Others - Completed - Something To Do With Love [v63] [Kabangeh]

A short and simple dating sim can be fun if the game is carried by decent artwork and dialogue, or at least respects your time.

Something To Do With Love, however, is the loathful offspring of poor game design, dating sims with one save and no skip, and Resident Evil 2.

Hear me out okay.

The game uses 3d models on a prerendered background, except with laughably bad scaling and panning that will vary from "barely acceptable" to "I've had slugs cross the screen faster." The game assets are much better than Resident Evil 2 but the developer made sure to bring them down to its level with a generous visual slathering of terrible filter and heavy effects along with voice acting varying from text-to-speech-like dryness to recorded on speaker phone from across the room. The gameplay is even similarly antiquated except instead of having to agonizingly slowly pan the 4:3 camera to find a zombie it's a purple raccoon thing that wants to tell you filler dialogue about the mall's food court for the hundredth time. Hell, there's even the dated zero direction given for the player to find the next step in their railroaded path on a labyrinthine map you will suffer navigating.

My experience with this game would be a good story to tell other people, if it weren't a furry dating sim, because there's few games that are so bad they make you wonder if something is broken. You don't know if the aimless character path bugged or you just didn't find the next step on the convoluted and slow to navigate map with confusing time system. The voice acting quality might actually be good and the developer just ruined it stylistically just like the visuals. Character movement and camera panning are intentionally slow but maybe your pc is just running exceptionally slow. Good games can change your life, this one's so bad it gaslights you.

The worst part is if it had just been made as a VN in something like Ren'Py (which does support the videos this game uses copiously despite all the pain for its 3D environment) the decent assets and writing, which is all a good VN needs, would have carried it and the developer would have crafted the simple but quality VN dating stim this game could have been.

Version 7 is completely unplayable, which makes it kind of hard to see if the game is good or not. It's a shame that it had such an awful release, but the fact that it won't even run on Windows 7 or lower is a complete joke.

This game has an interesting concept, but poor execution. The lens flare and the VHS aesthetic is just grating to look at. Plus, the sex scenes go by so fast and have the irritating flares still up on them that I turned off in the settings.

So I grabbed this game last night and boy.... do I have something to say. So mini-disclaimer; I typically run these games from F95 on my shitty Lenovo laptop vs. my rig so any performance issues are usually my own so I won't comment on crashes and they like.

Firstly it's a damn shame since I can see a lot of good potential with this game, and I mean a lot. A semi-open world with interactive public on top of actually decent voice over with nice artwork and animation, honestly this game looks pretty damn good. I know some people said the filtered real life background on top of the furs is a bit uncanny but I think it works, honestly it's easier than the same generic 3D backgrounds and store you find in most C G Ren'py games.

So Let me go into the pros:

• Animation and art is really nice, no stupid proportions or questionable style. They look great and it's the art that pulled me in.
• World feels pretty damn alive but at times can be a bit bland since the public say the same thing over and over.
• Conversations and voice acting is pretty top notch.

But for the cons....

• As much as I want to love this game I have to say navigating it is a pain. Maybe I missed it but this game could seriously benefit from a map. I didn't put too much time into it but yeah, it's a bit problematic since I found my apartment on accident first time I booted the game and the second time I couldn't find it... A map or quick travel would do wonders
• The filters are questionable. I understand it's supposed to be a sort of nostalgic 90's recording of a good summer, month or whatever but the flash in the face every time you pull up a conversation is a bit much.
• Missing plot is fine but sometimes it feels like punishment. With voice acting this good it's a shame to miss any sort of plot or voice over and it's really damn easy to do so. I missed out on a conversation with Lily? I think? because I didn't spend 5-10 mins looks for her house shortly after leaving the Movie Store at the start of the game. As much as I like this game being open, having it being a tad linear wouldn't hurt. I know some of the point of this game is don't mess up your shot to get with girls but still, if the game isn't already super fun to navigate, forcing more searching isn't the way to go.

To be honest I didn't get far because I got fed up walking around in circles looking for specific places so I didn't land any sex scenes. Maybe I'll try again, maybe not. Honestly if the artists and voice actors had someone with clear direction and execution/experience, it would go a long way. As much as people shit on Summertime Saga, a fur game in the same vein of a map, people in locations would be superb. I'm all for the visual look of Wilson walking around but it gets super tedious to go from A to C to D to E while looking for B.

In it's current state Something To Do With Love is a buggy cluster fuck of a mess. It feels like all the effort went into the demo, as you'll see from the beginning, where everything is just happening and theres pre-rendered scenes and something for you as the player to do and watch. Once you get past the fireworks scene with Arlene, if you can get past it, the rest of the game is basically just walking around town waiting for a random event to hit you or going to work to pass the time so you can walk around town for a random event to hit you.

Quick touch up about the Arlene scene. Seems that this pre-rendered scene just literally does not want to play about 80% of the time and will black screen or for some people crash. It's best to save AT the party before you talk to Arlene (maybe after you talk to May, the game remembers those choices for some reason) and go through the process of walking home with her and hoping the fireworks scene loads. If it doesn't, you really have no choice but to reload your save and try again. The game might remember you two going to the convenience store so as long as shes following you, you're good to go home.

Aside from this the game is blatantly unfinished. Theres placement dialogue, the game as a whole is completely directionless with no way to trigger anything manually as everything is designed to just give you something to do if it decides to. For example if you want to talk with May, she has no explicit place you can find her, instead you'll just have to walk around town unless she runs into you and asks if you want to get something to eat and then hang out afterwards. From there, honestly, there is only two real scenes you can get with each girl. Your place or their place, and its the same prerendered scene per area. The bed talk will originally be original dialogue but then the randomized chat from having a meal together will take over at some point.

Its something to do with love, but it isn't explicitly love itself, you could say.