I absolutely hope this review ages like milk, but I'm mostly writing this because, by God, Ocean simps are like no other animal I have seen.
Let me preface it that despite the rating I'm giving this, I like Summer's Gone. No AVN is perfect, but this one gets way too much praise for what it actually is right now. Screw it, I'll even extend an olive branch and start with...
The Good:
1. The most obvious part, the visual quality. If anything, the game indeed feels cinematic, the details can be seen, the lighting is on point.
2. The premise of the story is interesting.
3. Whenever Ocean actually remembers about that, the atmospheric moody scenes of the game can touch the soul.
The mediocre:
1. The writing is hit and miss. Aside from the slow burn nature of the romances in the game, there is actually very little character development, something I saw other reviews downright raving about being excellent, where that is factually incorrect - the majority of the girls that are supposedly MGs, in 5 chapters and thousands of renders in, have very little impact on the story itself, or any presence to speak of. There are also inconsistencies on when events happen, idioms that don't translate too well from German to English, some events that have been fully rendered out have no actual value to the story.
2. Coming from the previous point, the character cast is way too big for one game, and Ocean is simultaneously attempting to make two games at once. Game is supposed to be 30 chapters, but only 2.5 of the 10-12 main girls have had any real time spent with the MC.
3. The music. That part is subjective, but for me personally, even the "restored" version of the music is more annoying than it is helping me get immersed and I turned it off.
The bad:
1. This is an attempted joke that very likely will fall flat... unlike the majority of the female characters.
I don't know if Ocean grew up around women with no tiddies and he's overcompensating now, but it's easier to list the girls with what would be considered reasonably big tits in real life but are categorized as "small" within the game. Even if you have not seen what the game used to be before, currently your choices are "big tits" and "really humongous badonkerous" or however that copypasta went.
2. I don't care about the "fucking retarded"phrases encountered in the game, but shit like "bibi" and "wormy" make my soul die inside a little every time I encounter them, I could easily do without them.
Bad things outside the game itself:
1. Ocean simps are like nothing else, man, I swear.
2. This is obvious, but the dev times. Unless Ocean speeds up dramatically, neither of you who somehow reached this part of the review, nor me, nor Ocean himself, will live to see this project to the end.
You are allowed to like things, you can also be touched by them like nothing else, but you also can be realistic when talking about it. A shiny McBurger is tasty, but I am also fully aware of what it does to my health.
