VN - Ren'Py - Taboo University [Book One v1.03] [ViNovella Games]

VERSION: 1.03
SUMMARY: Great looking game with interesting plot if not oddly weird.
RATINGS: (out of 5):

1. Models: 4
2. Animations: 4
3. General Visuals: 4
4. Characters: 4
5. Story: 4
6. Writing: 4
7. Pacing: 4
8. Content (amount): 4
9. UI & Sounds: 4
10. Fetish & kinks: 3

Average: 39 of 50 possible points giving a 78% rating i.e. 4-5 stars.

PROS:

1. Models are really nice looking and not all look the same as is often the case with many games using the same, similar models.
2. Animations are very good, including the style and how some moments are captured in small animations.
3. Story is pretty interesting and makes me curious to see how it all ties up and ends.
4. Many potential love interests
5. Characters are often complex and interesting with own back story, issues, desires and agendas.
6. Writing is very good, reads well and is not filled with a bunch of bullshit or nonsense, there is purpose behind what is written.
7. Sounds are good, interesting how they are done with voice bits but not fully voiced, its actually a good balance as many fully voiced games just are poorly done or the AI does it poorly. Sexual sounds are also very nicely done.
8. UI and interaction are limited but good, the way the investigation board is nicely done, but the player is limited as its all linear, still impressive.
9. Good amount of content, though at this point in time I would expect nothing less, still, I have played games that are longer in development and have half this content and not nearly as decent.

CONS:

1. Linear game, mostly kinetic and hard to really say there is choice as often choosing the only other option forces a loss to many H scenes and I think since we all here its pretty much a lot about those scenes...
2. Per above being linear (kinetic) is that certain kinks like transgender characters are not totally avoidable. IMO LGBTQ should be optional as they cater to a significant minority of our population.
3. Not many fetishes or kinks TBH, strange if you consider the games name being Taboo, there is not much at all of this going on. There is suggested pregnancy, but it would probably be only a small part of the game and as such I hardly feel its worth mentioning, same with any other kinks, they all fairly vanilla for many normal sexual encounters by today's standards.
4. Per above, basically there are not many kinks or fetishes nor family related sex so incest is out, which is a significant taboo, but again nothing of the sort is really happening in this game, if anything it lacks the taboo and fetishes.

FINAL THOUGHTS & SUGGESTIONS:

• So far I am impressed, however per above points, cons particularly, I do feel here is a missed opportunity.
• There will no doubt be much more to come, though I do feel the dev has held back on the kinky stuff for later, understandable, however I feel some of the stuff could have been introduced already to keep it extra interesting like watersports or urination even anal sex is not yet a feature...
• As far as the plot and story goes, the way the developer strung it all together, is very well done. I appreciate the thought and effort that went into making this, its not some simple plot either, so well done.

There's too much text, and the choices in the game only affect whether you get a sex scene or not. There are too many characters, the game is overloaded with them and every female character is ready to jump on the main character's dick.
There are too many scenes. And yes, it's bad. They are monotonous and boring. There were a couple of interesting femdom moments, but otherwise it all boils down to the fact that someone sucks the main character, and then he fucks her. If this is a Taboo University, then where are the depraved fetishes? But there aren't any. Almost, there was one scene where a girl fucked another guy with a strap-on. And why did the game completely forget about Josie? We were given one scene with her. Why do I need a bunch of female characters, I need Josie, she's much more interesting.
This game is literally a step back from Fetish Locator.

Interesting story about an undercover investigation at a university/college, with a three pronged approach into different groups/cliques. Decisions seem worth making considering the story is rather intriguing. The web of threads and characters is a nice touch. The character models, personalities and cast itself is fabulous. The kinks/fetishes touched upon are diverse too, with a little of everything for everyone. The sex scenes as well as interactions are well made. Definitely a game worth playing!

Kinda interesting setup even though no one would send a rookie on an undercover mission. But in any case a nice twist on the school setting.

What I liked
very nice to look at, nice diversity in the girls, animated scenes are quite good and they don't distract from the main story lines.
Fleur made it easily into my list of top redheads and the other ladies are very appealing as well.

What I did not like
Audio consists of music that I mostly did not care for but that was not a huge issue. However, every sentence that you read on the screen is accompanied by some kind of exclamation or grunt from whoever is speaking at the moment. That made me mute the game entirely because I found it very annoying.
I did not quite understand the design choice to disregard 1 out of 3 suspect groups entirely. Not sure it increases replay value because in any case you will get a full repetition with one of the other groups and there are no significant branches there to explore either.
As choices go that was mostly it. You can decide to not engage further with a group or a character but mostly the story only plays out in one way.

Overall nice game with plenty of content at the end of book 1.

It's frustrating... For its production quality alone I'd want to give this game 4 stars. Its renders and animations are flawless, the music fits in nicely, the voices are... well, you can mute them so that's okay. Every part of the game's presentation is nearly perfect, including the UI and the general feel of playing.

BUT.

As perfect as this game is presented as stale it is to actually play. I love detective games and I'm (still) alright with college settings if they're authentic. But there's nothing to investigate here for me, I only watch the MC doing it by himself. Now, I know, this is a VN, but give me some sort of involvement at least. At no time during this "Book 1" did I actually look forward to finding out more about the underlying case and until the last chapter I couldn't even guess who was behind the obductions/murders. And finding out who the suspects were left me without any form of surprise or satisfaction.

I liked Fetish Locator, but I think the authors fundamentally don't understand why that game was successful. It seems to me that they're trying to be more "mainstream" with this release. There's a bit of kinky stuff, but it's subdued and every other sex scene is formulaic and... just not sexy or erotic at all.

Watching 3D models having sex is just not arousing by itself. The strength of AVNs is the story factor and the creation of exciting/taboo/kinky settings. You'd think that the makers of Fetish Locator would know this, but apparently they don't. All sex scenes in this game that I have encountered were boring and way too short without much or any means of interaction.

So, in the end, 3 stars is all I can give this game. Based on the presentation of this game and its production quality, you could create a 5 star game out of it. But Taboo University isn't that game. It's shiny mediocrity.

V1.03

to my mind, a real VN is indeed just that. visual novel. not some thrown together words but structure. a read that includes imagery. you don't buy a story driven game and then expect no story, unless your a bit of a twat.
Taboo university seems at first glance, and indeed with that name, to be yet another college fuckfest that will have fappers strengthening those wrists, but it is much better.

the plot and writing are mature enough that all signs point to thought and rewrites being used to create a full story pre-production. the characters actually dialogue as young adults and not the early teens most write them as. this leads to an easy read that is interesting, if not outright intriguing for some, and very immersive.
there are a few moments i thought MC would update with someone that didn't happen (avoiding spoilers) that had me scratching my head, but i already look forward to the completed tag and my consequent purchase on steam just on the writing's strength alone.

the imagery is better than their previous game. not a strong one for the imagery side of things myself, i have little to say on the subject, but the imagery was pleasing on the eye. no weird stuff going on and didn't in any way detract from immersion with odd poses or hollywood movie angles with the intimate stuff. all solid.

very surprised at how good this is. perfect design choice as nothing pulls me from the read, and with this being a very well structured and delivered story, a hat doff for the lack of design shenanigans others punt for.
fair enough if the writing is lacking but when it is this well crafted, it doesn't need the distractions.

my initial reservations/expectations were knocked into the stands for a six leaving me humbled.
looking forward to seeing this on my steam library list

I feel this game is pretty good. I was a huge fan of Fetish Locator. When I saw they were working on this game I followed closely each updates until 0.5-ish. Then I kind of got bored. I re-downloaded it and I have to give flowers where it's due; the story telling is very deep for an erotic adult game. It's certainly a game I feel may perform very well with some true visual novel enjoyer.

Over 6 years of players VN games and my taste has truly changed. Fetish Locator was dipping in a bit of everything and hence, I thought it was super fun for that reason. When I saw a lot of the same tag for this game I was pretty excited.

Here's the truth : I want more sex scenes, little less text. It's text heavy but it's good stuff! Well written, better than Fetish locator. But those games for me are more a stress relieve where I don't want to overthink what am I missing. I wouldn't be surprised if there's 16 different endings/path.

What would make me change the rating to much higher rate would be if we had 1 playthrough option that allowed you to not miss any of the content. For me going through this large amount of stories to review all the other option ends up being a thing that makes me frustrated. If I was newly introduced to adult VN and this was my first, I feel I would be super excited! But yeah, it's a classic "It's not you, it's me" moment for me.

The game overall is good.
The story is interesting.
Took two stars off for not having any actual anal in the whole game that is called Taboo University. And it has the anal tag.
It literally has everything you can have a trans person, but no anal with a non-trans person.

The initial trailer was promising. But, gradually, this novel trying to depict the depth of the plot, became overgrown with only empty, boring and stretched dialogues and the same characters. Lewd scenes are implemented average and with the same characters. Among other things, there is non-skippable futa/gay content here, which ultimately undermined my interest in it.

Game has an interesting premise and starts off strong story-wise.

However, it eventually becomes a mindless fuckfest as every female character throws themselves at the protagonist.

Furthermore, there is no thinking or investigation despite what is advertised - the only choices you really make are whether you want to bang a character or not.

In fact the protagonist makes some absurdly boneheaded decisions which you cannot influence/stop, and ultimately this is what drove me to drop the game. There is no player agency for anything that really matters story-wise - the decisions are already made for you, making you (the player) a mere spectator.

Finally, the animations are nothing to write home about, and the models are decent.

Cannot recommend.

Definately my top 2 game of maybe a thousand in this forum. Great renders but the most important a nice plot, well writen. This investigation story is very captivating. I liked the most the gang and the winners club paths. This game is way better than the last one Fetish Locator. I think the only thing which makes this game my top 2 and not 1 it is the sound track could have more songs which matches with the moment of the game. The actual one is not bad, but could be more diverse.

i like games like this with investigation, beautiful girls, good story, nice characters, ngl i want more i m so curious about what happened to the missing girls and i hope not sandbox on future ... please just dont !
one bad thing for me its the scenes not sexy enough only this !

I give it +1 star, cause rounding, but it's more like 1.5/5, only thanks to above average technical execution.
Interesting design of the way we progress story and nice unique interactions depending on the order of choices + lack of other technical issues is sadly the only thing I can commend.
Renders and models are quite boring, nothing to remember really. They are fine, but there's nothing original.

As for the content - actually lemme drop that +0.5 star, it goes back to 1/5 with it's awful approach. Beside how it is borderline transphobic in both design and writing, and it has walls of text with zero interactions, it's almost maliciously twisting every single femdom path into maledom scenes.

Disappointed after the previous trilogy that I enjoyed a lot.

- There is no fetish here. No urination, no female domination which I enjoy
- There is very little choice in what you can do. You can go with a girl or skip her. In the first chapter you could dominate the girl silently or choose to badmouth her. In the later chapter you don't even choose anymore, you call every girl you fuck a slut
- Overall feels like a generic fuckfest with girls hungry for your dick. Fully maledom all the way. get sucked and fuck (or "ravage" like the mc likes to say). There is some pussy licking at least)


On the plus side the story is interesting for a porn game, and the renders are super high quality. If you're into slapping asses and showing that you're the boss then you might be in for a treat. I was looking for a wild fest of fetishes and strange stuff and did not find it.

+ The story is interesting and engaging.

Dialogs are pretty good.

+ The female models are cute, some look very sexy.

The renders' compositions and quality are good.

- Sex scenes are not sexy.

What is the main advantage of erotic VNs over erotic pictures or video? In good VNs, there is a compelling story, development of relationships, emotional buildup and attractive imagery.

Regarding the sex scenes, this game doesn't provide any of that. At least during the initial stages of the game, sex scenes are sudden and seem totally random. No back story, no relationships, no buildup... Just some random girl gives you a BJ in a classroom or in a shower... Even the imagery is not sexy, at least for me a distorted face sucking a dick moving back and forth, and the like, has very little eroticism.

The game is good, but for unsexiness of sex scenes I give it one star less.

And it's not cool to gather "analytics" and send it somewhere without player's consent, and without even player's knowledge or an option to refuse.

I'm rating this game 3 stars for the obvious quality it shows in all respects, but I couldn't get too far as the plot got me bored quite soon. Maybe things get more interesting later but by the point I was applying the pig blood to Delphia I was falling asleep in boredom, sorry.

BTW in which world does a kid get a career as a policeman (and a detective at that, too!) and then goes to Uni pretending to be another student? I mean, it would be more believable if he was an alien posing as a human...

I was expecting much more from a game from ViNovella. While Fetish Locator is possibly one of the top 5 AVNs in a school setting, Taboo University is pretty much the opposite.

I enjoyed Fetish Locater for what it was, a fun and funny one. I wanted to prolong the pleasure with this VN and... no, it doesn't work, despite the technical quality, nothing to reproach and artistically, it's clean and neat. The problem is that the MC (Mary Sue Alpha) plus this investigation are compulsory, and it's boring, stupid and uninteresting. You'll have the opportunity to fuck everything in your path at least once, with lots of passing girls, but no more, too many people to satisfy. Interesting and serious romances, like with Josie and Lara (the only one I'm interested in), are drowned in all this mess and don't progress beyond the first kiss... frustrating and depressing.
It's bad, poorly written, lacking coherence, trying to satisfy the largest audience... I doubt this VN will go beyond season 1.

J'ai aprécier Fetish Locater pour ce que c'etait, un sympa et amusant. J'ai voulu prolonger le plaisir avec ce VN et... non, cela ne fonctionne pas, malgré la qualité technique, rien à reprocher et artistiquement, c'est propre et soigné. Le problème c'est que le MC (mary sue Alpha) plus cette enquète sont obligatoires et, c'est chiant, débile et sans interet. Vous aurez l'occasion de baiser tout sur votre chemin au moins une fois avec plein de filles de passages, mais pas plus, trop de monde à satisfaire. Les romances intéressantes et serieuses, comme, avec Josie et Lara (la seule qui m'intéresse) sont noyées dans tout ce bordel et, n'ont pas progressés au delà du premier baiser... frustrant et déprimant.
C'est mauvais quoi, mal écrit, sans cohérence, cherchant a satisfaire le plus le large public... je doute que ce VN aille au delà de la saison 1.

This game started out amazingly. I was totally on board but now, as of 5.21, it has devolved into a pile of garbage and there is no way to bring it back.

First of all, there are like 6000 LIs. Then there are the different groups... I mean what is up with this sex cult? How seriously stupid has that turned out to be? What a joke. Then there is the underground fight club and those folks have the WASPS as bad guys. FFS... shoot me now. Don't even get me started on the whole "Rich and Popular" volleyball. I mean, they let him on the team but not in the mansion because he is not rich enough? Not sure how he can even be on the team when he is dividing his time with the fight club and then sex cult. I mean, do these people actually go to classes?

And wtf has the MC learned, besides the fact he can bang every chick he runs into whether you want him to or not. It's silly, The whole story has become a silly, nonsensical mess. If you are only looking for a fuckfest, well then you might be happy with this, but if you like a story with your fapping, then move along. Just avoid this train wreck.

Well start is ok untill i found out a LI and a relationship is forced on you within the first few mins of the game, i just hate forced shit....it kills the hole game for me since i like to play the good guy so it forces me to stay faithfull which makes for one hell of a boring game, even though they kinda break up it dosent really feel right or like a breakup at all so yeah idiotic choice from dev side to force MC in a relationship from the start....

It dosent help to see flash backs of MC and the forced girlfriend fucking its idiotic and proberly the most brainless idea to force a relationship in a NONE harem game, and its unbelivable how games like this get such high ratings....maybe people just skip story for sex scenes? i dunno just seems weird, in any case seeing MC fuck someone that you as the player hate also ruins the fun and it should be a choice to see them or not which is the most simple thing to put in the game a skip dream option.....dont know why dev wants to force it since it dosent do fuck all for story.

Also when they meet up later it sure as fuck feel like they are still in a relationship with MC contantly coming on to her and again this is a freaking none harem meaning its a game with one set girl nothing else, since this is a long way into the story already, they even kiss right out in the open...what kind of a fucking break up is that? its like devs has no freaking clue wtf they are doing and what the story is even about.

Then theres the choices and its a pure kinetic novel, yes you can deside who to fuck or not which is great but as for main story you can change absolutly nothing its all out kinetic and should really be tagged as such.

Renders are of good quality atleast but that alone cant save a story.

As for each of the group stories its bland and very vanilla, why they changed the name to Taboo university i have no clue theres no taboo what so ever and the old name constantly shows up doing the game...it makes 0 sense.

And to ruin the game 100% it will force more girls on you and let me remind you its NOT a freaking harem game so why the fuck force even more girls, now faithfull route is killed as well...and theres just no choice its just all out kinetic shit just like everything else for the main story it truely is just awfull.
Its only some of the most ugly ass old hags with big saggy tits that is forced on you, it just dosent get any more shitty then that.

Girls 2/5
Hard to rate this one since its really a one girl only game, but the girls you meet there are some nice looking ones and an ok diversity in builds but it just means very little due to the one LI setup which is fucks up as well by forcing MC to cheat just due to hes idiotic investergation....

Animations 3/5
They are about average.

Choices 2/5
Forced Li and forced relationship without any choice so it fails in a huge way stright from the start, you can turn down i guess we can all them side-girls since theres really only a single main LI.

And again i dont see how this got so high ratings its an absolutly idiotic setup stright from the start and it never gets any better.

It's sad that they changed the name from vinovella University to taboo university. They should have changed it to kinteic novel university instead. The story premise is interesting but there's literally nothing you can do in it. You can't make any choices that matter (I'm not exaggerating) and the only choice you have is whether to have sex with someone or not. That's it. Nothing else.

The h scenes themselves are vanilla (ironic that it's called taboo) and you can't make any choice within them either. It really is a kinetic novel I'm not kidding.

Some of the girls actually look good in my opinion but otherwise it's meh. The story is dogshit really. Like I said, you can't make any consequential choices and the mc makes the most hare brained decisions himself to the point where you'll want to drive a fist through the wall. The writing is also disconnected. All the investigations are isolated basically and even when your character gathers some information on one investigation, when you do the other investigation he acts like he didn't know anything. I don't know what to call this if not lazy. It's obvious that the writers don't care. I find it hard to care about the investigation as well as a result.

Basically if you came in from Fetish Locator expecting something similar, turn around now and save yourself the time.