Review for v1.0
Subverse is a game I've kept track of for a long time. With the literal millions going into the budget and a team of talent putting it together, this felt like it could be the first real BIG lewd game title. Now in a sense that's true, because it's no real question that this could be considered "AAA" in the world of lewd games. Unfortunately that title, perhaps unsurprising to many these days, isn't exactly an indication of something being good.
I've been a long time advocate of writing being perhaps the most important element of a good adult game, since that's typically what grips me into wanting to actually play them in the first place. I planned on sinking many hours going through this and giving it a real in-depth review, expecting it to keep me hooked enough to do so. That plan has since fallen apart, as after experiencing the writing in this game, I asked myself why waste any more time on this and downloaded a full save for the gallery. With that being said, here's where I will put the fair disclaimer that I did NOT play though all of this, and thus haven't seen a large majority of the content. I specifically played up until the missions where you recruit the elf pornstar girl before I just couldn't do it anymore.
I've seen the comparison made a few times and I think it's apt: this is like Borderlands writing smashed together with a Mass Effect inspired space opera of sorts. This game REALLY wants you to know it's a porn game. The script is filled with never ending cheesy lines, fourth wall breaking jokes, and just an overall juvenile level of humor that's baked into almost every facet of this game. For me, that makes it incredibly hard to actually care about anything going on let alone take it serious. You could argue I'm a fool for trying to do so in the first place, but the game is half story-related cutscenes that I have to sit there and watch (or skip) to progress.
It's not as if I necessarily hate the characters, as they feel endearing enough when they aren't plagued by the umpteenth corny porn joke, but another aspect that made it hard to enjoy this was the MC. The game offers no choice, nor is the MC any form of self insert. He's a smuggler with an Australian accent that wears panties on his head. Much like everyone else, it feels like half his dialogue is porn jokes. I just feel nothing towards his character and there isn't anything changing that in what I played.
As for the actual gameplay part of the game, there's only two parts where you're actually doing something outside of clicking into different rooms on the ship. The SHMUP ship combat and the tactical unit-based grid combat. Both suffer from the same issues: being repetitive and lacking depth. To unlock most things in this game, including a large majority of the sex scenes, you have to grind XP for the girls to level them up. You get XP primarily from these combat encounters, which means you'll be doing a lot of them. It almost feels like because they decided to have these two styles of combat systems, neither of them got enough focus to make them truly engaging beyond the first few battles you do. They almost overstay their welcome more than anything.
Now obvious praise where it's due: indicative of the huge budget, the production value of this is insane for a lewd game. Fully voice-acted (and done well too), many fully animated cutscenes, lots of work put into the UI, music, sound effects, etc. etc. etc. Too many details to name, but suffice to say this does feel like a game with a ton of work going into it. Which is good, because it is. It's by no means average.
The last part of this is the sex. Again given the super high production value and the teams previous works, the scenes LOOK great and are animated very well. But the thing is, what is really separating this from being a gallery viewer you have to grind to unlock scenes for? Honestly, very little. This is because like 90% of scenes aren't actually built into the story but instead just exist to be viewed solely in the gallery. It's another thing that makes it hard to really connect with characters, but considering the games writing maybe it's a good thing the scenes don't have any dialogue either. So maybe they lack on certain qualities, but are they still satisfying to view so to speak? Yes and no. There exists what are essentially premium scenes that have a speed slider and a cum button, but those make up only like ten percent of the total scenes available. The rest exist as short loops without those things. Not to mention the extremely limited camera control, where penetration is often hidden. Edit: I took a look at some of the devotion scenes, and again while high quality, they suffer from similar issues. It's just a longer cinematic you have no control over with characters I don't really care about.
I feel like I've ranted about this more than put together a coherent review really detailing why I don't like this, but the TLDR is that while yes this is obviously not your typical porn game given the money and development that went into it, it ultimately fell short for me as a game that just couldn't keep me engaged into any of it. If there's anything I could have personally changed about the game, it would have been to take itself more seriously and ironically engrain the actual sex scenes into the story. The trend of me being let down by games I've waited a long time for unfortunately continues.
