Reviewing v0.06.1, no story spoilers, minor character/relationship spoilers. TLDR at the end.
Introduction
Shortly before I finished this version of the game, I had started becoming increasingly annoyed by it and I was really wanting to vent in my review. I calmed down first, and finished all of the available content, so that I can hopefully be a bit more objective now, but despite all the hype this game has received, I still have a lot to criticize and I'll probably still be fuming by the end of the review when I get into the things that irritated me most. I would like to give it only 2 stars for more emotional/personal reasons but I concede that that would be all-in-all pretty unfair to this game that still has a lot going for it, so therefore my rating of 3 stars.
I'll be starting with what are in my opinion the best aspects of the game, but it's all downhill from there.
Gameplay (4 stars)
The gameplay here is pretty fun and well-developed. A sandbox game, but actually one of the better ones. You are somewhat free to either pursue the girls individually and advance your relationship with them, or continue with the story first, but they do overlap and you can't progress too far in one without progressing at least somewhat in the other. Nice balance between streamlining the whole plotline while still, to an extent, disconnecting the threads, both of which can be bad when done to the extreme.
The missions, where you get to level up, buy new equipment, unlock new missions with bigger rewards and that whole thing is a fun element that you don't often see in this sort of VN, but it does get somewhat old pretty quickly, is mainly there for grinding purposes and the whole interface still needs a lot of work to be smoother and more intuitive. It also doesn't feel impactful enough for the rest of the game, it seems like it's just this completely isolated minigame/grinding feature that isn't connected at all to the rest of the game except thematically.
But I can't complain too much about the gameplay, definitely one of the stronger aspects of the game.
Visuals (4 stars)
This is another aspect of the game where the dev can really shine. The renders are all in all very good and much more realistic than one is used to. Unfortunately, that also leads to the fact that all of the women so far in the story have pretty standard body types; they are very attractive and look good, but also a bit boring and similar to each other.
The animations seem to be in their early stages, only further into the game they start appearing infrequently but they do show a lot of promise, so maybe we'll see more of that later on.
But here, criticism can feel a bit like nitpicking, because visually, this game is definitely in the upper tier. Not fabulously astounding but definitely good enough to not be distracting.
Sound Design (4 stars)
Maybe not the most important part of any VN, but definitely wanted to make a note of it here in the better aspects of the game.
The background music is on point in this game, really doing much of the emotional heavy labor subtly in the background without being too distracting, and still sounding very unique.
Other sound effects might sometimes sound a bit harsh, loud and repetitive but that could be improved over time and it's nice to see a dev at least caring about that aspect.
Unfortunately, no moaning or other sorts of sounds from people which feels like a missed opportunity in a game that is seemingly so concerned with sound design, so maybe that'll be rectified in future updates, but so far nothing.
Writing: Story (2 stars)
The meat of my criticism comes from the writing, but in very different ways, so I'll separate them into different aspects, starting with the main story itself (but like I said at the beginning, no spoilers here).
The main problem with the main story is that there seemingly isn't a whole lot of actual plot that moves the story forward. Despite the separation of the gameplay into story mode and free roam mode, the latter of which is designed to advance character relationships, the only time the story mode is really interesting, comes, when it too, is about advancing character relationships.
The rest of the story is unfocused and doesn't really have a clear endgame in mind while also being super convoluted, introducing new names and characters and families and family dynamics left, right and center, all of it is super hard to keep track off despite feeling ultimately inconsequential. It does seem to become a bit clearer towards the end of the current build where the story might be heading but there is nothing really hooking me yet because I don't feel I know what the main conflict is even supposed to be.
There are many people raving about the great story in this game, but it's really not great at all, they're probably confusing it with Luna's backstory which is pretty great indeed, but the main story, that's supposed to be driving the tension, is practically non-existent while somehow still being too convoluted.
Writing: Characters, Non-MC (3 stars)
This is in large part about the three main girls of the story (Luna, Gracie and Isabel) but I'll just say that so far, the other minor character are... fine. We haven't really explored them yet, which is also fine, there's time for that, I'll just say that Wilfred gets pretty annoying pretty quickly. Other than that, they're all just fine. We'll see how they develop later on (if at all, at least Cordia should). Now there'll be very minor spoilers here for the girls, but nothing that you don't pick up on after playing the game for a short while.
All in all, the girls are a bit of a mixed bag. Luna and Gracie at least seem to have interesting backstories but with all this work gone into them, you would hope that they would be a bit more consistent over all. It seems like the dev still hasn't really figured out how he wants their personalities to shape out overall which leads to it feeling like the girls are just hopping between wild mood swings.
The worst offender of that is probably Isabel, we know nothing of her past (so far, but there's hasn't been any hints either that there'll be more to come like with Gracie or Luna), and her whole ambition seems to be, that she's unhappy in her marriage. She can't seem to decide whether she wants a relationship with the MC, which would be fine, if her conflicted nature was better explained and more consistent. But she seems to only exist so that there can be a cuckold NTR fetish story here. Pretty uninteresting and weird. Hot, though.
Gracie is also a weird one, but at least we get hints that there might be an explanation for her weirdness. She's still too inconsistent for my tastes, jumping between innocent virgin, super-brain smart-ass, annoying little sister and weird unfeeling robot without missing a beat. If there is logic to all that, we need to see it earlier, up until now it has been mostly off-putting.
Many people have said that Luna is their favorite character, and for good reason. She might also seem inconsistent at first, similar to Gracie, but most of her weirdness is hinted to make sense through her backstory. More than that though, she seemed more consistent throughout than the other characters, in a weird way being consistent in her inconsistency, and I feel like the dev has probably put way more thought and time into her development than any other character. I won't give too much away here, but her character exploration is also by far the most intense emotional journey of the game, that really got to me towards the end of the game. So I don't have much issue with her, she has been pretty interesting so far.
I'll note though, that all three main girls share a certain character trait, the sort of reluctance/innocence/shyness that makes them really uncertain about starting any sort of romantic/sexual relationship with the MC. They all express it in different ways and for different reasons but it's sort of disappointing that there is not at least one woman who isn't shy, and has experience and has no real obstacles standing in the way of her being with the MC. That could also allow for more sex scenes starting earlier. But that's not that important, just a tidbit, I mostly like the slow build-up.
Writing: Dialogue (2 stars)
The dialogue is probably the first real weak link in this game. I started noticing the flaws right from the get-go but at first, it seemed actually pretty funny, idiosyncratic almost. There is a lot of light-hearted back-and-forth that you might find amusing. But after a while, it just becomes this weird thing that every single character does, arguing about these random, unimportant things for an eternity and disguising it as wit or banter but it's really not that funny and after a while it just becomes annoying. It also feels just so off that pretty much every character is engaging in that weird banter, except for maybe Cordia, to the point that you just can't help noticing that it's just one person writing the dialogue of every character, and that really takes you out of the immersion.
That's not to say that characters don't have their own dialogue quirks; they do, but also to a ridiculous, off-putting and just incomprehensible extent. Be it Wilfred's long pauses and snippy manner, or just words that certain characters tend to repeat unnaturally often like Luna's "silly" and "stupid", Gracie"s "indecent" and "probabilities" or Isabel's "teasing" and "cute/adorable".
I should mention that the MC/dev is lampshading all of this, which doesn't really make it better; it means, the dev was aware of this peculiarity but doesn't change it, just comment on it by remarking that it's weird.
Then don't do it, it's your choice, you write the dialogue for them!
Writing: Pacing/Efficiency (1 star)
This section is one of the worst aspects of the game that really made it excruciating for me to finish the whole thing, and that's just up to this pretty early build.
Most of the writing in this game is just the opposite of "efficient" writing, meaning the tenet that you should only write as much as necessary without needless repetitions or other things that could be left aside without changing the story. Now I'm not saying that that tenet is a cardinal rule that should always be followed to the letter, it might be nice and relaxing to just explore some aspects of the game and characters even if they are not strictly necessary to move any story along.
But especially later on in the game, many scenes are just so, so, so very long and booooring because stuff is just repeated or reiterated in a slightly different, but essentially needless way, you just feel like you're getting nowhere. It gets very info-dumpy and expositiony, in all of the worst ways. Especially in a VN, where you could just tell so much of the story
visually, you get overloaded with pages and pages of meaningless dialogue, which is especially frustrating in those cases where you see the conclusion approaching from a mile away (like in the emotionally gripping exploration of Luna's backstory, great story but terrible storytelling).
I normally don't do this in VNs, because I don't only want to watch porn but also experience a story, but I really ended up just skipping or at least skimming through so much of it just to move things along. And it's not because what was happening, wasn't interesting but just because it wasn't told efficiently enough. The dev really needs to reevaluate his writing style here in my opinion, otherwise, this game just gets so tedious after a while.
Writing: Main Character (1 star)
This MC is probably the main reason I got so pissed playing this game and wanted to give it a lower rating just based on my anger and frustration. Now this might be mainly based on opinion/personal preference, so the criticism might feel overly harsh to some of you, but it really impacted my playing enjoyment.
At first, he seems pretty non-descript, your typical, erotic VN, "regular" guy who's just thrown into a weird situation. But as the story progresses, he becomes "bolder" (which is how the women describe it) which really means, he starts to become a huge dick (
and not in the good sense), consistently mocking, berating, coercing and belittling all of the women, never taking them or their feelings seriously, and being the typical asshole alpha guy who "knows best" even when the women clearly tell him what they want and don't want. Worst of all is, that in typical fashion, he is not only not punished for this behavior, but ultimately rewarded for it by all of the women who, it turns out, were of course just faking their hesitation or straight-up rejection and are, in actuality, all very glad to have their knight in shining armor who is molesting them at every turn, no matter how inappropriate the situation. And when they try to engage in a serious conversation, talk about boundaries or want to tell him in what way his behavior is not something they enjoy, he starts to "joke" around with really corny and weird and inappropriate jokes but of course, all the girls are just so easily won over by his "charm" and just forget that they were angry in the first place. Now I wanted to include that criticism in my discussion about the girls, but even though they might be a bit too easily swooned, it's not really with them where the real issue lies.
The whole thing is just this disgusting, unrealistic male-gazey bullshit that I just can't suspend my disbelief for and it just got worse the further you got in the game. And don't tell me, you can't make a harem game that's not this pure male power fantasy,
I know there are games that manage to find a graceful, even respectful, way to do it.
Conclusion, TL;DR
If you actually arrived down here after reading all of my ranting review, wow, thank you so much for indulging me. If you just jumped here for my TLDR, understandable, so here are my final thoughts.
There is a lot to like about this game: the gameplay is unique, yet familiar, with an interesting way of going about grinding (although that aspect could definitely still be perfected). The renders are all in all pretty upper tier, even though I would have wished for more variety in the girls' body types. The girls themselves all have unique, sort of quirky, if somewhat inconsistent personalities and seem to mostly have interesting backgrounds that will surely be further explored in future updates.
There are however, also a lot of aspects I didn't care for, ranging from mildly annoying to frustrating and enraging. The dialogue is often awkward and stilted, and weirdly repetitive, the writing is the opposite of efficient and just drags on, and the MC is just one of the biggest asshole, bullshit knight-in-shining-armor, disrespectful, annoying sort of coercive and manipulative character I've ever had the bad misfortune of being forced to impersonate in a video game. And that last point is saying something because I've played a lot of these VNs.
So take that all how you will, apparently not everybody is as bothered by these negative points as I am, so maybe this is still your thing. I'm just glad I finished it for now so that I could write this review and don't have to touch it, or future updates, ever again.
Oh and n.b., forgot to mention, there is a fair bit of gore in this game, ranging from mildly violent to pretty disturbing. Never any snuff porn or the like, the violence is never sexualized (yet?, hopefully it stays that way), but it is part of the story. So, you know, stuff like that never really bothered me much, but if that isn't for you, maybe stay away from this game.
