The good
Taffy Tales has some of the best detailed 2D art I've seen from an independent game in some time. It's a mix of Reinbach's work that is actually more detailed, providing a very interesting mix of purely Western over-blown proportions with some faint Japanese influence- especially in earlier versions and early CG's you encounter. While a lot of the women are overtly busty, super-wide hips, etc.. There's a great deal of variation that makes each female character unique not just in one or two quirky ways, but quite distinct from one another.
If games like this are weapons, this one is a minigun- it fires so many different fetishes and kinks at you that, even if many of them miss for you, it's bound to hit a few of your preferred kinks in a big way, which allows you to skip past or forgive when the game hammers on certain kinks that are not your cup of tea.
The town overview is comfy, simple, and navigation around is very easy. Although the game itself doesn't really require an over-world map in my opinion, it gets the job done and its only a handful of clicks until you are where you want to be.
The writing quality varies. The description of scenes, providing the minute details not captured by the CG itself, is almost always excellent. There are many, MANY egregious typos that have yet to be fixed, but in more recent versions the dialogue and descriptions are cleaned up nicely- but they did not retroactively go back, as far as I can tell, and fix prior typos. By far the worst writing is for the Main Character himself.
The game's artstyle is so unique, and the setting so bizarre, that it easily towers over many other amateur games in the same vein.
The Bad.
In attempting to shoot so many kinks and fetishes, the game often feels like it's moving at breakneck pace. Interactions with women are heated when it's on the docket, but as soon as you finish with many of the characters you will never see them again. There are a few exceptions to this, such as Becca and Priscilla, but many of the girls are dropped almost as quickly as you pick them up. You'll have to make generous use of the CG/Scene gallery to check out past exploits.
The writing for the Main Character is contentious, to say the least. I completely understand where the developer is trying to go with the 'good conscious' and 'bad conscious' angle of the game, where your MC is struck by a car and this awakens an alter-ego that can best be described as Marquis De Sade. Basically, the only fetish the 'bad conscious' part of the MC isn't up for is murder and necrophilia, everything else seems to be fair game. Blackmail, rape, sadism/masochism training, urination, implied incest, all of it is on the table for the 'bad conscious' MC.
This opens up a great opportunity for replay- you can, in theory, have the two consciouses compete with one another. Good MC might be the romantic love-maker for vanilla-esque content where the Bad MC opens up the plethora of kinks and whacky sex. This is possible for a single scene encounter with Becca, a primary female interest, but that's it. 99% of the game is the Bad Conscious MC taking over the Good Conscious MC's entire life. The writing for these encounters, meant to be comedic, instead after a very short while comes off like an afterthought. The Good Conscious will always capitulate and the Bad Conscious is the #1 driver of the story. Because of this, you have no idea what the MC is going to do next. You have no real power to make decisions at this stage, you're just along for the ride. It's more of a 'kinetic erotica' game in that aspect, where you just drive one direction- forward into fetish town.
Due to this, the hint/quest system in this game is a joke. The hints/tips provided give you NONE of the basic hints: Who, What, Where, When, Why? Some quest hints are very detailed: Go to Claire's in the evening after you have 3 items from the Store. Perfect. Another Quest Hint: "it is time..." Time for what? Where? When? With Who? And Why? Good luck finding out, you need to click on every NPC in every location and burn through every dialogue option to find out.
The pacing of plot/story development is severely affected by this. You'll think you are finished with a character, only for them to reappear several hours later as if you had just spoken with them several seconds ago. Some characters that seem like they're on the cusp of dirty deeds just absolutely disappear, likely to be added in future updates, but with no real hint or explanation telling you such.
The build-up with certain characters is phenominal, with just the right amount of overt innuendo and seduction, but the pay-off for many of them goes way, way too deep into Marquis De Sade territory. The mother character, Mary, is the best example of this. Lots and lots of build up seems totally wasted because, rather than the good-conscious MC attempting any sort of reconcilation with his bad-conscious side at this point (some 70-80 days in-game-time) the mother character is treated like another bargain basement slut and treated as such the entire time.
Indeed, every woman is treated like a trashbin-living bottom-feeding ho. This kills the uniqueness of each woman, as the MC interacts with them all in the same manner- just holes to shag by any means necessary. Therefore you can't find any intriguing or nuanced content with the main love interests or with the implied incest- all the nuance is in the build up, and then totally thrown out the window once the taboo has been achieved. I believe this is largely the fault of the writing department.
The Mixed
Huge dicked MC's are dime a dozen. I get it, I understand why- I'm not adverse to one or the other, I'm here to observe and enjoy. But the MC's tool is thicker than a louisville slugger and nearly as long. It would likely kill most people. It's a detraction to me, not an attraction. I feel like this was done to the point of parodying other famous games such as Summertime Saga. In the end, 80%of the women encountered in this game make me think "God, you're going to hate when the MC bangs you."
I totally understand in the current development that static renders and CG's, rather than animation, make it far easier to generate modular content that lets the development team insert new dialogue and story-segments. Right now it's 99% BDSM/Masochism/Sadism/Forced Corruption. If that's your cup of tea you'll have an entire tea-pot to drink from here. If you can only handle that in short bursts, you will need to take a very long time to get through current content- it's all generated towards the bad-conscious MC being a totally soulless genuine psychopath. Once again, this borders, and often passes, the point of pure parody in execution. You should never take an erotica game too seriously (look at the BADIK thread for reasons why) but leaning so far into parody is also an issue.
TL;DR
Well detailed art that is unique from nearly everything else on the site and indeed in the genre. Touches a little into all sorts of fetishes and kinks. You have no self-agency in the game and the good/bad MC angle has all the opportunity for a dynamic playing experience but that opportunity is never seized upon. The artist is a genius and deserves every penny. The writer needs to get their shit together. There is no good flow of dialogue or pacing right now with any of the stories. The Good Conscious is written like a naive 11 year old and the Bad Conscious is written in such a way as to turn off everyone except the most hardcore of French Revolutionary Libertines- think 120 Days of Sodom without the murder.
The reason I give it 3 stars is because of the potential, the artwork, and the overarching setting. There's a real opportunity here to make a great game with good repeatability on return playthroughs, but right now it's a fast-fire-fuck-fest where the MC's morality and ethics would not be out of place in a post-apocalyptic carnal cannibal cult. I find myself rolling my eyes and sighing way more than I find myself chuckling or being titillated. The writer really needs to clean up their pacing, typos, and in my view add additional 'Good-Conscious' MC options to alter the general mood of many encounters, as most of it is filled with generic hardcore porn dialogue that wouldn't be out of step with Max Hardcore, Czech-Casting, or other porn-productions currently wanted internationally by INTERPOL. This is bizarre, as the descriptions of sex and the women are top tier, but the MC's dialogue and descriptions are frankly soul-killingly-disgustingly poor in their taste and execution.
Basically, this is a very classy looking game with a classless and tasteless MC/dialogue. A real juxtaposition, which has led to the currently juxtaposed rating of this game.
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