Ren'Py - Superheroes Suck [v1.976 Public] [Solace]

Came for the porn stayed for the story.
The writing is really well done. Both the technical part of good English, pacing and structure and the actual story.
The charters all act like real human beings they have goals, try to accomplish them and develop with the story, reacting to the mc in a believable way. The gimmick of this being a super hero setting also helps the narrative rather than acting as window dressing. And the over all narrative is very engaging.
The porn aspect, the animations, models and settings are all fine. In a way when you combine the porn aspect with the story I got the feeling that the porn felt almost unnecessary some of the time. It has tried to use the super powers of the characters in some of the scenes. But the fact that you don't even really get a threesome scene despite it being clearly a harem setting felt a bit lacking. And also the sex scenes happen really suddenly and no build up, in contrast to the story which progresses gradually. The porn almost feels like there just for this to be a porn game. It's why I feel that 4 starts is about right for this game in it's current form. If the scenes improve either in content or quality I will change my score.

English: 9
User Interface: 4
User Experience: 5
Art: 7
Dialogue: 8
Story: 7
Opinion: 7
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Avg: 6.71/10

I've been following this one for a while. And I genuinely enjoy it. It has an ACTUAL STORY that isn't just some college kid having sex with his sister. The dialogue is great, the story is not bad, if not predictable. The biggest issues are the fact the UI is completely default, the art isn't BAD just a little boring I guess, and while the dialogue is great, AS SOON AS YOU GET INTO A DECENT CONVERSATION IT ENDS RIGHT THERE. It never fails, as soon as MC and someone are talking and things get deep or personable, dev cuts to "YOU AND HER HAVE A LONG CONVERSATION FOR HOURS AFTER THAT." Or "AND THEN MORE SEX HAPPENED." Over a black screen that sucks you right out of everything. And for the length of this you get 90% of the sex scenes 25% of the way through the game. I think there's maybe two that happen after Ellie is kidnapped. Sure, you can have the non-canonical repeatable sex scenes with all the LI's, but repeatable scenes are cheap and, especially when everyone is depressed/stressed/manic after the issues happen, they feel out of place or inappropriate at the time. And if you've ever read my other reviews I almost never talk about sex scenes in any of these games because if you are on this site, you're looking to play sex games, big shock. And I can only imagine how MC's gonna fuck the car lol.

ANYWAYS. The story's short. MC has a dead end job and suddenly, during an attack on the city, he rushes out to save a hero that fell from the sky. MC somehow has powers that deflect a car and he's invited to join a superhero academy that, luckily for him, only has women in it. "Hilarity" ensues. After that this falls into the same pitfalls of a sandbox game, click on location at certain times to get brownie points with girl. Sure, you learn about Harper being a child prodigy with a mysteriously missing sister, who's probably one of the villains. Valentina the stoic gymnast with controlling parents she escaped from. Chrys who's rich and finds MC attractive (actually nothing deep about her). And Riley the party girl turned housewife to a shitty husband. Eventually MC learns about his Gary-Stu type powers and he'll be big and strong and save everyone. And maybe he'll tell a story that happened before you the player took control of him, huh, HOW ABOUT THAT? But to the current end of content, MC does a lot of meandering and everyone else does all the work for him then they reward him as if he did anything other than throw a punch or be in the right place at the right time.

I didn't write spoilers, too much, as I like this one. And really nothing beyond what I said has really happened. You make MC train or read books ad nauseam until the game says "YOU CAN'T TRAIN ANYMORE GO DO SOMETHING ELSE." Then MC just happens to find a villain. What should be worked on is instead of the cutting to black screen, maybe continue the damn dialogue? And download a couple free fonts and change the dialogue box. Renpy is so easy to customize it makes you seem lazy if you don't do any of that. I understand you can't change the whole art style this late in the game but for next time everything is so bright and flat, color grading and depth will go miles. Other than that I really enjoy this, give it a play if you don't mind having little(currently) late-game sex scenes.

Was kinda vacillating between 4 and 5 stars for this one for some reasons i'll get into below, but first what i like about this game

The writing is good and for a porn game i'd consider it excellent.
There is a compelling narrative and engaging characters, so much so that i'm actively interested in what happens next regardless of how arousing the porn is. The MC also has a distinctive personality and you can play him as a wise cracking type or more of a stoic type though this doesn't impact the story in any real significant way (more on that below)

the renders are decent a bit on the dated said but all the models are distinctive and attractive. The animations that are present are not great, but not bad enough that they are a detriment

now to the negatives

the porn here is serviceable and there are some good scenes here and there but overall not in the top tier of arousing porn games imo

the other big one is that this is another game that uses a kind of pseudo-sandbox to cover up the fact that it's more or less a kinetic novel. I personally don't really care about choice or KN vs VN or whether or not any of the things on this site qualify as "games" so I didn't ding the this for that, but people who are looking for impactful choices and a branching narrative or an actual sandbox will likely feel cheated

Overall a game I would recommend to almost everyone with the caveat that it's really kind of a KN in disguise, but if you can handle that and aren't just looking for porn you should have a good time with a fun and engaging story

For me it's a masterpiece of romance/harem games. All main girls are interesting and beautful in they own ways. And they not only love the mc, but agree willingly to share him too, without any jealously.

For the superhero storyline, i think it's better to just ignore, as the mc is 90% useless until the plot twist of the 1.452 version.

story 6/10
gameplay 1/10
yeah well you play as a hero whimp (again) where you are nothing then a fuck toy and forced to have sex/or made fun of/or don´t take you serious
Point system is pretty useless even with 0 affection points you get fucked even by girls you don´t really like pretty much linear
not worth it

[I'm rating this on v1.452P. I also focused more on Harper and Valentina, so my review will be a bit based on my experience]

Oh well, I wish I could rate more, but I don't feel like this game hit it's full potential.

The story is kind of interesting, though there isn't any interesting goal to follow, and the POV game style didn't help at all, I can't feel any interest in my own character as I don't even see him and I also don't expect anything from him, it's like I'm ONLY reading the story.

The female models are well made, especially Harper and Valentina (that both hit my personal taste)

The sex feels a bit slow, I like some of the angles and animations but I don't feel the romance/erotic/anything. They're 4/5 renders, but the renders by themselves aren't enough.
Sometimes it feels like the end of the sex abruptly ends out of nowhere, one second the characters are in bed and then the girl already has her clothes on.

The liquids is something that I care a lot, and I rarely even saw any, most of the ones that I saw were low quality (like when )

This could possibly reach a 4 some day when there's enough content, but it would take a lot of polishing and better sex scenes to reach a 5/5.

Good characters with a story that i actually care about for each of them . I haven't seen an adult game with a compelling story in a while . The game also came with great sex scenes maybe not the best ones but its still good.

Agree with others' view that it's a VN with a bit of wandering around and some arbitrary stat building. I wasn't too impressed with the renders, so it says a lot about the character writing that I played this all the way through.
The girls have distinct personalities and an amount of development - there's humour and vulnerability in there too which is refreshing (assuming you read the dialogue).
It's a bit slow to get going, but that initial investment pays off as the story develops which I found quite rewarding. I suspect some will find the sandbox/training element too much hassle to bother with, which is a shame.
Overall: I enjoyed this way more than I expected to, and found I cared about what happens to the characters, even the talking car. Not one for a quick fap-n-go.

It's alright. It just feels kind of ... empty. Idk. Got too bored to finish it.

• Building up your stats feels kind of meaningless when you don't really have any freedom of movement or actual choices. There's only one thing you can do in each time slot. Character models aren't that great to look at either. There's fortunately nothing convoluted about the mechanics but there's also nothing interesting. Just a VN that probably shouldn't have that sandbox tag but then most strictly kinetic novels usually have top-notch renders.
• I do however like the writing. Seems like there's some real potential talent hidden there. However, I don't know if that'd translate well into other media and I don't think it makes up for the lack of interesting gameplay and average-looking renders.

Sometimes I wish devs like this would team up with the devs with great renders and interesting concepts/mechanics but shitty writing. Then again there'd be a matter of butting heads over creative differences ... but if they got that figured out, they'd open up a whole new standard for VNs.

I don't know how this game can have so many stars.

For starters it says it's a sandbox but it's nothing more than a kinetic novel undercover, you can go to many places at different times of the day, but there's nothing to do, you just go to the board and see what time and where there's a girl to see if you have the chance to get her to say something...

The sex scenes are meh, and I couldn't care less about the conversations between the characters.

I don't recommend it.

Superheroes Suck is a kinetic novel where you play as an emotional support hero for a quartet of emotionally unstable supergirls.

As a kinetic novel, there's very little to speak of in regards to gameplay. After your character's introduction, you basically follow the story getting to know the harem girls along the way. All kinetic novels come down to the story and fortunately, Superheroes Suck knocks that out of the park.

The girls are not only cute, but interesting. They each have their own quirks, personalities, and goals. Getting to know them is honestly fun and relaxing. The game also gets massive bonus points for giving the main character his time in the spotlight as well. He's still a little empty, as main characters tend to be, but he's also interesting. I loved the intro and the exploration of his powers.

I was going to complain about how there's very little in the way of tension or drama in the story, but then shit went down. It took a long time to get to it, but the payoff was worth it. Watching the characters react to things happening is so much more worthwhile when you've actually come to care about them and know how they tick. It's especially good when their reactions just make so much sense based on how you've come to know them.

Anyway, the renders are great, the girls are wonderful, the story is incredible. My only complaint is that I don't have more of it.

It's crazy to me how underrated this game is. It's mostly a VN with sandbox, but the story and the girls are all first-rate. Solace really knows how to flesh out characters and make me care about them. I EVEN BEGAN TO FEEL FOR THE CAR. The renders are all quite solid. One thing I will say is that the story feels a bit slow in terms of the mc himself . There are a couple empty days within the sandbox of this game where not much happens, but definitely not grindy. Also, there is so much content in this game, and I truly marvel at how incredibly underfunded and underrated this game is. It really needs more notice. I feel like Discords always help; if Solace is interested in taking control of this forum, and adds more links like discord, I feel like the game will get much more attention. Posting it on other sites like Subscribestar and Itch.io wouldn't hurt. It'd generate some extra income, and provide a much larger audience than just Patreon. Patreon seems to favor much more lewd games like Dungeon Slaves for example. I think Itchi.io at the bare minimum would help out a lot.

TLDR: This game is a sandbox but has a great story, good renders, and engaging characters. You should definitely give it a try.

Such an underfunded AVN, it's sad the disparity there is. Anyway one of my favorite's. Above average renders and animations, but what makes it stand out is the story, doesn't get much better than this. I don't like sandbox, but it isn't too bad and well worth it to get to the story.

TL; DR: this a great story-driven game with erotic elements in it. If you're looking for an entertainment and not just quick fap, definitely give it a go

Story - this game has an actual proper story. There are plot twists, unexpected turns, good pacing and so on. It exists not as just an excuse to transition from one lewd scene to another, but a thing on it's own. I would even consider it pretty good outside porn games world. It is better than any CW superhero series for sure.
Characters - those folks actually have proper arc, character development and distinct traits besides boobs size and hairstyle. They do function as proper human beings and have goals and desires besides having sex with MC.
Artwork - while there's nothing extraordinary about them, girls are still good looking and believable. There are no weird-ass facial expressions or unrealistic body proportions (well, maybe besides one particular milf's bosom).
Lewd - nothing outstanding here. If you're skipping the story entirely to just see the scenes, you won't be impressed much.

Some games bring witty writing and some good laughs, others bring lots of great art and hot babes with a decent story, others master the slow burn, and some are great for a quick fap. On rare occasions however, you find a true gem. A fascinating story that is layered, rich, evocative and fun, that also happens to have great artwork with gorgeous women, coupled with some really clever writing. Superheroes Suck fits squarely in this rare gem category. Outstanding work, and my compliments to Solace!

Played Version 01.152

-good story & great writing
-believable characters
-pace is a bit slow and it feels like the story is very much just beginning
-models look realistic, fit their characters and the world
-interface feels very basic
-good mix of Visual Novel gameplay and Sandbox, though the actual choices or gameplay is very limited ( which is fine for the tight story the game is trying to tell )
-mc doesn't act like a jerk

I wanted to like this game... it's a SuperHero game after all. It started off ok... a dude living a boring life and then discovering you have superpowers while trying to save a women.

Then Some superhero chick wants you to join her academy after seeing your powers.... But then you spend the next many real life hours (many in-game days) grinding away with tutors (One robot like chick and another boring generic chick) in the academy.

I don't know how many hours i'm in, but i still haven't tried, used or tested any of the "powers" discovered. Maybe it gets better in future updates...

Version Played: 01.152 Public

The prose is solidly written and somewhat captivating. The characters (for the few hours I played) are somewhat bland however.

My main problem is the insane amount of grind, or should I say, lack of actual content. You're supposed to repeat 2 same actions and your stats don't even change if you hit an invisible wall and need to trigger another event to progress the plot.

I was simply bored of working out and studying on alternate days, and doing them alone to gain "confidence" (in my few hours I gained ~70 points and managed to spend exactly 1.)

So yeah, I don't get the high rating of this game. If you remove the grind it might be 4-5, but like this it's painful to play.

The writing in this game is so good that were times when I was clicking through the sex scenes to get back to the plot.

In total honesty, there was a point in this game where I was so absorbed I forgot it was a porn game and when someone started getting naked I was momentarily confused.

Gameplay: It’s your typical choose between choices and locations clicker.

Writing: Phenomenal is the only correct adjective.

Art: While all the models are good, every single character is caucasion. I can only hope that the next game Solace develops has some diversity.

Audio: Mostly stock music, but there’s a couple of grooves.