In Taffy Tales, you play as this kid, who gets involved in a car accident and develops a split personality. The "good" half is an incredibly dense, spineless kid. The "bad" half is a psycopath, completely devoid of any sense of empathy. So you get 2 terrible MCs for the price of 1.
This would seem to be a setup for your typical light/dark path kind of game. At the beginning, the game even hints at this, telling you about different routes depending on your choices. That couldn't be further from the truth. Right at the start, the doctor calls you asking about your condition. The game gives you a choice of lying to him and say everything is okay, or asking for help in dealing with your alter ego. If you try to ask for help, the game tells you that's not been implemented yet, and forces you to tell him you're fine. Then what was even the point of giving me a choice anyway? From there, the "bad" half basically takes over, driving every plot in the game.
To put into perspective how much of a piece of shit the MC is, I'm gonna describe the beginning of a path, early on. You meet this woman with a sad expression on her face named Clara. She's poor, divorced, and works as a janitor for the school. She's constantly harrassed by students and staff in front of her son, who is his own bag of problems. Despite this, she was always friendly with MC before the accident. So how does this new MC decide to engage this innocent woman, who's life sucks enough as is? He decides to rape her, wearing a Jason mask, in the school's bathroom. Then uses photos of said rape to blackmail her into slavery. Of course then the game proceeds with "oh, she eventually likes it", like so many games do, as if it would make raping any better.
This wouldn't be so bad if I could just avoid Clara's path, as most of the others are much more to my liking. But turns out you can't. Despite looking like a sandbox, most paths are actually dependant on one another. So if there's a kink or a girl you're not much of a fan, or would rather chase after a favourite, then too bad. You're given 2-3 paths to choose from at any point, but not completing one will halt your progression. Couple that with the fact that your choices hardly matter, we are talking about a game that's way more linear than it would seem.
The writing is fine at what it's trying to do, which is to be as edgy as possible, but it has moments of pure cringe. Like the MC randomly deciding to cum on his "caretaker's" salad. The few attempts af humor and self awareness fall flat, given the dark tone of the game. The woman have varying personalities and are executed well but they all fall into some category of "secretly submissive".
Gameplay wise, despite the numerous interaction points, only 2-3 progress the plot in any way, like I mentioned before. There's a couple of bland minigames. Where the sandbox element comes up the most is when the game asks you to "find x item". These items only show up after the quest pops up, and can be anywhere on the map. And I do mean anywhere, with no rhime or reason. I've found a software disk on the floor, next to a pool in the backyard (?????).
Which finally brings me to the one outstanding quality of the game for me, which is the art. The art is really unique, detailed and well done. Unfortunatly, the lewds are not animated, which could help bring this game up from mediocrity for me, despite it's shortcomings. As it stands, static drawings can only do so much.
TL DR: Game offers you very little choice on what to do or input on what happens. Most of it's kinks are forced upon the player, and you can't stick to paths and characters you like. Gameplay is pretty bad. Art is great, but it can only do so much specially with no animation.
