VN - Ren'Py - Shattered [v0.23.1] [Yeda Games]

DISCLAIMER: The game is not finished and I have no ideea when and IF it will be but I will try to be a bit easier on some things because of it.
0.23.1 version is when the review was made.

The first aspect that does raise an eyebrown is how big the game is in terms of content for something that is only 0.23.1 which for other games would be a measly few hours or couple. However the quality of the story,dialogue and overall choices is rather poor,I enjoy the story more than the fetish part and I got bored out of it pretty soon after the introductive part,I tried to read some scenes and parts inbetween skiping text but it wasnt too good. Overall the fetish part isnt that good either,there are some good scenes with pegging,feminization is not gone to my taste,characters are pretty shallow,story moves rather fast with little build up,nothing to really remember the game or characters.

-Very long game but has a poor story,dialogue and choices.

-Feminization is done rather poorly,atleast according to me. The game says that M/M content is avoidable but I saw a few parts where I was railblocked into M/M scenes despite turning off most of them,the game should have a option at start to turn it off completely not ask each time or railroad you into one. Yes im into feminization but not M/M content,yes it is more possible than you'd think given how many people are so in the bdsm community.

-Characters are shallow and dont really matter that much,I might have too high standards but they are glorified sex toys and nothing more.

-music is poor.

+some scenes are actually good but are too few

= the game started off with a somewhat interesting premise like a dude in prison and a dystopian world,he gets a interesting proposal to void going deeper into problems and takes it.
In a way its like the start of Karlssons gambit which has to be the best femdom game with a truly good story,I was hoping this game would be similar but its own thing,it wasnt.

-very poor world building,although I find it interesting this is a dystopian world and many things are referenced like the divide,resource wars,fall of goverments and cities soon to be overrun and a vault for rich being built to sustain itself,the game barely gets into those things and you need to "break the forth wall" which is basically talking to the dev and asking him questions ingame,which is badly done and break immersions,he could have come with a better way,plus why is it forth wall breaking to want to learn more about the world?

-Despite it being a dystopian/scarity wars era ingame,there game is too sunshines n puppies,it should be darker,more gritty and for this thing to be important to the story,desert stalker comes to mind n so many others.

This is a game that's strange to me, and not the setting, it's definitely an interesting premise, I just don't think it's executed well.

Let me explain, the game allows you to embrace being a sissy or try to reject the whole idea and try to retain your manhood. I figured it would be fun to go against the grain of the game and see what the author had in mind for the MC rejecting the message of the game, the answer was...weird.

At first, I felt like my decisions had weight, even getting to the point of fucking Lucia as a man, and not being put in a weird situation, but there was a part after the Samuel night out where you help him, you wake up in the morning and my character was talking about enjoying the lingerie and embracing the looks he had, it was...completely out of the character I had built? It felt like I got pushed over onto the sissy path suddenly without warning.

I get it, the game is meant to be played as a sissy, but why give the choice to try and retain your manhood if it doesn't matter in the end?

I really wanted to like this game. It has a great story with an interesting setting, characters and good writing with some quality art (even though there are no animations), which is a lot of good points for a VN covering this type of niche genre.

Sadly the game fell a bit flat for me due to its lack of structure. Even though I was making choices for Blake left, right and centre, I could not for the life of me understand in which direction the game was going. Moving between locations (the slums, the mansion and Deliverance) was already confusing enough, but the character interactions, different locations, and how these affect Blake during my play through felt like a jangling mess.

Wanting to dive deeper and try to reach a specific route in my second play through, I downloaded the walkthrough (which is over 600+ pages and feels like an encyclopedia btw) and even though this massively helped, it still felt like a laborious and tedious chore and kinda ruined my immersion. I feel like this game desperately needs an in game walkthrough mod added in at some point for it to be somewhat playable and enjoyable.

That being said, there are also still a lot of inconsistencies with the story. I had a playthrough with Blake for instance being fully female mentally and referring to himself as a girl, but still stuck with his male/sissy body. This felt odd given there were characters in the story like Reece for instance that had a somewhat similar journey to Blake but had already reached full transition with bottom surgery by that point. I understand the dev may be open to this option as one of the endings in the future (it’s probably too much work and assets to create for them), but it still felt out of place to be stuck as female with a male body and not having any other options presented to change his overall appearance (such HRT or hormones for instance).

Hopefully once the endings come into play Blake’s journey may start to make more sense, but right now it just feels like the game is trying to achieve too many things at once and I just felt I was getting lost in the sauce, no matter what choices I was making.

Good visual novel that I haven't finished yet. The themes are nice and rare and seeing your MC being able to evolve in his physical choices is a very good idea. The LIs are excellent. Very long and immersive novel.

Now why a 3 out of 5 because, in addition, I haven't finished the game yet. 80%

There are choices to make and these choices lead you to evolve physically, change your orientations and your relationships. But these choices are not clearly explained. So without an integrated walktrough you will not be able to be master of your character and his relationships. Inability to renew relationships, very annoying NTR. Developer's choice to limit certain relationships with LIs that are nevertheless main. Questionable choices on the DOM and SUB aspect because these orientations are only seen from the negative side.

After more than 4 days of non-stop play while paying attention to the texts in free mode without any help I have a mixed feeling and full of frustrations. No stable romantic relationship, the person I was aiming for is not obtainable even though she is a soul mate, a second LI ditto .... In short, disappointment and more frustration but it was the choice (very questionable) of the developer

Only a guide integrated into the game would help and this is not the case. A walktrough of more than 500 pages is available but it is an ordeal to replay everything because suddenly we lose immersion.

This game is a rough diamond that would deserve once finished to be modified, enriched with choices because if it is played in discovery mode without help, it will only give you frustrations. A PITY to always want to see the sad and dramatic side in a VN when we could give a few beautiful things to people.
2.
I change my opinion after several attempts and courses with the official guide. The impression this time is different because doing several courses with different characters allows you to better understand the story and its plot. As a result, I really realized the enormous scriptwriting work of YEDA. BRAVO!
I particularly liked the VANESSA path.
So I change my 3 to 4

I consider this AVN a huge ebook (that you can shape your character personality via multiple choices). You will not find a load of adult scenes here; when there are, you will see just a few renders without animation. It's a psychological horror/drama mixed with philosophy in a post-apocalypse world, not made because of nukes but a war between the working class and rich people resulting in the return of slavery, anarchy (no laws, no government, no police), and "The Wall".

This is one of my earliest favourite games and I still think it's one of the best VNs. The story carries you away, characters are well defined and, in general, tri-dimensional - almost all characters present you different aspects of their personality, some of which may attract you , while others repel you. It gives you opportunities to choose your path in a way that's both well rooted in the story, and in the player's preferences and the character they want to roleplay. Because Blake - the MC - will also feel different according to how you choose to roleplay his part.

My only critique, which I don't count as enough of a negative point to deserve removing a star, is that for such a long game, the replayability factor is relative - there's enough different paths and choices in general to deserve a replay, but to do so would require a truly committed player, who didn't mind repeating large chunks of the story in order to explore different variants of certain days. The official walkthrough is almost mandatory if you want to be "in charge".

My suggestion to @YedaGames would be that, in the future, they considered adding a simple cheat system, where you could unlock more scenes in the course of one playthrough, even across main and secondary routes... I'd still recommend a clean playthrough to fully enjoy the story.

I like what the Dev is trying to do and games with this set of tags are rare, so you'll have a lot of goodwill from the start, but...

- choices/ paths are largely arbitrary. You get "Go there. Or there." with no indication what that choice entails, making it meaningless without a walkthrough.

- if you'd print this, it'd probably put Wheel of Time to shame. Unfortunately it is verbose for no reason. There is very little happening and what does is rarely interesting outside the context of the kinks. The story is paperthin and the characters rarely have any depth outside of their (unexplained) depravities.

All in all, it feels not respectful of your time and the word salad gets worse with every update. I'd dread trying to play this from the start. Unfortunately, skipping through it won't give you much either, since scenes are scattered and few and rarely worth it.

Meh.

"I've been playing this game since version 0.12, exclusively following the Melinda and Iris routes. The story development is impressive, with a well-balanced approach to the femdom concept and sissification, ensuring it doesn't feel overly forced. The renders are generally good, and most of the girls have distinct characteristics and choices. I also appreciate the soundtrack, which effectively signals when something significant is about to happen."

I wrote this review to dedicate to the developer, hoping it might cheer him up a bit. Wishing you good luck and good health

Giving Shattered a 4 star review, but not for typical reasons.

I tried to like the game, but it had some -very- specific kinks, and a path for the MC that was essentially carved in stone (at least that I could tell playing partway through Act 5). I had thought I could resist being dommed and keep the MC a male, but sadly this wasn't to be from what I saw. He is never given the option to change course and start acting like a male again once the story pushes him out of it.

The game directly caters to crossdressing males, sissies, femdom, gay sex, some BDSM, and so forth. Trying to play the straight route gave me 2 sex scenes (one was a dream I think), though there may have been more later - I just couldn't continue playing to see if that was the case.

If the aforementioned kinks are your thing, the game is right up your alley. Decent enough renders, very verbose writing (not many errors), and a cast you can play around with.

Just wasn't my thing, so I'm taking it at face value that it is going to be someone else's, was well made, and can be enjoyed by a specific crowd. If straight sex with good looking love interests is your thing (primarily girls), and playing a straight male or female character is mandatory, definitely look elsewhere.

A fairly decent game that is largely ruined by being unbelievably over written. A writing editor would do wonders here. Look at the most recent update (0.21) 140k words, 620 images. An average 300 page novel has roughly 90k words... Some other minor complaints. In a choice based narrative being routinely TOLD how you feel regardless of your choices comes across as condescending. I think a lot of this comes down to the narrative storytelling choice. You are TOLD not SHOWN. The vast majority of the scenes serve zero impact. That being said there is a decent story with good imagery just quite poorly told in my opinion.

This game is a piece of art! The story is good, Blake is perfect... You have various routes you can follow, all of then well writen. The last version renders are perfect. It's the best adult game i ever played. Thanks to the developer!!!

One of the best if not the best gay and sissification game I've seen on this site. I usually hate when people jump into a thread and claim that isn't for them or otherwise complain about it, but on a review I think it's more relevant, the entire point is the reviewer's experience and observations.

Personally, I'm not a fan of either. I'd still have given this 5 stars though for the content, because the content is purely subjective preference, and I don't think it's fair to remove stars for not liking the content--the question is how well is it executed?

Here there is loads of content, a deep dive, plenty of variation and a wide cast.

What I didn't like is while there was plenty of stuff, and there were plenty of routes, there wasn't really much variation in routes. I'm not a stickler for consent in video games, the setting and story are designed with things being forced on the MC. But within those routes some variation, at least more variation, would have been preferable in my eyes, and that's where I knock the star off.

Make no mistake though, if you happen to love the specific kinks and scenario, again mostly cross dressing, sissification, gay content, overall femdom in that vein, then this is a treasure trove of a game for you. I'd always wondered why more games did not take inspiration and influence from it.

Goods -
Interesting world build
Good art where the transitioning MC doesn’t immediately look like a hot supermodel. Helps with immersion imo.
Writing skill is better than average.

So close to being a really good game for this genre.

So why only two stars?

The Primary Bad -
It’s ridiculously long-winded to the point readers can simply lose interest. So much of the writing is inner-thoughts of the MC about the most mundane things that don’t really help the story along, nor does it help display the depth of any of the characters (unless you just want to know the MC spends a stupid amount of time stressing over unimportant things).

The Secondary Bad -
The relationships with other characters never made sense to me. The love affair with the first guy you meet (don’t remember many names as I eventually couldn’t stand reading anymore and just started click-hunting for scenes) didn’t feel natural at all. After reading all of that drivel, I thought perhaps I missed some important scene which showed how I might’ve missed how I had arrived there, but it wasn’t the case. It was the same for many of the other relationships. You’d make a selection and it would lead you down a path that wasn’t remotely your intention when making that choice. I’m not talking about external factors driving that result; I’m talking about your own resulting feelings due to that choice.

The developer has writing talent, that’s clear. However, the structure just isn’t there. If the intent was to make a novel rather than a game, I’m just not invested in the characters, nor has the author made me see the resulting scenes through the eyes of the various characters. If the intent was to make a game, the result is even worse.

I know a lot of people have rated this game very highly, and on my first play through a few years ago, I was really impressed as well. But over time, it’s gotten much worse, and much more tedious.

Easily the best sissification /corruption VN I've ever seen. IT IS MASSIVE! Multiple, multiple paths (only downside is that it can be way too easy to get locked in a certain path or to miss something without an opportunity to course correct).

The writing and editing are top notch. The renders are amazing. Add that the MC sort of develops a fetish for hosiery hits me right in the center.

Spend the time to DL all the parts and take a few months to play all the routes. Make sure you get the walk through as well, it is a requirement.

Good product, really good.
More like a graphic interactive novel.
Graphically, psychologically, according to the scenario, the development of events is done very well. There are subsidences in the narrative, not too much variability, but these issues are not critical.
My personal rating, a grumpy and rarely highly appreciative person, is 8 out of 10.

None of these fetishes interest me but because it was clear on page 1 that everything is optional I decided to try it out.

The renders are nice, the Li's are attractive and the sex scenes are good.

The story and writing are excellent and the pacing is perfect. The characters are real and enjoyable.

You have to pick paths and make the right choices and the walk-through is perfect for navigating that. Most of the choices were instinctual but I would have made some mistakes without it. All fetishes and sex scenes are optional if you make the right choices.

I stopped at the end of ACT VI but I greatly enjoyed the visual novel. This is the first game that I've played that handled the Feminisation of the MC really well. Since these kinks don't interest me I will not follow it but in the future I will keep an out out for the creators next work to see if it is more along my lines.

Played lot of games but didnt write a comment before, but this is so good to stay silent. Tried playing all paths and they were too many than i expected. Renders are good, dialogues are elaborated Anndd developers team still improving. Please, keep up good work ❤

Maybe a little bit too much [Blake thinks this and considers that in is mind and feels this or that...and makes sarcastic coments] here and there, I do usually prefer that "don't tell it - show it" thing. And some parts of the story are a bit lengthy. And in order to really find every path, you need a walkthrough. Because you easily could lock some paths with one single wrong answer.

But besides this, this VN is one of the best sissification/feminization VN ever made. And by far the best one here on f95zone. I really like that MC is not just suddenly a mindless sissy craving for sex , just after one hypno session - but has some depth. And feels "real" in his behavior somehow. I also like that he (at least in some paths) Blake still likes to stay at least partially male - but with a big feminine side. That just feels so natural. Also the other characters have "live" and are not just paper cuts and stereotypes. Plus most other storyline elements in the vn are not just a deus ex machina thing to show porn, they just make sense. Really great story writing.

Good, Blake maybe could be more often be locked or "forced" (in a sensual way) in rubber/latex dresses or catsuits/gimpsuits (or other costumes) and chastity by someone at least in some paths that are a little D/s and BDSM directed, there maybe could be a little more.. playful public humiliation in some paths, but that is just my personal taste. If the author prefers a more vanilla style on those chars, that is totally fine too
Would give that vn 6 out of 5 stars if that was possible, because this one really deserves.

Super expansive and amazingly well-written, this game is a real gem and features a vast variety of fetishes, so there really is something for (almost) everyone in there. Loved the storyline, the characters and the worldbuilding, really worth your time and there's lot of variations to the routes.

Oh this game...

This game has great visuals and ticks most of my boxes kink-wise but my mind slides off of it every time I play. I recently discovered that there's a (absurdly large) walkthrough that makes it clear that there are distinct paths through the game. This came as a bit of a revelation as, despite playing through the game 3 or 4 times, I have never felt that I had any control over my character or the choices they were making. One time I'd play through and be a straight guy, then I'd play through and become a transgirl, then an out-and-out sissy. It all seemed both completely random and utterly weightless as there was no real emotion to any of the story beats.

The problem is that the choices are buried in hundreds of pages and dozens of characters, none of which really sticks in the mind. There's also so much content here that the narrative just continues on and on with no shape or focus. Rather than telling a story, there's this weird churn where characters disappear, reappear, hate you, love you, and it all feels overwhelming and unengaging.

I salute the dev's prolific writing ability and the fact that updates come relatively often but if it turned out that this game was based upon an AI churning out dialogue at random, I would not be in the least bit surprised. It's like a really-well produced and incredibly long visual novel written by alien who has never actually encountered a story.