Ren'Py - Scarlet Law [v0.3.16] [JYP Games]

[v0.2.3]

A game that really liked, don't understand why was rebooted though.

Although,after trying it once again since the new build the stronger points of the game are still there, really likeable characters and funny dialogues, nothing even remotly deep of course, just like the history and heroines plots.
I feel like the probably lowest part of the game AKA the repetitive grind was improved a lot in the new versions, with the possiblity of working for the entire day with just a single option, doing this a few times kinda send it out of the way.
The humor it's what it is and got nothing about it, lots of 4th wall breaking and the typical dynamics of sis/bro, mom/son, chhodfr/mc that we see in specially this kind of lighthearted VNs, including a lot of attempts of comedy thare aren't really bad, those are kind of funny if you like some goofy writing. Same can be said about the intimacy moments, really standard but that doesn't mean they're bad at all.
A lot of people seem to be infuriated with how the MC was developed but IMO that is a bit unjustified, the MC is not a bad protagonist, always remembering what the general ambient and context of the game is.

Review for 0.1.7b
Disclaimer: This is my first review and only decided to do it due to the unfair/harsh reviews of some others.

Story - 4/5
First things first the story, one thing immediately apparent is that unless I'm out-of-the-loop, it is quite original as I've personally never encountered the premise of buying girls to save them from a worse fate as the main plot device. In terms of quality however, it has so far been decent, nothing mind-blowing to deserve the 5/5 but I do appreciate the fact that there's at least a bit of foreshadowing of what the future storyline would be.

Characters - 4.5/5
Now in terms characters I really want to give it a 5 but I can't. One I have to mention is Estelle, although its obvious that the dev is going for the tsundere stereotype, her behavior is quite inconsistent and quite confusing. Sometimes this inconsistency appears where she opens up in one dialogue and then suddenly acts like a tsundere again making it feel like the act is forced or when the dialogue says one thing but the render represents another. Besides that however, the other characters are made well enough albeit being a little TOO willing to wet the MC schlong, for characters like Azula or Serena I would understand as they have a reason for needing or have a history with the MC but in cases like Silvia, Makoto, Laureate and Ferry, they were definitely too eager for strangers who just met the guy though an understandable choice as to not make players wait too much for the h-scenes. Otherwise I personally love the characters.

Art - 5/5
I may be biased in this one as I love Koikatsu's art style but I have seen less-than-great renders in both character and room design, this however is not those as they look good. One complaint I would give is that some renders like Makoto's hammer or the Town Hall are reused either from free assets or another game, which it is I do not know. Another I'd like to mention is that Silvia definitely looks younger than she should considering she's 39 but her design still exudes a sense of a mature lady so in my opinion it balances it out.

Gameplay - 3/5
Its... An interesting case, honestly the only reason it gets a 3 is that the characters in this game is hard-carrying it to hell, if we strip out all of that and only look at the gameplay aspects then its probably a 2 as although its not HORRIFYING like some other reviews might suggest, the grind does get a little cumbersome and honestly all the gameplay entails is follow the story, hangout with girls, work for money, rinse and repeat. The interface is good and intuitive, which is to be expected. The girls' progression is a little too limited by the main story progression in my opinion. There should also be more avenues of passive income (unless I just haven't gotten to them yet).

Fapability - 1.5/5
Yeah no, although when there's an animation for a h-scene its quite well made, they are both short and rare. This game (with the exception of Silvia) is a slow burn and you most likely will only see maybe two short-ish proper h-scenes after 20-30 minutes of playing the game. Definitely not the game you want to play if you're looking for a quick fap, even the gallery feature doesn't fix this issue.

Conclusion
As a summary its a very character-driven game with a decent and original story to boot. HOWEVER, think of it as a visual novel with grinding and a pinch of actual hentai so I'd suggest to play this as a game instead of fap material.

This game is not what is advertised to be. With all this Scarlet law that theoretically could let you buy any single woman given you can afford that, you would think you are ready for some fun with them. But unfortunately the whole game is about saving them from that fate so you can treat them like a true white knight that does everything for free and takes pleasure in being taken advantage of. At least they feel like they have to give something in return, like a kiss maybe, probably out of pity.

Pros:
1. Nice looking models, respect to Illusion for making Koikatsu chara studio, a nice engine which this game uses for renders.

Cons:
1. Very limited H scenes, it would be very easy to add some good H scenes as there are plenty available for this engine, why are you not doing it?
2. Grind. Looks like a trend, every simp simulator has to have it nowadays.
3. Out of character dialogues, it is really sad to see mc or women in the game talking about why you should pledge on patreon.

Overall - don't believe in a single word in the description, stay away, play other games based on the same engine if you like this art type.

In games with this engine you may expect that the differences between young and older are not very big, but this game is one of those where you definetly cant tell the difference between younger sister and mother. If you like that shit, good for you, this is your game.

Music is not generi, or i havent heard it, so thats good, it adds something.

Review as of v0.1.7a - One play through.

Summary
This is a sandbox centric harem building game with a good bit of affection, cash, and stat grinding (CTRL key is your friend.) Your own stats are hidden and don't seem to have much effect so far, although there are a few scenes where there is reference that more of a stat might have affected the outcome.

THE GOOD
STORY: The story and originality are pretty decent and drive repeated affection and cash grinds.

The Sandbox: Standard fare, but good.

THE 'Don't Care'
MODELS: The models are ok, nothing special though.

Bit light on the H scenes compared to many.

The Bad
There is no way to determine if you have all the rare events.

This is a bit of a finger burner. There's quality of life and streamlining tweaks yet to be added to reduce the mouse's repetitive journey around the screen and contribution to carpal tunnel.

• Quest tracking requires opening one icon..
• Money tracking requires opening a different icon.
• Would like to see an option for current cash and active quests/needed affection tracking on screen
• At midnight add a 'ZZzz..' icon that takes you home and sleeps in one click
• ESC from within one of the icon screens should back out to the main screen, not open the save screen

The 'respectfully disagree'
The Grind - Lots of people dogging on this. It is certainly grindy, and a lot of people do not like the grind. However the Dev builds some mechanisms into the game for you to reduce that. 1) You can grind cash, stats, and affection in a single action. 2) You can double up on affection if you are targeting a specific girl. 3) You can buy and renovate store/condo/spa to gain and increase passive income up to >1k/day for just waking up, +2k more if you work the right jobs. 3k/day eats up the cash requirements fairly quickly. 4) the more you work in certain places the more money they return when you work there (up to a cap.). 5) You can progress story elements while grinding. 5) Some of your scarlet purchases are subsidized (the princess and a couple of the girls subsidize purchases) 6) CTRL is mandatory. CTRL through repeated grinds.

So overall while there's a good bit of grind, the Dev has put in mechanisms to make it go faster than you initially think.


SUMMARY
A fun sandbox heavy game with an engaging story and decent graphics. A bit repetitive working up affection. So stay away if you are completely intolerant of grinding. Otherwise - Check it out

4 Stars - Losing one mostly because of quality of life tweaks that are needed.

These reviews are brutal so I wanna balance it a tad (But consider this 3.5 stars instead of 4). The grind is terrible, but the game is good beyond that. If they fixed the grind, it might be 4 or 5 stars.

I had really high hopes for this game but the latest update is the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I know it's been said before but maybe if the Dev hears it often enough he might salvage/remake the game before it's too late.

- way too much unnecessary grind
- not enough quality h-scenes
- too much bad writing "plot"
- wide as ocean but shallow as a pool. Stop adding new chars and develop what you have. It sucks if we have 20 waifu but one scene per each of them...

+/- both the sister/mom (landlady but whatever) have really nice models that draw me to the game. Sadly - they each get little scenes after insane grind.

The grind makes it feel like I'm playing a mobile gacha minus the sweet satisfaction of progression. The story itself isn't interesting and doesn't take itself seriously even though at times it tries to make it seem like theres something more to it only to be ruined by the lines after.

Scarlet Law is a game, like many others, with a lot of potential. However, there are a lot of issues bringing it down and its just not that good. I'm playing version 0.1.6 so there's a chance it'll change, but this review is for this version. I hope the developer reads this and tries to improve the game.

First of all, the writing isn't all that good. It tried to get serious, but ruins it with a main character who's not considering "TPO." Time, place and occasion seems to be completely ignored here by the writer. For example a girl is telling you about her struggles of getting by day to day, and she opens up and tells you that she's even thought of selling her body. This was feeling kind of serious, but the main character instead starts thinking "oh yeah I would've been first in line to buy" and starts imagining her naked. Again, TPO.

My next biggest problem, is the grind. Please don't try to inflate playtime by adding a grind that is extremely tedious. I'm playing a hentai game, I don't want it to feel like a chore. Not just that, but adding a "rare event" where half of the required money to progress is essentially stolen is a great way to get players to quit and forget about this.

Finally, the scenes, are they worth it? No. The developer didn't spend much time on writing for the scenes so they last about 30 seconds. At least for the ones I saw since I stopped playing anymore after the "rare event" happened.

Overall, I hope the developer can work on some of these issues. The world in this game is a great hentai setup, but poorly executed as of this moment. I wouldn't recommend it right now.

After playing the game for awhile I only can describe it with 2 words. Boring Grindfest. Unless you use a cheat code for money, it takes an extremely long time to build up the funds for all the buying that's required to progress the game.

The animations aren't that great compared to some games that use the same type of program for the characters. At least give the option to change the camera angle when having sex with Silvia.

Overall the game is pretty boring and isn't very inspiring to play it for very long. Maybe in another year when you can actually have sex with all the women and maybe knock them up it might be worth playing. I won't hold by breath though considering the other game by the same dev got abandoned.

Well this is my review based on v0.1.3 of the game and I can say without even completing the whole update that, the game is great and has tons of potential

PROS
- All characters are great looking with some really high quality renders
- The map, UI and navigation are all great looking and feel really polished
- The characters fit their persona really well and are very likable
- Story is simple to understand
- Nice choice of music, really enhanced the experience for me
- I love the inclusion of those shameless plugs

CONS
- The thing I kind of hated about it is that the font used for the textbox...Don't get me wrong the font is nice but without a 'textbox' per se, it is really hard on the eyes to read, especially that fucking red text...makes me feel like my eyes are bleeding
- A bit of a grind
- Needs more flavor text during the animation loop(my personal opinion)

POTENTIAL IMPROVEMENTS
- The date, time and money that is displayed at the bottom right can be hardly read on most backgrounds...so maybe make it a different color than black?
- Since the game is a bit of a grind...it would be nice to have separate things while hanging out on random
(eg with Estelle we could watch tv once, while hanging out another time we could go to the park,)
- Instead of having the hangout or work event be a blank screen for many I think adding the visual event like
-showing mc actually doing the chore, or
- watching tv with Estelle, or
- mc speaking with Azula in lake, or
- while working in store it would show us actually working
- mc drinking tea while hanging out with Laureate in Town Hall, etc.
Such small addition I think will really improve the experience you can get out of from this game
- Also maybe actually show Estelle and Silvia sleeping during midnight instead of telling they are asleep but having their bed clearly empty

FINAL THOUGHTS
The game has got a great potential and I like the way the dev is going with the game
Hopefully the dev makes the game feel less of a grind with a more engaging affection system as well as add tiny detail to make game feel more alive
All the best to the dev and hope I get to see the game grow to its full potential