Review for
The Last Oasis Before Chastity v1.8b:
Overall: 3/5 - It's a good start and worth a try, but there are a lot of what-the-fuck moments that made me scratch my head, and the changes from v1.1 to v1.8 don't give me much hope that it's going to get better.
Story: 3/5 - There's a reasonably coherent story in the beginning, but the game is trying it's hardest to destroy the story with all of the weirdness and the 1.7 and 1.8 updates only made it worse. It's starting to feel like a disposable thrash game. It's early, so maybe there's a lot to be revealed, but right now, there's a lot of content in the game that's totally off-the-rails and the story just seems like it's heading for a train-wreck.
Writing: 5/5 - The writing is excellent. It's funny and draws you into the game. There were very few errors. The conversation in Foxxy's room was the only one that stood out as needing some proofreading. The use of "They" and "Them" in a few dialogues got silly sometimes. It seems like the writer is intentionally trying to hide who "they" really are (I'd guess it's the girls' mother) and just can't think of a better way to write it without giving something away, but it's just not how people talk to each other and it got cringy.
Renders: 5/5 - High resolution, high detail, mostly beautiful models.
Animations: 4/5 - There are some outstanding animations and there are some that are laughable. One of the great animations was the truck driving down the highway with birds flying over and the leaves on the trees gently swaying in the breeze. One of the laughable animations was where MC got the blowjob from Harper (hitchhiker). In one angle, her entire body moved like it was made of a solid piece of metal. Luckily most animations are much better than that. There seem to be some delays with the animations, and they've become worse in v1.8, even on a high-end gaming PC.
Sound: 2/5 - The sound needs work. Some of the UI sounds are not affected by any of the in-game volume controls and they are extremely loud. On top of that, the UI sounds themselves are annoying. The music was mostly OK< but sometimes it was weird, but maybe that matches a lot of the other weird stuff going on. Heard what I believe is unlicensed copyrighted music in v1.8, which is a good way to get a game killed.
Gameplay: 3/5 - Gameplay is a mixed bag
Good:
- Nice looking user interface.
- Standard Renpy features are all there and not disabled.
- Choices of which characters to have lewd encounters.
- Game tells you how choices affect character relationships.
Bad:
- Pointless long delays (literally 3 to 5 seconds while showing a blurred image) transitioning between scenes. This is painful. Please stop it. [Edit: changelog says this is fixed in v1.8]
- Too much text in some places. For example, there are blurred renders with a paragraph of text at the end of some scenes. The text mostly says stuff that players
already know. It's a terrible balance of visuals with writing.
- The animation of opening the GUI is too slow. Yeah, it's cool that the developer learned how to do it, but players don't want to wait for it all the time.
- The icon to see the character relations isn't available most of the time.
Other: There are a lot of WTFs:
I sure hope there is going to be some explanation for why the game instantly switched from action/thriller to teen horror movie parody on the drive out of the city.
, I have never encountered this in other renpy games. - 3 stars