VN - Ren'Py - Rise of the Crime Lord [v0.12 Alpha 1 Extended] [IziRider]

I wanted to like this one and it has some very good things in it, but it ended up falling short of what I consider good enough to devote my time. The core idea of the story is interesting and it would work very well if the writing wasn't so full of errors; I get it the authors are not english speaking natives, but I ain't either and the mistakes they make are too big and constantly take me out of the game. There are plenty of choices, which is great, and as far as I've played (chapter 3 or so) they do seem to be impactful, even though a lot of them from the first parts are apparently lost with the time jumps, I imagine that wouldn't happen from then on.

The art and characters are rather nice and they seem quite different from the common and overused models around. But animations are rather poor and the sexual content is a bit underwhelming. Music is also mediocre and sometimes annoying so I turned off all audio.

So, all in all, not a bad game, but it has some aspects it would need to seriously improve. So, for me at least, I rather devote my time to other games.

Language barrier is obviously a thing here and still, even at this level, it can't overshadow the positive aspects imo:

Well thought through and interesting setting and world believable as well as diverse characters. And after a slow start building and introducing those all it also shifts to a good balanced mix between interesting story and girls. The pacing also feels about right, not too rushed and not too slow at this point.

What I furthermore really appreciate is firstly the fact that there aren't only braindead/troupe bimbo girls/guys. As mentioned we get a diverse cast of characters and with Cora at least even one about equal with the MC as far. Gotta love the interactions, honesty and support (options) between them. I hope this aspect continues, as it makes the story a whole lot spicier and more interesting to me at least.

Secondly, there's no (overly) annoying moral ranting/pretenses/etc. as some games here implement. Where every character that acts outside of certain norms automatically needs therapy and whatnot. Here it's rather a more "grey" approach which feels more realistic in contrast and flows well with the story.

Visuals maybe aren't highest tier of what you can find on here but they are definitely in the higher quality area overall imho. With a good amount of care for details and composition.

Plot is surprisingly not terribly cheesy/ridiculous, only a little bit but thats to be expected. Translation isn't great but its not terrible, occasional wrong character identifier and has its share of spelling mistakes.

Loads of player choice which is nice, the problem is that it starts branching too early in the game. Its just a unfeasible amount of content to produce and push the story forward. The overall amount of content for a game with over 6 years of development is also on the low side.


To not rush the endings, this game would need 5+ more years of development if its current dev speed was maintained, which is why I rated 2 stars instead of 3.

Right off the bat, I have to say that I really like this game but it does not make a strong first impression. I first tried it over a year ago and bounced off it quickly enough that I barely remembered playing it at all. This time around I powered through and I'm so happy that I did.

Let's get the biggest negatives out of the way first: the visuals are so-so and the English translation is not great, but both of those aspects are greatly improved in the later chapters. I would say that the content in the latest update is above average in that regard.

Easily the biggest strength is the variable dynamic between the two protagonists. Their faithfulness to each other is completely within the player's control and no path feels under-served. All of the love interests have an equivalent platonic route to explore so you won't feel like you're skipping huge swaths of the game if you don't want to fuck them. And honestly, the overarching narrative is one of the more engaging plots you'll find on this website.

I went with the cheating wife/faithful husband route for my first playthrough and it does not disappoint. The wife is decidedly the secondary focus of the story, especially early on, but as somebody who prefers female protagonist games I found plenty here to enjoy. She has a fewer options than her counterpart at the moment, but that just makes her side feel like more of a slow burn. There are a lot of intriguing seeds being planted in her route and I anxiously await the pay-off.

Well, a game with many innovations, an interesting story, an interesting rise of a possible Boss, it starts from afar, true, but the game develops in the right times, his DNA comes out in the long run, he has his father's blood, but perhaps much more intelligent and witty. has some typical elements of a game based on power, money, sex, delinquency, MC has the sense of family protection, what real bosses do even in reality, many good conversations, many beautiful women, and a lot of corruption, MC can count on the sisters Ash and Miri, on his friend Raven, his father's former colleague, a true cold killer, the one who taught Mc how to be strong, the rest, he has some friends, yes, but nothing that perhaps is as faithful to him as the characters described. let's go to the description of the wife, there are many contradictions about her, but here I find perhaps a real doubt in the plot, as the values of mafia bosses are always told, I expect in the path of the wife's betrayal, Mc's just revenge, a real Boss, he can't let anyone cheat on him, especially his wife, I find those who say that she loves him bullshit, I don't think so, whoever loves you doesn't have a relationship with someone else, I can justify the secret sex escapade , but not what Cora does, I trust that the creators give the right weight to that path, if the destiny is to make MC grow as a true boss, then, revenge against those who betrayed him, wife and lover, or those who betrayed him are precluded. is. I think it's my only flaw, because this game isn't born like the usual TR, but is born as a story of an ascent, I'm fine with NTR, but here, we have a strong guy, therefore, I expect the consequences of that betrayal, and Even a policeman friend, he deserves to end up badly, he betrays him. great game, I expect a diversified grand finale, but in the right ways.

Rise of the Crime Lord is a VN about the son of a mafioso and his desperate struggle to stay out of a life of crime... only to get pulled right back in.

The game tries extremely hard. It follows the main character and his wife, though there's a bit of a prequel introducing only the male MC and his family. It then proceeds to pretend that it's just going to be a slice of life following the couple's romantic issues only to dip back into crime land, then out, and then back in. Over and over and over again.

That's kind of the problem to me. I actually enjoy the mob drama. The crime aspects of the story feel more focused, with direct goals and consequences for failure. It's just that at least 80% of the story is slice of life bullshit following the MC couple and their work lives. While these stories obliquely impact the crime story, which has been slowly orbiting closer and closer, it's insanely tedious waiting for actually important shit to happen amidst all the obnoxious filler.

This goes hand in hand with the fact that every scene is interminably long. Any conversation between the main characters and anyone else will be punctuated with paragraphs and paragraphs of internal monologue explaining the characters' next actions and plans for the future. It's the quintessential definition of telling and now showing. The characters desperately need to do things and talk to people instead of thinking all the time. There's a place for the latter, but it isn't constantly.

The sex scenes are also mostly extraneous to the main story. As a result, you have a kinda fun mafia plot, two tedious slice of life dramas, and then a bunch of sex drama all jammed into one game that's supposed to be a whole rather than four parts. It's predictable that the story would be a meandering mess and it is.

It's really disappointing, as I really do like the mafia plot. The various characters have enough personality and individual motives to make things interesting. I was briefly on the edge of my seat during the mid story mafia segue and subsequent consequences. The game is easily four stars if all the other excess storylines were cut and we had a crime drama with life and death sex to break up the story.

But it's not, and the graphics certainly aren't enough to carry it otherwise. The models are pretty dated and the animations are very short and choppy. There's no sense fighting through the story for the sex scenes, especially since the VN choices can be boiled down to fuck or not fuck, divorce or not divorce. There's hints that crime time will someday be front seat, but there's already many hours of content and it's still not the case.

Overall, Rise of the Crime Lord is a rather depressing labor of love gone wrong. There's an excellent crime story hiding somewhere deep beneath hours of slice of life bullshit. I wish I could recommend digging through the slice of life to reach the warm gooey crime drama within, but there's just so fucking much of it. It's just not worth your time.

Rise of the Crime Lord is, in my opinion, a very good game with some flaws. Some of the things that it does well are things that other games struggle with, or do not even attempt. But an important disclaimer is in order: If the player only likes self-inserting into a typical harem fantasy, this will not be an enjoyable game for them. The way that the female characters are portrayed is not standard for a porn game; they are written much closer to extremely spicy romance literature. The women in this VN have their own motivations and desires–including their own sexual desires–that do not necessarily center on the MC. But if the player is interested in a relatively engaging story with lots of sex this is a definitely worth a play.

Story: The story is good, especially for an adult VN. MC (Rick) is the son of a high-level member of the Mafia. Growing up Rick hated his father’s lifestyle, and so tries to live on the right side of the law. Offscreen, he marries his wife Cora, who is an up-and-coming high-powered attorney. Both Rick and Cora lived openly hedonistic lifestyles prior to their marriage, and neither was faithful to each other–and they loved it! But both were scared straight soon before their wedding, and have been monogamous with each other for five years. Now, because our two nymphomaniacs have fought against their natural inclinations, they find themselves with a dead bedroom and failing marriage. And of course, Rick’s father’s past crashes into their lives, upending everything.

Characters and Relationships: The player has several options on where they can choose to take the marriage. They could have the couple remain faithful to each other–then the dead bedroom will be fixed with steamy hot sex, of course. They could have one or both partners cheat on each other with singular or multiple other partners, while at the same time not fixing the marriage. This will lead in the future to an amicable or messy divorce. Or the player could have the couple cheat on each other and fix the dead bedroom and marriage, having them heading for an open relationship and the swinger lifestyle. All in all, I enjoyed the story and options available for the couple.

I appreciate that Cora is not a one-dimensional character. I have no problem with harem fantasies, and I play a few of the most highly rated ones myself. But it feels like a breath of fresh air to find a decently well written woman who has her own desires, both inside and outside the bedroom.

Graphics: They are OK. The game first came out in 2018, and the first few chapters look it. Over the past four years they have improved a lot. The women are beautiful, and the men who are LIs for Cora are not ugly (women may find them attractive). Some animations are included in the sex scenes, the early ones aren’t very good, but the later ones are decent. The graphics get the job done.

Sound: No music to speak of other than the main menu theme. Occasional phone rings or wake-up alarms are the only sounds in game. I personally would rather that the dev had just left the entire game silent, as hearing an alarm blare is annoying when there isn’t any other sound. Easily fixed by turning down the volume.

Writing: This is where the game struggles the most, but not because it is badly written, but rather that it is badly translated. The ideas are well thought out, the characters are well explored, and the sex scenes are hot. But the text was written in Hungarian, and then translated into English. A few lines–not enough to affect the understanding of the reader–have even been left untranslated. Often Hungarian idioms are directly translated into literal English. I personally found it to be a fun game trying to puzzle out what each idiom meant, but I imagine that many would only find this frustrating. The dev has had help with a few of the chapters, and they read better, but the translation is still quite poor. For me it didn’t detract too much, so only minus one star. For others, I can imagine them feeling enough frustration to rate the game lower.

Conclusion: Overall, this game is different–in a good way–from others on F95. Some topics this game explores that most games avoid: 1. Reviving (or not) a failing marriage with a dead bedroom. 2. Spouses who are tempted to be unfaithful, but is it really cheating when both are serial cheaters heading for an open marriage? Probably, but that’s for the player and characters to decide. 3. An interesting plot that drives the characters forward, and doesn’t merely serve as a vehicle for the MC to bang as many women as possible (although there’s still plenty of banging). 4. And an interesting and independent female secondary MC, with her own motivations and desires.

Rick is not a wimp, and neither is Cora. Strong men can marry strong women. If the player has Cora NTR a faithful Rick, I imagine that in the future Rick will have the option to get back at her in a very nasty way. And vice versa. I greatly commend IziRider for taking risks and giving us a game that hews closer to reality than most of what we see.

Highly recommended for players willing to struggle through the translation. However, if the player self-inserts and hates NTR or if the player struggles with English, my recommendation is to stay well clear.

Good renders, and an interesting concept.

But these elements are brought down by terrible writing/English (Note that the story concept is fine, but the translation/English used would make a Machine Translation Algorythem say "Wow that's Bad".

Aside from this, the story (or what I can parse out anyway) is a fairly typical crime drama (the title of the game helped me work this much out).

It's fine for a quick playthrough, but I think it needs some serious work on the story (both translation and contextually) as well as fixing some bugs like the fact that the Male MC is referred to as "Rick" (the default name) in half the scenes, even though I clearly renamed him "Chad ThunderCock".

I believe that these elements need to be addressed before the Developer should be asking for money.

Regarding the NTR/Sharing/Open Relationship system:

I have mixed impressions about this, these elements ARE totally AVOIDABLE as the Dev promises. In fact, you control the wife (Female MC) and make each decision for her.

The issue that Rise of a Crime Lord runs into here is the fact that the game has no mechanism or algorithm for considering previous choices.

As a result, the implementation of this system is very much a case where a question like "Should I Cheat/Ntr/Open Relationship? Y/N" is asked of the player at every possible scene.

This is made worse by the character's internal monologue, which seems to always consider how "exciting" it would be to take the sexual option, the Female MC is especially bad for this.

The result of this is a game where the Non-NTR/Sharing/Swinging players, (aka the "Only MC's cock" players) are constantly reminded that this other content is there, and constantly prompted to check and re-check if they want to see it. This can (and I suspect for many) will lead to players being constantly "on the defensive" or "hyper-vigilant" so that they don't accidentally make the wrong choice and trigger these scenes.

Example:

This isn't a terrible game, I can tell that the developer has put a good deal of effort into it, and I commend them for that. I also think the fact they have tried to offer a play path that doesn't involve ntr-like elements is commendable (if poorly implemented).

With that being said, even if the translations were flawless, I feel that this would only be a 3 or at the most 4-star game. There are some good ideas here, but they are heavily weighed down by design choices and a lack of polish.

The characters are based on very old models , but the stories are wonderful .
Not only is there a choice between open harem and simple marriage ,
there are even movie storyboards and flashbacks in the story telling .
The author is no doubt a genius at writing stories, but he should have paid attention to his graphics .
The author has used these characters for many years, but now there are too many games in 2022 where girls are prettier than the author's game .

The C&C in this game is pretty amazing and has the best branching path in the VN genre bar none. Your choices actually lead to different paths and scenes, and different relationships. "Illusion" of choice does not exist here because your choices actually do matter. Dialogue and conversation are very strong as well. The game also does not blueball and has plentiful of scenes.

Relatively good game. Need longer lewd scene. Somewhat rare of course for Adult game, but suited with this game because build up with every character, story,etc is somewhat great. Love the NTR in this game. Very few game has good NTR story but this game has potential. Thank you for an art.

Critique - v0.10

This game does a lot of things right, effort has gone into most aspects of the game and the game itself would be best described as a dating sim with consequences.

It's biggest failing would be in the animations, adding sound would make them so much hotter. As they stand i'd rate them a 6/10.

The plot is interesting with multiple pathways that'll keep you engaged, important characters have decent backstories too.

I think the backstories of the MC and FMC are a little odd, their relationship pre-wedding is full of infidelity. This is used a justification for infidelity after several years of faithful marriage (both deciding to be faithful after the wedding independently without consulting each other).
The aim of these very similar backstories is to give the impression that neither is suited for a life of monogamy, however the decision to cheat for both is left up to you.
It wouldn't have been too hard to justify any infidelity with unique stories/situations, this is a failing on the dev's part.

As it stands the FMC up to this point gets a lot more action in the bedroom than the MC (on cheating path), which I don't mind but others might (some LI's pathways are slow-burn).

Both MC's have very little guilt or remorse after they cheat, this is odd and along with their backstories of past infidelity reduces the severity of the betrayal on both sides, which kinda sucks.

While the English in the script is decent, it's far from perfect and is riddled with grammatical errors. Male and female pronouns are mixed up and the tenses are all over the place.

Side notes

The FMC finding the Reg character physically attractive is kinda off, he looks gaunt and his face is covered in bum fluff. His facial features could defo use some improvement.

All the girls are either shaved or have very similar landing strips, if you watch porn these days you'll see that bush has made a comeback. I would like to see the single milf characters (such as Judit) with some bush, perhaps the characters that aren't getting sex like Ashley also with some bush. Basically just add bush if it fits the character profile and situation.

Conclusion

Maybe this game is closer to a 3 star than a 4, but you rarely find porn games with a half decent plot, which I definitely appreciate.

This game is like a movie, from the well structured scenes to the brilliant facial expressions the characters show, absolute top notch. Its all about choices and most of the choices affect the outcome or the story one way or another, The only minus is the grammar hence the four stars from me.

To the game dev : You are going down the correct path just fix your grammar or get a writer to do that for you and don't change the female character appearances much, stick to the original ones. Congrats and Good luck!

The first time I saw this I thought, "Well, another cliché mob story, let's give it a try." And then I got the impression that I was right about my thinking, as the beginning in my opinion needs a rework, specifically the first scene. I mean, it starts right away with a intercourse and it feels like it's a desperate move to get the public's attention. After my first try, I never played again, but after so long I decided to try again and I don't regret it. If you endure the first scene, the game will quickly envelop you and you won't be able to stop playing it anymore. The characters are interesting and unique, each has a different personality and the dialogue is top notch, it's not like 98% of the games here where the characters seem to have been written by a child or teenager who loves anime and has never seen real adult content. Surprisingly, this is the first visual novel that I don't feel bad about ntr stuff. I've never had any problems with ntr, but I don't love it either. But this one is incredibly executed, the decisions are realistic and you don't feel like the story gives you that option just because some players love this kind of fetish. I just can't understand why people give such a negative review to this work.

Really interesting game. Not the best renders in the world, but they are good enough and the way specially sex scenes are animated is up there with the best. The MC is one capable dude, pretty smart, it looks like he was writen by a adult, and the fact that is somehow "based on" Patrick Jayne, makes it better. He didnt know how to fight, and this one does, but their mental processes are similar and is at least pretty fun to read.

Overall this novel seems to be written by an adult, or a good writer, for how things happen and how they are described, there are extra steps that they are not present in many VNs, so this writer knows his shit.
For me this game has the 2 things that i look for in any VN, which are decent sex scenes that feel natural, personally i wouldnt even need animations and good writing with a likeable Mc.

Well im ready to give it 5 stars, if it shows just a little more.

Edit:
Played half the earlier version before, and I overlooked a couple of things. For 0.91 i started from scratch and the English is still quite bad, it is specially noticeable in long dialogues, and Ashley who speaks kind of weird takes the worst part in my opinion. Ina first plathrough i think the relationships and the feeling fo the dialogues help you getting to the sex scenes, that are the good part of the game. But in a second playthrough is imposible not to notice it.

Definetly needs proofreading, or rewriting a lot of stuff cause there are expressions and sentence structures that are weird for an english speaking person, i know it cause i do smilar stuff quite a lot.

Well, this time i cotinued playing, i really was saving it cause i saw interesting thingsi didnt want to be dissapointed. Tough life. Things didnt go where i wanted, too much fooling around and too much mafia shit took way too much time of the interesting things. Its a shame cause i liked it, but it went nowhere interesting. I'll have to wait one year to play it again

One of the most boring games i have ever played. MC behaves like 11 year old. Entire game can be played on fast skip mode. Average graphics, below average dialogue, asexual characters, Waste of time

This is not a simple porn game. It's very interesting story. And, sure, there are adorable relations and girls. Its game which really want play and read all dialogues. So if u want waste your with very good story and hot stuff - play it. I just don't understand why so few people support the author. Hope i see the end of this game. Good luck, Dev.
P.S. Sorry for my bad english =)

Excellent game with an original, realistic and very interesting plot, where the player's choices really matter. The female characters are very hot, albeit a little too similar to each other lookwise. The images and animations are very detailed and of high-quality.
This game definitely deserves a lot more appreciation.

As of 0.9

In short - desperately needs a proofreader.
It's not a bad game and the story, characters and choices are interesting. Sadly it's plagued by really bad grammar and outright untranslated lines, even in parts of the game released months ago. If you can stomach that - there is a ton of content and good promise for the future. If not - avoid.