Recommending TonyMurray's Favourite Games and Favourite Girls

[TonyMurray]

I want to like this game so badly. The game looks amazing, but the dialogue feels a bit wooden and the story jumps around. It’s not bad, it just needs more emotion and smoother pacing. Still, I’m keeping an eye on it because the potential is definitely there.

Agreed on all aspects. The lack of emotion is my main gripe with it, as the rest I can get past a lot more easily, and I don't need to know all the ins and outs of the music at this point, as some in the gamethread have complained about.

 

[TonyMurray]

u4ia by DriftyGames

Having played Leap of Faith and now what’s currently available of u4ia, I can comfortably say that Drifty’s style doesn’t quite suit my tastes. The visuals are good, and most of the girls pretty hot, but there’s just something in the writing, and certainly in the humour, that doesn’t work for me. I can see why these are both popular games, but not every “hit” game will work for everyone.

I didn’t really like the story here. I was talking with Lagunavii as we both played the game at about the same time, and we came to pretty much the same conclusion. There are some good elements here, and it seems there’s a decent enough overall plot, but the actual narrative that gets you there isn’t as good. We get the destination, but not really the journey.

A couple of design elements also really frustrated me here, and some of it was present in LoF too (perhaps all of it, but I can’t remember). There were far too many free roams, and even when “quick travel” became an option, they were a bit clunky to navigate. I really despised click, click, clicking to move around a floor of a hotel, then whenever I clicked on a door or the elevator, I had an extra set of clicks to say yes, I wanted to open/use it. Some women were also treated to a free roam (which I remember with Holly at least, in LoF), where you had to use navigation arrows to move up and down her body in a slow and unnatural way. I didn’t like it at all.

I also didn’t like the pathing, as it seemed too many choices were locked out, seemingly tied in to choices you made with no frame of reference earlier in the game. For just a single playthrough, this meant a lot of missed content, but not only was it scenes that I saw I was unable to access, but there were also plenty of scenes that I had no idea about, as they were hidden behind stacked choices. How anyone manages to play all the different LI paths here without a walkthrough mod is beyond me, and that is poor form for a game in my book.

Edit: I forgot to mention as well that I thought this game went a bit overboard with the cameos. Usually you just get a quick look at someone and have to go back and check it was them, or your MC actually interacts with the cameo character briefly, with a couple of lines of dialogue. Here though, there were a few scenes that were very much superfluous, and were added in solely to give a cameo character (or multiple characters, since one involved a phonecall and basically every character from LoF being featured) a scene that added nothing to the story. When I felt there were pacing and writing issues with the game itself, adding these extra scenes for cameos just felt like a further step in the wrong direction.

 

[Lagunavii]

u4ia by DriftyGames

Having played Leap of Faith and now what’s currently available of u4ia, I can comfortably say that Drifty’s style doesn’t quite suit my tastes. The visuals are good, and most of the girls pretty hot, but there’s just something in the writing, and certainly in the humour, that doesn’t work for me. I can see why these are both popular games, but not every “hit” game will work for everyone.

I didn’t really like the story here. I was talking with Lagunavii as we both played the game at about the same time, and we came to pretty much the same conclusion. There are some good elements here, and it seems there’s a decent enough overall plot, but the actual narrative that gets you there isn’t as good. We get the destination, but not really the journey.

A couple of design elements also really frustrated me here, and some of it was present in LoF too (perhaps all of it, but I can’t remember). There were far too many free roams, and even when “quick travel” became an option, they were a bit clunky to navigate. I really despised click, click, clicking to move around a floor of a hotel, then whenever I clicked on a door or the elevator, I had an extra set of clicks to say yes, I wanted to open/use it. Some women were also treated to a free roam (which I remember with Holly at least, in LoF), where you had to use navigation arrows to move up and down her body in a slow and unnatural way. I didn’t like it at all.

I also didn’t like the pathing, as it seemed too many choices were locked out, seemingly tied in to choices you made with no frame of reference earlier in the game. For just a single playthrough, this meant a lot of missed content, but not only was it scenes that I saw I was unable to access, but there were also plenty of scenes that I had no idea about, as they were hidden behind stacked choices. How anyone manages to play all the different LI paths here without a walkthrough mod is beyond me, and that is poor form for a game in my book.
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No Nikita in your list? Disapointed , Though Amazingly, I think my girls align pretty closely with yours.

 

[camube]

u4ia by DriftyGames

Having played Leap of Faith and now what’s currently available of u4ia, I can comfortably say that Drifty’s style doesn’t quite suit my tastes. The visuals are good, and most of the girls pretty hot, but there’s just something in the writing, and certainly in the humour, that doesn’t work for me. I can see why these are both popular games, but not every “hit” game will work for everyone.

I didn’t really like the story here. I was talking with Lagunavii as we both played the game at about the same time, and we came to pretty much the same conclusion. There are some good elements here, and it seems there’s a decent enough overall plot, but the actual narrative that gets you there isn’t as good. We get the destination, but not really the journey.

A couple of design elements also really frustrated me here, and some of it was present in LoF too (perhaps all of it, but I can’t remember). There were far too many free roams, and even when “quick travel” became an option, they were a bit clunky to navigate. I really despised click, click, clicking to move around a floor of a hotel, then whenever I clicked on a door or the elevator, I had an extra set of clicks to say yes, I wanted to open/use it. Some women were also treated to a free roam (which I remember with Holly at least, in LoF), where you had to use navigation arrows to move up and down her body in a slow and unnatural way. I didn’t like it at all.

I also didn’t like the pathing, as it seemed too many choices were locked out, seemingly tied in to choices you made with no frame of reference earlier in the game. For just a single playthrough, this meant a lot of missed content, but not only was it scenes that I saw I was unable to access, but there were also plenty of scenes that I had no idea about, as they were hidden behind stacked choices. How anyone manages to play all the different LI paths here without a walkthrough mod is beyond me, and that is poor form for a game in my book.
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despite the fact that drifty has already reduce and streamline the freeroam on Update 2. i still find the game to be really clunky. I don't think branching paths + renpy + freeroam is a good recipe tbh.

Im not opposed to freeroam at all, it's just that i don't think that renpy is a good engine for it. I dropped u4ia and BaDIK from my "play it right away" list because of it. rpgmfor example, is probably a better engine for it.

i'll play u4ia again once it's completed

 

[Dessolos]

to be honest I never tried his 2nd game as I didn't really like Leap of Faith. I only liked the Cece stuff but take that out and the game is snooze fest that puts me to sleep. Plus the front page of his game didn't grab me then ontop of negative things I heard about it made me stay away.

 

[Dessolos]

despite the fact that drifty has already reduce and streamline the freeroam on Update 2. i still find the game to be really clunky. I don't think branching paths + renpy + freeroam is a good recipe tbh.

Im not opposed to freeroam at all, it's just that i don't think that renpy is a good engine for it. I dropped u4ia and BaDIK from my "play it right away" list because of it. rpgmfor example, is probably a better engine for it.

i'll play u4ia again once it's completed

Yeah people say BADIK is really repayable I find the opposite to be true if you play more than 1 or 2 paths because of the freeroam. But that could be just me because I like to see all the content at once and not replay 1 or 2 paths and do more after some time has passed.

I still haven't played the last update because I need to redo all my saves , I don't mind replaying once in awhile if I had all my saves in order. But my saves were unorganized to the point I felt the need to delete them and restart as I didn't know what save was what anymore. It was before I started to be more organized with my saves.

 

[camube]

Yeah people say BADIK is really repayable I find the opposite to be true if you play more than 1 or 2 paths because of the freeroam. But that could be just me because I like to see all the content at once and not replay 1 or 2 paths and do more after some time has passed.

I still haven't played the last update because I need to redo all my saves , I don't mind replaying once in awhile if I had all my saves in order. But my saves were unorganized to the point I felt the need to delete them and restart as I didn't know what save was what anymore. It was before I started to be more organized with my saves.

same problem. my saves are also unorganized, but i went the opposite route for the solution.

Instead of replaying and organized the saves, i just play twice nowadays. One blind playthrough where i choose what i want, and one other playthrough where i choose the answers that seems like it would be the answers the characters / the game / the devs wants.

yeah i can't stand the combination of BaDIK's freeroam of episode 9 and 10 and how slow the game's main story progresses. It's like all those freeroams have very little reward in terms of story progression. playing once is fine. but playing 4 times is too much. even 3 times is too much cuz BaDIK has mini games on top of freeroams.

some games keeps the main story moving at a steady pace and on those games, i'm totally okay wityh freeroams.

 

[TonyMurray]

despite the fact that drifty has already reduce and streamline the freeroam on Update 2. i still find the game to be really clunky. I don't think branching paths + renpy + freeroam is a good recipe tbh.

Im not opposed to freeroam at all, it's just that i don't think that renpy is a good engine for it. I dropped u4ia and BaDIK from my "play it right away" list because of it. rpgmfor example, is probably a better engine for it.

i'll play u4ia again once it's completed

I don't have a problem with free roams in terms of Ren'Py (which is also the only platform I play on) - for me, it's the individual dev who makes or breaks it. I've seen plenty that work fine, it's just when they're too frequent (like here) or too clunky (like here), or completely unnecessary and out of place (also a bit like here) that they become annoying for me. Otherwise, it's when the dev has tried to copy BaDIK, and without me saying BaDIK has great free roams, they take all the bad parts, and not so many of the parts that make them work, and make them fit in to the story, so you end up having a free roam just for the sake of having a free roam, because the dev is trying to emulate a big, successful game. I have exactly the same complaint with minigames.

to be honest I never tried his 2nd game as I didn't really like Leap of Faith. I only liked the Cece stuff but take that out and the game is snooze fest that puts me to sleep. Plus the front page of his game didn't grab me then ontop of negative things I heard about it made me stay away.

I agree there, although less for the Cece part as she wasn't my favourite (I did like her, just not nearly as much as you did). IMO, u4ia has the same issue though, and it comes into what I said about journey before destination - he needs to work on getting the journey right, because he has a pretty good destination set up - a decent enough idea, but not a good enough story to tell it. I also think the cover image on the gamethread's OP is poor as it doesn't really show much to entice me, and the girls it shows, in particular the main girl, is really not a main girl in the game itself. She's just the first one you see, and comes up again later on, but it would be better to use a couple of the main girls from the actual story...

 

[Lagunavii]

A great example of the dev knowing the destination but not really the journey happens in LoF and then to some extent, u4ia.. The forcing of the LI, which by chapter 3 of LoF is not earned at all, just rushed.

A similar thing happens here, in a piece that is seemed to emulate that party week of LoF, not only are you expected to just pick a bed of a girl, you are also expected to pick a never have I ever that specifically is only for one girl. There's absolutely no build up to it, no reward, its just I need the MC here or there so let's force it.

 

[Zorro#34]

u4ia by DriftyGames

Having played Leap of Faith and now what’s currently available of u4ia, I can comfortably say that Drifty’s style doesn’t quite suit my tastes. The visuals are good, and most of the girls pretty hot, but there’s just something in the writing, and certainly in the humour, that doesn’t work for me. I can see why these are both popular games, but not every “hit” game will work for everyone.

I didn’t really like the story here. I was talking with Lagunavii as we both played the game at about the same time, and we came to pretty much the same conclusion. There are some good elements here, and it seems there’s a decent enough overall plot, but the actual narrative that gets you there isn’t as good. We get the destination, but not really the journey.

A couple of design elements also really frustrated me here, and some of it was present in LoF too (perhaps all of it, but I can’t remember). There were far too many free roams, and even when “quick travel” became an option, they were a bit clunky to navigate. I really despised click, click, clicking to move around a floor of a hotel, then whenever I clicked on a door or the elevator, I had an extra set of clicks to say yes, I wanted to open/use it. Some women were also treated to a free roam (which I remember with Holly at least, in LoF), where you had to use navigation arrows to move up and down her body in a slow and unnatural way. I didn’t like it at all.

I also didn’t like the pathing, as it seemed too many choices were locked out, seemingly tied in to choices you made with no frame of reference earlier in the game. For just a single playthrough, this meant a lot of missed content, but not only was it scenes that I saw I was unable to access, but there were also plenty of scenes that I had no idea about, as they were hidden behind stacked choices. How anyone manages to play all the different LI paths here without a walkthrough mod is beyond me, and that is poor form for a game in my book.

Edit: I forgot to mention as well that I thought this game went a bit overboard with the cameos. Usually you just get a quick look at someone and have to go back and check it was them, or your MC actually interacts with the cameo character briefly, with a couple of lines of dialogue. Here though, there were a few scenes that were very much superfluous, and were added in solely to give a cameo character (or multiple characters, since one involved a phonecall and basically every character from LoF being featured) a scene that added nothing to the story. When I felt there were pacing and writing issues with the game itself, adding these extra scenes for cameos just felt like a further step in the wrong direction.
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Same Top-2 girls as me, nice! Why did you do our loyal Jackie so dirty tho? She's one of the best "as friends" LIs I know…
It's curious how everything you dislike about this game, I like. Freeroams? Check. Hotel freeroam in particular? Check. Humour? Check. Pathing? Check. Cameos? Check, I'm actually a fan of the "Lexiverse". There are just two things I actually dislike about this game, and the first one is never complained about (Ch. 1 doing a poor job introducing the player to the world and the characters, you need Ch. 2 to get a hang of things), while the second is pretty new (Season 1 finale is rushed). Otherwise, to me it's a really balanced game that does everything on a high level.

 

[Lagunavii]

There are just two things I actually dislike about this game, and the first one is never complained about (Ch. 1 doing a poor job introducing the player to the world and the characters, you need Ch. 2 to get a hang of things), while the second is pretty new (Season 1 finale is rushed). Otherwise, to me it's a really balanced game that does everything on a high level.

Chapter 1 is definitely botched, esp in terms of mentioning/explaining the choices... Tony mentioned in the review that we talked about it and we still can't really decide if the OJ v Whiskey choice is important in regards to the girls and we still don't really understand what prior choices enable us to choose which girl to go home with at the club. It's very poor in that regards

 

[TonyMurray]

Same Top-2 girls as me, nice! Why did you do our loyal Jackie so dirty tho? She's one of the best "as friends" LIs I know…
It's curious how everything you dislike about this game, I like. Freeroams? Check. Hotel freeroam in particular? Check. Humour? Check. Pathing? Check. Cameos? Check, I'm actually a fan of the "Lexiverse". There are just two things I actually dislike about this game, and the first one is never complained about (Ch. 1 doing a poor job introducing the player to the world and the characters, you need Ch. 2 to get a hang of things), while the second is pretty new (Season 1 finale is rushed). Otherwise, to me it's a really balanced game that does everything on a high level.

My tier ratings are (as much as I can make them) purely based on looks, and I don't like Jackie's looks. Most of the time, and especially when naked, she looks far too butch for my tastes (to the point where I genuinely wondered if I'd missed a bit of backstory telling me she used to be a he...).

 

[Zorro#34]

My tier ratings are (as much as I can make them) purely based on looks, and I don't like Jackie's looks. Most of the time, and especially when naked, she looks far too butch for my tastes (to the point where I genuinely wondered if I'd missed a bit of backstory telling me she used to be a he...).

My tastes are more boring than yours, and any idea of making a personal 'pure looks' ranking for a game stops immediately with me understanding that busty blondes are gonna win each time anyway. Sure enough, my Top-10 ever 'pure looks' rating is 50% busty blondes. It has Celeste in it, by the way.

 

[Eleanorduval]

My tastes are more boring than yours, and any idea of making a personal 'pure looks' ranking for a game stops immediately with me understanding that busty blondes are gonna win each time anyway. Sure enough, my Top-10 ever 'pure looks' rating is 50% busty blondes. It has Celeste in it, by the way.

Busty woman turn off Tony if I m right

 

[Zorro#34]

Busty woman turn off Tony if I m right

Depends on how busty, I guess, because Roxanne is tied with Celeste for my favourite tits of the game, and their Tony Tiers are 1 and 3. Meanwhile, the melons on Ana and Jane are too large even for a tit man like me, and sure enough, they are lower for Tony too, at Tier 4.

 

[TonyMurray]

Busty woman turn off Tony if I m right

I'm not generally a fan of women who are "too busty", you're right. There's a lot more that goes into it though, so some who I think are "too busty" can still do well (and then I just find myself thinking how much better they could do!)

 

[Eleanorduval]

Depends on how busty, I guess, because Roxanne is tied with Celeste for my favourite tits of the game, and their Tony Tiers are 1 and 3. Meanwhile, the melons on Ana and Jane are too large even for a tit man like me, and sure enough, they are lower for Tony too, at Tier 4.

Personally for me it go from flat chest to medium.

 

[TonyMurray]

I see a few regulars play Where the Heart Is. It's on my list, and came up in another post I saw, which means I took the opportunity to download it and add it to my "waiting to play" folder. Question though: it's one of those with two sets of downloads and no explanation, what's the situation here?

I went with the Ep1-24 download because it's about 3 times bigger, so I take that to assume the S1 download doesn't include all the same content, but the changelog possibly suggests S1 is a remake, is that the case?

Also, why can't the devs/uploaders make it clear in the OP when there are two sets of links...?

 

[Lagunavii]

I see a few regulars play Where the Heart Is. It's on my list, and came up in another post I saw, which means I took the opportunity to download it and add it to my "waiting to play" folder. Question though: it's one of those with two sets of downloads and no explanation, what's the situation here?
View attachment 5259514
I went with the Ep1-24 download because it's about 3 times bigger, so I take that to assume the S1 download doesn't include all the same content, but the changelog possibly suggests S1 is a remake, is that the case?

Also, why can't the devs/uploaders make it clear in the OP when there are two sets of links...?

I seem to remember when I last played that it was in the middle of a remake TACOS style and they'd only got up to episode 6

 

[MiltonPowers]

I see a few regulars play Where the Heart Is. It's on my list, and came up in another post I saw, which means I took the opportunity to download it and add it to my "waiting to play" folder. Question though: it's one of those with two sets of downloads and no explanation, what's the situation here?
View attachment 5259514
I went with the Ep1-24 download because it's about 3 times bigger, so I take that to assume the S1 download doesn't include all the same content, but the changelog possibly suggests S1 is a remake, is that the case?

Also, why can't the devs/uploaders make it clear in the OP when there are two sets of links...?

Season 1 (Steam) contains a remake of Episodes 1-10. The remake does have extra stuff in it and better continuity.

Episode 1-24 is almost the full game, with Episode 25/Epilogues coming (supposedly November). They will then go back and remake the rest.

I'm not sure if the remake 1-10 will be included in the final package coming out with Episode 25, or whether it will be the original 1-10.