Ren'Py - The Hero Awakens [v0.5a] [Serys Studio]

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This game surprised me! I thought it would be a chill idle sim, but now I'm totally hooked on Lyra and building my club empire. I even spent two hours picking an outfit for an in-game party!
The story's surprisingly good – full of secrets, drama, and wild characters. And somehow I'm balancing keeping my taff happy with unlocking magical dresses.
The visuals are stunning, a cool mix of anime, cyberpunk, and fantasy with a luxurious feel. The music's fantastic too, I often just leave it on in the background.
Shout out to Sophia and Quinn, my two favorite hires. Sophia's iconic, and Quinn's got this might kill you but also love you vibe. Great additions to the team
If you're into story, glam, chaos, and a bit of a girl boss management vibe, you should check it out. No regrets joining Member mode. Lyra supremacy....

Okay, I have to say... I really like this! Lyra is a great protagonist, the scenes flow well, and the costume system? Absolutely perfect. You can really tell there's a lot of passion behind this game. However, I sometimes found myself thinking, "Wait, where did that event even go?!" A little help with navigation or some subtle hints early on would be nice. If you added more story lines and polished the UI a bit, this game would definitely be better.

This review is for v0.3

So to start this off, the very first thing that you will notice upon launching the game is the music that is incredibly loud, so logically you would turn it down to less than half of what it's set to and then launch the game.
Guess what though? The music is also apparently tied to all of the game audio, so turning it down makes everything quieter.
This becomes very apparent when you first start the game as it opens with exposition read by either ai or text to speech as it mentions an orc king, but because it doesn't recognize orc as a word, it reads it as O.R.C. letter by letter. Combine that with the other massive issues generated speech creates and you get what feels like a cheap attempt at something that is trying to be more than it is willing to put the budget forth for.

Moving on to the game, you are immediately in a dialogue with a Saitama knock-off filled with atrocious dialogue that makes you feel like you are having a stroke just reading it. This dialogue ends with a choice of either ignoring the "advice" or ignoring the advice while giving Saitama the middle finger...I think because the text is so bad that I have no idea if that is what actually happened.

After that, you are immediately in the "open world sandbox" with no clue as to what to do or where to go, which is made even worse by the fact that most locations are completely locked away if you aren't wearing the right outfit, but guess what? The cheapest outfit is $200!
So clearly inflation has hit this society hard, which is even more depressing when you realize that you only have $500 to start and have no idea how to make more money because the obvious choice of becoming a hero in a game called "The Hero Awakens" is not an option at the beginning of the game because you only have $500 and the registration fee alone is $1k, so you have to somehow make money to get a job to then make money?
It's like the real life issue of needing a car to get a job, but you need a job to make money to get a car in the first place.

As for the art, the only thing I can really note about it is that it looks...wrong.
The main character has really off-putting proportions, especially in her alien looking face, and all of the NPCs have the same issue that makes them all look like discounted off-brand barbie toys.

So all in all, it's a really poorly made directionless game (so far) that has aspirations greater than the talent and none of the trademarks of a playable or enjoyable game.