VN - Ren'Py - Twisted Memories [v0.9b] [BaiBai]

Armstrong said:

Never really understood grammar weirdos. They see a few misspelled words and react like someone killed their family.
With high-quality content that baibai is producing, there may be some misspellings, but it is not the end of the world.
You can just wait for the full game if it's that important to you.

Click to expand...

I am a grammar weirdo. There is a difference between typos (which this game contains) and whatever the fuck is going on with most of the English-as-a-second-language-refusing-to-hire-a-translator situations you see on this site.

This game is top notch in any language. It's actually a great example of what's wrong with games like Milfy Day for me. I'm willing to tolerate a decent amount of spelling and grammar shenanigans in the name of a good story that's communicated comprehensibly and thoughtfully.

In fact, this game features superior communication in English than the vast majority of games written by native English speakers. Compare this game to a popular game like Tales from the Unending Void. TFTUV is a very popular game on this site and for good reason. It's clearly well-conceived and well-executed. But it kinda bores me, to be honest.

By comparison to Twisted Memories, TFTUV takes itself just a little too seriously to be consistently funny, and it isn't thought-provoking enough to be worth the number of hours it takes to play. Just my opinion, obviously, but TFTUV takes few risks and doesn't ask all that much from its audience. And btw, TFTUV is one of the best games on the site. So this is very high praise, in my mind.

None of this is meant to denigrate other games. They all have their audiences. But I've been struggling to distill down what the heck it is that I like so much about a game like TM, and the easiest way to explain it is by comparisons.

BaiBai's game is better. It's funny when it wants to be, thoughtful when it wants to be, and isn't afraid of making the audience uncomfortable. I have no idea what BaiBai's writing process is, but the MC feels shockingly human and compelling within the absurd Hentai-World we've all agreed to inhabit by playing an H-game.

It's one of the best games on the site.

I've been registered here for 5 years now and I think this is the first time I've left a review (mainly because I can't write properly in English and that's a barrier to expressing my feelings properly). This game is simply good, despite the clichés: the father is dead and so you live with your mother, the shy little sister and the slightly strict big sister (your relatives are simply really hot), the photo shoot, the massages, the yoga session etc... But with great writing and high-quality renderings, we really appreciate it. I've never been a fan of girls with these measurements but once again the quality of the writing made me forget that. All the loves interests are different, they each have their own distinct personality. The animated scenes are very hot and very well described. A well-deserved 5/5

Twisted Memories.

There is a lot of good here.

The story, the characters, the writing (at least... most of the time, the writing is overall good.)

However, the MC just has way too frequent and large inner monologuing, to a sickening degree.

There are way too many walls of texts of the MC's thoughts, mostly consisting of the repeated phrases : "And yet" "But then again" "Oh yes" amongst others.

Reading these time and time again starts to feel like a massive, repetitive chore. I really think the MC's inner monologues could be cut right back, it's a massive detriment to my enjoyment of this VN, personally.

While the general writing is good, there is also so many grammatical errors.

The story is good though, as are the characters. There's actually quite an impressive amount of depth here. The sex scenes are hot, when they happen. I like the corruption or seduction choices, most of the time the corruption choices are best in my opinion, but context matters, sometimes the seduction choices feel more appropriate.

In the latest update I haven't enjoyed the MC's sudden talk about pregnancy and how much he's in to it and wants to get Stephanie pregnant, absolutely no input from the player here, and it's just...kinda weird.

I also don't like the forced harem aspect, if you enjoy focusing on only one/some girls and having a choice to not pursue a girl, this ain't the game for you.

For example, I didn't want to pursue the MC's little sister because frankly... she's too way too young and that ain't my kink, but she's forced on you whether you like it or not. Also, I like some of the side girls more than the main girls (Mrs Clements, Mya for example), but they only get "corruption" choices, it's unclear if their paths are going to go anywhere beyond being glorified side hoes.

Overall I would recommend this, there's a lot of good material and plenty to enjoy here, but go in knowing there's a lot of repetitive walls of text that can get quite jarring to read, especially when it doesn't particularly make sense due to the grammatical errors.

This is a VN I play in small doses for sure... but having said that, I can't really stop coming back to it, so there's that to consider.

4/5, with some improvements in the areas I mentioned, easily has potential to be 5 stars.

this game is one of the very best out there
spoilers below:

first off the game looks awsome one of the best if not the very best honeyselect 2 based game ive played the expressions of the charcters and the animations are beatiful to put it lightly.

the charcters are far off from being one dimintional and even though some of them are a similar type they all are uniqe and have thier own story and motivions and the anime-esuqe way of the exprresions (aka blushes or the heart shape in the eyes) is someting i thought didnt exist in honey select engine

the mc is usally where most games fail but the mc of this game is great, he is simply put belivable as he wants what he wants and often relaize he has his own flaws but he is conssistent mostly

the story is the best part for me, and yes it has been done before many times, however it is still one of my favorite tropes as it is always fun to watch the smart underdog, also in the past some things dont add up (like the presance of stephani for exmple) which makes it more intersting

When you give this one a go, you have to set time aside, even when you're just on the latest episode. But it's all worth it. The costumes and proportions are ludicrous. The premise is standard but hot. The dialogue - or more often inner monologue - is not only endless but necessary to read if you want to enjoy the story, and in any case the h/scenes are infrequent enough that it's not worth ctrl skipping if that's what you're about. But it's funny, properly funny. The mix of blushing innocence and degenerate sluttiness, often in the same girl. The mix of self-awareness and goofiness in the MC. The story moves *just* about quickly enough to keep the corruption arc going. Give it a go but, like I say, don't expect instant rewards.

0.7v update

10/10, i definitely recommend!! amazing story, characters, renders, emotions, scenes. lots of comedy as well. keep up the phenomenal work baibai!

we must protect stephi at all costs ❤ lol.

There are some typos, but believable story (certaninly not realistic, but in the setting), and and is honestly a strangely good feeling laughing out loud, when you in mid-fap.
Different enough caracters, bit oversized boobs, but for a self-aware wannabe harem hentai, I can accept that.

The idea of this game is something I have seen before on this site, but the execution is great. The characters are written very well and I think they do a great job of both the redemption path and the corruption path. Still, to be honest, the author did such a good job writing the familial characters that I kind of didn't want to do anything sexual with them. If there was a path to lean into redemption with Stephanie/Catherine/Viki and focus on them this would be one of my favorites. I understand the point of the game is to be a degenerate so I am not knocking the score at all, but I would like the ability to decline certain women, I understand that the point of this game isn't that, just food for thought because I thought you wrote the family in such a great way, I don't want to blow it.

I can't say enough good things. Excellent plot basis, excellent content, pretty awesome models (even though I hate unrealistic sizes). I was fully engaged until the end of the content for this release. Keep up the good work!

There are a lot of flaws with this game, particularly in the text, which is rife with typos, incorrect words, and sentences that are sometimes impossible to parse, all married to prose that is trying to be literary/poetic and often veers into the realm of the purple... but I don't care: I absolutely love it anyway.

The LIs are all gorgeous, varied, and interesting, the corruption/seduction paths are distinct, and for all that the protagonist was an ugly, failed old man with very little in the way of redeeming qualities, he is written in his second go at life as someone who is learning things about themself and recognizing the missteps he made in that first first life. Especially on the seduction path, it becomes about more than just finally getting his rocks off with all the gorgeous women in his life... there's a real desire to improve in his own approach and to improve the lives of those he loves, and that helps elevate this story beyond the standard 'attractive renders, lots of sex, nothing else of value' paradigm.

And there IS a ton of sex, often with a truly absurd amount of fluids flying around. Once again, we have a young (visually, if not age-wise) boy with a massively oversized penis, but despite the obvious (and common) power fantasy, there's enough other stuff going on that at worst, I'll find myself laughing at the silliness of it all without ever actually checking out of the story itself.

Can't wait for the next update. But I do wish the developer would send someone/anyone the text files so they could fix the English. While the purple prose and over the top descriptions can work surprisingly well, stylistically, for the setting/scenes/story, the missed words, typos, and other issues are glaringly evident in almost every dialogue screen.

Fantastic writing. For all the MC is sold as an ugly bastard, his character is more complex and introspective than you would expect from the summary. If I've any complaint, it's that with such fantastic asses on all these girls (despite the dev being a tit man), I'd love some more ass focus. But it's still early, I have faith that the dev understands that proper corruption demands some hot, degrading buttfucking too. And painal. Especially for some of them, whew.

I loved the premise of this game, the story and even the characters.
It has great potential and I like how you can choose corruption or seduction choices. I do love me a corruption path.

The characters do feel fleshed out and their personalities are distinct. Stephi as the jealous/horny gf is great and I love Viki, the Tsundere type who is pretty hot with a fiery personality but in fact has actually been mistreated by the MC while he is oblivious to it. Cathrine I found boring and also not that pretty to be honest.

The graphics are quite well rendered overall, despite my dislike for HS games, they are better than most of that type. A good deal of detail is shown in them and their facial expressions are captured well.

That's the positives.

What kills it for me is the ridiculous pneumatic boobs, thighs and asses on literally all the girls. They just look silly and in my honest opinion, anything but sexy. Like the mom for instance, they have pretty faces but the over the top boobs just detracts from the sexiness of the model.
I guess it's to cater for the guys who like that shit.
Emma has the most normal and nicest figure and she's the loli - actually, out of all these blow up anime doll love interests, she is easily the hottest.

The story can really drag a bit with the MC's inner monologue and I ended up skipping bits due to so much text to wade through. Way too much info at times kills the pacing of the story.

With decent proportioned girls and less walls of text, I'd give this a 5.

As it is, it's a 3 from me. Average but could be great.

How is this not a 5/5? This is an adult, subbed isekai anime where the MC's superpower is enchanting all the women in his former life. Art is good. Character models are cute. Compared to the rest of this site's RenPy games, five stars is well deserved.

Good story and interesting characters. The dialogues between the characters are really well-written and feel natural. There are very few moments where you ask yourself why he/she acts the way they do; the characters stay true to themselves, which certainly helps to immerse oneself in the story.

Would highly recommend it to people who are tired of nonsensical fuck fests.

This is probably one of the best erotic games that I have played in many time, the only wrong is the time reminded into updates, if it's possible that have one update every month will be perfect.

Congrats!

P.S.: Sorry for my english is no my first languaje

This visual novel with minor branching falls somewhere between average (3 stars) and good (4 stars) for me, due to a mix of excellent (5 stars) and poor (2 stars) features.

• The main excellent item I care about is the art/animations. Dev is starting with a base of heavily modded HS2 by the look of things, and puts a lot of thought into the renders, character expressions, environments, lighting, and more. When we get animations (H scenes), they usually have many progressive steps and very smooth, high quality animations. Characters are usually quite bodacious, but a few more modest ladies exist. They're all very attractive and nice to look at, as is the world they live in.
• The main poor item I care about is the writing. You'll find a lot or praise for it in the reviews and I agree to an extent, but I guess many folks have a lot more patience than I do with H games. If you read every single line in this game, you're going to invest probably 4+ hours before you start seeing any content worth playing for (AKA interesting sex scenes with interesting characters). It does at least put out (barely, see below), and while you are waiting you are at least reading some decent, relatively well thought out story and dialog, but it is quite excessive imo. I have skipped SO MANY lines of dialog in this game, so many insignificant details and repetitive discussions. I understand it's hard to find the right balance, too little and your characters feel flat, too much and it feels like a slog - this is on the slog side imo and could really do with a healthy trimming.

There are a few other things I could praise and critique but above is really the meat and potatoes of it. I recommend playing if you have half a day you don't mind losing. Also, at 0.7a, here is my recollection of sex content available:
As you can see, lots of red AKA not a ton going on yet, which adds insult to the slog writing injury imo. Hopefully this isn't due to the love/lust route breakdowns (if so, dev has masterfully crafted a title which he can milk for years and years and years) - I mostly played lust route with a couple love routes. After more versions (minimally a tripling of the reported """109 animations""", with more penatrative sex with more characters) I'd probably call this a 4 star, but cannot see it ever getting a 5 star from me. How this title consistently receives 5 star reviews with very little to show for it is beyond me.

TM is a VN with a clear and concise concept, giving a simple story but at the same time entertaining, slow and fast at the same time, in general everything is good since those plot holes are not seen or presented and it breaks the mold a little, In animation and eroticism he is very good, he knows how to deceive and leave you wanting, the performance could be improved a little more, but as I said in general you have something very good here BaiBai I hope you can continue it without pause but without rushing and it does not end up abandoned like others projects that are present here in F95Z.
then good luck and may you meet the goals in mind.

Great renders, solidly executed character archetypes (caring milf, naive younger sis, tsundere older sis, etc.).
A likeable protagonist who, while 100% a pervert, doesn't come off as too much of sociopath or psycho.

I have soft spot for blondes, so the mom and older sis take 1st place for me. Mrs. Clemens and the redhead are a close 2nd place.
All the other characters are good enough too.

A solid, entertaining game that doesn't attempt to reinvent the wheel, because it doesn't need to.
Well done Bai Bai, hope you can keep up the good work!

While the premise starts off very interestingly with an extremely bleak outlook that is very different from most such games, thus easily grabbing one's attention early on, Twisted Memories sadly fails to maintain the same quality throughout the rest of the story.

After the initial surprise the plot quickly becomes a repetition of "What's wrong with you, why did you change so much?" from pretty much every named character instead of building on the significance of the decisions throughout the story, so it comes off as misleading, because it hints at a plot very different from what is actually offered. This is really exemplified by (re)turning the MC to a pubescent boy with a fairly short body while overcompensating other proportions, as well as generally having character design which may or may not be appealing at all depending on one's preferences.

While it's certainly far from finished as of writing this rating, I probably won't be following the rest of its development.

Good game, nice rendering, nice story, nice sex scene, I'm impatiently waiting to see the sequel, this game has potential, I just hope that it continues like this is that the story and the relationships between the characters will not become anything, too many games are lost over time