Solvalley is easily one of the best games I’ve played on here, and probably one of my favorite visual novels in general. Consistently funny from start to finish. Porn aside, if you are a fan of classic late 90's early 00's edgy teenage boy humor as seen in stuff like Beavis and Butthead I would recommend this game on that alone. I was dying of laughter when the fugly protagonist convinced the retarded christian girl (Tatiana) in the school library to jerk him off to calm him down and he cooms in her face. I was especially impressed given that the developer is ESL (English as a second language) and parts of the script are actually translated from Portuguese. Despite that, the jokes land incredibly well.
Content-wise, the game is very long, with 100+ scenes and 30+ girls. By the final stretch I was starting to feel ready for it to wrap up, but even then the writing managed to pull me back in with more laughs. And for a game with such a huge cast, most of the characters still feel distinct, each putting a fresh spin on familiar archetypes.
I’ve seen some people criticize this game for not having a conventional story structure, but I think that’s a bit misleading. It is true that it doesn’t follow a traditional beginning, middle, end format. But the girls’ stories are very interconnected. It actually reminds me of Grand Theft Auto’s mission givers. You will go through 1/3 of a girl's scenes and in that you will meet her mom or another character, which will grant you access to their storyline. At most you might have 5-6 going at the same time. The game doesn't just dump 30+ disconnected storylines on you. Considering how long this game is and the large magnitude of women, I think Solvalley does a fantastic job in this regard.
Another common complaint I’ve seen is about the graphics feeling dated. Personally, I didn't have an issue with them. Within the enormous character roster there are plenty of cuties and the dev I feel has an eye for taste and skill with using honey select. In regards to the graphics themselves I feel Honey Select models are stylized enough that they are kind of timeless.
One area where I think the game really stumbles is with the stats and money system. They’re so barebones that you can max everything out very early on, after which they become completely irrelevant. Which I guess is good if you just want a visual novel and don't care about those things. But in that case, why include them at all? As it stands, all they really do is force you to grind for a few minutes by clicking the same activities until you hit the required numbers, after which you can forget about them entirely. You can easily max everything out within the first 5% of the game.
Another frustration is the way some of the menus handle scenes. The phone menu for instance quickly gets cluttered with scene prompts, and after you’ve completed them, they don’t go away so you can just repeat them. This becomes annoying when you’re trying to track down new content, especially since the game already has a dedicated Scene Replay menu. In my opinion, once a scene is finished it should disappear from the game world, or at the very least be clearly marked with a giant green tick or something.
One area where the writing could have been stronger is with the mother characters. There is a common trope in this game where one of the girl's your age will have either a protective or slut mother you also end up banging. I felt this trope got pretty repetitive towards the end. Given that the overwhelming majority of girls in this game are very unique and manage to stay out of being a 1:1 copy of the flavor or archetype they may represent. It was disappointing that the moms didn't live up to this. If you were to ask me to actually get rid of one I wouldn't know be able to pick though. In a vacuum their stories and scenes are good and hot. It's just when you play them within hours of each other it feels repetitive. There is only so many ways you can write protective mom in shitty marriage gets corrupted by big dick.
I also think it was a mistake to let players skip or disable the “sharing” content. These scenes are quite funny and lighthearted. When you skip or turn them off you’re not unlocking alternative routes, you’re just cutting out content. Even if you’re not into “sharing” as a kink, the tone here is played for laughs, and if you enjoy the rest of the game’s humor you’ll probably find these moments funny too. If you’re approaching Solvalley with the mindset of “oh no don't let my best friend who is bright green due to radiation from working in a factory touch my precious waifu who I sincerely love like a Victorian romance,” then you probably won't enjoy this game’s sardonic wit anyway. So either the dev should not let the player skip or actually provide an alternative route with equally as much care and humor.
The music is repetitive generic slop, just mute it and put on "chill lofi beats to jerk off to" or whatever.
