The Bite: Revenant is a well-made game: in which author tries to create its own lore, add some gameplay elements and develop character personalities. Still, in spite of the fact that the author has really tried and done many aspects of the game very well, I can't say that I liked this game. I didn’t have enough interest in finishing this game after completing it to about 70% of the way through and watching the rest of the content with my ctrl pressed. However, this has more to do with my dislike of typical visual novels that gives little possibility of influencing the world, the expectations that come with a vampire setting, and other factors that I will write about below. Despite my nickname, I can't say I'm a huge fan of the vampire theme, although I did like it a lot at one time. Vampire theme, perhaps, like zombie theme, has been used too much and that is why it is really hard to make you surprised anymore. I'll try to highlight the main points that I found important. Both the good and the bad.
Good and neutral.
The vampire infestation was explained quite well, in my opinion. In this universe, vampires are carriers of a parasite and their abilities are not related to any mysticism. So here vampires are rather closer to living beings, which is not a bad excuse, for a game of adult genre, where the characters will have to engage in carnal pleasures.
I really liked our patron Zoe, who took the protagonist under her guardianship. Apart from her sweet looks, there is something about her character that is rarely seen in girls in other games. She is probably the only character who doesn't immediately jump on the hero's dick and you really have to do certain things to make her trust you. However, this attitude may simply be due to her backstory, which is only hinted at a couple of times in the game. That would certainly be a disadvantage, as it's all too rare in games like this to find characters who know their worth and who really need to be conquered. To be honest, I even have some regret in dropping this game, as I would have liked to see more of this character. But not being able to fully play the character the way I want to, I think it would have ruined the experience of having a romance with her anyway.
The writing in the game is at a pretty good level, and it's generally interesting to read the dialogue. However, I would note that the conversations are a bit too much at times.Yes, in the beginning it seems important, so the hero needs to learn the ropes of vampire world. But later on we see that it's more of a trait of the author to make "chatterboxes" out of the characters. The ratio between talk and action in this game I would estimate at 80/20, which eventually bored me.
Sex animations are made on an average level. You can't call them very good, but you can't say they're bad either. I would rate them at 6/10 slightly above average than what you can usually find.
It felt like the author was inspired by the World of Darkness, which can be considered a plus since it's one of the most developed worlds about vampires. However, many of its inherent qualities, which I appreciate it for, were either left out or not properly represented in this game. After all World of Darkness is about the roleplay, which is done poorly in this game.
Negatives.
When you play a vampire-themed game, you have certain expectations of what you want to do and see in the game. While everyone has their own preferences, I personally felt that something was missing. Something that didn't make this game a simulation of everyday life in a nocturnal setting. More use of vampire abilities and traits, confrontations with other vampires and vampire hunters, more of the supernatural. You can say that the game is still in its early stages and that everything is still to come, but you have to realise that the player needs something to keep them engaged until then. And I can say that this game turns the wheels of the story too slowly.
I've already mentioned that I liked Zoe's character, but in terms of the rest, it's more of a standard set of everything you'd find in other novels. Although the writing in the game is at a good level, I can't say that anyone impressed me enough for me to remember them later. Except for one more character, formidable arbiter (a tall girl with a sword that acts as a judge), but there are very few interactions with her, and those that are there don't look like this dominatrix trying to dominate the protagonist. In general, the game is very bad with dominant characters, which for a vampire theme, I think is a very significant attribute. If there is a super being that lives for hundreds of years, whether you want it or not, but most of them should have already tried all the available pleasures, know their own worth and look at others from the position of their experience and power. In this game, this theme is very underdeveloped, and those characters that even have influence and power don't reveal their dominance in an intimate way. And I want to point out right away, I'm not saying that all of such vampires should be into bdsm, but even light femdom would be very appropriate, but it's not there.
Overall, the sex content in the game is very vanilla, which is not what you would expect from a vampire-themed game. It's not a moe game with cute teenage vampire girls to make it so soft. There are different characters from different eras and backgrounds in this game, but they are all too "trivial". There's no real depravity, and no characters we could call perverted lunatics. The maximum we get to see in this version is a vampire girl masturbating in a club while listening main character's story of sleeping with another girl, and even that scene isn't written well enough to generate excitement. Most of the characters here suffer from the same thing as other games in the vanilla genre. The protagonist is the centre of the universe, and all the other men are just extras, and more often than not, nasty individuals that the protagonist has to put in their place. God forbid any vampire not keep themselves for hundreds of years for the sake of one and only main protagonist, otherwise the audience will immediately start shouting a three-letter word and hating the author. I'm exaggerating a bit, but it's true: in a game about vampires, you want to see sexually liberated characters for whom all this vanilla stuff should have stopped being interesting a long time ago. Ordinary people during 30 years of active sexual life most often get tired of it all and start trying new things, and here we are talking about immortal beings. It can also be noted that according to the lore of the game, in addition to huge physical improvements, vampires have insane regeneration, which should essentially lead us to the conclusion that their sexual stamina should be almost infinite. But in the reality of the game we see one simple intercourse with little imagination and one ejaculation and that's it. I don't know what the developer's plans are, but at the moment, I would feel very sceptical if any of the vampires would praise the protagonist for such "undoubtedly" divine sex from the height of their experience and vampire standards. Again all of this isn't just some silly nitpicks, I just don't understand why make mystical creatures the same as humans? As for the sex scenes themselves, they are rather short and, I would even say, weakly written. There's little passion in them if we're talking about the romantic side of things, and too little depravity if we're interested in dirty, fetishised sex (In one scene, the girl had a long tongue, which she took advantage of, of course. But that's about it). There is also no way to give it direction in any way, sex goes strictly according to a script.
If you take out all the sex scenes from the game, it can be rated 16+. At first I thought that the tag graphic violence was simply forgotten to put, but after playing the game I was convinced that it really is absent here. There is only one more or less brutal scene in the game, where the main character is killed by another vampire. Everything else is text descriptions and a few blood stains. Again, this is a game about blood-sucking monsters with inhuman abilities, and turning it into yet another dating simulator is a waste of potential. Yes, this is all subjective, but as I said, the vampire theme raises certain expectations and even freaking Twilight has more violence than this game.
Next, I'm going to name a drawback that is essential for me, but may not be so for others. Choices and their consequences. Right at the beginning of the game, a girl is thrown at us with whom the protagonist has sex, there is no way of avoiding it. To be honest, I thought this girl that will turn us into a vampire, an that's why it's mandatory, so I continued playing. But then it turned out that wasn't the case and we're going to be turned by another girl. I was pretty dissapointed that scene with this character was just made to show us animations and to show that the player has little control here. For me, there is nothing more frustrating in games like this than when the hero acts solely at the behest of the author and the player is merely an observer of his decisions. Fortunately, the situation improves a little later on and we can reject certain characters, but there are very few choices and alternative story options. There are also some skill checks in the game, and at first I even thought they would have a strong impact on the game. But later on, I started to feel like they served more as an extension of the scenes, merely adding extra dialogues, which led me to think that they didn't play a big role in the story. However, some kind of relationship system is present here and trust and relationship checks sort of affect whether a character is willing to go on a mission with you (this was the case with Zoe), but to prove it you'd have to go through the game a second time, which I don't really want to do. But like I said, the game doesn't often put the player in front of any choice.
In the game, very often we are "pushed" to love interests that we need to interact with. Even after choosing the option that you are not interested in this character, we still
have to listen to their babble until the end. And as I said, characters like to talk a lot. And like I said, things are very sparse with choices here. We very rarely get to influence anything and roleplay the character. So the main character, will play gentleman with everyone and listen to every woman's problems.
The last drawback I'll mention is the protagonist's ability. Here is a little spoiler that reveals this ability.
I've never been a fan of overpowered protagonists, and I personally find it much more satisfying to accomplish something with limited powers or powers that everyone else has. But yes, in some cases even I can enjoy a powerful protagonist, but as long as the ability is not too ultimate and as long as the game continues to challenge the player. Again, I think it would be important to focus on the power-play fetish in the game. Here, however, such ability of the hero kills all further intrigue - it is too powerful and
And at this stage of the game, it doesn't really show up in the sex scenes either.
In conclusion, I would like to say that while I gave this game 4 stars, I personally rate it much lower. But I try to be unprejudiced and I realize that many things in this game are not done badly, they are just not done for me. So if you like visual novels, where the story the author wants to tell is more important than your inner desire to shape it, then you might like this game. If long conversations with little on-screen action don't bother you, and you're a fan of vampire theme, then again, you might like this game.
