Recommending Story-first games

[bacienvu88]

Just played the first update of new urban fantasy detective game Detective Necro . Really promising so far and first update has a fair amount of content.

 

[larsalexanderson]

So I don't really want to click on every link. Are any of these games complete?

 

[realjitter]

So I don't really want to click on every link. Are any of these games complete?

I "only" read like 7 from that list and 3 of them are indeed completed which are the first 3 ...
Acting Lessens is like a traditional AVN and the other 2 are kinetc novels...

 

[mad_kiwi]

Love the list in the OP - great inspiration, but I was surprised to not see The Last Sovereign on there, luckily for me another person kindly summed up the game below.

I will agree with the The Last Sovereign. The prologue will make you feel like its a generic harem collecting game. But very quickly you will realize the game will start mocking common ropes found in adult games. In terms of world building and fantasy, the story will suck you in. You will feel empowered by the strategic decisions like economics, military & politics so that you can build your army to defeat what is existential threat to humanity.

The criteria that it might fail for you, would be that there is a Harem involved. However the sex scenes are actually well written and every character grows to have their own motivation to join it.

Also thank you for starting this thread. I am noting down some of the great games suggested. I am very much aligned with you in seeking games that really tell a story first.

I'd add on to this review that all of the characters in the game have great arcs, their own motivations, quests, and their dialogue is very well written. This is one of the few games where I started speeding through it to see more of the plot, I think Caribdis is the only other dev that does that for me. The game is also very meticulous about reacting to the many choices you make as you go through the game, to the point where during major story events not only are there lots of variations on what's going on based on your choices and completely different paths that play out.

It's really something special.

 

[desmosome]

Love the list in the OP - great inspiration, but I was surprised to not see The Last Sovereign on there, luckily for me another person kindly summed up the game below.



I'd add on to this review that all of the characters in the game have great arcs, their own motivations, quests, and their dialogue is very well written. This is one of the few games where I started speeding through it to see more of the plot, I think Caribdis is the only other dev that does that for me. The game is also very meticulous about reacting to the many choices you make as you go through the game, to the point where during major story events not only are there lots of variations on what's going on based on your choices and completely different paths that play out.

It's really something special.

I haven't played it in years (waiting for art and maybe completion), but TLS could certainly quality. It has kind of a good guy chad harem structure which is usually an uphill climb, but it doesn't lose track of the main plot. It gets bonus points for having impeccable balance both for the battles and resources management/kingdom building with meaningful choices. It was awesome making the tough choices with limited resources and seeing how that pays off later on.

 

[desmosome]

Divergence: Beyond The Singularity is going great, and I'm going to keep recommending it until someone else plays it and discusses it with me

I've been thinking of playing this again. As usual, I play an early version and then sit on it for a while unless it has something that really catches my attention. This one didn't quite draw me in enough to want to check out every update when I played the first update. It would be cool to hear your analysis on the game.

Well, I fapped one out to some NTR shit an hour ago, so I'm down for some non-fapping game. I'll check out the latest release.

 

[Tlaero]

So I don't really want to click on every link. Are any of these games complete?

All of the Elsaverse games listed are complete, and the Omnibus contains 5 of them as well as a number of short stories.

(Though, jufot, you've got the order of Transitions and Elsa's Nightmares reversed.)

Tlaero

 

[jufot]

This one didn't quite draw me in enough to want to check out every update when I played the first update. It would be cool to hear your analysis on the game.

Of course. I'd call it a transhumanist dystopian corporate espionage thriller. That's a mouthful! Think Blade Runner, but less ambitious It revolves around a piece of tech that a powerful corporation may be developing. Nobody knows exactly what it is, but everyone's convinced it's game changing. There are parties who'd like to keep things under wraps, and those who'd rather expose them. None of them are angels, and they are all ultimately acting for selfish reasons.

Many of the characters are androids, and there is an interesting storyline about their humanity and what happens when an android - who is already designed to be as human as possible - starts experiencing things no other android ever has.

It's important to note that there is no MC. The story switches between perspectives of various parties that are involved in the mystery. It's more like reading a book or watching a series, than playing a game.

It's hard to write about the story without spoiling things, so that's where I'll stop. The weakest aspect of the game is definitely the porn. It looks gorgeous, but it's entirely mechanical and soulless. I genuinely believe Divergence would have been a better game without the porn, but don't let that discourage you. I have much pickier standards for sex scenes than most (see: my comments in this thread) and it's probably just fine for most people

Love the list in the OP - great inspiration, but I was surprised to not see The Last Sovereign on there

I haven't played it in years (waiting for art and maybe completion), but TLS could certainly quality. It has kind of a good guy chad harem structure which is usually an uphill climb, but it doesn't lose track of the main plot.

Thank you both! TLS has been in my backlog for a while, and I've heard good things from multiple people. I don't add games to the OP unless I've personally played them, so it'll have to wait its turn

(Though, @jufot, you've got the order of Transitions and Elsa's Nightmares reversed.)

Oops, fixed!

 

[rasyonel]

you have great taste thanks for sharing. ♥

 

[jufot]

Just played the first update of new urban fantasy detective game Detective Necro . Really promising so far and first update has a fair amount of content.

Thanks for the recommendation! I gave this one a shot. Story wise, very strong start, I'm thoroughly impressed! The central mystery is layered, deep, and full of believable characters with dubious motivations. I'm definitely sold

Unfortunately, I found the porn to be really, really bad. Bottom of the barrel stuff. Sex scenes have the cringiest, cheesiest dialogue, having everyone act like dumb caricatures. The only saving grace here is that you can skip them.

All the usual annoying tropes are present. MC is a womanizer with a pre-existing harem and a forearm-sized cock, and all potential concubines are completely OK with the arrangement. The one woman who left MC because she didn't want to be just another body to him, comes back grovelling, begging MC to take her back.

That's not all. MC grew up in Orc culture where, apparently, monogamy is not a thing and MC and Glasha (his "main" girlfriend) saw her dad with "a million different women" and yet, while MC - a human - has fully embraced this part of Orc life, Glasha - an actual Orc - only sleeps with MC. For... reasons. It's weak, pandering, and boring.

The dev's comments on the game thread are not encouraging either, so I expect this lowest common denominator stuff and "NTR" avoidance to get worse, not better.

Still, the story is well-written and immersive, so as long as sex scenes remain avoidable, I'll keep playing. Unfortunately, having a great story is not the only criteria in the OP, so this one won't be going into the list

 

[bacienvu88]

Thanks for the recommendation! I gave this one a shot. Story wise, very strong start, I'm thoroughly impressed! The central mystery is layered, deep, and full of believable characters with dubious motivations. I'm definitely sold

Exactly. And I really like the initial world building. Lots of interesting backstory to explore.

Unfortunately, I found the porn to be really, really bad. Bottom of the barrel stuff. Sex scenes have the cringiest, cheesiest dialogue, having everyone act like dumb caricatures. The only saving grace here is that you can skip them.

I have to admit that I often click through sex scenes. I am not too fond of overt descriptions of things already shown on screen. I quite like Talothral's approach there.

Still, the story is well-written and immersive, so as long as sex scenes remain avoidable, I'll keep playing. Unfortunately, having a great story is not the only criteria in the OP, so this one won't be going into the list

Not going to comment too much about the other stuff so far. I'm giving the dev the benefit of the doubt and hope the relationships etc. will be interesting as well in the future.

 

[jufot]

I quite like Talothral's approach there.

Oh, no While no dialogue is better than bad dialogue, it's still lacklustre. Talothral's sex scenes remind me of the early 90s, when I used to download a gallery of porn images on a dial-up connection and quickly switch between them and pretend it was a video

Nowadays, I want more than just watching characters smash their bits. I want feeling, and lust, and eroticism. Raife can back me up on this.

Still, horses for courses

 

[bacienvu88]

Oh, no While no dialogue is better than bad dialogue, it's still lacklustre. Talothral's sex scenes remind me of the early 90s, when I used to download a gallery of porn images on a dial-up connection and quickly switch between them and pretend it was a video

Nowadays, I want more than just watching characters smash their bits. I want feeling, and lust, and eroticism. Raife can back me up on this.

Still, horses for courses

I wasn't referring to the strange very slow slideshow thing Talothral does, but that there is little to no description together with it. And Talothral probably has gone too much in the other direction.

What I want from a sex scene is dialogue in text and actions in screens/video. I dislike long winded descriptions of what is already shown on screen.

Feeling, lust and eroticism for me to a large degree comes from everything leading up to the sex scenes. There are very few sex scenes in AVN:s that I find particular hot if I were to view them by themselves without knowing the characters etc. Often I find intimate moments without much lewdness to be hotter than actual sex scenes as well.

But I may be weird.

 

[jufot]

But I may be weird.

Not at all. If anything, it sounds like we mostly agree here

 

[realjitter]

2 days ago i read the AVN Artemis and for some reason i could have sworn it was on that list here...am i trpping?. I think that was the whole reason why i read it in the first place, but then again, maybe i'm imagining things..

 

[jufot]

Artemis has been discussed extensively on this thread but no, it's never been on the list

 

[realjitter]

Interesting, so i am tripping=) I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing

Artemis is arguably a pretty complex game and there's certainly a lot to write about it..
Too bad though that english isn't my first language so the following text will probably be a bit messy to read..sorry in advance, i try to keep it short (i failed)

The game is one of the harder ones to judge (at least for me). And the reason why is mainly because of it's 1st chapter.
It started out ok, introducing the MC and setting up the story, but then it became weirder and weirder and even weirder.
From the MC (who's supposingly 27 years old) participating in a sorority BJ contest (why is there a sorority in this game again?) to him moving in with his childhood friend and then jerking off out in the open during the first night being there..followed by some super awkward "comedy" scene right after with Kindra putting something on his dick or...i don't even know what happend there..

At that point i thought "Ok, this was fun i guess", but now it's time to delete whatever this is supposed to be...

Well, the only reason why i kept on reading more was because i thought the game was recommened on that list here (which it turns out it wasn't)

I gotta say i'm glad i did though because as far as i'm concerned the game made a complete 180 starting from chapter 2 onwards and it never looked back..
Like it was actually scary to me. It felt like the developer had this "great" idea in his head about this Artifical intelligence or Android and than he started to build everything else around it. The overall cast, how to integrade porn in such a game, sidestorys, charackter backgrounds and so on..
Which is truth to be told a pretty big, creative process considering all of that is just one part out of many many things when it comes to creating an AVN of this capacity. So you gotta give the Developer credit either way because this is certainly not your everyday AVN...it's far from it actually

Anyways, so in my run i went with the Reina charakter as my "chosen one" for, at first at least, no particular reason. Probably mainly because it's heavily written around Juno and Kindra in the first 3 chapters so i always tend to go a different direction just to see how it's done.
Well that and because i wasn't really into both above mentioned charakters....
But then the game suprised me once again because from the experiences i made in the first chapter i thought i knew pretty well how this would go down, but it didnt it slowed down alot, like alot lot and on top of that it actually came around with a somewhat realistic approach when it comes to building relationships (within the boundaries of an AVN of course)
Up to a point where i'm actually genuinely curious about what's going to happen next..
Just really good, there's nothing else to say about it (at least on the Reina route)

Well, later down the road the main attraction will obviously be Artemis her/itself. It'll be interesting to see how the Developer is going to handle this to be honest because there are a multitude of ways to approach that particular part of the story...
Not to mention the potential philosophical questions you can bring up alongside with it..

I mean sure, this is an AVN so there'll be the inavitable scene where Artemis wants to experience the MCs dick at some point, but other than that there are so many things you can do with that. And if it turns out that Artemis will become a LI at some point then..well, that'll be certainly interesting to read about...
But maybe it won't come to all of that, maybe she'll become just a domnestic type of Android with benefits (please no)

Oh, there's one more thing i personally didn't like about the game and that's.... Kindra.... (i'm so sorry) ... ('im not)
Omg i just can't stand her, she's like the complete opposite when it comes to people i'd surround myself with in my personal life...
This happy go lucky, borderline childish, super genius, hyperactive type of charakter is like a personal nightmare for me
And the fact that the MC is like sharing the same roof with her certainly doesn't help much...
But that's just personal preference i guess and from what i read about her in the Artemis thread she's like a fan favorite or whatever..which is cool, i get that and all, but man o man...you're screwed if you'e like me and don't like her...
My antagonist in this game is not Cassandra it's Kindra
Funny enough though that the (imo) best written scene so far is with freaking Kindra during their camping trip when they're fishing...way to go Kindra ..way to go... convert me

Alright i'm gonna stop here i guess ....
I lastly just wanted to point out how impressed i was by the sheer amount of work and passion the developer put into this monster of a game...like seriously it's completly bonkers and even with all the negative stuff i said about it i'd still 100 % recommend reading it. great stuff

 

[desmosome]

The game is one of the harder ones to judge (at least for me). And the reason why is mainly because of it's 1st chapter.
It started out ok, introducing the MC and setting up the story, but then it became weirder and weirder and even weirder.
From the MC (who's supposingly 27 years old) participating in a sorority BJ contest (why is there a sorority in this game again?) to him moving in with his childhood friend and then jerking off out in the open during the first night being there..followed by some super awkward "comedy" scene right after with Kindra putting something on his dick or...i don't even know what happend there..

Funny thing. That's about where I stopped playing that game lol. The entire super genius sorority sluts plot seemed incredibly out of place. Maybe it just didn't jive with the expectations going in because I was thinking it would be a bit more grounded than that. Plus, that entire sequence felt artificial with the MC going around interviewing each girl for the sake of the players. That's one of my pet peeves.

 

[jufot]

From the MC (who's supposingly 27 years old) participating in a sorority BJ contest (why is there a sorority in this game again?) to him moving in with his childhood friend and then jerking off out in the open during the first night being there..followed by some super awkward "comedy" scene right after with Kindra putting something on his dick or...i don't even know what happend there..

That sort of stuff is exactly why Artemis isn't on the list There was a great comment on the game thread a while ago, saying the sorority should have been in the past - that is, the women knew each other from their sorority days, and now they're friends & colleagues working with Reina. That would have been a better background.

Anyways, so in my run i went with the Reina charakter as my "chosen one"

Well, later down the road the main attraction will obviously be Artemis her/itself. It'll be interesting to see how the Developer is going to handle this to be honest because there are a multitude of ways to approach that particular part of the story...
Not to mention the potential philosophical quetsions you can bring up alongside with it..

Well, MC has already molested Artemis in her sleep and it was played for laughs, so I'm pretty sure we know how it's going to go

 

[realjitter]

That sort of stuff is exactly why Artemis isn't on the list There was a great comment on the game thread a while ago, saying the sorority should have been in the past - that is, the women knew each other from their sorority days, and now they're friends & colleagues working with Reina. That would have been a better background.

I always wonder why Developers come up with those weird scenarios in order to show lewd scenes. Why not just simply put in an ex girlfriend which whom you have casual sex wth? or i dont know...maybe you meet some1 at a club...things that also happen in the real world


[/QUOTE] View attachment 1779965 [/QUOTE]

=) Right?, i mean the scene where Reina was going on a blind date with someone and then stumbled across the MC followed by them ending up at her place was pretty well done. Same goes for all the scenes prior to that


Well, MC has already molested Artemis in her sleep and it was played for laughs, so I'm pretty sure we know how it's going to go
[/QUOTE]

Yeah that scene though, i did not molest her...but....what exactly is he doing in that scene? Is he like actually going all out, or is he just briefly touching her? I mean both is kinda the same, but still...whats he doing? spoil me =)