Ren'Py - Abandoned - The Class Next Door: EX2 [v0.13.1] [9thCrux]

I know the game does not come together smoothly, however, i give this game four stars out of five due to the near perfect quality of the unique and beautiful women in it.

There are many games that are overall better, but I assert that few can beat the exquisitely pretty renders of the MC's love interests. The characters of each is unique and it sucks that the gameplay is so clunky. This game is a diamond in the rough.

It's abandoned now, so I wonder if this story or the characters can be saved and used in other stories? It would be a waste of excellence, if not!

The worst part of this "game" is that most action is happening in Mc's dreams. Too much time and effort is wasted on both dreams.. that give 0 useful information and barely any fap material. Too much focus on useless day to day banter without any meaning. Like good morning etc. Lack of substantial progress that could happen if said things were omitted and thrown to the bin. Almost every girl is too similar to each other to remember them. The hottest part of this game happened in last updates. Between Mc, Daughter and Mother... so a full damn year in making till barely good fap material appeared. The rest was a filler without substance and meaning yet it still found its way into this story. Oh, dev... you have too much passion for lackluster fap material you produce. If I wanted girls to always wake me up each day with different render of her.. then I would find myself a girlfriend. The last threesome action with Tiffany was the hottest yet, I didn't understand why it happened because I skipped most of this game. Is it my fault? Partly yes, but mostly because there is soo much useless filler that do not give any depth to this story that I feel that I wasted my time on it the more I read useless banter between girls and Mc. Which is why I used skip button to the point that I find interesting and hot moment and can't fathom why it happened in the first place. Dude... I hope that you will clean up this game from useless fillers and it will became way better. I mean.. I get it that you spent hundreds of hours on those renders but damn.. You can add them into a bundle for your fans and don't waste our time on it. This way we will enjoy this game way more.

About useless parts of the story and fillers/dreams. You can add them as bonus images in gallery or something like that. Do not make Us choose between those dreams "in game". It is both tedious and useless to prolong our gameplay. It dimnishes value of this game by adding this cheap shot at prolonging gameplay.

So ideas for now:
- throw dreams into gallery/bonus gallery
- throw away 1/3 or 2/3 of the filler that is useless for the story to the bin or add them into gallery as separate story
- focus on character development and their depth instead of useless fillers and dreams.
- The star of this game is Tiffany and her mom. Focus on them more and after almost fuking Tiffany... why the hell is she behaving like nothing happened? As if Mc and her didn't lvl up in their relationship? Explore emotions of characters and why they behave like they do. Tiffany too. Either way... its a blueballing frustrating mess of a game that has two very hot models in it and too many side characters.

The writing is awful. Plain awful. This is one of the few visual novels (out of hundreds) where I had to skip through large parts of conversation to keep my sanity.

Most of the conversations do not have informational content. So many of the sentences are just greetings ("hi X"), or other things that describe what is just clear from the image. Even ignoring that, there is no real story cohesion.

I'm not sure the author understands how people work. The conversations are surreal, unrealistic, vapid. You think I might be exaggerating, but most of the unrealistic mom-incest content on this website is more realistic than the conversations in TCND: EX2.

At the start of the game you get asked which routes you are following, with one of the defaults being all of the girl routes. If you choose this option, you will have to choose ALL girl options in scenes one by one, which then happen in parallel and conflict story wise.

Half of the game content and nudity is via dreams. Again, an incoherent mess.

Oh yeah, and the game has overt racism against black people.

Only reason to play this is to skip the text and look at the really nice models.

With 11.1 this game finally, after years of development through two other games, provides the player with a scene that is among the very best payoffs in any game out there.

The slow burn finally lit a bonfire.

And more is promised and foreshadowed.

The renders are beautiful; the main girl is probably my favorite model in any game. Many reviewers have consistently praised the models and renders.

The problem has always been game play and slow burn. Well, with 11.1, the problems with game play have all been resolved. This is now something like a visual novel, but with different paths with different girls.

It would be great if renders used in the two prior games, or renders from dreams in those games, were incorporated into this game.

I tried to play the other games, but could never finish them and therefore missed many scenes. It was simply too grindy, and there are only so many hours in the day.

Reviewers have been against this developer for years, but this is finally the game that many have been hoping for.

It is still a slow burn in some ways, but with a big payoff this time; and the payoff is reachable without grind.

Recommended. Excellent.

So what I gather this is a third game, or rather attempt of making one.
First one was rather arrogantly described by author as 'slow burn' when in fact was barely coherent mess. I am not sure if sandbox feature was added to it later or that was standalone game - doesn't matter, really.
This is basically the same stuff as the first one. Now girls already attracted to you, dreams are still a thing oh and - there is still terrible, terrible writing of someone with bare knowledge of social interaction, not to mention something more subtle at attraction between man and woman.
Girl models are nice, but that's just it. They are still robots who meet MC on various occasions and want to, quoting 'hang out and do stuff'. Truly riveting, isn't it? As for someone who claimed to do slow burn stuff, author doesn't get build up at all, there is just this robotic, emotionless row of scenes MC and girls. Want some good dialogues? Not in this game. Want some tolerable dialogues and personalities? Well, they are not in this game either.
Dreams again - why? What for? Dreams have no consequences, they are just a poor excuse to take advantage of other backgrounds author has laying around, so we have dream sex scenes in sci-fi settings, pseudo medieval one and so on. Here is an idea to the author - why not to develop girls personalities and show dreams from their perspective? They are attracted to MC, but show us why that is. Show us their way of thinking, anything besides pretty model and bare bones dialogue. Let dreams to be reflection of reality, to have any consequences on character actions later (or be shaped by said actions). Give me something to work with this 'slow burn' narrative rather than nothing at all!
Overall, it's still grueling, grinding experience. At this point I doubt author will ever improve.

where is the animations??. i see it has the animation tag but it all damn still images.
lies, i hate lies.
maybe i missed the animation? if so there must be a single animation in the game.
Because of not giving correct info about the game and lie what it has.
it gets 1 star.

This is the third iteration of this game and the best one so far, with the first one being entirely dull, and the second being entirely unplayable. As with the others, this game features some of the best looking characters out of any Daz game, but unfortunately, the general render quality is pretty average - the lack of anything more than the minimum effort put into the lighting makes everywhere in the game look like a hospital. It’s got potential, though. The writing is still subpar, very robotic, but it's improved, and that means something.

What’s new is the story structure. It’s a bit strange. For one thing, when you pursue multiple girls’ paths, what you end up seeing are multiple versions of the same scene with a different girl, because canonically, you’re manipulating dimensions to see alternate timelines or some shit. It’s weird, but it’s able to be looked past, I guess. The second thing is that each girl has a multi-part dream sequence, consisting of completely different storylines from completely alternate realities than the main plot, that you’re able to explore some nights between day events. It’s not clear for now if these will be fully fleshed-out side plots, or are just vehicles for delivering barely passable lewd scenes with girls. Some of the transitions between the different parts of a single girl’s dream sequence being jarring and poorly executed makes them even more awkward, but in general, time will tell if they end up working or not.

Edit: The updates come in the form of continuations of multiple scenes that are scattered throughout the middle of the game, so you can't play this like literally every other one by continuing from an end-of-update save. I guess you have to maintain multiple saves throughout the game when it says "this scene will be continued!" as there's no other way to get back to them. Scuffed.

So far this is barely a 3/5 game for me. Not great, not terrible, and improvement over time means a lot. I don’t need to wonder if I’d round it up or down, though, because the next part is how it ends up at a solid 1.

From the outset, this dev has used his games as his own personal political soapbox to preach his conspiracy-theory-riddled reactionary conservative viewpoints. People with these viewpoints see things like women and minorities being represented and treated as human beings in other forms of media, and interpret it as overt left-wing political messaging and propaganda. This dev has taken the opportunity to “strike back” at this perceived cultural indoctrination with what is actual overt right-wing political messaging and propaganda of his own. Characters rant unprompted about “woketard” streaming services, the “woke mind virus”, fake news, “race quotas”, liberal propaganda, and even how everyone just needs to get on their knees to suck a hero police officer’s cock for all the sacrifices they make for us.

Unfortunately, that’s not the worst of it. There’s an instance early on in this game where a horror movie is described as having “violent black primates” and “long-legged chimps” as villains. Were it not for all of the other messaging, these would be extremely bizarre descriptions that couldn’t even be applied to a Planet of the Apes movie. With all the other messaging, though, it becomes clear that the self-insertion of the dev’s vile racism is so thinly veiled it might as well be through a slightly dirty window.

1/5 for gross vice signaling. This is as of 0.7.1. I'd love to revisit this review in the future.

This one is an improvement over TPCND: EX, but still needs a lot of work. I added a star to my review for the removal of the sandbox mechanic. You no longer need an extensive WT to play the game. Most of the content in this version is rehashed scenes from EX. I saw very little new content. I guess the focus on the core 4 girls was due to polls. I missed the routes of the other LI's from EX. There are still unnecessary gaps in the story flow where you have to click through days without anything happening, why keep that in? The grind is still there from EX where the player has to repeat events/conversations just to grind stats, why do this (boring)? Maybe by the end of this one the developer will have revamped the game once again to create a flowing story that is enjoyable to follow.

This is a difficult game to review because of, uh.. its unique history. So I will get into the review for this game EX2 before getting into the caveats later on. Hear me out.

EX2 Main Review:

EX2 has good renders and environments. The designs of the girls are also nice and seem to be updated. There is sound/music which fits nicely. The grammar and spelling are on point. Events and plot slows nicely, nothing too disjointed. If you are a new player, it will not make sense as you will have to play EX first, as EX2 is the continuation. The VN is a traditional VN format, its kinetic with no free roam sandbox elements. There is nothing really wrong with it, but thats my opinion.

The Caveats:

This is a tricky review for many reasons. This game was first released as TP: The Class Next Door, which was kind of a remake or spiritual successor to another game called Teachers Pet hence the TP part of the name. TP The Class Next Door had low quality renders and environments but overall despite that it had a good release. Described as a really slow burn, most were fine but it persisted for ages and was the main complaint for the game. Eventually some lewd content rolled out but it was too late. To make things worse the game had sandbox elements which was reinforced with the EX remake of the game: The Class Next Door: EX.

EX had a lot better plot flow, events, scenes, renders, environments etc however it was a total free roam sandbox nightmare. It was overly tedious and a grind fest to get new events. After a while, the dev continued the story with EX2, this game. As stated in the beginning, EX2 continues all the good of EX, but without the bad: Sandbox. Unfortunately, you still have to play EX to get the first part of the story. You can still download and play the original release TP: The Class Next Door from the Itchio page, which has a lot of content and later, actual lewd scenes with some of the girls but the EX/EX2 revamps have a lot of new and revised plot and events so the original game is out dated and wont really help bridge the gap if you decide to play TP, then skip EX, and jump into EX2.

Overall:

EX2 seems to finally be the game people want (for now) Better plot flow, renders, etc but now without the sandbox. However, until EX is integrated into EX2, you will need to play the nightmare sandbox that is EX, or play TP then jump into EX2 skipping EX, and filling in the blanks yourself as the story for EX/EX2 is largely changed from TP besides core plot/story points.

Pros:
+ character designs are updated
+ nice background music throughout
+ lewd content is progressing faster
+ more cohesive story and pacing
+ background and environments are more detailed
+ overall render quality is better

Neutral:
+/- dont actually know with 100% certainty if EX2 is a direct continuation of EX since I never made it to the end, I cant bare its sandbox but I am pretty certain it is

Negatives:
-no actual EX2 negatives so far
-however forced to play EX and its horrid sandbox despite EX having many of the same +'s as EX2, to get the first part of the story and the beginning
-or forced to play TP with a largely different plot flow and fill in the gaps of the story before getting into EX2 if you want to skip EX's sandbox hell

Considerations:

Dev seems to have moved on from F95 and is focusing on Subscriber and Itchi.io, this is fine but dont expect him to see your feedback/complaints or to get rapid updates here on F95. He has active and frequent updates on his pages and seems dedicated to finishing. While stubborn during the early days, and insistence on forcing sandbox, he seems to be willing to concede and learn based on EX2.

My message to 9thCrux:

Integrate EX into EX2 so you have a single game new players and returning players can get into, without having to deal with the sandbox from EX just to be able to get into EX2. Or, just remove it from EX and it can stay as its own game and a part 1.