VN - Ren'Py - The Last Progenitor [Ch.1] [SeCe Studio]

Ch.1

Too early for a review so this is just first impressions. Chapter 1 so far piqued my interest. Especially the narrative.

Supernatural theme, so vampires, which is something up my alley but with a unique premise. There's the human aspect with you inheriting a corporation and the politics invovled. There's the vampire side with a hidden past you're unaware about as it seems your memory has been intentionally wiped. So far i'm liking the narrative, its not your typical vampire story. Also you have to replay the game as it has branching routes that'll reveal additional plot points and different character perspectives. Which means certain scenes and characters are locked out base on your choices(at least so far in chapter 1 but might open up in subsequent chapters).

Am liking the cast of characters. Too early to render judgement as it's only introductions for now, but i like what i see, especially the women. Varied cast of characters. Models and renders aren't anything fancy but it's passable. I'm expecting the narrative and characters to carry the game.

Has potential, hopefully dev commits and delivers.

The story is too messy and have some massive logical issues, the render quality are moving up and down more than wallstreet's market and finally the final boss, the unavoidable freaking minigame clearly developed for mobile, i mean even on a overpowered device with a mouse that answer in 1ms, (and the fact i myself react quite fast) i barely win it.

That mean that 99% of pc player will fail them and the "i block roll back" make it worse and won't prevent people from redoing them anyway.

So please fix all those story / quality / Ui issues.

Also those kind of end do not make the game better, it's only frustrating the player and associates a negative feeling to your game is not what you want when you have so much issue in the first place.

I HATE quick time events and there is no mechanism to skip them and you constantly have to go back and do it again, but since I'm playing on a laptop, no matter what I do, the goddamn thing is not going to be able to move fast enough to beat the timer. I couldn't even finish the damn chapter because of this. Either that function needs to be removed or made skippable because I cannot be bothered to do that again. Any player not playing on a phone shouldn't even bother with this because it's impossible to beat them.

VERSION:CH1
SUMMARY: Overall not a bad start, but some revision is needed to avoid player frustration and more quality of life features should be implemented.
RATINGS: (out of 5):

1. Models: 4
2. Animations: 4
3. General Visuals: 3
4. Characters: 3
5. Story: 3
6. Writing: 3
7. Pacing: 3
8. Content (amount): 3
9. UI & Sounds: 3
10. Fetish & kinks: X

Average: X of 50 possible points giving a X% rating i.e. X stars. WORTH 3.5 STARS 4 OR MORE WITH CHANGES

PROS:

1. Music and general sounds are included and fit well, basic but least there is some sounds.
2. Models look pretty good, not over the top or anything crazy, but good.
3. Animations look pretty impressive also, though (see cons)
4. Renders overall quality is decent and looks good.
5. Writing is not bad, structured general well, though (see cons)
6. Choices are available in dialogue, however not 100% if it really changes anything save for minor dialogue changes.
7. Story is OK?, semi intriguing particular when the MC is being "knocked out of the world", no pun intended, or banging some chick during an office meeting, is pretty weird though interesting (so far).
8. Pacing seems fine, though I am still checking.

CONS:

1. Renders are good including animations, but sometimes its annoying to have only the first person point of view and not several angles, at least when it comes to sexual scenes.
2. Unable to skip unseen text to get through the mindless chat or for potential replay value.
3. "mini games" or "timed events" where the player must react and reaction times are very short, are unavoidable and due to no rollback options or its buggy, it gets really annoying to redo them...
4. Sexual sounds like moaning or the normal beat the meat sounds are not present, which is very unfortunate considering quality of animations.
5. Choices could use some sort of walkthrough or point system, if it even matters, right now there is no way to know if some choices have negative or positive effects save for dialogue changes. NPC, LI's need stats please!
6. Interface needs to work, quicker access to gallery or bio on people would be nice.

FINAL THOUGHTS & SUGGESTIONS:

• Story starts suddenly, not complex but its like having a dream where it all starts in the middle, would be nice with more context. Was going to add this comment to cons section but its not really an issue, simply my opinion.
• Story that unfolds "within" MCs mind when he blacks out is strange and a tad frustrating because nothing is really said or achieved in the conversations with the entity there, this creates IMO more frustration than mystery. That being said, hopefully the developer will move on from having the MC concussed and focus on the story.
• Some models like the adoptive father seem a bit young for the MC, but i guess since its adoptive it can work...sorta, just my opinion.
• Personally I see no point in timed events of mini-games, you can achieve the same without frustrating the player by just putting in an option "stare at her ass", "leave quick", "dodge right" or not etc. Alternatively put the option to play mini games or timed events or not.
• More tags please, more kinks and fetishes would be appreciated, can never have enough!