VN - Ren'Py - Completed - The Photographer [v1.1.0] [Nymphs]

The game is definitely mediocre, but it doesnt deserve avg rating of 2.5
There are no crashes, no softlocks or so on, models are ok-ish, aminations are present if somewhat cluncky. There are even some sounds,

Unless you are extremely into sharing/cuckolding, you can skip it and nothing of importance wiil be lost.
On the other hand, there are so maby games that scratch the same itch better...

I remember playing this when it was Drama in the Office. I don't remember a lot of the details from back then, but somewhere along the line I added The Photographer to my list of games to pick up and—eventually—discovered that I'd played this before... but that maybe there had been some changes? In short, I'm reviewing the most recent iteration, The Photographer.

There are two routes and four LIs. The game centers around your MC's moral decision to help one of the LIs deal with a situation her family got her wrapped up in. Himawari is a Japanese girl who has been selected to participate in an adult film being produced by the company the MC works for. She was initially one of three candidates, but the other two bowed out because they decided they didn't want to do it. Meanwhile, Himawari is in this mess because of her family's shenanigans—she wasn't given an option here—so her fate is now in the hands of the big guy (supposedly, the guy at the top of the pyramid and ultimate owner of the company): To say she is hesitant to do any of this would be an understatement. As MC, most of your decisions as the company's photographer (and hesitant part-time model...) are designed to either dig Himawari deeper into the mess or to help her slowly work her way out of it. The other decisions are about the MC's involvement with the other LIs or arrangements with other men (sharing/netorare).

The other LIs are tangential to the story. Julieta works at the same company as the MC, though I'm unsure what her position is. Monika is the MC's boss's wife (bear in mind, MC's boss is not the big guy, but is another rung on the ladder). Isabelle works at a retail clothes shop, but is secretly a private detective.

The storyboard concept of this game is good, while the writing, however, is pretty awful. A lot of the writing gives See Spot Run vibes—if you catch my meaning—and I was going to give this masterpiece three stars. Then I got to the end, and it feels like the developer couldn't be asked to figure out how to connect the story's climax with the ending. Instead of resolving the ending logically, like a good writer would, they threw in a contrived multiverse solution where the big guy is actually a female time traveler that came back in time to do business, failed in the endeavor, and—in order to mask her connection to this timeline—she wants to leave all of her wealth and illegal baggage in the hands of the MC, giving the MC a means to complete the story. For a story that has zero sci-fi elements, this makes sense right? Total deus ex machina, complete fumble.

Two stars.

Another soulless VN with very little to do. And unlike the other games of this quality, it's depressingly slow. You barely get to do anything with the main girl who is kept "pure" as the ultimate prize until the epilogue. One wrong choice and you'll be locked out of all progress with her. It also has the same unsatisfactory resolution as all the other games with vague allusions to this tie up universe.
Give this one a skip.

Honestly, the game isn't great. The story doesn't hook you, and the characters make no sense with some weird introductions. The writing is pretty bad, but somehow it has a certain charm that makes you laugh at how silly it is. It's so stupid, it's good!

The character models are decent, but the animations and sound design could use a lot of improvement. Despite all this, I had a fun time playing because it's just so ridiculous.

I know the game isn't really a 5-star game, and everyone knows it. But the other ratings have been very harsh, and I want to be nice to the developer. You can see the effort and passion that went into making this game, even if it didn't turn out perfectly. If you're in the mood for something that's entertaining in its own bizarre way, give Drama in the Office a try! Its a numbers game, keep throwing shit out there and evetually something will be popular and make you money.

It's not a terrible VN game, it just not worth to buy it completely.
Not bad and not good either, choices are a little odd but not too difficult.
But these devs got so much the bad vibes because these project seems to be just a side works so I will leave it 4 stars instead of 3.

In the overall this VN is not terrible but there are quite a lot of things that could've been made better:

1. The pandemic setting is totally useless, even if this VN was made during COVID, I don't see any reason to make it happen also in this VN;
2. The dev seems to not know how people interact between each other in real life, the main LI seems like a robot;
3. Only one facial expression for everyone? Really?
4. No feelings development whatsoever.

This game is very poor design. Initial run lead me to very quick ending and no explanation what kind of ending it is, trying it again and progressing bit further was lead to another ending with very minimal scenes. With frustration and confusion if this game is a demo or actual full game I realised that players are forced to finish game quickly if they choose one wrong option, which is incredibly bad design. Using walkthroughs managed to see all the scenes.
Overall all the scenes and renders are borrowed from other games (as it's mentioned in the credits), hence was looking for story, but even that is linear and you are forced on certain decisions to progress forward. Terrible gameplay design and not worth spending time.

This game has average graphics and renders. The characters are not that attractive. But the worst thing is the story. It is uninteresting and almost impossible to enjoy. The animations slows the game a bit and the sex scenes are quite strange (you just start fucking and immidiately get the scene that you cum)

Decent art and animations.

I didnt have the same problem with dialogue as some did.

HOWEVER, none of that matters, because a bulk of the content in game is hidden behind a stat check for which the player has (6!) chances to sabotage and 1 chance to get right, and these are not obvious story responses.

I can't rate a game higher than a 1 that requires a walkthrough/browsing the script files to access a majority of the sexual content, it's just simply poor design, no matter how good the art, story, or animations are.

I must admit Drama in the Office didn't make it for me in any way. The story is very bland and poorly written, with characters that lack interest and a development that seems at time pretty rushed and doesn't create any intrigue or tension. Character models are decent but not great, but animations are lacking and sound is very poor. If this was a game still worked on I would hope they would improve, but since it's finished I don't think it will rise in level in any way and seems like quite a waste of time to play.

The female models look ok, and there are animated though short sex scenes.
The story could have been good with the 3 different routes, but it seems the dev had enough half way and simply attached a nonsensical rushed ending out of nowhere. Well, at least he didn't simply abandoned the game.
I've only played the romance/harem path but the romance between MC and the main girl was basically non existent. She barely got more comfortable with the MC but she never showed any feelings towards him.

TLDR - Terrible "writing" made even worse by poor translations. Might be enjoyable to someone that wants to just click through to the fap material.

It feels like the games creator has no clue what they are writing about and doesn't understand normal human interaction - so many examples or weird behaviour and conversation!

I mean, who introduces themselves to the bartender at some random bar!? Sure, sometimes you strike up a conversation and sometimes you might hit it off and exchange first names, but it's damn rare IMO.
Also, why is everyone using their full names when meeting random people all the time!?

So much of the "writing" is more like bullet points needlessly describing pointless events / actions alongside filler images when a short paragraph of actual storytelling with a relevant image would have been far better.

Renders although often very empty seem to be decent quality.

Sorry for the incomplete review, but I've wasted enough of my time on this experience!

This game had a pretty weak premise to start. It's called drama in the office but yet does not take place in any office. You are a cameraman tasked with corrupting a girl into doing porn. You even live with her, and sleep in the same bed. I guess it was SUPPOSED to be a corruption/love story but yet nothing once happens. Despite sleeping in the same bed, you are a beta cuck soy boy that won't so much as make a pass at a woman. No corruption of any kind, no dates. Then the dev puts together an end that is literally just says you corrupted her, the end, and shows nothing. Then they have the balls to say come support my new game!

Short and unfulfilling. Don't be surprised if you manage to miss all the sex scenes, because the decisions in this game are atrociously telegraphed. Considering how brief the game is it's not worth downloading a walkthrough to find the right path. The ending is jarringly abrupt, and there's a "demo" for the dev's next game tacked onto this one. This makes it feel like the dev got bored of making this game and slapped on an ending just to move to the next game.

Almost no content, doesn't feel immersive at all.

Overall very bad writing and from a story telling perspective it is not interesting in the slightest.

Not only are the characters generic, but the characters are shallow.

Unless you're a very patient person, you will not be playing it after two minutes of gameplay

Story is confusing(for me) seem to be everywhere and not there.. so your photographer than one girl stay with you, but story out focus confused and not make sense.. and than some how your owner and is just mess poor story i prefer dev previous game(landlor/tenant) make more sense... this just POOR.. basic choice.. lead to poor story..

Graphic/ model look OK acceptable.. is free game is OK.

When i saw the pictures i was excited to see how the Game is gonna be because good Models were used but this is barely a game. It feels like a 10 Minute Demo with no action and lazy writing.There are no Sex Scenes i could play except a handjob Scene. Other than that you can see Pictures of three different paths in the end of the Game which is laughable.This is really a waist of time for anyone who wants to play a Game with any action.I definitly wouldn´t recommend it.Dont waste your time.

When the story gets going, it just jumps the shark completely and rushes through to the end using a lame tactic to completely change the trajectory of the story to that point.

To bad it was a pretty decent, albeit simple, story up until that point.

One major positive this game has (that is surprisingly actually not that common) is that the main female character is a hot Asian woman whose model is not made in Honey Select (I dislike the low quality renders of Honey Select or even Playhome.) This game essentially features 2 main routes with some small deviations: the first route is a "love" route where the MC directly pursues the women and the "ntr" route where the MC watches other men pursue the women. To be clear, the ntr route is really more of a voyeurism route which might disappoint some people who are looking for a more traditional ntr storyline. Personally, I enjoy voyeurism as well so it's not a problem for me but I do think it's something you should keep in mind. I recommend this game if you find the main female character attractive and are interested in either voyeurism or normal "MC pursues random sexual encounters" storylines.

The game is about a photographer who for some plot reason has to take part in a "beauty contest".
The game is about chosing routes, basically, is pretty linear.
The writing is bad, just bad cause there is nothing there, it's only a small explanation of the story and from there most of the text is explaingin, not much character development or anything.

The writing is so bad that whe the boss explains your role in the context he basically is talking about game mechanics telling you about how you can approach the girl corrupting her or in a romantic way, and even clearly hinting the sharing thing, it is quite Cringe. That's why the writing is bad, cause i think this could be told in a more subtle way and not that hand fisted.
The boss is basically a plot device, the only thing he does is explainin you what you have to do and where you need to go, and I already told how he does it.

Visually is decent, but so far most of the girls are basically the same girl, the same body with a diferent head, and its way too obvious, so no much to chose from.

The concept of the gamemight be a little broken cause the girl that you are supposed to "share" you wil only share her if you don't interact with her much, to the point that the Mc acts as he is not interested in her, and she acts like she hates him. This happens in other "ntr" games where it fails to establish the conection with the partner. If there is not aeven the slightest conection how can be that NTR? she is basically a random girl that happens to be close to you for plot reasons.
If you pick certain options from one route you are locked and can't pick the coming options for the other route. But as I said, one of the routes doesn't have enough to make that route work.
Well, thats why this doesn't work for me.

The game has animations but are looped and keyframed, so its probably one initial frame and one final and its basically 1 object going from point A to point B and coming back in a very smooth way. If you take it too seriously you wil see a guy fucking like a 60 year old, well maybe a 60 year old has more energy ith his thrusts.

So yeah, kind of mediocre, but it will work for youif you are not that picky.