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.
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.