Let me start off my saying that overall I enjoyed the game. The 2D art was generally nice, although it was a little jarring that certain scenes or characters were drawn in a style that was inconsistent with others. The CG of Nyx at the very end, for instance, struck me as very out of place among the much more detailed and good-looking CGs in the final part of the game.
And really, Nyx's CG feeling as though less effort was put into it makes sense given that she only shows up at the very end, and somehow it is symptomatic to me of the state of the ending overall. Now, the story and characters of the game were passable by adult game standards most of the way, with some characters and story-lines being better than others, but the ending felt very rushed. It felt like they were trying to do an ending along the same vein as
Monster Girl Quest - a VN I actually enjoyed, including the overtly cheesy ending (and which I only just now realized has a sequel that I'll have to take a look at) - but without going all-in on it and just sort of get it done and over with. The ending was very disappointing compared to the rest of the game, but "luckily" the consequence of it being so rushed also means that it's over quickly.
I was surprised that nearly everything in the game was accomplished through different varieties of puzzles rather than battles, as is the general trend with RPGMaker games, but it was a nice surprise. The puzzles were generally easy enough that I didn't get stuck on them for more than a minute or so (aside from a boulder-pushing puzzle near the start of the game, which took me a while to figure out simply because I insisted on starting with the wrong move), yet interesting and challenging enough that it gave that little bit of a "heh, I'm so smart"-feeling to solve. Once again it was only at the end, during the final quest, that I started getting genuinely annoyed with the "enemies chasing you"-puzzles, purely because it started throwing way too many fast-moving enemies into the areas. Combine that with the fact that enemies can spot and start to pursue the PC through obstacles, that one of the final areas involved repeatedly traversing portals and that there is no delay between going through portals and enemies spotting and attacking you, and it can get frustrating very quickly.
The adult scenes were pretty good overall, mostly vanilla which suits me just fine, with at least one scene per NPC involving vaginal penetration. The game featured a variety of angles, positions and character dispositions, the animations and sounds ranged from passable to good... yeah, not much to say regarding that.
That being said, there are a few things that annoyed me about Town of Passion:
Adult content-wise, I find it both strange (and very disappointing due to my own preferences) that despite the game taking place in (an area? A world? In hindsight I'm not entirely sure how widespread it's supposed to be) a place where the PC is literally the
only male, not a single female NPC gives any indication of being a virgin aside from appearing inexperienced, neither verbally or visually. In fact, even Haru, the youngest and supposedly most inexperienced and innocent character seems sexually proficient. Similarly, even though almost every character has at least the option of receiving a vaginal creampie, there is not a single mention of the mere possibility of pregnancy by any character throughout the entire game.
The game could also do a better job at communicating useful information to the player. A good example of this is that when I started the game I quickly determined that there were certain characters I was more interested in pursuing than others, either for sexual preference (Haru and Aunt Rose, for instance) or for story purposes (Haru and Akane, for instance). I only checked the "relationships" menu after a few in-game days, only to feel my heart sink at the realization that characters were divided into categories of "Passion" and "Lust", and that completing character arcs increased the related stat in the PC. I immediately assumed that these stats were used to determine the ending of the game, and that one was probably "better" than the other, which led to me pointedly ignoring all the characters in the "Lust"-category. Only much later, after finishing all the "Passion"-characters, did I realize that
both categories were beneficial and that the stats and endings were not mutually exclusive. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that was the case, but it could have been communicated better to the player.
Which brings me to my last, and possibly greatest, annoyance: the NPC named by the player, default name: Mary. At first I thought it was an odd, but potentially neat idea to have a girl that you could decide the relation to the PC yourself to suit your tastes. I thought "Maid" and "Client" was an extremely strange default relationship, and - to suit my tastes - set their relationship to "Sister" and "Brother".
Only much later (since this relationship is set at the very start of the game) did I realize
why Mary was like that; to get around Patreon's rules, because from everything else in the game (most blatantly by the fact that
Aunt Rose repeatedly refers to Mary as "
Sis") it is fairly obvious that Mary is supposed to be the PC's mother. I was incredibly frustrated for a while at this, and only somewhat alleviated that frustration when I googled my way to finding the Cheat Stone to allow me to change the relationship with Mary to what it was
supposed to be. And lo and behold! The second the relationship was "Mother" and "Son", dialogues actually changed to reflect that in ways beyond just inserting the word, like Mary starting to refer to herself as "Mommy" and such.
I can see why they had to do that to get around Patreon's bullshit policies, but I really wish they had given at least a hint to the player at the time of setting the relationship with Mary that there was a "correct" answer, and what that answer was supposed to be.
