Ren'Py - Straitened Times [v0.66] [HRelease]

There is a lot to like about this title and there are some very good PROS about it but unfortunately the CONS outweigh any PROS by far.

PROS - The Story for the most part is fun and interesting. The character models mostly look good and attractive. It is FUN early on in your playthrough.

CONS -
RANDOMNESS and GRIND!! This game should be called Straitened times the ULTIMATE time waster. To get new content you have to complete tasks and days OVER and OVER and OVER again!! Until some RANDOM event you luckily complete at some RANDOM time, just happens to take place.

The MODS and cheats are a necessity, I could not even imagine playing this title without mods and going through the FULL GRIND!

The Sad part is I was having FUN initially, but then the GRIND set in and ruined this experience. I have played Tencent Gotcha games that had less GRIND where they sell you microtransactions to fix the grind.

I deluded myself into thinking I was having enough fun to come back to this title, and as updates keep passing and I fail to come back I finally realized I was dreading with every fiber of my being playing this title again. 54.1 is out now and there is still no GALLERY mod so I'm done. I can't do it, this is the first game I like and I want to like more but the GRIND has broken me.

This title is good for a dedicated explorer of adult VN's with a crap load of time on there hands.

I salute you players that can but the content is nowhere near incredible enough to over come my dread of grinding out another 50 hours as if I'm trying to beat the hardest boss in Elden Ring on Insane difficulty!!

Give it a shot if you want, the early game is fun with mods but be careful to know when the fun ends and the chore like grinding begins. This is NOT a bad VN, it's a Good VN, saddled with some horrible mechanics.

I'm sad to say, at this time, I can only rate this one 2 stars. There's a LOT of content, which is great. Most games don't have this much content in a full game, much less an incomplete one like this. However, due to the disorganized, unclear, janky, grindy objective/point system per character, it gets really repetitive, tedious and annoying to figure out how to move forward with many of the characters. If some of the options were simplified and trimmed down in how many points you need, it would help this game immensely. This way, you don't have to spend in game weeks grinding the same relationships trying to find some obscure dialogue option you didn't know you were missing. If you don't want to simplify that, there at least needs to be a compact, simplified tracker for love interest based objectives to show you what you’re missing.

Beyond that, I am always annoyed by bad spelling and grammar, which is abundant in this game. This could easily be a 4-star game if some systems were polished, some unnecessary repetition was removed, and some kind of objective tracker with clear hints was put into the game. To clarify, The story quests already have a tracker in the phone in game, which works just fine. This game just needs better tracking for the love interest objectives. Anyway, iron out those issues, and you'll have a pretty fantastic game.

Very good game and highly recommended. It has quite acceptable animations.

Sometimes you can get lost in the character requirements because the quest guide is very ambiguous and confusing at times, but when you manage to continue with the stories, the animation and text are excellent.

This is a really good game with interesting characters and plot twists, great scenes and dialogue. held back by a progression system so convoluted that you'll 100% need a guide to progress almost every step of the way. Grinding is insanely tedious as well.

I really liked the game the first time I tried it, but as more updates came out I always didn't know how to deal with the new events. To this day I still can't access Grandma's house... I simply can't access most of the events... it's really frustrating, no matter how hard I try to follow the guides I can't do it.

I hope that one day they release a more complete guide or that the game is very, very clear on how to get the events.

The game has very good graphics, scenes, etc. but it is simply terribly boring because of the system that the creator came up with.
I have already reached day 450, which is about 75-80% of the game and I do not play it anymore because it bores me because of all this stupid and pointless grind.

If the game forces me to use mods, cheats and use the console to get everything in it, then it is very poor because it causes me to not be able to focus on the game.

One of the Incest/Corruption games of all time!
Decent renders, animations can be a hit or miss though. Writing is actually competent.
What really irks me, however, is that once you manage to corrupt and fuck your immediate family, the family members will still provide responses that do not recognize the fact that you know that they know that you are all fucking each other ("oh no, but what if our sister found out" directly after she ate her snatch as were railing her asshole).
Presently some of the plot-lines outside the immediate family are left hanging and/or are very thin on content.
But the core content is there and is good.

My all time favourite! Everyday I'm checking if there's an update. Just wish they were more often and with a little bit more content. Also updates changelog or walkthrough is useful to know what's new, since it's a complex sandbox.

To be honest, this is a miss for me. First off, the story isn't great nor are the characters in it particularly memorable or well written. No choices that matter seem to exist beyond what actions give or take away points here and there. And it's all packed into a sandbox that feels more like a chore than a game, keeping schedules, looking for money, etc. The help tools to navigate that are good, which is nice, but sometimes are missleading with things like "talk to father about work" and when you go there there is no such conversation yet available. It is very nice though that it lists the different actions you can do and which still can earn you points and which have been depleted.

Render quality is pretty decent, but I didn't particularly like many of the character models, that's a matter of taste I guess. Sounds were mostly absent though can't say for music since I usually turn it off. And I did find some minor bugs here and there with some things not triggering or some minor renpy problems to ignore.

All in all, not the worst game but I think there are better ones out there with which you can spend your time.

Without a walkthrough, its just a chore with too much grinding.
At first its enjoyable, and then it just annoying. I just saw that there's an update, but I dont have a save and cant imagine going through all the mess again.

A majority of the scenes are NOT animated which is misleading. A lot of the biggest games have animated scenes and I think this game could be at the top with all of its scenes completely animated. I think the story and theme are good and engaging but the dialogue is horrible I don't think the developer speaks good English

Several times I tried to give this game a chance, and the last time I managed to sit down and try to understand why this game has such a high rating. And I will say that it is overrated, but because of some aspects I will leave the rating at 2 stars.

In the first place, the game from the first frames shows what to expect from it, it is a very perverse MC, like and not bad, but for the first 5 minutes he in every girl immediately sees sex, taste and color, but I do not like it, I would like at least a little realism, I wouldn't write about it, but the game positions itself as a story, but the story in the first frames is practically rolled up) In general, just run around and fuck a bunch of girls, and it's not bad, but again, why then try to cram the story here, maybe.

The second disappointment, there is no focus on the available girls who could be revealed, because of this we get the following, a huge number of girls, absolutely not interesting, empty, strange group sex, 4 people, it is generally nonsense.

On the tags of the game also nothing interesting, in this world there is only the main character and that's it, the rest of the guys they are not, even at school, MC has no friends, there is no one at all in fact.

And all this is embellished with grind, gradually corrupt and get scenes.
From the pluses, the picture is good, even different figures of the girls as well as their holes, which is rare in novellas, that's where the pluses ended)

Loved the game for sheer number of characters and events written for each of them. It's a huge amount of gameplay and I guess that's where the lack of better walkthroughs or mod hurts. That's the only reason I can think why people may not like it. Otherwise it is easily one of the best corruption game I have ever played

Amazing game. Tons of different scenes with pretty much every girl you see and they are all high quality. Thought I ran out of scenes but then i explored a bit more and well found like 6 other characters. Not sure what conflict does though because i keep it low but if that forces a ending or whatever then its a 4.9999 instead of a 5. One of the best games on the site and one that actually has content matching the 4 years its out (some other games still have like a couple hours of content at most). Props to the team/creator behind it.

Great slow corruption game with nice animation. It is very interesting to discover new ways of interacting with girls. The text is also a pleasure. There are a huge number of interesting situations in which additional characters can be included.

Nice renders and hot women. But there is a lot of grinding and the gameplay is confusing, you need to use the walkthrough. The game takes a lot of time to complete the same actions. The interface is just as confusing.

Definitly a amazing game,though I ve download --play the begning-delete for 4 times.bc the colour make me feel very anoying.
This is my 5th times to try to play it through,I have to calm myslef down,play it bit by bit and without a WT most of time,and then find out very interesting and the scene is quite good.
WORTH TO PLAY!!!and I think the hints could be more clear such like "if I need to trigger this scene,how much illure do I still need.

Not the worst, but certainly low scale when it comes to many aspects.

Story - The whole premise of the game is based on the father going to jail, and you doing the freudian thing and taking over the job. Well that doesn't really show well in any part of the story, what story there actually is which isn't much so far.
It is done quite poorly, with just statements of "i am the man of the family now" and really lacks any imagination when it comes to this.
Really lacks any emotional sparks in the story when it comes to the characters. Everything just quickly and without any real build up, comes down to trying to screw every woman in the entire family, neighbours and step family. Rather simple minded story line.

Originality - Far from Original, although the one somewhat different aspect is the three different households the MC is trying to seduce.

Grammar - Oh jeez, hire a writer and make sure he can spell properly. The grammar is quite horrible, wether or not english is devs first language i do not know , but certainly the whole writing scheme needs to gone over and in many cases redone.

Amount of content - Fair amount of content, although all of it is pretty much ninety percent grind, yes the game is a big grind fest which seriously lowers the interest of playing it.

Animations - Not an utter failure, although what animations there are and what they include are mostly repetitive and very unimaginative. Since the story is so basic and really doesn't include any realistic steps to the relationships of any of the characters. The animations do not go very far either. Most include only a few types with no respectable realism, only a few have any kissing scenes and those are simple static renders.
Animations being so very important to any of these games, most devs i guess don't notice that the better the story and the more animations as well as things like different positions and things like foreplay. Make for a much more interesting Story/game overall.
This one does not really try in that respect, its the usual one or two positions and two second then squirt your load sex scenes. Far from making it memorable.

Although it is not the worst game i have played, it is also not one that is memorable. So much could have been done better, but then redoing it so it is better would take far to much time since this one has been out for quite a few years already. Players don't have years and years to wait on such things. There are better projects with better quality to them.
The only reason for two stars instead of one star, is the fact that i think the dev did put in more effort than a lot of other devs that i have seen. So there is that.
Still it's a huge grind fest and a lot of things don't actually makes sense when it comes to the game itself. Maybe it will get better, but i think it's beyond saving really.

This deserves one star. The early renders are poor, the later ones (the better-great ones) require so much time it's not worth playing. The UI is dated, the game's buggy, the grammar is off and strange, and the corruption/plot as a whole is just as strange.

There's better games to play by far, with 1/10th the grind.

The models are very appealing, I like the mom and the younger sis, they have very sexy body without being an exaggerated stereotype.

I like how the interface is built, it gives it a feeling of managing the motel and the tablet is a good idea.

While the game isn't finished at the time of doing this review, I see where it is heading, with a story where you have to investigate what happen with your dad, who was sent to prison, while having all those relations evolving through multiple interactions.

I think the relationships are well paced, and interesting overall. Frankly an excellent game in my opinion, that I'm following for further updates.