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

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.

I played this game like two or three years ago when it was only had 3 episodes and I didn't finish it because I lost interest in the story. I decided to come back and see what has happened since. And I'm very disappointed. Not mentioning the lack of chemistry between our own little group (Sharon, Andrew, Laurie, Carmen, etc.), the plot itself.... Idk what the hell is going on or why some things are happening. It's good to keep us (the players) guessing when there's a mystery, but it's bad writing if you confuse them or simply throw them out of the loop completely. Things seem to happen randomly imo. I can't seem to understand where the plot is going other than there's a big old baddie down the cave somewhere, and everyone takes an interest in it. Idk, I don't feel like the build up to anything was written all that well.

There's not a lot of H-scenes, I don't really have a problem with it if it makes sense, and it does, but the most recent ones seem to happen out of nowhere just because? Like, eh? Seems so random that they suddenly wanted to fuck. The first time with Sharon? She's been abstaining for the longest time, but then she suddenly wanted to fuck out of nowhere? No build up to it? I can't remember what they were doing exactly before the scene, but I remember talking about some serious stuff, and the suddenly she wanted to fuck. Like what? Threw me off the mood. And the sex scenes aren't even that good. I don't expect any animations, but the renders, angles, duration are not worth the wait at all. After a long wait, we finally got a sex scene... and it was crap. Sharon's scene is not the only one, the other scenes are pretty much similar. It was just so poorly done overall... I've played other games with little sex scenes and they're not the focus in those games anyway. But when you do get them, they were worth it. It's like getting your paycheck at the end of every month after your hard work. The scenes in Rebirth feelslike when you've worked your ass off, and only got minimum wage out of it, if you even get paid at all.

I also have issues with how Laurie is being handled. First, she only got caught in all of this because the MC wanted to keep her in his life (I think, I forgot it was so long ago), and that's why he told her about him being a vampire. Astrid saw, reported it to the uh what's the name, Archon? Marcius or whatever, and so Laurie's life is in danger. MC made her his thrall to keep her safe in the end. BUT THEN, other than the little and short moments we got between MC and Laurie whenever she wanted some of his blood, Laurie was neglected quite a bit. MC barely spent time with her and even do anything with her, and while I understand that he had other things to deal with, but it felt like she was an afterthought in his life. AND THEN, the dev decided to kill her off in the cave. Sharon decided to turn her into a vampire. I didn't like that at all. I didn't want her to be a vampire. Heck, being a thrall was already bad enough for her life, but now she's one of them? We robbed her of her life as a human and that doesn't sit well with me. The same thing was done to both Ivy and Nora. We just take them both and decided to take their lives away. If it was done voluntarily, like in Laurie's case, it wouldn't be too much of an issue. But Ivy and Nora didn't have a choice and I didn't like how it played out.

I've caught up to episode 5 but haven't finished it yet because I need to rant about it here before I lost the desire to do so later. Sharon is acting weird, we understand what caused it, but not why. It was so bizzare to see her character turned upside down completely, but then we just gave the shield away without any further thought to Virgil, who we still don't know full well what his intentions are, but then later once he got his own people down the cave, MC suddenly thought that he shouldn't've given him the shield. He wanted answers in return for the shield, but Virgil couldn't (or wouldn't) give him satisfying answers, but it's fine, right? He gave Virgil the shield anyway. And then there's the thing with Malia. Sharon demanded a meeting with Malia to get some answers, barked a little demanding answers, Malia didn't give her satisfying answers while keeping some things hidden from both Sharon and MC, and they're both fine with it and let Malia be. After all of that. They just walked out after not getting what they truly wanted. Yet again. It's the norm, apparently. Malia was the one MC trust, btw. Trusted her because he knew her before being a vamp, gave him a job, etc. He championed her to be the new archon replacing the bald one. Since he trusted her so much, surely she's our ally right? Then we found out she's been scheming behind the scenes with Virgil & co. And here I thought she was an ally. This game has a problem in writing good dynamics and relationships between characters, especially the ones the MC considers as his allies and friends.

Either way, I've talked way too much. Just needed to put it in writing. After I'm done with its latest update, I don't think this is a game that I'd like to come back again eventhough the ending is near. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, depends whether I'd have anything else better to do or not. There are worse AVN games out there than this one, but there are also much better ones. This one is in the middle. Unfortunate, since it had a lot of promise. I was gonna give it a 2-star, but 3-stars seem about right.

I just played first episode and gotta say that this game is difficult to summarise.

There is no actual sex between any characters, and it's not like i am against VNs without sexual content so at some point i started to only judje the story. Wich is not that good unfortunatelly.

If you will make a choice based story with not porn, you have at least to give me meaningfull choices to actually mold the Mc's personality. Not just force me to swallow a Vampire story where i don't have at least the choices to be the bad guy or the good guy.

And for god sake, don't write a vampire story if you have fear of showing blood. This is not Twilight!

Maybe some day i will come back to play the other episodes and see if it becomes any better, but the day is not today...

TL/DR: Okayest vamp game I've played. Super-duper average. Right down the middle. 3 stars. Nailed it! Very story driven vamp game that engages with the depth of vampire themes on a shallow level. Middling writing- but some fun tried and true tropes. Powers system is kinda fun. MC has the EQ of a piece of cardboard. Scene content is neither very erotic nor very well rendered.

Pros:
+ This is quite a long game with lots of story content.
+ The lore is pretty decent. Who doesn't love this sort "They dug too deep" narrative.
+ Lots of cool looking vamps!
+Power development / differentiation (in the code / story) is a lot more robust than most Ren'Py games. Big fan of that.
+ The blood sharing in the scene content was fun.

Cons:
- Very few sex scenes for a H game.
-Not many renders per sex scene.
-MC doesn't really have any cool powers that make the sex scenes hotter. Its just your standard- "I get so horny when you bite me" sorta stuff.
- A lot of the content is non-consensual and features weird power dynamics caused by the vampire's abilities. If you like giving chicks stockholms syndrome, addicting them to your blood, and then raping them....you'll like this title more.
- The characters vacillate b/t slightly considering the evil of their actions to not even thinking about it at all. There was a ton of casual evils committed by characters who were not supposed to be the "bad guys."
- The characters' voices are all strangely homogeneous. If they weren't separated by names- it'd be quite difficult to tell who was who. Except for one character every single one of them had the laugh "Hee Hee" MJ is clearly haunting this VN
- Pacing feels pretty erratic. Sometimes it is treading water as the characters ping from place to place doing very minor things- other times a BBE is removed in a rather not epic way.
- You have very little control over the protagonists personality / perspective. You can pretty much choose to be a dense sorta okay dude or a dense kinda assholeish dude. Either way your character will hard simp for Sharon (who I didn't care for that much) and blow off / mistreat Laurie (who I liked a lot).
- The romances feel empty and lifeless.
- Lots of typos.
- There are internal consistency issues- such as Sharon saying the MC has too many thralls to feed (when he only has one at the time) ect ect.

This is really going nowhere. The story is meandering without any focus, there's no real tension. People do stuff. It all has little consequence.

Worse though, there's little chemistry between the characters. Sharon is written in a way that makes her inept at best or completely incompetent at worse, just so she needs to lean on the manly MC. The side characters aptly swoon for the MC as seems to be the first commandment of porn games.

It's all just really really boring. Even the vampire thing is mostly Disney level story telling.

Disappointing.

Whenever I read someone say they play an AVN for the story, I roll my eyes. Of course there are some AVNs that have compelling stories, and some are even well written, but if great stories were really what we were after, surely we would seek them from a source other than porn games. Yet now I find myself having spent many hours reading/playing "Rebirth" by LikesBlondes (review as of episode 5 update 7) and I am hooked by its story far more than its porn content. Moreover, I continued to engage with the story, despite the fact that the fundamental concept is that our MC becomes a vampire, an idea that if I had known about it before downloading the game, I would have rejected immediately as adolescent drivel.

Despite the juvenile fantasy nature of the core plot, LikesBlondes' writing and characters are firmly adult. Experienced through our MC's eyes, I learned more and more about this world and found myself suspending my disbelief and caring about the characters. There's no narrative exposition that gives you character background and world lore. Instead, we learn about it as the MC does, by talking to other people and interacting with the world around him. Some of the people our MC talks with include our vampire mentor, Sharon, and her thrall, Andrew. As they help us navigate life as a new vampire, they also reveal bits of their backstories, all done in ways I found satisfying. Not as satisfying as a great novel or anything like that, but it's certainly on par with much of the airport bookstore fare that people happily devour during long flights.

As porn, "Rebirth" does fall short, in my view. There isn't a lot of lewd content here and what is here is not exactly best in class. Part of the problem is that the game seeks a level of verisimilitude, in that vampires do not hold enough blood in their bodies to get erections. Because of this, the MC occasionally is literally unable to perform. Of course, the verisimilitude flies out the window when it comes time for the cumshot. The game made such a big deal about the need for blood I wondered if maybe the MC would ejaculate it, but it looks like regular old semen to me.

Visually, the renders are passable, if a bit basic. The female characters are mostly quite attractive. The lewd scenarios are often highly erotic, but the presentation is minimal and there are lots of weird closeups. If cinematic animations and highly detailed visuals are what you need, "Rebirth" will probably not be fap-worthy. The game offers some choices, so perhaps the game can support more than one playthrough, but I haven't done a second yet to be able to say whether another run is worth the effort. There is no gallery, so I have no idea if making different choices would lead to different lewd scenes or romance paths.

Bottom line: if you're looking for a quick fap or a sex marathon, this is not it. If you're looking for a reasonably well-told adult fantasy with erotic elements, "Rebirth" is worth checking out. I, for one, expect to see this one through to the end.

Story is wasent really good, its very vanilla when it comes to vamp stories, there is not really anything new or any good twists, its pretty well written even though it does have a few worng or misspelled words every now and then.

You should think of this game like a couple romance with 2 people and nothing else, its really all its about and you wont have any choices to change anything, the story is also very slow and drawn out there is no fun or action just huge amought of text and very little progress.

What really ruins the game is the lack of choices, and MC is more like a thrall then hes own person, he has a single goal and a brainless mind that you have 0 controle over, he only cares about getting together with a single girl, so if you as the player dont like her, right from the start you might as well quit the game, it will force you into a relationship no matter how many times you pick the fake choices like not touching her not to kiss her and so on, they have absolultly no effect, and MC will none stop flirt with her.

Storyline feels extreemly kinetic and you dont have any kind of meaningfull choices like who to have sex with, but plenty of fake choices that changes nothing, apprently a very few choices will impact the story down the line but 95% will be kinetic.

There will be spoilers in the text below so read on at your own risk.

Some things make little sense, like when MC wants to show hes childhood friend hes a vamp, he can only prove it by stepping in to sunlight? that feels idiotic, hes a vamp he should have superhuman strength and how about him not breathing, i mean there is about a million other things he could do...sunlight would be the absolutly last option if you ask me....

Then there is the hole issue with turning Laurie into a thrall MC knows nothing about what it is, but apprently he barely even cares about what it will do to hes friend and he is just fine with it, MC dosent even ask many questions about it, i thought he cared about hes friend but for some weird reason he couldent care less???? even after she turns into a thrall MC dosent give a shit with what he sees, its like MC has transformed into a hole diffrent person that dosent match how hes been acting for the hole story and it just dosent make sense, he even wants to kill humans who are now just food to him, he was even told to keep hes humanity but its just gone out the window.

Sharon dialogs gets a bit boring, after what she did to MC compelling him to force him to do stuff and treating hes friend like shit, MC should be more pissed then what he is and he accepts all that as happened to him way to easy, you got to remember its all forced on him and he never asked to become a vamp, but MC just accept the facts and starts falling in-love with Sharon for unknown reasons???? which also dident make sense, and you as the player has no controle over it.

i hated the bitch and it felt alot like femdom in the start, couldent wait to put her in her place or get the fuck out, so MC starting to flirt constantly with her felt stupid to say the least, even when you pick every single option to not touch her or do anything with her it means nothing just fake choices since MC just keeps on flirting and touching her trying to get into her pants, it dosent help that shes a lesbian as well....
Its so bad that its making game unplayable.

Another fail is the visions MC gets and that no one belives him, its extreemly stupid since MC could just tell the vamp girl about her parrents and how she and her parrents looked when she was young since she knows MC never met them, that would fix any issue of not beliving, its just a huge fail on that part.

And MC dosent listen to anyone not even to Sharon that keeps teaching him about only drinking/feeding when he needs not when he wants, and first chance he gets he feeds on one girl then move on to hes old friend to feed even more, its stupid and all out of the controle of the player, most stupid part is thats its all about getting hes dick hard, also for no reason since he dosent have sex with anyone, making the hole thing pointless.

Yet again MC shows how little brains he has when he talks to Sharon about killing Astid, Sharon ask why he dosent want to kill Calisto to and hes response is "She dident try to have me killed" i mean really she tried to kill him by feeding on him and never expected him to survive....and on a side note i earilere in the game also picked the option that i would rip off Calistos head given the chance, but now he dosent want to kill her? again choices 0 has effects and story is becoming a big mess.

One of the absolutly biggest fails is when he fucks Carmen, a freaking hunter an enemy, and one of the most ugly LIs, that made 0 sense, hes been trying to get with Sharon for the hole game and the first fuck is with Carmen? no just no, the last bitch he should fuck would be her.....thats when i couldent take any more of the poorly written story and had to quit and delete.
I gave it a really good try but its just becoming to idiotic for me to play on.

Also the game is not really a AVN since its missing the adult part, there is 0 sex scenes in chapter 1 and 0 in chapter 2, in chapter 3 you finaly get to see a sex scene not that it was one that made any sense but still.

They made a very poor excuse to not make sex scenes by saying vamps cant get a dick hard due to not having enough blood, it goes without saying thats the most stupid thing for a game that is supposed to be an adult VN.

Girls, well there arent many and i dident find any of them attractive, same for their personalities they where a bit boring.

Music is about average, some scenes the action type music is a bit misplaced and dosent fit with whats going on but overall its not bad.

If this game had meaningfull choices it would easy be a 4 star game, but since you cant controle or deside anything as the MC story just get ruined and make so little sense in to many areas, also dosent help the extreem lack of sex scenes and the MCs weird thrall like personality, so its at best a 2 star game.

cant believe i didnt play this game sooner, i definitely feel rebirthed. the chicks are hot sometimes, the story is where this ame excells at, the other things are pretty bad imho. if you like god story this is good game. charewcetrs are intereting too..

I like spatial rendering, it's simple but conveys what is needed, I guess this rendering strategy will reduce rendering time, which is great and also gives a unique touch to the game

Having played through 4 chapters now I can confidently say that this game is best passed over. The overarching story is nothing new, MC gets turned into a vampire, ancient vampire under a town gonna wake up and eat everything, gotta save the world. Even though the story isn't original in any way, it could still be saved by the characters...if they were good. The MC is an egotistical moron who is so arrogant it's amazing anyone can fit in the room with him. He's a nobody, and yet runs his mouth off in some of the worst situations he possibly could....because. I could understand if it was a bit of culture shock at first, but by the 4th chapter it's been a while and he's still being stupid. Also, he has visions, and NO ONE believes him. Apparently stuff like that is impossible, nevermind literal vampires are the ones not believing. As for the adult part of the AVN...there's virtually no sexual content, so not even that could save the game.

Rebirth has some stellar characters, but where it really shines is its story and worldbuilding. Its a slow burner, and the sex scenes arent the best, but the story keeps you invested in every damn scene. It legitimately might have the most interesting and unique tale of any game on the site.

There is absolutely no nonsense or filler content, every scene feels like it's worth being there and every scene feels like it's going to have some sort of effect later down the road. Wonderful pacing indeed. I WANT to know what attacked Sharon, I WANT to know who Calisto really is, I WANT to know where Astrid is going to end up, I WANT to know how the ancient is going to be dealt with, and I WANT to know how the vampire world will be affected in the long term.

Though admittedly, I often forget it's a porn game. Clearly the creator wants to stick closer to the narrative, which im fine with, but my only actual gripe is the quality of the sex scenes is fairly mid. No animations (not even back and forth renders), too dark to see in many examples and quite honestly, they just feel like they're thrown in there to keep the game tagged as NSFW.

One other problem, SOME of the characters feel somewhat pointless. Carmen, for one. She offers basically nothing interesting to the story and feels more like a method to get to the next scene as opposed to an actual character. The others are slwoly starting to feel that way in the last chapter, and i hope this doesnt become a longstanding problem.

If you cant find anything useful for all of your characters to do, find a way to put them outside of the main story for a while. Dont become seasons 10-12 of Doctor Who.

Still though, put the horn aside for a while and play through this title. It is WELL worth the time investment, and I will absolutely be coming back in future.

Edit: Moving to 2 stars. This turned out disappointing. Rushed finished. Killing off characters for no reason out of the blue. Story got stuck in the mud and did not really end up going anywhere. Wish I could rate this higher but it just ended up being a not good game that was on the cusp of being awesome.

Another great game from this developer. Good writing and pacing, art isn't phenomenal but its good enough. The only downside is its development is much slower than it was for Life With Mary. Its slightly overambitious, but the game (after 4 years of development) is still on track to be finished eventually. One of the better plots in a VN on this site, would highly recommend playing.

*I will preface this by saying I have only played about 1 1/2 chapters of this VN*

What to say about this VN. Did I enjoy my time playing it? Yea, I did. Do I see myself playing more of it? Probably not.
Like I said above, I only played about 1 1/2 chapters but as anyone who played it will tell you that's a good lot of hours worth of content.

What I liked -
The story good. I first heard about this VN in a thread about games were the story takes precedence over the sexual stuff (which is my cup of tea). Although a story about vampires wouldn't have been my first choice, I'm glad I gave it a shot. It's interesting enough to keep you engaged

The visuals are great. Nothing spectacular but still good. There are some occasions were you get a close up of a characters hair and there's some nice details there.

My issues with the game -

**Some people might think this ventures into spoiler territory. personally I don't. The majority of these things happen early on in the game but read at your own risk**

The biggest issue of the game in my opinions is how characters relationships grow
Very early on your established as a Padowan to an already experienced vampire. Ok, cool. And your basically living in her house. That's fine too but its not long before your having an active role in what goes on. Its as if your partners instead of master and apprentice
You sleep in the same bed because her room is the only one with protection from the sun. Ok cool, it makes sense because they're basically corpses when they sleep but out of nowhere your character starts saying "oh yeah, I want you". And she's flirty back "but I don't love you so I wont sleep with you and you also can get it up because you don't have as much blood anymore and you need blood for an erection"?? umm ok I guess...

Your best friend from before you turned also becomes your Thrall (follower) because your told her you were a vampire even after being told not to.
I have no problem with this but your character just starts being a bit of a dick to her.
I get that your relationship has turned into a master/slave kind of deal but this is were the game desperately needs a mass effect paragon renegade system were you can be nice to her or you can choose to be an ass to her

And don't get me started on Andrew. I like the guy but every two seconds his big bald head is on your screen.

All in all its not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination but I just don't like the way the characters are going and reading some other reviews on here doesn't exactly fill me with hope of redemption

This AVN had so much promise. I even donated a VERY large amount to help out. Unfortunately the time it takes to get any real story is way too long. The true story that we have so far could be condensed into one episode if you took out all the unnecessary things.

I absolutely adored this story. I've always enjoyed VtM as a setting and have played numerous of the make your own adventure games on steam but apart from one (the road?) the writing has felt kinda disappointing. Not a problem for these games. Was gripped from start to finish.

This one's perfect for all who value a good story. The sex scenes are scarce and short but don't get me wrong. With a big focus on its story, this game is a masterpiece and I would love to have this as a movie.

I have been following this game for a while and just got to play throughout episode 4. I must say that this game is a major disappointment in story and sex scenes. The visuals and models are high-midtier at best and probably stock. The skill system doesnt make any sense as far as i saw it, there might be hidden things at work but not in my playthrough. There are just a few sex scenes that are in my eyes too basic, soulless and mostly with people unrelated to the MC, who thought that was a good idea. Overall a bad game but better than Boku no Pico.