Brilliant game that is a near masterpiece!
Pros
- Excellent writing
- Excellent storytelling
- Excellent humor
- Fun characters who you grow to love
- Likeable MC
- Excellent lewd/sex scenes
- Excellent animations
- Good use of sound effects
Cons
- Honey Select game - outdated graphics and outdated character models
- Writing gets a bit verbose or drawn out, mainly just a couple of places in the game such as when the MC enters 1999 (beginning part). The game pace can get a bit slow at times (between events).
- Few meaningful choices in the game (I understand that this is a visual novel).
- MC needs more character development. The MC is likeable but I still don't really know who he is at this point aside from mundane facts. We know a lot about his quest for finding out the truth about the power plant disaster but we don't know very many defining characteristics about the MC aside from this. Some of the love interests in the game have the same problem. To the author's defense, many characters are still in early development.
I generally frown on Honey Select games because of the outdated and below average character models but there are a few out there that make up for it with superb writing and stories. This game is a real gem among Honey Select games! The visuals and character models are passable enough to not distract from the story, however there are plenty of games out there with much better visuals and character models.
One bonus for authors using Honey Select is that they can develop much faster due to lower rendering time. They don't have to have a PC with monster specs to render at a decent speed. I've followed a lot of developers and games on this site and those rendering in DAZ usually produce 50% less content per release as opposed to those rendering with Honey Select. There are tradeoffs either way.
The past two winners of the Christmas Developer Contest were Honey Select games. So using Honey Select isn't necessarily a bad thing...
I'm guessing this game was originally called 'Nipples'? The author's F95Zone profile says, "Nipples Dev". I'm guessing Patreon made him change the name to Ripples to fit their guidelines.
Jestur (the developer of this game) goes outside of the normal Honey Select animations and creates unique ones of his own. This is hugely refreshing as I get tired of seeing the same Honey Select default animations over and over again!
Jestur also makes good use of sound effects. It is extremely rare that an author will have excellent animations, writing, and sound effects! This makes the sex scenes something unique and special!
There isn't a lot of sex scenes in the game but the ones in it are done exceptionally well. I greatly prefer games that have good stories AND plenty of lewd content. There was enough to keep me satisfied. I was not disappointed.
There is some porn logic used with some of the lewd scenes but it is done better and is more believable than many other games I've played. The dev puts one foot in reality and one foot in fantasy (which I greatly prefer). The author doesn't take all reality and jettison it into space like I commonly see in other games. Thank you for keeping the game believable and real!
The thing that sets this game above many others is the excellent humor throughout the game! The humor feels natural and not forced which is rare. Too many games out there try to force the humor and you can tell and it often falls flat. This is not the case with this game. The game had me laughing many times! Thank you! It was a big stress reliever.
I'm hoping that there will be a harem option with this game. The author makes you fall in love with all of the the love interests in the game. It is a testament to the brilliant writing but will be very painful if I end up having to choose just one of them!
Thank you for not having a zillion love interests! The game focuses on four girls which gives the game more focus. This also allows the player to form deeper relationships with them.
One common pitfall I see with authors is their inability to develop deep and meaningful relationships with characters in the game. You see this in games where the author continually adds more and more pretty faces (new characters) into the game in order to keep things fresh and interesting. What you end up with is a ton of shallow characters with next to no character development. This author appears to be the opposite of that. Great authors have the skills and talents necessary to develop deep and meaningful relationships!
All the pieces fit together near perfectly in this game. It is well polished and a near masterpiece! I thoroughly enjoyed this game!
I highly recommend this game and encourage others to give it a try!