VN - Ren'Py - Rebirth [Ep.5 ver1] [LikesBlondes]

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 and try to see what the people that have given this its high rating despite being such an utter bore, I give 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.

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.