VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Rosie's Innocence [Bright Sun Studios]

I like the story, it's very saccharin and that's sort of my jam. I do have a few issues with with the game however.

To begin, there's not nearly enough renders. The developer's transition between renders is glacial in its pacing, it almost feels like an eastern-style 2dcg VN. The player has to basically use their imagination for most of the scenes because you might get two or three renders out of a scene with 3-5 minutes of reading. Did I say glacial? Yeah. That's the right word to use.

On top of the glacial pacing, the developer isn't above reusing a render. I understand the need to do that sometimes, and for some games I wonder why they aren't doing it more to give the appearance of the scene continually moving... but there are so few renders that a "render of the MC and Rosie kissing with hearts all over the solid background" sort of stands out in a player's memory. Hard to forget that exact render you saw just 20 minutes earlier in a completely different scene, then again near the very end of the story.

This one is just me nitpicking, but I don't really love Rosie's face. Her hair is beautiful, and I appreciate that the developer has given us reign to determine her breast size... even if I feel like we shouldn't have that ability, but they're clearly trying to give us the opportunity to cater the LI to our preferences. But why not give us some options for the facial structure? It's not like Rosie's face is locked in on the title screen, she's overlooking a balcony while facing away from us.

Meanwhile, the developer gives--at least for the G/G route--an MC who is arguably much prettier than Rosie. Granted, I think as an LI she is more virtuous than vain--I mean look at her wardrobe, she's clearly a girl out of time, like she was from the 40s or 50s and not the 2010s--so being the prettiest girl at the ball isn't her top priority. But hell I would say the female MC is even prettier than the LI's rival Elain... looking pretty and being Queen Bee of the mean girls is basically her bread and butter, so outshining her is almost criminal; yet, I feel like that's what's occurred.

I like the musical selection for this game, it's very "floating above the clouds" fairy tale. It sings to me in ways you don't see in adult games. Good job, developer.

Going to give this 4 stars. The story is amazing and the musical presentation is fantastic. My main gripe is the lack of renders. I get that this is 6 years old, online storage was constantly at a premium then (I remember when every VN was split into 10+ parts), but we're cruising in at less than half a GB? Wow.

The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs... The version this review is based on is Complete...

Not a bad visual novel/game, but it did have a couple continuity issues and completely unbelievable moments, that I'll get into...

The visuals of the characters are decent, although the Rosie character kind of has a slightly male looking face... You only get to see the protagonist character a couple times... The backdrops are a mixture of real life pictures and 3D backdrops we've seen from the Blooming Love VN/Game... The choices at the beginning for playing either a male or female protagonist as well as the heroine's breast size was a nice touch...

The script is pretty good, as I only ran into a few spelling/grammar errors... There were a few times when the text spoke as if I was playing a male character when I was playing a female one... An example was when the protagonist was having sex with Rosie in the girls bathroom right before she mentions her scholarship... Rosie spoke about the protagonists penis, when I was playing a woman protagonist... The plot revolves around either a male or female protagonist and his/her love interest, a fellow student who lives across the street... The protagonist moved from New York to the current location and is attending her/his last year of High School...

Now, there are a few things that I sort of had a problem with, in regards to this setup... First, both the protagonist and Rosie appeared to be living on their own, which for High School students in the United States is a bit of a stretch, as they lived in fully furnished homes... The way the whole story plays out, it really felt a lot more like the characters were College/University students, and not High School students... And would have made a lot more sense that way as well, being perhaps community college students, rather then High School students... I just kind of shoved it to the back of my mind and kept reading...

And the concept that Rosie's heart medication was only obtainable through a High School Nurses office? That is not how it works in the US or most other big countries, since it typically requires a prescription for heart medications, from a Doctor, and is usually picked up from a Pharmacy or Hospital... Yes, sometimes very important medication might be kept on hand in a schools nurses office, for cases of emergency, but not as the source of getting it... That whole non-sense with the medication threw the immersion on it's head, during that part of the story... And what about the emergency with Rosie...

If you decide to do CPR, the story even states there was cracking, which is common when doing manual CPR to someone, where some ribs get broken... She then goes to the hospital, loses her baby, and the hospital can't get the medication she needs? What? More outrageous medication non-sense... But lets get back to the hospital stuff... Rosie is then released within like 24 hours or so, and is able to move around with cracked ribs, having just suffered from heart issues, and loss of her baby, and is able to have sex in the bathroom and walk around normally? What in the hell? That is utter non-sense, as the immersion is shot full of holes with a 12-gauge shot gun slug... I almost just stopped reading at that point, but decided to trek on...

Ok, outside of the whole Medicine and Hospital debacle, the rest of the story is told very well and mostly made sense and was mostly believable... There are multiple story endings, with some choices not seeming to matter, and some choices that fully matter... I experienced the True Ending, which was mostly a love/romance story with a few hic-ups to get around now and then, as various characters try to distract you into other story lines... It's not a short story, but it's not long either... I probably spent around 2 to 3 hours or so reading and going through the story... The erotic parts do not appear right away, but they do happen here and there... They are mostly text based with a few visuals, not unlike you might see in Hentai sexual encounters...

Overall, it's a decent story based adult visual novel... It has it's share of continuity issues, and a few out-to-lunch moments on some of it's believability... Almost like those moments were rushed without being fully fleshed out properly, which is why I can't give this 5 stars... But most of the story was decent... It feels like it would somewhat fit into the Blooming Love universe, mostly visually... I still think that Blooming Love is a superior product to this one so far... At some point I might replay this VN/Game to see what the other endings are like...

The game is short, but sweet. It's a story that exists in the dev's "Blooming Love" universe, and if that game had a commercial release this would be the equivalent of a bonus dlc.

On the con side, this game suffers from the same thing Blooming Love suffers... not enough renders, especially in the most significant moments. Romantic scenes, sex scenes, reveals... all suffer from having only one or two renders throughout the moments. Help the imagination out a bit here, dev.

On the plus side, the game handles what it does have quite well. It's a sweet little romantic VN, and does not shy away from that identity. The atmospheric music mostly works, though there are a few tracks that sound like they came from RPG Maker. And while there is a paucity of renders that handicaps the imagination, it doesn't detract too much from making the emotional moments feel emotional.

What some people fail to realise is not everyone is here just for porn. The internet is full of that as is this website.

Some of us like a story.

I'll grant that the renders aren't the best but they do the job, the day I turn into a graphics whore is the day I hand over my gamers card and retire my gaming rig and consoles. As long as I can see what is going on, I can live with it.

That said the story is pretty short but, well, it's a short.

It's not the most original, boy/girl meets girl, falls in love, lives happily ever after if the right choices are made. That said it's quite charming.

If what you are going for is purely sex then avoid VN's, the novel part of that usually means story and we end up seeing things like the review below this where some numpty can't understand that different people like different things and not everything is catered to them.

It's a short romance story with a couple of sex scenes. It's something the dev did before working on current projects.

Again if you are just looking for sex scenes move along.

this dev needs to realize that who plays erotic games is doing it to actually see renders of sexual intercourses. in this game you'll find a scene that was supposed to be a BJ but that only has one renders of a girl holding the MC's penis in her hand, while the player has to click trough a wall of text to get to the next scene.
in another scene that was supposed to be sex in a school bathroom, there are only 3 renders, all of them only showing the upper torsos from the side, while obviously the player has to click through a wall of text.
if you have time to waste, instead of trying this game watch a youtube video of paint drying, it's just as easy to fap to that as it is to fap to this game, and you won't have to click through a wall of text.