VN - Ren'Py - Abandoned - Stormside [v0.23.1.4] [Atemsiel]

TL;DR = a mix of supernatural horror with dating and abuse simulator.

Story: 4/5
+ MC lives in a world of superpowers. He has a superpower that is especially good at doing perverted things.
+ MC has a sweet childhood female friend who has a crush on him. Her best friend is a nympho who fucks anything with 2 legs.
+ MC is attending an university with experimental perverted program for females. Girls had to consent to being restrained with BDSM, abused, beaten and sexually harrased and penetrated. And girls are like "It seems legit" and they consented. Luckily MC gets put into a position where he is the one doing abusing.
- Story might seem interesting, but MC has really thick "harem protagonist correction" , where all the girls fall for him stupidly. It made me cringe. But if that floats your boat then you might really like this.

Art and Sex stuff: 5/5
+ Girls are hot.
+ Renders are good.
+ Sex scenes are hot.
+ Sex scenes has huge variability. You can choose what kind of scenes you will pursue with each of the girls. There are 3 options. You can go for romance and get basic vanilla scenes. Or you can go for some sort of submissive scenes. Or you can go for full BDSM abuse.

Gameplay: 5/5
+ This is typical VN with choices.
+ Choices has great impact on a game and sex scenes.
+ English is good.
+ Game has decent soundtrack. You will hear different types of music for different situations. It fits quite well.

To sum it up:
I really liked this game. I will definitely recommend this.

I was very positively surprised, i didn't expected much when i started playing it but i really enjoyed it. good looking girls multiple routes that are really different from another, awesome animations and a lot of details that many may not even notice like how the skin really shines when applying the lotion during the massage. that pretty much shows me how the dev even thinks about such details.

loved the gym scene so much that i wouldn't even had mind if i had to go through the entire process of their exercises it was pretty hot i hope that the game keeps the BDSM as much optional as possible and let's the player decide how much he wants to go into it. perfectly executed so far.

can't wait for the next updates and hope that there is tons of content ahead of us!

4.5/5 I wish it wasnt just out of 5 as I dont think it lets me be as specific as I wish lol
I feel like I could end up giving this a full 5/5 rating but since the game isnt finished I dont feel right giving it that full of a blessing

I didn't even really look at the tags for this game too much before downloading it (was just recommended at the end of another game I Loved), And I normally dont think I am much into BDSM because I am a soft and tender harted Boi but this game fucking Did It for me!
What I think is Up:
+I enjoyed how the Girls looked; Cute, Pretty, and not to similar to each other
+Thought the Girls personalities played out well, and were believable for their parts
+Lots of good sound design (i think, Gaming Buzzword ); Spooky places made me feel spooked, General out-n-about noises weren't Jarring or annoying (did turn music almost off but thats just a me thing, i like other tunes)
+I liked how the available choices actually played out, seemed to fit well with how the MC personality is presented but without making me feel too disconnected from the roll
+Liked that in the options I could change what Units of measure were being used in the story, But I do wish I could've also changed the ingame clock to the 12hr am/pm configuration as I did have some trouble quickly connecting the dots of time passage when in Dialog someone would say "7pm" but the clock provided was a 24hr config. Though passage of time isnt really important to experiencing the game as a whole

-MC physical design was a bit... off in someway for me. Not ugly or rough, but just a bit out of place seeming compared to the gals maybe lol
-A sandbox portion (spooky night) did leave me a bit too lost, and confused, Even with hints. I was super into the vibe and everything, got fairly spooked a few times, but eventually I kinda just hit a wall in trying to figure it out. I will admit that maybe I was just really missing something, and Potentially might be a bit dumb at times
-Some English grammar mistakes (even through my own dumbness) but really wasn't all that many. Compared to some this is nearly a boon for the game but Im not comparing it to others, just itself

Im super excited for more of this story, and was just shocked that I made it through what's available. Don't get me wrong! There's a good chunk of content to be had, it's just what is here feels polished enough that i just didnt see the end coming lol

If you've been like me a user that has searched for a proper BDSM Game for a long time then you came to the right place. They are usually either tame or to short/to unfinished. If they are even good at all.
This game is heavily under appreciated and its potential basically through the roof.

As one can see from the Screenshot the game doesn't use the most prettiest model. It uses these weird asian clay textured models that turned me off from playing a game like Eternum.

A new reader also has to be warned that the game takes quite a while to take off. Not totally boring though depending on your patience. There is a looong pre-story before you actually get to the point.
But once your are there. HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT!

Finally a game that actually deserves its tags.

Any of the girls can become a romance, submissive girlfriend or a slave. The Game has waay more animations than you are usually used to from a VN and also uses sound in an good way.

It can be a bit wordy to read through. I've skipped about 30% of the dialogue but it didn't stop me from being able to follow what's going on.

The game also features an implemented walkthrough. So no external mod necessary.

At the point of writing this review the story starts with some hints of some metastory. Something imo many games ruin the fun with by adding some unnecessary extra drama and render time.

Lets hope that part won't ruin the fun. But I can't say because at this point you only get like 2 short scenes with some dialogue that doesn't explain much.

If this game would get voice acting (unlikely I know) it could easily outshine the best VN's you find on this site imo. It already competes with them already now from a quality perspective.

I hope we will see this project be finished within a reasonable timeframe.

This game is based. While the story is farfetched and obviously just there to get you to fuck the girls, the girls are actually really unique. In most other games the honey select models are really generic and they all look alike. Here, they are quite different and they all look good. I also like the other stuff thats been included outside of just a sex game like that ghost hunting bit. That was quite cool. I like how the game has an included walkthrough, and is very upfront in what your choices actually do instead of dumb hidden points that many other games do. Overall, based and 5/5 pilled. Play it.

Excellent game.
Girls are cute and interesting.
MC is almost not cringe.
Dialogs are hot.
The highlight of the game: sex scenes - kinky, diverse and imaginative.

And it's one of these games that even non-sex parts of it are interesting. Loved the ghost hunting.

9/10.

Loved the game. The comedy is pretty on point and got quite a few laughs out of me like the principal helicoptering towards the podium out of nowhere.

The girls are pretty interesting so far and do a good job with their distinct personalities. I love Cassie and Riley and also like Sasha, love to hate Olivia since she gives us every reason to as to a lesser extend, Akemi. Hikari is pretty adorable too and Taliya doesn't have much screen time, or at least didn't have with the choices I made.

The ghost hunting bit was a very interesting part too and I appreciate there being a VN version separate from the usual sandbox. Sometimes I just feel like progressing the story and am not a big fan of fumbling around looking for clues, going back and forth and risk missing content.

This VN is ambitious and an impressive technical achievement, but does so at the expense of writing.

Going through Stormside it's impossible not to be struck by the project's ambition. Even just the settings menu makes it clear that the attention to detail is well above-average, between little minigames, sound design, controls over measurement units in displays, etc. The smartphone is one of the better ones I've used overall in RenPy VNs, and this attention to detail really culminates in the ghost hunt minigame which is legitimately pretty impressive. But I couldn't help but ask myself... why?

I think there's a temptation among first-time developers to do more, more, more. Subsystems have huge effort put in, not because in benefits the project in any way, but because there's a sense that high effort is inherently laudable. The ghost hunt is a great example of this: as impressive as it was technically, I quickly backed out and just skipped the whole thing, because fundamentally it subtracted from the experience. It had nothing to do with anything else going on. It was just a complex minigame for the sake of having a complex minigame. This isn't a VN about a ghost hunter, it's just a subplot involving one of dozens of characters.

The writing is at best okay and at worst bad. The characters are at their strongest when they're shallow VN stereotypes—people who won't really challenge your opinions or present something new, but at least might set up a good sex scene or something down the line. At worst they're outright bad. I remember exclaiming to myself a few times that "real people don't talk like this!" And this isn't even in some contrived way to set up a sex scene or something where you just shrug your shoulders and accept the medium—it's often just bad dialogue which serves no purpose whatsoever.

The actual sex scene/relationship setups are often terrible. VNs like this often like to lampshade the absurdity of the main character with others who are meant to appear the same but who are somehow bad by virtue of not being the MC—Logan serves this role here. It's presumably supposed to serve as basic self-awareness, but it just feels clumsy and lame and highlights absurd plot points that are better glossed over for the sake of porn. It also has some aggressive what I like to call "nice guy wish fulfillment garbage," in particular in a party subplot with Riley. There's a bizarre contrast between the toxicity of some Japanese girl/American guy stereotypes, which the game explicitly calls out, and the fact that the game just outright embraces them anyways. I'm not sure if I'm just not the target audience for this, but this stuff just didn't work for me. Not even as porn wish fulfillment. It just felt clumsy and contradictory at best.

The sex scenes are executed with a fair amount of technical mastery, although your investment in them may or may not be impacted by the writing issues discussed above. And I found the game's sense of humour outright charming at times, laughing along with it at a few particularly absurd moments which I didn't expect.

The GATDAM subplot is bizarre. There are other VNs which have gone with this BDSM training style plot before, but most of them have committed to it. Stormside seems to be unsure where it wants to stand, halfheartedly including this content while also including—and arguably even outright encouraging you to take—a more generic harem VN style path. I think it'd be better served by just picking what it wants to be and doing that rather than trying to please everyone.

At the end of v0.22.06, the latest version as of this review, the game introduces yet another military subplot with more characters to an already very bloated story. While I'm sure some folks will find their interest piqued, for me it just elicited a groan. The VN already struggles to keep its myriad characters and subplots in focus, and the last thing it needs is more.

Overall Stormside certainly isn't bad—it has some clear strengths—but it isn't good either. I think it'd benefit a great deal from identifying a clearer focus on what it wants to do, trimming unnecessary fat, and shoring up the quality of the core writing. I can't help but view VNs with this level of production quality and scope as doomed to transition to the "Abandoned" status as progress crawls forwards and the dev eventually becomes exhausted or loses interest, and while I hope Stormside doesn't meet that fate, I think it'll require a radical rethinking of its goals to achieve it. All in all, if you want a mediocre harem VN or BDSM game with some very impressive technical aspects, that's what you'll find here. If you're looking for a somewhat more believable or engaging story (at least by porn standards), this probably isn't the one for you.

Girls are likeable and feel believable enough to suspend disbelief.
Humor lands well, good work on the quick cuts and punchy sounds.
Options actually present choices rather than all leading to the same outcome, many even adding some flavor rather than diverging the route for the girl altogether.
Supernatural aspects intrigue me and hopefully can hopefully add to the story in the future.
Dev also respects the players time by allowing vn mode for sandbox elements people may not like, and unlocking collectables and scenes at the end of the update.

Game clearly has a lot of effort going into it, looking forward to future updates.

Jeez, this is good. Perfectly competent in all places where you'd want competence, and great in all the ways that make reading stuff like this great.

There's a disproportionate amount of replayability compared to how long the first playthrough is. Which will be excellent after some more updates, but feels off right now. Definitely a pantheon game if it keeps going.

The length really is the only knock I have against it; but by no means is this game short. This game isn't lacking on content, it's lacking on payoff. Games like this tend to have two things going on: early and shallow sexual content to keep people interested, and plot/sexual tension buildup to be released later. We're still in that early phase, which isn't a bad thing. But it does make it extremely obvious that you're waiting on literally every character to have that massive outburst of sexual/emotional tension. There's also hints here and there of a super intriguing main plot. I say all of this basically because this game would have been a game you've heard of if they were more than just hints at this point.

One knock I probably have is that introducing the second years was possibly a mistake- the main cast hasn't been explored enough to justify the introduction of a wider cast. Yup. That's the knock: too many hot women each with a diverse cast of personalities. Woe be upon us.

More seriously, this usually leads to scope creep which doesn't impact the quality of the game so much as it impacts the quality of my beliefs that the game will ever finish. I don't change the score based on how likely the game is to being finished, but I'd be lying if I told you it didn't change how likely I am to rate a game in the first place (it's basically the only reason I'm reviewing this right now).

Worth checking out if you're looking for a possible new big thing. But no matter how much potential this game has (a lot- the answer is a lot), it's definitely much more raw than actualized at this point.

firstly I have to say there isn't really anything to complain about in this game, player has full agency over choices and how relationships playout, no need for a guide or walkthrough to keep track of convoluted choices you made 5 hours ago while playing.
good story and dialogue, good characters, and good animations.

hope this gets more recognition as it is criminally underrated, one of the better vns actually worth playing on this site.

This game has entered my pantheon of best games on this site, truly amazing. The world, story, dialogue, pictures and animations are all great. Also, it all plays into themes are training and dominance that I'm a big fan of.

On top of all that, the dev is extremely responsive. I ran into an issue (that apparently only affects me), and he posted a patch within a few min.

It's not all perfection (but it's close) - a couple of minor complaints:

• The girls faces can be a bit strange sometimes. Riley's in particular (maybe that's just because she gets a lot of screen time). Sometimes it looks like she has no teeth or something that makes her mouth look really awkward.
• All of this awesomeness comes at a price - this is the most demanding renpy game I've played in terms of computer performance. I normally play in a Linux VM, but it was too slow. Works well when I play on the Windows host. It's a worthwhile tradeoff, but wanted to note it.

One of the best projects on the site. Really can't oversell the attention to detail, the animations are good, the writing is charming, and the characters are fairly unique. The system for discipline is a cool approach and essentially having 4 options of Romance, Sub, Slave, and basically could care less is really cool. Some hidden details I couldn't figure out on walkthroughs. Wish you had an option to at least begin a plot with a couple more characters but its very clear that the author is laying the foundation for exactly that in later updates.

I would mention other games that it reminds me of, but I understand there is a cross promotion rule. With that in mind - if you like discipline games with a story, academy settings, the option to protect or dominate, or in general enjoy anime-esque honey select games, there are very few I could recommend above this one, and even fewer that are still actively developed.

If domination is not your style, without spoiling where the plot is currently, you do take on a role as a disciplinarian but moreso for protection of characters you care about. So if you enjoy a romantic or protective plotline, those options seem to be on the table based off of the current release. How severe you go is truly your choice at this point and I'd even say its one of the best intro's into this style if you are unsure if a disciplinarian game would be in your personal wheel house.

TLDR - its a good game. Play it. Support it if you can. If you don't like this style of game, it has more variability than other with male domination / slave type play, give it a fair chance.

Criminally underrated!!

Pros: great story and writing, animations are plenty and done super smooth, characters actually have depth rather than being bags of flesh and blood, branching is great, gallery items are sweet, characters are beautiful, and music is well chosen......also.....the UI is one of the best I have seen in years!! The setting has options to control moan, music etc volumes, and shit ton of other customizable things.

There's tons of other games where you can be in charge of girls in a school setting but this game separates itself from those by actually investing time in making the girls appear humanlike rather than just making them mindnumbingly shallow. The girls actually shine here and have their own ideas and interests that aren't always about the MC. Massive respect!

Cons: NONE.

Verdict: Abso-fucking-lutely play certified! It's insane how good the quality is.
This game was made by someone who was actually making a game that they themselves would enjoy rather than just sell their soul for mass appeal and it shows in their work. The game isn't massively popular but it has heart!

Yes, pick up now!!

(Insert Palpatine Voice) We will watch your career with your great interest...

Given my rating i can wholeheatedly say, i love the game. So i better get some of the small things that were not absolutely perfect out of the way. Most of it was nowhere near a dealbreaker for me, but who knows for some it might and a review should give you the chance to see such things coming. So you do not waste your time waiting for something that does not happen.

I think the dev misses out on perfectly good occassions to include a bit of leg erotica (or even feet which is not so much my thing). Lots of renders are cut off unfavourably or the girls posing is just not out to emphasize the legs. The models would absolutely allow this and it (really low) low key bugs me some opportunities were missed.

So far the game is a tad bit shorter then one might anticipate given the respectable filesize. Just a heads up for anyone as naive as i am. An hour before finishing the current version i was somehow counting on a few more in game days or maybe even a whole week and the game was done on the evening of that same in-game day. There are good reasons for that, i guess, which i will expand on later.

This point is a bit of a mixed bag, as it did not put me off actually. However tastes are different. There are injections in the flow of the story that might be considered "breaking immersion". Also sometimes parts of the story are told from an omniscient narrators point of view. All in all the narrators perspective is not consistent throughout the game. Just another heads up for those that care about such things.

Now come the parts which i consider the reasons to give this game a try or even go as far as supporting the dev according to ones abilities.

Narration : I rarely see "Show, don't tell" and "don't tell stuff that does not further the plot" so well implemented as i did in this novel so far. There is no constant repetition of previously mentioned tidbits or shown things to remind the player. The pacing is great, with a nice rythm of funny, cute and sexy interactions taking turns. There are timelapses when appropriate which shows the dev(s?) are confident in their narration skills.

Story : The actual baseline plot is a cliche for adult novels, but i think the devs found a nice tangent to set it up. The MC himself goes through a bit of a character development so all the pieces of the scenario intended end up in the place they need to be. Of course the whole framework needs to be quite a hyperbole in many regards. Inside that framework though the actions and motives of the MC and the LI become actually quite believable.

Technical&Small Stuff: I like the style and many design decision that where made. The phone is not in the least annoying or feels like it was latched on later on an already existing game. There are good old tried and tested inserts ("Meanwhile") mixed with custom transitions between scenes, which together give the game quite a bit of a "polished" feel despite its rather early stage. Even the goofy stuff with the male side characters feels like a welcome running gag and not out of place after a while.
Lots of animations, really lots of them, which in hindsight explains the rather big size of the game. The animations are also done very, very well. In my experience devs with these type of models (Honey Select ?) sometimes just do not care to "line up" body parts carefully making their animations look worse then a series of stills done with more care would have been. Not here ! The animations are flawless in this regard and also wet, if you know what i mean. In my opinion a giant plus.

Characters: Well, it is not like the wheel was reinvented for the game. Still the characters are in their own regard feeling fresh enough to be very interesting. Except maybe for the obligatory basic bitch (so far). One thing that is also not completely novel but for some reason rarely used. The (very much real life) fact that girls are also pervs/horny sometimes and love sex as much as men do without any prior "corruption" taking place. One of the characters even reminded me of a girl i used to date. Almost every character is at least somewhat fleshed out and not one-dimensional. At least those that you have more intense interactions with thus far. Even the less likeable characters interact in a way that makes it an enjoyable experience.

Well, i think it got long enough and i could probably tell quite some more of the stuff i really like about the game, but i also tried to avoid any hard spoilers. I really recommend you should give it a try.

All of this is only my opinion, i respect that you might not share all or any of my views.

Review for v0.22.06

Though you've almost certainly seen the premise done before, Stormside is a pretty well put together visual novel as a whole so far. But there is one thing the game is absolutely excelling at: intimacy.

I'll say first that I only did the romance routes and cannot speak about the submission and slave paths. But man do the love route sex scenes hit. For multiple reasons really.

First, the love interests (only looking at main girls here). Though we have yet to see much from some of them, they are very well put together characters so far. What maybe stuck out most to me though is that this has some of the best characterizations of different nationalities I've played in an AVN. Rarely does a girls accent and mannerisms stick out so much in writing and actually stay very believable. It's refreshingly different.

Next, the animations. Exceptional. Easily top tier among honey select games. So many little details even outside of sex scenes that really do add so much to the game. The cute moment of Riley and Cassie running up to hug you is a great example.

And that's the thing. Cute moments. I'm a sucker for that shit, and we get so many of them. Which is the other half of that intimacy coming into play. Looking at Riley again, that morning after sequence where she's waking up in bed with you as your girlfriend (for the first time) is just so nice to put it simply. It's very easy to like the girls because of these moments (besides the one girl intentionally made for you to dislike them).

But here's where things get a little weird. The plot and overall premise itself feels a bit strange. Despite playing this for as many hours as I did, it has yet to really take off. Honestly it's hard to even have much to say about it? Where I'm getting with this is that it feels like the games trying to mesh together many different themes at once, and I can't say it's completely working for me yet. Hard to talk about without spoilers, but the whole magical powers thing has yet to play any major role. Though I suspect with this latest cliffhanger that it is about to.

Despite all the cute moments, there's also a few... rapey/almost ntr bait moments weirdly enough. We all know from tags and disclaimers it won't actually happen, but one of the events is saving our childhood friend from being gang raped by 5 dudes at a party. It feels out of place I suppose. Not sure the game even needed it imo.

Overall I really did enjoy this, but it almost feels like I'm walking on egg shells a bit depending on how the games plot moves forward. For now I'm really invested, and I'm hoping it stays that way.

Stormside is a rather strange VN all told. While it has all the elements of your typical harem VN, it also proceeds to go to some strangely dark places while simultaneously trying to keep a light tone. I’m not sure how the game wants me to feel about a lot of the content, and I’m not sure the game knows either.

It’s the story and gameplay combined that really throw me for a loop. Stormside takes place in a pseudo-dystopia. It's a near future, sorta real world scenario in which college prices have ballooned to such insane levels that most of the story's cast has agreed to sell their bodies to an experimental obedience system to save their wallets from several hundred thousand dollars of college debt. Apparently it’s the only way to get a well-paying job I guess?

To reiterate, the main girls of the story are genuine, bona fide whores. Sure, there's a little uncertainty in regards to what the GATDAM system entailed, but the contract they all signed suggests that, on some level, they all knew what was likely to happen. Strangely though, the girls are rather blasé about the whole thing? You’d expect some raging against the machine, dystopic nihilism, or just raw misunderstanding of the contract amongst the cast given such a fucked up world but there’s basically nothing. The most the girls do is attempt to manipulate who receives the role of the magistrate, the one delivering their punishments, and several of the girls didn’t even seem to care, even those who really, really should have.

Each girl has three different paths the MC can follow with them. There’s a romance path in which the MC refuses to abuse his authority over the girls and they naturally fall for him since he could have turned them into mindless cum-puppets and didn’t; a submission path in which the MC plays the boyfriend by day, but also can’t resist tying his girls up and mind controlling them at night; and a slavery path in which the MC goes full heel, manipulates the girls emotions, bodies, and minds, and does turn them into obedient cum-puppets. Riley’s slave route is just starting out and the emotional manipulation is already pretty heinous.

The submission and slave routes are reasonably similar. The former may have a little more kissing and romance to it, but at the end of the day there are still mind control collars, punishments and a lot of “for your own good” and “better me than someone else” rationality. The romance path is wildly different, though you still get plenty of sex. Personally, I enjoyed it greatly, as there’s a strange sort of power trip through… not power tripping. Akemi’s story presents this in the best light, as she’s constantly baffled by the MC’s refusal to abuse his position of authority. It’s always fun to show a transactional character that altruism exists.

The fucky part is how you can mix and match routes for different girls, romancing one while enslaving another. Conditional morality just isn’t moral and there’s no way any decent individual could think sexual abuse is an appropriate punishment for misbehaving at school, no matter what contracts were signed. I’m curious whether there will be story consequences for being a horrible human being or if this is all just a vehicle for porn.

Admittedly, it’s really good porn. Outside of the weird sort of tonal juxtaposition and the girls just not caring enough about something REALLY IMPORTANT to their immediate futures, I find it difficult to complain about much of anything else. The girls are beautiful with extremely expressive faces and strong personalities. The story, while quite unrealistic in the ways I’ve mentioned, is still interesting and engaging with some fantastic writing, both in and out of sex scenes. And the animations are pretty incredible. Hell, the game even has a couple of laugh out loud funny moments that I really didn’t see coming.

I truly can’t do anything other than recommend it strongly. While I’m concerned about there being too many girls to properly focus on, and the sheer breadth of content that having three different paths through a half-dozen different girls will bring about, what I’ve seen so far has a great amount of promise. I’m looking forward to where the dev decides to take things. Given a couple more updates, I could definitely see myself rating this five stars.

Probably the avn I've played that has the most potential in my eyes, especially with where 0.22 is taking things

The girls are fantastic but what I really think is the main point of the game is the routes, I've only played through up to current on the slave path (which is very easy to follow with the in game walkthrough he added) and even though it's the least popular one it is still written extremely well and really the only time I've seen such content done to that quality in an avn. I also massively appreciate the lesbian setting that got added for 0.22. Sasha best girl

Pleasantly surprised by this game with great potential but already very good, I like the graphic style, I find the rendering pretty, the animations are good, the story is nice, I also like the dose of humor in the games, the sex scenes are good, I just hope it won't be a harem game where we end up sleeping with all the girls at the same time

Review of 0.22

IMO this is a 4/5 game for me, but 5/5 is a more honest rating and I'm going with that for a convoluted reason explained below.

Everything good that has been said about this game is correct; it's magnificently built, has amazing attention to detail, I personally loved the ghost hunt section, and the conversational chemistry is best in class. I very much want to give the game 5/5 because it is that fucking good. It's iconic and deserves a place on any short list of great games.

So why 4/5? Because its premise is deeply flawed, at least from my perspective. The game feels like it's on a knife-edge between consensual non-consent (CNC) and outright rape/abuse; as soon as you deviate from the romance route, MC gets just ... bad. Without going into detail, BDSM should have some eroticism to it; my experience with the sub routes is that they really don't. Girls are reluctant and never, as of 0.22, really get past it; you're basically abusing your authority position to coerce them into stuff they don't want. They don't like you for it or see any value in being a sub, beyond becoming opportunistic or, in one girl's case, cold and ruthless. I actually really like this girl, but MC is too dumb to appreciate her enough to have any respect, and that's a major turnoff for me.

Stormside falls into a common trap for BDSM-oriented games: MC's power is mostly bullshit. It sort of falls into his lap by a fluke, so we're playing a chill guy who all of a sudden rationalizes being a massive asshole to people -- and his reasons are flimsy; aforementioned best girl would easily be able to see through it. In other words, sadist MC is a pathetic dimwit with delusions of importance and morality. (Romance MC is well-written and I have no issue with him; it's just not most of the focus of the game.)

Let's contrast this with a game about a dude in a post-apocalyptic desert who stalks things. That guy has actual power, and his BDSM tendencies are both dominant and caring; he doesn't need to be an asshole to be influential, because ultimately women depend on his good will for their survival. Sure, they're in just as precarious a position if not more so, but he can be a benevolent dom and not use sadism as some cheap threat; the world around them is threatening enough and you get the intimacy along with the erotic intensity of an organic dominance scenario. MC's special abilities could have been used to frame the story this way, but they're largely ignored and instead we have something that in my opinion is a lot less satisfying.

It speaks highly of the game that I've knocked a point off largely for the way MC treats Akemi, and because I was so upset about this I'm giving the point back in the actual rating. The girls are so well-written that I'm actually like "fuck you dev, write me a better MC to treat them right" and honestly, that's an achievement in itself. So yes, fuck you dev, but also god damn you can write some compelling ladies -- hats off.

I hope MC ends up with some more cohesive development that turns him into less of a tool and more of a considered human being. I have a really bad feeling about the frankly stupid closing scene in 0.22; it's a great cliffhanger but it also means MC is going to pull more dumb shit and we're along for the ride. Can MC acquire any real power that wasn't trust-funded to him? I mean he's already got it technically; the party scene gives us a glimpse of where that might go. It's a strange, disjointed thing right now that I hope will improve.

Despite my complaints, I'm eagerly looking forward to the next update. This game is unique and brilliant and I'm on board -- but will play carefully to get the style I'm looking for. (Walkthrough is superb, highly recommend.)