Annoying edgelord MC that goes from sociopath to pussy seemingly at random(or when the plot demands it), most of the intro seems like it was written by a teenager who had Linkin Park blasting in the background, bizarre and nonsensical character progression (the MC starts out as a completely amoral nihilist and yet within a couple of days he changes dramatically). Also a few non-story related are the MC's DBZ haircut and the constant cockteases while also having no sexual content.
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You don't enjoy the mystery of Summer's disappearance or the rest of the characters? I'm not a fan of the MC either as they remind me of a cringey fanfiction about Shinji Ikari I wrote when I was 14. But everyone else is great imo. Seeing the MC become more 'normal' is also a key hook of the story I feel.
Won't demand you like a game though. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
- Aug 31, 2020
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you know, ignorant comments about the game aside, Linkin Park would actually fit this game quite nicely
their older stuff tho
their older stuff tho
Not particularly. I know the MC cares about Summer but I, the player do not. The rest of the characters are varying degrees of unrealistic, archetypal or shallow. Like how the 10/10 hottie Mila is getting bullied by some guys cause she's poor. This would never happen irl, all those dudes would try and fuck her and brag about their wealth to her to get her to date them. Men aren't this classist towards beautiful women, so her entire "story arc", if you can call it that comes off as goofy. I liked Bella initially but her transition from crazy bitch to softhearted bitch in love with MC took about 2 in-game days. Even Summertime Saga did that better with Roxy and I've never heard anyone praise that game's story.You don't enjoy the mystery of Summer's disappearance or the rest of the characters? I'm not a fan of the MC either as they remind me of a cringey fanfiction about Shinji Ikari I wrote when I was 14. But everyone else is great imo. Seeing the MC become more 'normal' is also a key hook of the story I feel.
Won't demand you like a game though. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Anyway, I might keep up with the game just because the renders are good, but the story is definitely not interesting to me.
- Mar 23, 2019
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In most cases you'd be correct, when dealing with the ultra rich however, not so much. Think Kyler from Cobra Kai, or hell any rich spoiled brats from Beverly Hills. They wouldn't dare 'degrade' themselves with trailer trash even if she is really hot, because it would hurt their status with the elite hotties they are truly after. Granted, if one of them ever got in a situation where nobody would find out... they'd be doing everything they could to bang her, but typically it wouldn't increase their status if word got out, so they'd simply avoid her or bully her instead. By shaming her in front of their 'bros' they are staking their claim to elite status.
- Apr 28, 2020
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and what if she doesn't want to date them? I assumed that they know each other long enough to be past that point and rejected people can get petty
Yeah that was too fast, especially if you didn't break into Mario's house. I wanted more times when we try to kill each other
- Jun 28, 2020
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Just going to say, you're off with this take. Perhaps you haven't seen that sort of thing happen in your experiences, but it happens all the time. Kids from middle and high school will find any reason to bully and shit on people for any reason if they're bullies. Being a 10/10 isn't a shield. If you're "weak" in any way and they set their eyes on you, being 10/10 or smart or talented will, if anything, make you an even bigger target.
I grew up with a hot girl who was shit on every single day of high school just because she was nice to a nerd one day. And yeah, she was on the poor side. Not Mila poor, but still poor. Its one of the reasons I empathize with Mila's character.
Maybe you're right, but what I saw in the prologue I didn't like at all.
Nope, but eventually I get unbearably hard so I go and masturbate in the bathroom. Also often I play together with my GF sitting in my lap until we can't take it anymore, we make a game out of it, we can't touch each other or ourselves with our hands but we can rub each other but only slowly so no grinding, it's really fun I suggest trying it out.
- Oct 22, 2017
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In Germany there is a saying that goes "Children are cruel". And believe me, they are ... even in elementry school and now think about older spoiled brats that have the money of mom and dad behind thier intentions and know how to use it.
I have known a beauty little girl in her 17s whos got bullied like hell in school just because the apartement of her family was in a economic weaker part of the town. When I started my vocational training, i moved and lost sight of her. A few months later, a friend woke me up in the middle of the night and told me on the phone that the little girl had hung herself from a door handle with a belt. On a door handle! Can you imagine how mentally broken you have to be to pull something like that off? The worst part is that these sanctimonious assholes were present at her funeral and could not explain how such a terrible tragedy could have happened. That was one of the few times I didn't regret that it was not so easy to get firearms in Germany.
These people are in college. This isn't middleschool. I went to university for my studies (bachelor's and master's) for 7 years. Most people don't even know most of their classmate's names. I have never seen or heard of someone doing this childish attempt at bullying to anybody ever. I will also say that men bullying women is extremely rare even in middleschool. 99% of girls getting bullied are bullied by other girls, especially when it comes to petty shit like wealth or how many pairs of clothes they have.
Mila getting bullied is nothing more than a plotpoint, to 1. achieve conflict and drama, 2. to make you empathize with Mila and 3. to give you more antagonists and increase the rivalry with the other schools that will come into play later on. But it doesn't make sense on itself. Anyway, I just pointed that out as a simple example. There are others, like unisex sports teams, freshmen coming in earlier than non-freshmen, classes being merged for some reason several days into the school year, etc.
So I'll repeat what I said before, great models wasted on a cringe story. It could get better in future updates but I'm not holding out much hope for that.
- Jan 31, 2018
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On the topic of MC's characterization, I agree it's poorly done and inconsistent. I have praised Summer's Gone several times previously, however that shouldn't stop legitimate criticism. MC's character is by far the major problem with the story.
MC in Chapter One is presented as Generic Nihilistic Badass Antihero™. He is completely callous towards everyone, and the most egregious thing is when takes the gun from Ms Marla without missing a step like the complete Badass™ he is, and he then (can) shoots the gun at Ms Marla which luckily has blanks. So he was perfectly fine with straight up murdering someone apparently. Later on this incident is barely mentioned and more or less handwaved away.
Then in Chapter Two and Three, MC is just more or less a moody edgy emo virgin teenager with a traumatic past event, with his Badassery™ downgraded from awesome and real to purely performative. This is good. It is far more grounded and fits the story better. I'm sure we all knew some edgy emo when we were teenagers.
In OceanLab's defence, I know they took over from someone else after Chapter One so Chapter One doesn't completely reflect their creative vision, and knowing OceanLab's approach to WIAB, they probably want to overhaul Chapter One at some point.
In my humble opinion, MC's character should be focused on the edgy emo teenager. MC's nihilistic outlook should be superficial. He doesn't really believe the crap he spouts ("your words mean nothing to me"), but are purely a defence mechanism. As the story progresses the facade that MC has should crack (already happening ingame so far) but I would like to see other characters actively call MC out on his fake nihilism. Acts of Badassery™ should be out of the question, and the greatest extent should be teenage fistfights. Also his new haircut looks stupid.
As to the above complaints of being unrealistic and contrived, I both agree and disagree. Frankly, there's a much larger meta-level discussion to be had on the quality of writing in erotic/romantic/porn VNs generally. To summarise, the overwhelming majority of VNs have atrocious-to-poor writing. I can count on one hand the amount of games on this website that I consider to have "good" writing. Understandably, this is in large part because the major selection pressure for this broad genre of games is jerk-ability rather than good writing. They're basically just vehicles to get people to orgasm. As such, erotic VNs have a lot in common with trashy romance novels that are ever popular (you know what I'm referring to) and have a similar quality of writing.
The reason I bring this up is because it makes it extremely difficult to evaluate the quality of writing of erotic VNs. On one hand, I want to evaluate them relative to their peers. On the other hand, I want to evaluate them to narratives more generally ("objectively" evaluate the writing). Summer's Gone is absolutely one of the best written stories when compared relatively to its peers. When compared to other mediums or "objectively", ...ehhh not so much. It's not bad. It's also prudent to acknowledge some of the criticisms being levelled at Summer's Gone are more accurately criticisms of tropes and conventions in erotic VNs more generally. For example, the criticism that the "colleges/universities are not really colleges". It's true, the trope is that the colleges in erotic/romantic VNs are weird high school/college hybrids. I guess this is in part to skirt around age limits ("they're all 18! They're in college"), but also because drama is easier to write when everyone acts like they're in high school, but old enough to act independently when the narrative calls for it. Best of both worlds. Similar tropes occur in tv shows and films.
In conclusion, the writing of Summer's Gone is good even if it's bad because almost all other VNs are complete shit by comparison.
TLDR; MC's character is inconsistent and needs to be fixed. Quality of writing in erotic VNs generally is shit, by this standard Summer's Gone is very good, so it's hard to evaluate criticisms fairly.
EDIT: Just wanted to add, because otherwise this post was really quite negative, that OceanLab's renders are really really fucking good by any standard, and actually utilises cinematography, a rare thing indeed. Can't say enough good things about the visuals.
MC in Chapter One is presented as Generic Nihilistic Badass Antihero™. He is completely callous towards everyone, and the most egregious thing is when takes the gun from Ms Marla without missing a step like the complete Badass™ he is, and he then (can) shoots the gun at Ms Marla which luckily has blanks. So he was perfectly fine with straight up murdering someone apparently. Later on this incident is barely mentioned and more or less handwaved away.
Then in Chapter Two and Three, MC is just more or less a moody edgy emo virgin teenager with a traumatic past event, with his Badassery™ downgraded from awesome and real to purely performative. This is good. It is far more grounded and fits the story better. I'm sure we all knew some edgy emo when we were teenagers.
In OceanLab's defence, I know they took over from someone else after Chapter One so Chapter One doesn't completely reflect their creative vision, and knowing OceanLab's approach to WIAB, they probably want to overhaul Chapter One at some point.
In my humble opinion, MC's character should be focused on the edgy emo teenager. MC's nihilistic outlook should be superficial. He doesn't really believe the crap he spouts ("your words mean nothing to me"), but are purely a defence mechanism. As the story progresses the facade that MC has should crack (already happening ingame so far) but I would like to see other characters actively call MC out on his fake nihilism. Acts of Badassery™ should be out of the question, and the greatest extent should be teenage fistfights. Also his new haircut looks stupid.
As to the above complaints of being unrealistic and contrived, I both agree and disagree. Frankly, there's a much larger meta-level discussion to be had on the quality of writing in erotic/romantic/porn VNs generally. To summarise, the overwhelming majority of VNs have atrocious-to-poor writing. I can count on one hand the amount of games on this website that I consider to have "good" writing. Understandably, this is in large part because the major selection pressure for this broad genre of games is jerk-ability rather than good writing. They're basically just vehicles to get people to orgasm. As such, erotic VNs have a lot in common with trashy romance novels that are ever popular (you know what I'm referring to) and have a similar quality of writing.
The reason I bring this up is because it makes it extremely difficult to evaluate the quality of writing of erotic VNs. On one hand, I want to evaluate them relative to their peers. On the other hand, I want to evaluate them to narratives more generally ("objectively" evaluate the writing). Summer's Gone is absolutely one of the best written stories when compared relatively to its peers. When compared to other mediums or "objectively", ...ehhh not so much. It's not bad. It's also prudent to acknowledge some of the criticisms being levelled at Summer's Gone are more accurately criticisms of tropes and conventions in erotic VNs more generally. For example, the criticism that the "colleges/universities are not really colleges". It's true, the trope is that the colleges in erotic/romantic VNs are weird high school/college hybrids. I guess this is in part to skirt around age limits ("they're all 18! They're in college"), but also because drama is easier to write when everyone acts like they're in high school, but old enough to act independently when the narrative calls for it. Best of both worlds. Similar tropes occur in tv shows and films.
In conclusion, the writing of Summer's Gone is good even if it's bad because almost all other VNs are complete shit by comparison.
TLDR; MC's character is inconsistent and needs to be fixed. Quality of writing in erotic VNs generally is shit, by this standard Summer's Gone is very good, so it's hard to evaluate criticisms fairly.
EDIT: Just wanted to add, because otherwise this post was really quite negative, that OceanLab's renders are really really fucking good by any standard, and actually utilises cinematography, a rare thing indeed. Can't say enough good things about the visuals.
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- Jul 12, 2020
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He didn't take anything 'over'....it was always his own story. When his friend (who he offered it to) stopped, he simply took it back so it wasn't forgotten and abandoned.
- Jan 31, 2018
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Yeah I know, I probably could have stated it better in my post. My point is that Chapter One wasn't purely OceanLab's creative vision.
- Jun 28, 2020
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And I have seen that shit happen in uni. I think the thing you're missing is that these bullies in the game are not bullying some random girl. They're bullying someone that they've been bullying for years. That behaviour isn't going to suddenly disappear upon graduating high school. I mean shit, the girl I mentioned was still bullied by the same dickheads for the same shit at our high school reunion, and we're all working adults by that point.
Like I said, you may not have seen it happen in your life, but it happens everywhere. In school. In uni. In adult life.
But I'm not here to chastise you, so I'm going to leave it at this. I have no issue with you not liking the game for whatever reason. This one single reason of yours just rubbed me the wrong way, as its directly contradictory to what I've experienced.
- Aug 5, 2016
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Do we know when the complete version of ch 3 will be released? I'm waiting for the complete version to play or the is no reason to wait as there won't be a difference beside bug fixes?
- May 29, 2020
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damn dialogue's the shittiest i've ever seen. apart from that, the cg and story is great
Really? You've seen a big-titted supermodel-tier girl be bullied for over 10 years by 3 rich boys because her family was poor? And their bullying amounted to the occasional "haha u doodoohead haha poopoohead haha poor haha" kindergarten insults?
- Oct 22, 2017
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Sorry, you just dont want to understand. But you will...
I'm done with you. *ignore*