tl;dr: cheating-themed story about corrupting an already corrupt wife, with top-notch renders and high production value but boring gameplay and weak characters.
or if you prefer a
metaphor: Imagine a beautifully crafted and expensive looking box of chocolates, imported from Belgium, and while you really want to like the chocolates, they all just taste mediocre and underwhelming.
Now let me just start with addressing some of the other reviews and general opinions on this game. I understand where they are coming from. The single most often mentioned point of praise is a more than valid one:
The renders are really, really well made. The FMC is possibly one of the most good-looking women I have seen in a game. Other characters look really good too. However, not all of them. More on that a little later.
In general, the
production quality is quite high, the
UI is nice, very good integration of music. It feels like a well polished game from a production stand point. I can sense some very obvious BaDIK influence, there is actually a scene where a character is looking through a magazine filled with BaDIK artwork. Funnily enough there is a character that has the DAZ model face of Tommy, not sure if that was intentional.
However, I believe that, while aiming high is a noble and ambitious thing to do, said ambition comes crashing down sooner or later.
While production quality definitely does make you look like a great game, it does not really impact the essence of why most of us play them. The core of any VN should always be the story. Or let's call it "gameplay", with which I mean the experience of immersing yourself in the story, with the gameplay loop (in this case the sandbox and minigames) and story progression, leading you to the various scenes.
This is
unfortunately the weak point of the game. The dialogue itself is actually well written. No clumsy grammar or cringe interactions perse. Again, high quality production value. However,
the story itself, the world building, the character depth, the inherent logic by which characters make decisions, it is flawed, and the gameplay experience suffers from it.
One of the glaring problems is the premise of the game. It is clear that the game is set to be about a loyal wife, that gets tempted to do naughty things. Sounds fair, this can be a solid foundation for a story. The FMC could be slowly corrupted to break free of her role as a wife and explore other avenues. Neat. But. It turns out,
there really is no corruption needed. The FMC has those thoughts pretty much from the very beginning.
She is basically a female horndog and gets aroused by any male attention, no matter how inappropriate it may be. There is barely any progression or development, sure, you can choose to either give in to those thoughts or try to prolong the development, but the inherent thoughts are there from the very beginning, there literally was no effort needed by the player to instigate that. I found that very disappointing.
The story tries to give reasons as to why it should be okay for the FMC to act out on those feelings: When she is being harassed by guests in the bar, she goes to her hubby (who is the bar owner) to complain, and he insists that she should just let it go since they are regulars,
so it's fine to grope his wife. What.
This brings me to another point that should be the pilar of this game but falls short: Her marriage. By that, I don't just mean the fact that she is married, or to whom, or how their marriage is going or how it is displayed. I mean all of it. None of it is really explained.
First of all: There is no explanation whatsoever to why the FMC (a 21 y.o. bomb shell of a woman) is married to a guy almost (or exactly?) twice her age. They were actually together since she was 18 (I'm sorry but that's a little creepy, no?). It is made clear that he is neither super handsome, nor incredible in bed, nor is he super rich. In fact, the game makes it very clear very early on that:
Her husband is unfunny, not trusting, boring, sexually underwhelming and in huge debt.
Given that scenario, there really isn't even much of a reason why the two of them are even together. She does tell him that
she loves him all the time. Yes, but why? There is no backstory, no prologue where it shows some good times they had, some character traits of the husband that made her fall in love with someone so much older than him, possibly defying her family (as they are somehow completely omitted form the story). Anything to give the actions of the players some weight, jeopardizing their marriage. Why would you feel bad about it if they already don't feel like a real couple?
To me, this basically reeks of a lazy NTR scenario. Now, there is no NTR tag and before I get stoned right away,
I understand why. This game is a female POV, obviously
she isn't being cucked. The player is not the husband. The wife does the cucking. So cheating it is. It still makes the
story progression bland and predictable, you know where it is leading to and any attempt to make it seem like the wife truly loves the husband seems ingenuine and untruthful. Sure, you often have a choice between "No, I will not do this outrageous thing", "Oh I can't hold back, I want to be naughty" and "I AM A SEX ADDICT WITH NO SELF CONTROL AND SELF RESPECT" but in the end
it just feels like choosing between slow mode and fast mode.
For god's sake, a few weeks in,
No, not because he is holding a gun to her head. Because he knows she cheated on a school test. Although he has no proof. And somehow that one test threatens her whole existence. And convinces her to agree to be sexually abused. Girl, what are you doing.
Why is that sex-addicted dean even risking his own existence for this? How does he know that she won't just be a decent fucking person and report his ass? And why does he look like 28 when he is supposed to be the dean of a college?
The characters just barely make any sense.
There is also a mobster that straight up looks like a metrosexual Balenciaga model for whatever reason, that reveals to the FMC that her no-good husband is in debt. With an incredible $100,000 (which obviously cannot be repaid, his credit score must suck ass). He needs to pay it back in TWO DAYS (for no reason, his boss just said so). No funny business. Except, when the FMC says they don't have it, he agrees to go from $100,000 in two days to $200 a week. Which, BY THE WAY, would take
9,5 years (!!!) to pay back. Like what. Negotiating her way from 2 days to 10 years, holy mother of god, get her in the hostage negotiation unit ASAP!
I thought he needs the money
right now?! What happened to that? Basically, all this does is negate the threat that has just been built up.
But well, you see, it never was about creating a threat.
It was just another shoe-horned trope to give the FMC a reason to earn money by being a tease and keeping it a secret to her husband. Clever, if it weren't for the fact that the story suffers because of that.
Another example of bad character design and story telling is the neighbor. Somehow, everyone talks about him as if he was this distinguished gentleman, a George Clooney type womanizer that barely looks 45, with an aura of a once very attractive man, aging like fine wine.
My man, his ass is the default grandpa DAZ model. He looks about 90, with shriveled raisin skin and pubic hair on his head. He looks about as dignified as the average YouTuber in an apology video. He looks so thin and fragile, if he was a dog you'd want to bring him to the vet to put him out of his misery. But not only that, he also acts all pretentious and wise, yapping about older men being so much more mature than her 40 year old husband because he likes gaming. All while secretly perving on the FMC and sending her sex toys (which of course she loves, duh). He is clearly a rizz god, any 21 y.o. sex bomb will be attracted to him.
The only somewhat interesting character in this whole game is his grandson, that inexplicably lives with him, because fuck it why not. He is a streamer and halfway convincingly introduces the FMC to the world of
simping streaming. There is
some potential there, even a little bit of chemistry in a way. But even that
guy boy is a
bit of a stereotype, very shy but secretly into the FMC and wants to bang her (again, our sex addict FMC loves that idea). He also decides to completely give up his goal of becoming a streamer to transfer his account and viewer base to a
thot e-girl. Why? Why not manage both? Does anyone in this game make sound decisions?
Whatever, I'm sure a lot of you already scrolled down past my review because I am nitpicking everything in this game, and that's fine.
A lot of players will enjoy the game purely because of its visuals, and rightly so! It looks great. Sure, the animations are a bit disappointing, sex scene so far offer nothing you haven't seen before, but the overall visual quality is simply beyond what most games offer today. Big kudos to the dev/artist for that.
But please,
for anyone who plays these games not just for the looks but also to immerse yourself in the story, to feel like the game takes place in a believable world that does not revolve around the FMC, where characters interact with each other instead of just with her, where people have a backstory, motivations and feel like actual people, this game will disappoint you.
It aims to be on the level of high quality gems like BaDIK or Our Red String, but it falls short on the execution. There is no coherent narrative, just a sandbox clickfest to get from one scene to another, while wasting time on the overworld map in between or the completely useless and unfun minigames that are just there to waste a few extra seconds. It's a glorified gallery of admittedly very good looking CGs, but filled with soulless characters, plot holes, stereotypes, predictability and sleep-inducing gameplay.
I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I feel there is a lack of more critical reviews here. And I do hope that whoever is responsible for the visual design and looks of the characters gets to work on another game in the feature that hopefully mitigates the other issues.
