Reviewing v0.8.6.5
I've realised I haven't rated this yet although I've been following and enjoying it for a while, so it's about time to do it.
This has been one of those I look forward to the most for a while. The main reasons being two fold:
1. The renders
The quality has been good from the start but is also very obviously getting better and better.
The setup of the scenes is clearly thought through and adds to the quality.
In more recent updates there are now animations which are of incredible quality. When I play Ren'py games I usually don't want full on animations, but here, they are really adding something.
As for the models they are pretty good, and has one of my favourite girls on the whole site (and I am picky). Furthermore their face expression receives just as much attention from the dev, not just the posing, and it makes a world of difference.
2. The writing
This is an interesting one and pretty unexpected, let me explain.
The story I find a bit complex and must admit I have at times skipped some dialogs that I didn't get. On top of that the dev isn't a native english speaker and one can tell even from the game description (and I sometimes wonder about the proofreaders too...).
However, despite that, I found that the level of detail spent to craft the dialogs, alongside the aforementioned facial expressions, makes for an experience that you sometimes feel in your belly way more than you should. There are certain scenes I know I felt deeply connected to because of that, and I liked it. Certain scenes with Katie in particular, the way she fights with the MC and gradually warms up to him, it's just well done. And I think this is the main reason I hung around when in other games I probably would have left due to a lack of perceived progress and sex scenes.
Now there are bad points too.
As mentioned above I don't enjoy fully the whole story, which may be because I'm not into the supernatural things (but like I said, the relationship building part is wonderfully done).
There's also a lack of decisions so it's more a VN than a game.
And then there is the Alice model which to me looks weird (both old and new models), so in a way I wish there was more gorgeous models. But then that turns into a positive because it means I get to see Katie more
And so that is where it leaves me. I know my attraction to Katie may make me too soft for this game and maybe I try too much to compensate against a potential bias. But objectively this game is quality and a work of art that is very good.
What would make it Excellent for me? Some decisions or maybe variations in the sex scenes if the story is important to be linear. And some variety to the sex which has so far been pretty basic (but oh so well done - now that I write this I'm not even sure as it may not work at all... dunno, still curious I guess).