VN - Ren'Py - The Sinful City Fight for Love [v0.4] [Peacemaker]

This game is very clearly in development. There are many, many, many, MANY different paths, not all of them on the same level of completion. While it would be great to have a "go back to last choice" button instead of getting back to the menu each time you get to the end of a path, saves do the job and it's not too difficult to explore everything there is. Some other choices seem pointless at times, but you can clearly see how they could impact the story in future updates.

The fact that there are so many different paths, is to me an amazing thing. Each story feels completely different from the other and you can clearly understand what the girls are thinking depending on what you did. They all have unique and beautiful personalities.

I'm not one to judge on graphics too much, as long as the body is pleasing to my eyes. The only negative thing would be the white haired daughter having too big and fake looking tits. Everything else looks great. The poses and framing, which is what I mostly struggle with in many other games, is just hot in this one. Not forced, not artistic close ups only, not "show many different povs but none of them decent", just naturally hot.

I can understand some people don't like the wip part, and you get the feeling this will take a long time to be finished, and will get increasingly more of a chore to play through everything. But once it is finished, this has the potential to be a masterpiece. So I really don't get the other criticism that is not about the unfinished game. I'm not saying that to dismiss others' opinions, but to tell you, who are wondering if they should play this game, that some of us do think it is indeed worth it! So try it at least, and you'll see pretty easily if this is your cup of tea or not.

I have seen the developer complaining about the constant criticism, I honestly believe that if you want to progress in this (or anything else in life) you have to be willing to put up with criticism and take note for improvements, it is no coincidence that all the criticism is focused on the same thing.

The game has good renders and a good mc that is not the typical fool, I like it, it's a good idea but it's just poorly implemented.
You can see that the developer wants to put effort in the story and it is appreciable but when you have so little participation in the game it turns directly into a kinetic novel disguised as a game of choices, and besides, there are choices that I don't even know why they are there if they are not yet fully implemented in the game.

In short, the idea of the game is good but it is poorly implemented, it's a pity.

Not feeling this game. Not going to write a huge review, just a few things that really annoyed me.

The reason for the 1 star is mainly because it bored me to death due to not having any interactivity apart from "bang - don't bang". I ended up holding skip and skipping through like 90% of it and to my surprise, it's actually quite short considering the massive file size. That's probably due to several Rick and Morty episodes that come with this game lol. Yea this one wasn't for me.

1. Too much contrived humor that isn't funny.
2. No dialog options, feels like a kinetic novel.
3. Over use of annoying sound effects, music in wrong places.
4. Dialog txt is pretty transparent making it hard to see at times.
5. All the characters have the same personalities, they all talk the same.

Where are these good reviews coming from?

The implementation is really awful. You play as a wannabe macho mc that seemingly has never been around anyone who isn't fake.

The renders are ok but the models are awful. At many places the mc has actual cancerous boobs. With a tshirt on it looks like blocks were added to the front of the model. The same too for the females who have misshapen rigid fake boobs.

The girls are also ridiculous, you're forced to setup a bunch of relations that have absolutely no relevance anywhere then in many scenes they are shrunken to 2ft tall so that the mc can feel "alpha", but instead making them look like children which is gross

You also spend almost all the time with anyone but the pictured girls including some nasty sisters and police that act irrationally and nothing like humans would actually behave

if youre 13 you might enjoy this. If youre not, you shouldnt fall for the fake reviews like I did.

I skipped through it and it also ends abruptly. With the general poor quality of this, I can't tell if it's a bug or not

Yeah, pretty much on the same page as the previous review. The writing in the last update really fell off, to the point of sloppiness even. And the section that was added wasn't even finished! There were choices that didn't exist, (esp. the actual modeling outfit MC's daughter was going to try -- what an unfortunate surprise! You're shown 2 choices, are then told sorry, you have only one choice -- and then even that one choice isn't shown, as we are dropped into black screen w/ dialogue, aaaand scene. Weird.
And I have to say, even before this new addition, a large part of what came before was a Halloween story that was virtually unseeable. Really, almost EVERY scene was too dark to see. Might as well have been just clicking through dialogue.
Too bad. I hope the dev gets things up to speed. The early story and writing was quite promising, along with mostly hot females -- but it seems as if the developer has not decided where they want to go with it. Good luck to us all, I hope it's not abandoned...

I had appreciated the games until 0.2 but since then I have fallen from a height, even if the characters are endearing, the renderings are beautiful without being exceptional, I was won over by the story, but since 0.2 at the level of the writing I have the impression that it's a completely different person, I no longer feel connected to the story, add to that that the last update released half of the choices are not yet unlocked they will be in a future update.

I'm going to give it 3 stars because I hope to see the potential from the beginning again.

i will change my note if the game become well again.

Just started playing, so keep in mind, this is based on the first hour or so of the game. The game overall seems pretty decent so far. The general arc of the story works and is compelling enough. Where it falls down is the details of the writing. The dialogue, people's reactions, etc.

It often feels forced and unnatural. People spill their life stories and admit embarrassing things to the MC the second they meet him, they speak in long, run on sentences, they move the conversation much too quickly - it all feels almost expository. It reads like a first draft, and it needs at least a couple of editing passes to get it to a good place.

My advice to the dev, if they read this, is to think about how people actually speak and react in real life, and right like that. Don't write the dialogue as a tool for exposition, write it like the characters are real people. Give them space to breathe, let them have their secrets, and let us in on them with subtle hints instead of just having the character outright tell us.

For example, the scene in the hospital (minor spoilers ahead.) I would rewrite this scene from the ground up, personally. Give the cops a real reason to think the MC is dangerous. As it stands, it makes no sense at all that they would be aggressive towards him. All he did was walk into a hospital. Real cops would never react the way they did unless the MC appeared like an active threat.

And then, instead of having Rebecca randomly spill her guts to the MC, tease it out, make her blush when she's taking his info, have her stare at him a little too long. It feels very forced and unnatural for this hospital receptionist to just start fawning over this random patient just because he's hot. People don't act like that in real life. They're subtle, they're nervous, they drop hints, they use body language and eye contact to convey interest well before they say anything out loud.

That's my two cents. The game has a lot of potential, the writing just needs some polish and some room to breathe. I also think the AI voices aren't worth the effort.

PROS:

• Great visual arts
• Excellent story
• Outstanding development

CONS:

• The game text has been updated, but it's still somewhat difficult to read.
• The music can be distracting at times, requiring adjustment of the volume settings.

Recommendation:

Damn, what a game!
PROS:
-Fantastic renders,
-amazing story,
-lovely cast,
-chad MC
CONS:
-Average animations,
-bugs,
-maybe to much flashbacks (but I understand need for them)

It's not a 5 star game, it's closer to 4 but I have to balance the score somehow. This game may inspire me to continue working on my own.

A decent foundation, but could use a fair bit of polish.
Pros:
- An interesting premise
- Characters have potential
- MC isn't the same copy and paste MC
- Incest is wincest

Cons:
- Story coherence: flashbacks, shifting perspectives are all quite jarring. It says "Male Protagonist", but the majority of the time is spent in scenes that don't even feature the MC.
- Storytelling - The apartment scene was so incredibly dialogue heavy for characters that have literally only just been introduced and don't feature the MC. Why are we supposed to care about the drama if we haven't been eased into knowing these characters first. Storyboards are your friend. Consider adding Narrator and images in place of character dumped exposition dialogue. And they say a picture is worth 1000 words for a reason. This is literally one of the best vehicles for proving that to be true.
- Lighting: The characters are very poorly lit and it makes them look like they were crafted on a PS2.
- AI voices? The flattest and most unnecessary voices that can't be turned down by the damn voice volume control.
- Text: I believe you're aware and someone kindly patched it for you.
- Joe Rogan
- No but seriously, he says something nice and she's all "OMG, thank you for that heartfelt, insightful, amazeballs compliment." Get off his dick, man lol.

I'll be happy to revisit this game in the future and adjust my review. Best of luck.

NB - The previous review (for version 1, aka 0.175) had 3 stars. Now this review is about the next version (2 aka 0.25).
I still think that the game is a bit vulgar (I prefer romantic) but it's also funny, with a lot of creativity, spiciness and very good visuals. So I decided to upgrade my rating to 4 stars.

----The old review ----

Pro:

• The story in general is interesting and promising.
• The renders are of high quality.
• Many interesting details.
• Some scenes are funny, some are done with great care and creativity.

Contra:

• UI (hopefully would be better in the next version).
• Music (though I've to admit it's too noisy for me in most games).
• The high quality of renders sometimes feel wasted with those average models. Many girls there are supposed to be beautiful, but often they just aren't, or their faces are not quite there. (As if, you know, some cheap models from like 5 years ago. Not literally, but the impression is they could use a bit more of artistic touch. And some have so heavy makeup, like Abby, that I can't even figure is she beautiful or not; doesn't look good to me, really).
• Grammar; and; syntax; are bad enough to distract from dialogs and break the immersion.
• Writing, pacing, scenes are not that good. (E.g. why would I look at some naked ugly pervert, and not just briefly, but through dozens and dozens of dialog lines? And something that a girl did to a younger girl was so vulgar, it's revolting. And in the middle of a potentially developing sexual encounter the scene moves to another place where a girl vomits into a toilet. What is that, satire or AVN?) All that revolting and vulgar shit just makes me think about dropping this game and try to forget about it. I'd say, the emotional dynamic is bad, and it makes the experience kinda boring.

TL;DR: It's a really interesting game, in some scenes outstanding. I'd like to see more. But with all the flaws I can't really give it more than 3 stars, as my overall impression is really mixed.
[0.175]
----
[0.25]

Normally i don't write reviews when the game is still in the starting stage. But the excellent writing, interesting characters, cool MC and quirky interludes (esp. love the over-the-top story about a school bully) should not be overshadowed by a technical aspect (bad text readability in certain situations) that was already fixed with a mod:

MrBenny said:

mod link here

Click to expand...

(or page 10 in the discussion). It has all the ingredients (good writing, good story, good sex scenes and sexual tension) to become great, and the dev already said the readability fix will be included in the next update.

I will update this for a more comprehensive review when it has a few more chapters, but the game is on the top of my watchlist to immediately DL and play when the next update drops - that's worth a temporary 5 stars to me...

1-star because the game is unplayable and I don't mean that in a hyperbolic way. The text and text box when you get into the Octagon for the UFC fight is unreadable, you have to do your best to try and make out words when this is something they clearly should have fixed before they sent the game out. It's a very simple thing but you actually can't tell what is going on in the story because of it. If I could read what was said maybe I'd rate it higher, models look good and it did have a promising premise, but if the author can't figure out that you physically can't read the story in a visual novel game, you're going to have a bad time.

Edit - There is a nice fix created by a fan that adds a text box and several different options for it, so now that I have played the game it is a solid game with a good story, with good models and lots of effort from the author.

The text is too light / the background of the text is too transparent and there is no way to adjust it. Because of this, text on a light background is practically unreadable.

Some scenes are very dark and you can't see anything. I had to turn the brightness up to maximum. This needs to be fixed!

Constantly jumping to memories is a little annoying, especially when new memories start in the middle of ongoing memories. Try to alternate memories with the story happening now. The player who follows the plot will thank you for this.

Breaking a story thread right after the next story choice with the inscription “the code here has not yet been completed” is a real disrespect for the player’s time. Try not to let this happen.
When giving players choices in the story, reward them with some content before stopping the story (until the next update). This will show your good attitude towards the players.

I think the game could have a good future. The main thing is that the developer understands what is important and enjoyable not only for him but also for the players playing his game.

I used shift A to change text size and enable contrast. Thanks to that tip I was able to play through so I amended my review.

Text issues aside, that I'm still not crazy about, this is one of the better looking VNs. The models look pretty good though some of the girls are a bit bustier than I prefer but that is a personal preference. Isi has to be one of the most adorable characters around.

I'm guessing we'll see more interaction between the MC and the girls moving forward. I look forward to that.

The writing is solid enough and I liked some of the humor. The dodgeball ball story and the naked fat guy were pretty good. I look forward to seeing how things progress.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nice looking VN but I had to give up on it. The text is just too hard to read. At times it's nearly impossible. It didn't take long to cause serious eye strain. It's too bad, I'd like to give it more of a go but as it is now it was more frustrating to try and read than it's worth.

Fix the font and I'd be happy to give it another go. I also agree with another review about some scenes being too dark.

As of v0.175

Tha game looks very promising. I relly like the MC. I really don't like little boys and some stupid MC's. This guy rocks and I like it.

The font MUST change tho. Its very light and you cant see anything sometimes, and some renders are so dark that you cant even see what costumes they're wearing. That renders should be looked at.

Renders and models are very good, but I really didn't like Abbi, she looks like very plastic. Other than that the story seems it will be enhanced with every update.

I hope this game becomes a harem game and pregnancy is possible. That'd be very very good.

Very promising first release. It was quite long for a .1 and there was enough to get to know all of the characters pretty well. All of the daughters are adorable and I might even venture to say that Isi is the cutest VN girl out there, at least to my taste. The graphics are pretty good, the MC is a bad ass older man who knows what he wants. I really enjoyed everything about the game so far.

-Edit-
Adding more for v 0.2
So, starting with the second release, choices really matter. There are entirely different scenarios depending on the choices you make, including whole different scenes and characters. This is definitely one of my top games in recent times, and I highly recommend!

good character models and the lighting isnt bad. i can tell a lot of work went into this and i appreciate that. the writing is good as well. not 5 star awesome but still good enough that i want to play more of your work. good job and good luck