentially stockholm syndrome into changing sides.

Development between them is mostly teased but never actually shown. For instance, apparently Carmen and Laurie become quite close, but you only know because the characters say so. They share almost no scenes with each other, and even in the scenes they share, they don't have the benefit of much interaction. The game essentially proceeds to ignore them all in favor of showing the MC awkwardly bumbling through the vampire world, needing every detail explained to him like an idiot, which gets old the 2nd or 3rd time it happens, much less the twentieth.

There's also a fairly large cast of secondary characters in this game, many of them with some promise: Merrick, Markus, Frank, Virgil, Marcius, Astrid, Eloise, Malia, MC's sire/vamp mommy, Calisto, and many others. But almost all of them fail to live up to their potential. A lot of them are heavy-handedly discarded to set up some nebulous big bad threat, which ultimately is dealt with incredibly unsatisfactorily.

Characters are not independent agents as much as objects where things happen to them. It's an amateur mistake repeated many times over. Instead of showing how characters react to their environment, how their perceptions may be challenged, changed, or solidified, they simply react to the newest event that happens, and not particularly convincingly at that. You rarely feel like these characters have their own ambitions. long term goals, or core desire because they're all prisoners of the moment, left at the mercy of a story that's not particularly interesting.

The story, which seems to build up to the MC and his gang figuring out how to take out this elder god vampire ends with literal whimpers, as most of them are taken out off-panel and the MC cuts a deal with said deity that he's never actually shown having to pay back. Then the last half of the last chapter is MC making some shitty political maneuvers to rise to the top of the vampire hierarchy, which was never a stated goal of any of the main characters. It's all as unsatisfying as it sounds.

Plenty of others have brought up the concern that this is essentially a porn game with very little actual porn, and that is certainly valid.

Make no mistake, a porn game doesn't need to have a lot of lewd scenes in it. A few relatively choice scenes in an otherwise interesting story is perfectly adequate. But the issue with Rebirth is that it's clearly a porn game, with so much of the focus on sexuality and the MC's sex drive, impotence, and obvious attraction to the women in his life. Yet the actual porn is so unsatisfying that it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. It feels too much like drip-fed patreon-milking that's already too common amongst this genre's shovelware.

It's all a terrible slow burn with the MC simping after Sharon for three or four chapters before they actually do anything, despite their clear mutual attraction. When the levee finally breaks, the scenes are bland, not to mention horribly dark and poorly lit so that you can't even see what's going on.

A lot of the problems with the lewd scenes, or lack thereof, would be alleviated by a strong, taut story, but this game is too much setup and not enough knocking down. The story essentially floats out there without any real urgency. Characters can disappear and the MC and his gang are supposed to find them, and yet they'll still be spending most of their time arguing about clothes or sleep schedules instead of having any urgency to get the apparently very urgent tasks done. It's a visual novel that plays out like a video game, where you can leisurely do sixteen fetch quests before you attend to the next pressing matter, which works in a free roam RPG but not so much a kinetic novel.

Ultimately, this game leaves you feeling more disappointed than impressed. At least it has an ending, which is better than most games on this site, but it left you feeling like the developer was just winging it without a plan, and the characters and storylines were just arbitrarily picked up or dropped at leisure. Almost none of the big mysteries established in the first act are really answered, such as the MC's vampire heritage or even the ultimate fate of the big bad. It's an interesting premise and a fairly strong start that's let down by everything that happens in the middle and end.

A fairly average game in most respects.

The writing and the choices are all fairly average, the story isn't bad, but its not terribly exciting, and it all just sort of cruising along, the ending and climax aren't anything great, but again it isn't bad so, there is always that.

Upsides? The renders all look nice, and whilst there are a few glitches here and there, its a pretty good experience. I liked most of the characters its just that most of them don't really do anything.

All in all, a average game, that has an actual ending. Which, ya know, is kinda rare, so kudos to the dev.

The fact that this VN has (at this time) average of 4 stars is WILD... Shows how much do the reviews of early versions of VNs matter (they don't).
This VN is average at best, and that's only if, like me, you ignore the fact, that this is supposed to be a PORN VN. You know, enjoyable/exciting sex scenes and all of that. If you are someone looking for a porn/erotica VN, I'd rate this VN 2/5 instead, because you basically can NOT fap to this (the sex scenes are bad, like seriously bad).
The characters of the story are relatively interesting, however the story is bland. It's a functional story, you don't get bored reading through it and I personally don't regret finishing it, however...
This is a kinetic novel. There are no choices (even killing a side character doesn't matter, I replayed the VN to see the difference). Your powers don't matter. Your stats don't matter. Yes, sure, there's a little bit of a diversion in the dialogue temporarily, however ultimately everything goes the same, the main parts of the story are always the same. Like, maybe there is an extra sex scene here and there, but the sex scenes are not worth talking about anyway...
I'm only giving 3/5, because this VN wasn't abandoned and to be fair, I don't really care that much, that the sex scenes are bad. Also, the girls are hot. However, I really don't like the fact, that unlocking the vamp powers and the stats are just a bait for the reader. Oh, and if you do read through this VN, get ready to read through typos/mistakes like every 2 minutes.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is (kinda) ruined...
Meh. What a waste.

Imagine being on a cruise ship. You're going from port A to port B and nothing can change that. In the interim, you're allowed to go from your room to certain other rooms, but not all rooms. Some rooms remain hidden and despite wanting to know more, you know little.

Such is this game. It is technically a KN with no real choices in how it plays out. One supporting character can live or die based on the only real choice in the game. So that leaves the question of whether the story is compelling enough to push through the lack of agency the player has. Early on I might have been inclined to state, 'yes', but now...not at all.

There are so many unanswered questions about origins and relationships and progress that in the end, the story implodes leaving one with the feeling of anger that all these hours and attention have been wasted. It's as if one went to a dinner and upon arrival the menu looks great, elaborate even, but by the time the waiter makes it to your table all that's left is a bologna sandwich.

Pros:

+ Length and longevity of story and updates.

Cons:

- CG Renders. It is apparent the dev team never tried to improve their work. While other games in this genre have evolved with improvements in DAZ (for example), none of that can be seen here.

- Animations. None

- Audio. One endlessly repeating BGM track. No creativity in this regard.

-- Lack of choice and opportunity for player to interact and immerse.

--- Plot holes, lack of explanation, rushed and incomplete ending. Embarrassing lack of dedication to players. Lazy. Ends with dozens of questions of origins, relationships, outcomes...all left blank.

--- Throughout the story, the main characters...all characters, communicate with truncated, stilted speech. There were times I thought they would just start grunting at each other. Again, laziness has to be a factor.

Recommendation: I cannot recommend spending the hours necessary to complete this game. I am confident that a new player will be encouraged early on which will lead to frustration at the end.

I wrote a glowing review some episodes ago as the story was quite interesting and the world building was quite nice. However, now I'm changing my review to hopefully let the dev know that this game is going downhill hard and fast. You're killing off characters that were being built over many episodes for no real reason, the MC has completely gone from from being this newbie to vampire society to bossing around these top elder vamps. This change was not gradual but rather a sudden shift. It makes no sense. The quality of writing has tanked enormously. Also, there are still no animations, and any type of points and paths we were slowly building up are now completely useless and gone. This means that the sex scenes are completely pointless and linear. And since there are no animations, it makes them dated and stale as well. This game is slowly becoming a generic kinetic novel with dated models, bland sex scenes, and poor writing. I don't know if the dev is getting burned out or what's going on, but this needs to change quickly or this game is gonna become a stinker. It also doesn't help that there's now going to be SIX episodes, and you can't start a new game at these later episodes. New players are going to have to start from the very beginning, and a lot of people are not going to want to have to download over 20GB, probably approaching 30GB, of files and mods just to have to catch up.

Tis a porn game without porn.

Doing a VTM-esque VN needs a good writing, the plot, choices and etc should matter. The ep 1 was great, kinda rushed to what could be, but still, great start, build up and stuff. You could unlock 0 powers, claws, or even claws and invisibility, for example.

The plot was moving in a way, and it was building a strong foundation to some shit, and then it all is thrown away from 2 onwards.

Almost no choices.

The ones you have, change jack shit. You can be evil or good, but neither let's you do anything beside saying "Hi uwu" or "fuck you lmao"

Dunno how long in ch 3, still couldn't fuck my god damn thrall or the pseudo-sire that has the hots for me nor the fucking hunter that tried to kill me.

New characters that i don't care while unresolved plots stay on the background for no reason

This was like Castle...

It's an old tv show if you don't know.

Not in theme, character or plot line.

More in the sense that the writers came up with these different ideas for an old trope and put it together in an interesting way. So the story, with every chapter makes you feel like this could get so much better, maybe if i just play the next chapter they'll finally have taken that next step.

Then you donload the next and you play it... But then it's over. You tell yourself... Well, thst wasn't better. Then you drop it

But you come back a couple months later to see if it got any better because you kept having this feeling that it could be so much better. It never gets better though.

At least, that's how i felt.

The writers bring in some interesting concepts but they never really matter to the story.
The renders of this VN are okay.
Characters regularly act out weird( can't say out of character because... Some like Carmen/MC/Sharon constantly make decisions and say things that are not in line with earlier chapters).
The plot is okay.
The biggest let down is that your choices mean nothing.

I suppose there could be some who enjoy this but i would not recommend if you have played at least 1 VN

Rebirth is Missed Potential and i hate that.

First Impressions: After reading Episode 1, i have to say i was hooked into it. The way the story carries itself and progresses makes you feel like you are learning everything with the same pace as the main characer. Actually giving me choices to how the story played out not just the illusion of it. Overall it was good and till date Episode 1 is still the best episode. A shame all of what i just wrote didnt carry out to the remaining 4 episodes but ill get to that.

Sound: When playing games i like to be immersed into it and one of those ways is through sound design and music. Unfortunately this game doesnt do it well like AT ALLL like JESUS CHRIST there are only like 5 songs in the entire 5 episodes and believe me they get old fast. its so bad that even in upbeat moments it playes that string instrumental (if you played the game you would know). youre better off using the mod below.


Renders: The Renders are just okay they dont really look bad neither do they look amazing in any capacity,shape or form just average. It has the occasional posture and facial problems but nothing TOO crazy its just okay and mediocre.

Grammar: Honestly this section would have gotten a passing grade from me but towards Episode 4 and 5 the grammar just takes a straight nose dive like misplacing words calling genitalia 'sex' and just all around weird phrases and naming characters wrongly. Its Just BAD! I dont think the Devs read through their first draft.

Amount of Content: What can i say, Its Long. Its a game that would keep you busy. adding all the episodes combined it would take you upwards of 10+ hours. Its only a shame that its 10+ hours of the absolute dogshit story ive ever read in my Life but im getting ahead of myself.

*THERE WILL BE STORY SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT*

Sex Scenes: Practically Non Existent. majority and i mean MAJORITY of the sex scenes practically make no sense. Its a story focused VN so as youll guess the sex scenes should be in line with the story and the character interactions and their personalities BUT UNFORTUNATELY its not executed that way. The sex scene with Carmen feels forced as if they forgot to add a sex scene after a lot of hours of playtime and just shoehorned it in. The sex with Sharon is the only one that makes sense to a certain degree. The sex and threesome with Laurie and Sharon came out of fucking NO WHERE and dont even get me started on th sex that happens with the minor characters. MOST of the sex scenes in this game come out of absolutely no where. On a norm i wont really be so hung up on the randomness of the sex scenes if it were any good but sadly its not. For one the sex scenes are not animated. Secondly they do this weird foreplay thing to get enough blood for the MC to get enough blood for an erection and i like the context and why it needs to be done but its executed so poorly and badly that im just baffled at how anyone will think its hot. And then to even get to the sex scenes youll have to get through a meaningless wall of nonsensical,borderline idiotic text of words called a story.

The Story: OH MY GOD!! the story was such a letdown from what seemed to be a very good premise. Basically the story centers around MC(nameable) He and his friend DJ at their local club one day he receives an invitation from someone to just play music at a gettogether. MC naturally takes it as free money and accepts the job. During the gettogether as he plays music a woman approaches him talking about how life is boring,yada yada yada she turns him into a vampire. With that type of premise you would think the story would be good but nope. Ill start with Characters.
MC: Has the personality of bland crackers very boring. Towards Episode 3 his moral compass takes a complete 180 degrees by him effectively ruining a policewoman's life all for a night of quick fun, frames a man for a serious crime just BECAUSE and so many more. He makes very and i mean VERY stupid mistakes including telling his bestfriend that he's a vampire leading to her almost getting killed. He gives a very important artifact to a dude that he clearly doesnt know too much of and knows his motves might be questionable. He fucks a vamp hunter first even tho it is heavily implied that he's in love with Sharon and all around MC is just a terrible person.
So the MC gets visions about this girl did they flesh it out and give a reason NOPE (I know the game is not finished)
Calisto(The woman that turned him) Just Dies for really no reason
Virgil(The guy he gave the artifact to) He dies for no reason too
The MC lets vamp hunters who know vamps are real, live for no reason even tho thats like their no.1 rule to be secretive abt their existence
Characters just die for no reason like CHRIST its as if episode 1 and episode 5 were written by different people. ITS SO BAD!!
Laurie and Astrid have seem to have a relationship would they flesh it out NOPE
They dont go into detail the type of religion Calisto practices
There are so much more wrong with this game but im tired of typing. The game is bad youre better off not even downloading cuz after episode 1 is disappointment.

I believe this game deserves a 5-star rating overall. However, I was disappointed by the way the ending was handled. It felt rushed and included unnecessary scenes. The game had a lot of potential and could have been the best vampire AVN game available. The developer's decision to rush the ending felt like a letdown after all the good work done so far. I initially considered giving the game a 2-star rating, but after experiencing the latest update, I find myself having a love-hate relationship with it.

I like very much the story and the characters, but do not expect sex scenes (until the end of episode 1). It is like a romance you want to read to the end. The plot seem interesting. I look forward to playing the other episodes.

I just can't fathom how this managed to stay at such a high rating after all this time.

On the Adult side of the visual novel, there are no animations, and the very few sex scenes we have gotten are barely erotic at all. I'd forgive this if the plot was good, but unfortunately, it's not.

The story portion of the game is terrible. Barely anything happens at all. It's like going to see an action movie with all the action scenes edited out. It's the slow burn to end all slow burns. You can jump into the game at nearly any point and you'll find that barely anything has progressed from the previous point, that characters are doing pretty much the exact same thing they were in the previous episodes.

After 5 years and many attempts to pick the game back up to try to see what the people who gave this a high rating saw, I've given up. I'll never understand.

I will rush my review the same way dev rushed ending of this long time project.

There was SO MUCH MORE potential in here but all wasted. Every each update, I had hopes it will get better and couple interesting moments will be developed into something more. Unfortunately almost all of them were left in background where main stage was occupied by tons of pure filler dialogues and just stupid/extremely stupid plot.

I wasted so much time on this game, lost saves couple times in the process so most parts I played more than once. Fairly to say I'm quite into this game and after finishing ep5up15 I can say with certainty that I DO NOT recommend this game.

Boring and disappointing, very disappointing. 2/5

I swear it's the last time I download a game purely based on the amount of positive reviews only. The fact that negative comments are wayyyy more liked should have been a massive hint.

Tbh I didn't even finish the 1st episode because there are a lot of cons and any pros I had when starting to play were just overthrown by cons.

It started pretty well and looked quite intriguing, you're turned into a vampire by a unknown seemingly powerful one, discover their secret society and are given a tutor (Sharon) to guide you. Not gonna lie, up to that point it was quite captivating because we were discovering at the same pace as the MC.
But then you discover the MC is a damn -50 IQ dude and you can't do shit about it, worst thing is that you know he's going to mess up, he knows he's messing up but he just don't give a fuck and will do it anyway then say some shit like "sorry I messed up but you got to help me".


And the dumb and dumber episodes keeps piling up, at some point MC is basically a toddler. Everything says don't but be sure he will do, tell him a inamovible fact he'll keep askip you if you're sure about it. In some of the reviews I see people say that he's spineless (I'm not even surprised), he does a 360 on his moral compass (he doesn't have one, or at least I figure not because dude himself said he had no shame gene, Lol), treat people like shit and just do as he want.

So no thanks, it's not a story driven AVN, story wrap around MC stupid decisions that keep pilling up and you have no control over, only choices I've seen is simply agreeing or agreeing while joking on how pathetic the MC is. Conversations are basically useless, you ask someone something? He'll tease you the answer but won't give it to you fully or random people will blurt a piece of information totally out of the blue. It's like they try to keep some mysteries to keep you wanting to unravel them thus playing and when you "need" that info someone will randomly spill it out.
Barely even a AVN tbh cause there's only 2 nude bodies so far and it looks like there's only 3 totally random sex scene so no points taken here as well.
NPC are lot likeable at all because they're having bipolar crisis that either star trouble or resolve them out of the blue.
Gameplay is nonexistent, you got 3 skills you need to improve but opportunities are mostly random and you don't even why you should push this skill or the other since you don't have any control over your character improvements and it looks like you can't even choose when to use them, total joke.

My bad there's one slight pro and it's the graphics, nice looking girls so far but dudes are barely meh.
Honestly feel like dev had an interesting main plot but no clue about how it would unravel so he just stitches everything that comes up.

Hard pass if you're looking for story driven, well written, interesting characters or just sex scenes. But if you enjoy vampires and stuff and can play a game without impersonating the MC or you find that Twilight was a great movie you may find it okay.

Not really worth it: the story is good, the writing is fairly good, the girls are interesting, the sex is very poor. It's not entirely unrewarding, but you'd be better off reading a book.

There are a few meaningful choices (not counting the choice to be a dick to the optional girls) but their impact is either underwhelming or a hard game over. They don’t cause branches.

I'm not super into vampire stories, but this one is fairly well constructed. The timescale should be spread out across a few years, not a few months, given the protagonist's meteoric rise. I’m not sure why these vampires don’t breathe, have heartbeats, have human body temperatures, or eat or drink anything other than blood. Doesn’t seem to add to the story. And how did vampires ever come to thrive if they die immediately upon exposure to the sun?

The girls are interesting and different, but I don’t find the blonde attractive.

The sex stuff is a complete disappointment. Because the protagonist is a vampire, he needs extra blood to get an erection, so a lot of it – the foreplay entirely – is strange blood-drinking stuff, which I don’t find erotic. Also, the writer refers to genitals as “sex” as in “you reach down and touch her sex.” Plus, the sex scenes with Carmen seem rather out of character for her. Almost as if they said “people are complaining that there aren’t sex scenes, and Sharon said she’s going to wait, so we need to get someone in bed with the protagonist this episode.” The point of a plot-supported sex scene is that the characters add to the scene. Otherwise it’s just random fucking. Even if they were good, the sex scenes are far too scarce. I’m all for slow burns, but there should be more than 7 or 8 sex scenes in 5 episodes and 17gb of adult game.

In the beginning, Sharon and the protagonist are awake while the sun is still up. Cuz…?

In pt. 5, the protagonist reveals the existence of vampires to hunters and lets them go afterwards, which is like the cardinal rule.

The first 4 episodes have occasional typos, but not enough to derail it. The 5th is full of typos and misspellings, like the creators didn't even care to go over their first draft. There are errant screens attached to some lines. At one point, some ugly dude (Carius?) is labelled as Carmen, when she's in a different city. It's really distracting, confusing, and unprofessional.

So yeah, I wouldn’t recommend this game, unless you have a blood-drinking fetish.

My first vamp theme AVN, would rate 5 for the 1st season and same if played 2 years ago. But now will just say the story is good but it turns bad in episode 5. Not that bad but doesn't justifies the pace of the story in a good way.
Good start, bad story after that. MC doesn't have any charm nor any other characters, you get the feeling at the start that the game will turn out something more but turns way bad than expected. Still will say try it once because it was likely one of the first Vamp theme visual novel to catch audience at the start.

I just played the game i found it extremely good .. simply masterpiece
story is very good , visuals are great too and it has very good characters are too
it doesn't have much sex scenes but i don't care about it,
i played it mostly for the story (though few more sex scenes with sharon wouldnt be bad)
moreover i really liked Sharon and MC relationship and thats im going for the end. (Sharon path)
i also liked that basically the story have a main female love interest (sharon)
with some side chicks for fun.
Overall this VN is one of the best VN if you are searching for a quality work and not looking for just repetitive sex scenes without any plot.

Probably the best VN I ever played. The story is great and engaging, and characters that make you feel. You can really sense the writer/artist cares about the story and the way it's told. And the game is not just a sex-sim, it makes you work for your reward.

I have no clue why this game rates so well, its really not that good...seriously

The MC is a drone, he is not really special or memorable in any way, truthfully none of the characters really are.

The game has some ideas or gives you some thought provoking concepts early enough on and during for a bit but then never goes anywhere.

The models are mediocre at best, scenes are nothing special...its just not a good game, its a hell of a lot of dialogue that you can almost skip entirely and still catch on several updates later as to what is going on...The plot is stretched far beyond what it should be and does really little to keep the player interested and if you in for just lewd...well, keep looking

I have followed and played this game since launch in the hope it would become something more interesting but it simply isnt. There are other games that have a paranormal setting which are much better.

I left Rebirth durign the first part of the game, and yet I still give it a 5 stars, why? Well, the reason is simple: it is a great narrative vampire (VtM is more than an influence here) game. But it's not a great erotic game, sex is not too present nor important, in a story that goes beyond that into exploring the evolution of a new kindred, their entrance into vampire society, the problems with holding humanity, and so on. Characters are all interesting and nuanced, situations are tense and believable (within the game's world), and so on.

All the technical aspects are really good as well, from the good renders, to the animations I saw and the sounds present. And I didn't face any bugs while playing.

So, all in all, when I get more time around to get deep into a real game with a real story I'll probably pick it up again. Really worth it.