Review as of v0.5.5
Renders: They're really nice. Shadows and mood lighting to fit the scenes were great and the characters (for the most part) feel real. Though I do think the MC looks ugly / weird and I hate every render that shows his face, which fortunately for me is rare. There are no animations so far, which I'm fine with since most games don't really do it well enough to make it worth it. I think Eve and Kelly are gorgeous and very well rendered, while Cassie just looks pretty good, but the game declares Cassie as being the hottest one. The expressions that Eve gives is so real and well done.
Story: Story progression is great, and I like the fact that there's I think 6 completely different routes to take so far which really changes your perspective on the characters and seems to change the romance portion dramatically as well, including some really strange ones I wouldn't dare get into. The only problem with that is when you have that much variation, it can often take forever to develop a good length game with enough story and lewd content to satisfy most players of this genres without having to start over and choose different routes which I imagine the majority of players (including myself) aren't really into doing as we usually just want to move on to the next story / game. So far though, the game does seem like it'll be an ideal length given the current story progression and version number if that's anything to go by. I imagine not having to create animations helped a lot in saving time with getting the content completed. I do feel like the overall story plot is somewhat predictable and the lack of options to influence it or at least let us think we can influence it makes it a bit frustrating.
Gameplay: This is where the review gets kind of ugly and where the dev and I can't agree on. There has been a lot of mentions and complaints on at least 1 issue which the dev has acknowledged and refused to correct. Having choice triggers and point requirements in games to allow certain routes to be taken and the better routes being more difficult than others is quite typical of any good VN game. However, where this game goes wrong is how blind and limited some of the choices are during the first playthrough. It literally feels like a coin flip on some of the trigger decisions (referring mainly to the unadvertised harem / throuple route). You would either need to backtrack on a lot of decisions to make sure you got the ideal result or deal with the very dark ending that no one expects to get. There's one in particular that really upset me because both decisions felt like good ones and I feel like the game wanted me to choose one over the other which was essentially a trap and there was no way of knowing what major impact it would have until much later in the game (lingerie shop choice... choose Cassie for harem or you'll regret it). In order to get the harem route, you have to cheat, there's no choice about it (I know cuz I tried everything to find a way around it), even though the game punishes you for it and dev in the comments section claims you deserve it when there's no better way of getting that harem route. Aside from that, the lack of text box and white text on nearly white background which happens a lot was annoying, ended up having to "Shift+A" and increase font size to maximum in order to improve readability. I don't know why we can't just have the text box as an option, or add thick font shadowing / text size options to counter this simple issue.
Writing: Written in a non-native language, so it's not expected to be perfect, although still pretty good overall, considering. The writing did start out a bit robotic and with a lot of grammar and spelling mistakes, but it does quickly improve as the game progresses. There's still some grammar and spelling mistakes even in the last game day, but it's a lot more subtle and I imagine it'll remain consistent like that from now on, which I'm happy with. The dev does occasionally add rarely used words in the script which is appreciated as I love learning / practicing words like that. I only wish more devs would do this.
Sounds / Music: Non existent, which I'm personally ok with.
Menu / UI: Menu is customized and clean of any features that don't do anything like sound options. There's a picture gallery which I'm sure some ppl appreciate, but no scene gallery by default, luckily there's a mod to correct that (although, as of writing this, the mod is kind of broken and the walkthrough leads the player down a very bad path due mainly to that lingerie store decision). There's an optional stats display while playing which is appreciated. Unfortunately, there's a forced 25 second intro warning dialog each time you load the game and you cannot skip it which obviously is very annoying.
Overall: I think the game is alright. I think if the dev could just listen to the criticisms and make the minor changes needed to dramatically improve gameplay experience, the amount of positive attention and popularity would likely increase a lot more. I also think the game's description could include a harem tag or throuple tag unless the dev has plans to kill that option later in the game (the mere mention of harem would boost playerbase). As it stands right now though, there's no way this game will make it into my top 10 favs list.
EDIT: I would also like to point out that to anyone who objects to this review, I'd appreciate it if you could at least show respect for the review as this took a lot of time to write and I meant every word with the best of intentions. There's no need for fans to insult me over my opinions and honesty. This community represses enough ppl with conflicting opinions. To anyone else, thanks for reading it.
