VN - Ren'Py - The Way Love Goes [Ch.35] [Naughty Skunk Games]

Game as of Ch 12

Visuals

• I feel like this is another very, very misleading posting in F95. When you stumble across the thread holding the deets, you see a banner atop that promises smooth lines, impossibly sexy hourglass figures, and rich, vibrant renders. Until you stare longer. Open each full image, you'll see insane compression. Either that, or they're super fucking low-res. I'm not sure why that is, because this game could be a flagship for hotties if the devotion were there.
• Obviously, you downloaded the game because all 3 women - yes, ALL 3 - are appealing from the banner, and perhaps even the preview images. But part of you is thinking, "Is it me, or are they kinda half-assed?" It's not just you. They're half-assed. Promising character models that would otherwise be oh-so-boner(or moistening?)-inspiring. Play ANY other hi-fi rendered VN, and come back to this one, you will immediately take notice and have a womp womp moment.
• With the above stated, it also goes without saying that the environment renders are also completely lacking in detail and refinement. The lighting is horrid, pretty much across the board i.e. characters are noticeably darker in appearance in an otherwise well-lit room.
• The character thumbs are also not kept to ratio; they're squished hot-dog style, so it looks like they fell into a garbage compactor a la A New Hope and didn't quite stop it in time.
• If you can get past all that (I unfortunately cannot), Megan, Lily, and Nina are hot as fuck.
• Bella looks like she is mid-exorcism in the eyeball region.
• The animations are just one speed setting shy of being such; a series of images meant to simulate motion kinda like the old flipbooks you could manually create a moving image with or recreate with a Post-It pad and a ton of spare time. In other words: don't get your hopes up here, either, kid.

Story

• Not gonna lie, I played this from start to Ch 8 sometime back in May '22, then shelved it and either didn't see or didn't download Ch 9-11. Picked back up as of Ch12 in Sep '22. I don't remember anything about what happened before CH 9. That should tell you all you really need to know about the value added for the story.
• The "choice" system is shit. I'm not sure why this was glossed over, but it's basically a matter of "do you wanna have content with this character or do you wanna make the choice that clearly means you won't?" No real "consequence that I can detect, except for perhaps being locked out of scenes, but see above as to why no one will care.

Dialog

• This is actually where the game shines. No idea what other games Naughty Skunk has made, and I don't care. This one is rough in every conceivable aspect EXCEPT the dialog. I am constantly pining for well-written, English-predominant dialog. This one (mostly) delivers. It's not poetry, it won't leave you feeling like your heartstrings have been tugged on. It probably won't even be memorable overall. What it will leave you with is the satisfaction of not having to stop, tilt your head, re-read constantly, and go, "Dafuq?" I appreciate that characters openly swear, albeit with some reservation on some occasions. I'm sick to death of devs writing ADULT VISUAL NOVELS that lack adult language except by "playing it safe" by resorting primarily to inner monologue for that. It's annoying. Either the player is an adult, or they are doing some adult shit they don't want their parents to know about by playing these. Either way, I appreciate a realistic, sensible amount of profanity, blasphemy, and crudeness. I'm almost positive this is the only VN out there with the line, "Holy shit biscuits!" Than you for that, dev.
• I don't know if it's the OG dialog or the "taboo" patch, but it's kind of annoying that we know Megan is MC's aunt yet he pretty much only refers to her by her first name. If I pulled that crap with any of my aunts as a kid they'd have either taken offense or put a stop to it.

Overall, I just can't recommend this one. If it were redone, visually, from the start...yes. Visual is half the components in "visual novel", so I have higher than average standards given how saturated F95 is. Yes, I'd probably do a shit job if forced to make one. Actually, no, I wouldn't; I'd be so consumed by perfectionism that I'd end up like Pinkcake spending hours toiling over little details and convincing myself I need multiple systems rendering 24/7 just to meet my own standards.

I think this game is very under rated. The story line is ok but the characters are very beautiful. I recommend the download and giving it a try. I really enjoyed it. For the dev, I think developing the characters a little more would help. Also, more scenes with the “younger girl” would be awesome. She definitely made the game!

So much conflict in me for this review. Edit: no more. I dropped from 3 to 2 stars finally.

For good point, I love the girls. Yes I'm a sucker for those model types. So very much it appeals to me, i'm not even sure i'm not just forgetting a lot of bad points.

I like the "story" so far (ch11). (There is none really it's just a pretext to see the girls)

Now... there are a lot of bad points which would have been worth a less than 3 stars review if not for the good looking main girls.

1) "your" in spelling mistake. It's so frustrating that a non english speaker as myself know it's a bad mistake so everytime I see it in a game, i'm pissed.
2) why does this game use a "mini talking head" next to the text? it's useless when you have the name, besides it's ugly because ingame models have evolved but the "mini head" did not, so there is a reminder of how bad MC looked at first for example (i'm not sure that MC looked bad, but the change of model during play is rarely due to story purposes...)
3) except for the Main girls, too many girls want (and have) quickly sex with the MC... that's killing the pacing. Happily the main girls do not fall into this category. Teasing and all, but not sex, so at least it's not a killing bad point.
4) almost no choices. And some choices do not really matter to the story but just to a scene.
5) so much use of "hihi", "hehehe", "*munch munch*" sounds and onomatopeias.
6) it's also a game with little attention to details as the "feet enter ground" issue is quite common or some clothing do not make any sense for those who wear it... Or another example: beach scene, with girls on the sand. Any feet print? no of course. And in the next scene, volleyball match. Do we see some prints in the sand? of course, no. The girls and MC just magically moved there.

The model proportions are all ridiculously overblown (I know that's not all that uncommon). There's also no choice who you 'seduce' though. Those two things combined lead to some really vile scenes. If you try and avoid some of the grossest (falishia, the old mum) then the dev hard codes a game over

The scenes are well crafted and the renders are at a decent quality. If the dev didn't force you into their fetishes, then it would have a lot of potential

You can hate me for giving 5 *,but game is not that bad how the stars show. True ,is not story wise quality but is not fast fap crap either. Babes are great, ieasy going story and we still didn't bang any of them. Kinda cheaper version of Grandma's House where also everybody is falling for MC whatever he does. We had so many similar VNs like this one,but TWLG is still going strong and often updated, when others (similar quality) are dead or 3-4 months wait for update and is usually disappointing.

Sadly this VN is not to my taste.

Story - Weak, VERY weak clichè without any surprise you can't see comeing and nothing you didn't see in 132546536 other novells like this.

Picture Quality - Average, sometimes horrible with heavie grain - try a denoiser for that - my advice.

Also the "hehe" at the end of nearly every 2 sentences spoken are tireing and annoying after some time - but thats only my opinion of course.

To sum it up - if you are in for the fap and a very light story - go for it, you may enjoy it, its not bad per say, but not good either.

If you are looking for a good story with plottwists and deep character design - look somewhere else.

Game: The Way Love Goes
English:............6/10
User Interface:.....3/10
User Experience:....6/10
Art:................6/10
Dialogue:...........2/10
Story:..............3/10
Opinion:............3/10................
Avg:.............4.14/10 [2.07/5]

I HIGHLY doubt anyone is going to see my review, no one ever goes beyond page one aside from me. And this broken website still shows me games that I've ignored, so I guess "Here are my impressions of this terrible game, two and a half years later." As always, I will include my old review down below. If you care enough to read it and my assuredly long-winded new review of a game that is so tropey, mid, and brain dead I don't know why I'm putting myself through it. What I do remember about this is MC is lazy, only one of the girls have a reason to like him, and the dialogue is terrible. I think this is the game that made me realize all of these games have the same plot. "MC returns home after X years, suddenly the family is attracted to each other. Oh and the mafia is now after him because there needs to be a plot." And even right away, you see the piss poor renders and empty dialogue. Like when it zooms out to see MC's old neighborhood, you can see parts where the plane all the houses are sat just cuts off into the void of the low res background image of clouds. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. And just how grainy all the images are so far, is so distracting. I know most of it is subsurface scattering, cause a lot of the image looks fine, then theres pretty much white noise over all the models' skin. And I know, because this is a mid-ass game, there will eventually be a "remake" of early chapters that are just re-rendering similar images. But this is one of the few games that has a rating it deserves. UNFORTUNATELY, it's getting that rating, not because it's written and executed like shit, but because these weird snowflake "alpha males" can't handle forced LIs in a sex game, or girls who do the same thing a lot of the scummy MCs do in other games. You can dish it out but can't take it FROM A BUNDLE OF IMAGINARY PIXELS. It's pretty funny to see, you know, if it wasn't so sad. So let's get through this, shall we?

Fair warning, this is one of my longest reviews to date. So I put it in a spoiler. I know it's just me screaming into a void, and not many people will see this. But I figured I'd review this again for the hell of it. It's spoiler heavy and I really just don't like anything about this game. Do with that what you will. I will warn you with this: This game is so banal and awful, going back through to spell check I wanted to check out.


I don't know where to begin with this. The Translation is not the worst, but the English is not good. Words missing, misspellings, and just weird phrases no one that speaks English has ever said. The UI/UX is dead stock, but the side images aren't good and all the images are loaded when needed so the game just freezes for a full on second some times because, instead of making a video or loading the images in at the beginning, the suddenly tell renpy "GET THESE IMAGES NOW." The art is grainy, poorly lit and the poses are boring and asset flipped. I have seen much worse but these aren't good. The animations are coppy and comical at best. The Dialogue and story are some of the worst and most boilerplate garbage I've seen. MC has to shout dum stuff like "HOLY SHITTING MONKEYNUTS" at the drop of a hat and to END OF CONTENT you don't even know what MC's parents did, just that they're bad people. Maybe I skipped on line too many and missed it, but when MC found out the reader just got empty ellipses instead of what was on the computer. So, to put it in the games terms: "BY GOLLY MS MOLLY'S GIANT SWEATER PUPPIES THIS GAME IS BAD."

Not a fan of image quality nor artwork, story is okay but nothing too exciting. Also has a couple of typos here and there that really need to be cleaned up. Would need a whole rework of the images for this to get worth playing.

really nice concept with hot mcs just the story line is kinda all over the place like the cousin admits to being in love with him 3 times and each time he acts like he didnt know and he goes from a perv and peeking on her in the shower and grabbing all their asses to scared and contemplating if he should kiss them like bro how you gonna go from big perv to pussy to nuts of steel back to a pussy like she admitted she wanted you to touch her and asks you why you would you want to touch her friend when you have her and you say youd rather have her and then when she asks for a kiss youre like idkkkk like yeah id eat you out but idk about a kiss and then you say you would owe her big and when you guys get back she asks for another kiss like bro you couldve asked him for anything.... but yeah all in all good game just gonna wait till ch 20 atleast for some action with the 3

The good:
There are a few cute faces.

The bad:
Grammar.
Poorly written dialogues.
The story is a poorly executed collection of porn cliches.

I don't skip text usually, but in this game I mostly skipped. The experience was not really interesting.

[Ch.8]

The choices are meaningless. The player has no control at all over what the MC is like, no control over how the MC feels about any of the characters, and little control over which scenes happen. This is a comic pretending it's a game.

The plot moves slow, which is a good thing because it's a little silly and not in a good way.

There's good effort on the content and renders even if they're not amazing, which kinda redeems the game.

The story is good, the LIs are beautiful and they have differnt characters and body types. The MC is agreable and someone that isn't just an overthinker regretting everything he does. The graphics are also good, so all in aall I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

Some of the early reviewers gave it an unfairly love ranking. I always wait!

Edit: After Ch 8 I still can't understand the low grades. The story is nice and easy, the LIs are great and the MC a funny and thoughtful guy that don't back down from the lewd scenes. So far a slow burner, but I don't mind that.

Overall average game so far in my opinion. Nothing really stands out too much.

Animations and models are decent at best. Storytelling lacks any real depth and much flavor really at all. Some wholesome scenes but I'm sure we were all hoping for some more layers to this story. Maybe the dev doesn't have the means to improve the quality of the visual components, but if they get there eventually or get a lot of support behind this game it could help it and improve it a lot obviously.

Is this game just average as of right now? in my opinion yes but could it get a lot better? of course it can as most games can.

For this game i'm giving 3/5. There are several reasons for this score. Firstly i want to say that character models are nice, not best but they can pass. Story itself isn't that bad.

Now what i totally disliked in this game so far is the fact that all females are hot for MC. All of them want his pants off from the start. There's no relationship building, nothing like that. You just get some choices to pick up and that's it. Speaking of choices certain things are forced on you. Like there's no option at all. So lets say you want to play solo path for single female. Well tuff luck on you cause game forces you to do something you ass a player don't want to.

Does this game have potential?, yes it does. Do i recommend it to try it out? Yes and no.

Thats nothing... The Setting and Story goes around here in every second game.

The Renders are... yeah there are Renders. The Models were recycled many time around F95. Overall the game looks "ok-ish" but really not good... there is so much more possible with a little more effort.

The writing is not good, the storytelling just bad.

And the Game has major issues... not the first a game give you choices and just ignore them after a second you picked some. "want to peek?" "no" "NPCs respond as if you have peeked" yeah what ever. No choice did matter, there are no variables. Doenst matter what you choose, the game goes the way the DEV wants. Just dont give us choices if you dont want the player to choose something diefferent than you intend@ DEV.

You can find hundreds of games like this, and much more better ones.

Normally i wouldnt write a review at this early state of a game, but im doing it anyways cause this game just dont have any potential at all. Its comnplete generic, and in my opinion the goal for the DEV is to get easy support at patreon with minmal effort to the game.

I just finished the first chapter and here are my thoughts about it.

Let's start with this I think the game needs an incest patch to make Megan the aunt and Lily and Nina cousins of the MC.

Now with the obvious out of the way let's get to the story or better backstory, the parents throwing a 12-year-old out is a stupid idea, a better idea would be that they send him off to boarding school.

Cut back the thoughts of the MC and especially the perviness it's annoying and childish. Also, in the first scene with Nina why the bullshit with her kneeing the MC in the balls.

The MC is not the worst I have ever seen but get rid of this sad excuse of a beard or give him a good locking one.

I think these are the most important things for now.

Chapter 1 brings a series of cliches, every scene so far we can see it other dozens of games. Story is more than dumb, models are generic and we saw them as well in many other games, and many renders have terrible lightning. So far this is worse than average.

Good start, I like it when stories build up slowly and you can tell when characters are interested in each other.
The graphics are also great.
An Incest patch could also be quite interesting.
Keep it up