Impressions after playing until end of current version, Chapter 4.
I have mixed feelings about the game in the current state. My hopes were very high after seeing the description and very positive reviews. The biggest disappointment was the linearity. Before somebody tries to shoot this argument down by saying "it's a visual novel duh they are linear", I strongly recommend any femdom afficionado to try Karlssons Gambit, which is a pristine example of a visual novel that doesn't feel like a visual novel at all, because your choices actually matter. In TBS? Nope. After playing 4 chapters you end up at a predestined crossroad that would always be there with absolutely zero regard to your "choices". Well, you could say, choices don't impact the main story, but maybe they impact the kinks you'll get to see? Unfortunately, no. There are instances where the game gives you an illusion of that, but then it instantly becomes obvious the choice didn't matter. Example: at certain point, when tidying up Laurens room, you stumble across her panties, and can choose to take them or ignore them. Classic motif. I thought to myself, the MC is already in deep shit, best avoid getting caught panty sniffing. So I chose to not take them. Guess what, you still end up with the panties and you get punished for it. Your choice is completely meaningless, the story is driven in a way that literally puts MC in the worst possible situation every time. It breaks the immersion, it is boring, it is frustrating. I won't rant more about it, you get the idea.
When it comes to characters, the game deserves a lot more praise. The personalities of main heroines are outlined finely enough for me to be able to tell which character is delivering the line, even if I didn't have their name or portrait displayed. They are unique, but they also aren't overly schematic cliche stereotypes. Regarding writing I do have a rather subjective criticism: at some point it actually becomes annoying that the main character is THIS much of a pathetic, degenerate, irredeemable dumbass. I know the game is mainly about humiliation but even then there should be some levels of it available - this goes back to my criticism regarding how linear the story is. At every point, the outcome is the worst for MC, and you often can't make a choice that would get you out of it. Although as I said that's subjective, some people will certainly like the way MC is.
The last of major things is the graphics and the art. The devs took care of one important thing that often gets overlooked - the backgrounds. They are well done and fitting. The layout and interface are also proper. However, the art. I'm sorry if that's harsh towards the artist, but the art is simply not very good. The characters are inconsistent in their appearance, character animations in dialogues are almost non-existent, and animated scenes are so rare at some point you could almost forget they're even in the game. 95% of the time you will just be staring at a mostly-still character sprite and reading. Although facial expressions deserve a mention, they are doing a decent job giving the characters more personality.
All that said, the game is good, and if you're into the stuff tagged you should certainly try it. I am only ranting this hard because the game has a lot of room for improvement, not because I didn't like it. You created something with a great potential mister developer person, keep it up.
I will pay attention to future releases.
![Div [Divanation]](/data/avatars/m/2261/2261048.jpg?1690677789){kind=avatar}
