Ren'Py - University King [Release 9] [The Sexy Chinaman]

Good:

Subjective, but I personally really like the way the girls all look, I guess I just have a thing for lithe girls with "da beeg teetees" and perfect skin and faces. From a technical standpoint, all of the renders of both characters and settings are great.
Dialogue is good, grammar is logical, and it sounds like actual people conversing compared to some of the other games I've gotten from this website.
Plot seems to be alright, not original, but it's fine. I appreciate the inclusion of an affection route, even if doesn't lead to any sexy sex sex yet.

Bad:

Grindy, a lot of things are point based, like the relationship level, measured in "Love" or "Submissiveness" points, so you will be repeating the same actions over and over, like tutoring Stacy. But I can overlook this aspect thanks to the renders.
Lacking in affection content currently, I've looked through the image file and I see that I've missed a majority of the sexual content available that would've involved a more deviant playthrough, like the mom's camwork or the sneaking up on various girls when they're unaware. Most of the content included currently seem to lean towards a deviant playthrough (?) not 100% sure.

Overall:

Solid foundation, great potential. 4/5 only because there's not that much affection content yet.

It's a much cruder and half-baked version of a lot of other generic going to university and seducing girls games. You'll recognize all the classic tropes: from the mom who has a bunch of debt from the missing father, to the gyaru girl with the underpreforming jock BF you have to tutor, etc. Generic can be fine and even welcome if it's done well, but I don't really feel it is here.

For Story/Content: At release 9, it still feels like a alpha that I would say should've been left in the oven longer before release. There's a few early-in partial routes you can start with a few sprinkles of content, but for the most part a lot of it is warnings about "this isn't done yet, so do the other route", and it seems once you're on a route, you're ON that route with incredibly linear paths where choices don't matter. For example with the mom's debts, you can either offer to help pay or convince her to do 'modeling photos'. If you pick help, you get told this isn't in the game so pick the other option, so you pick the modeling then get a choice to either tell her how much she earned or lie to her, if you're honest then nada end of content and quest disappears, if you lie you're 0-60 forcing her to do a bikini shoot and openly jerking off on her ass. It's pretty crude nonsense that just forces you into the pimping route. Same with the gyaru where if you choose to actually tutor her, you're pretty much forced on the dominate her path even though it still gives you a buncha useless options not to which just do nothing until you pick the dominate one. Maybe I actually wanted to help her and break through the shell and do a romance path, not just start slapping her around.

I assume (hopefully) these will be fleshed out so the useless options actually do something for alternative flavors of routes in the future, but imo rushing forced routes like this with unfinished useless choices everywhere is a really poor way to develop a game. Nobody is gonna want to commit to a save where you have to make forced choices to obtain any content. Better to simultaneously develop paths, even if it's slower.

For Sandbox Elements: They aren't the most annoying I've ever seen, and it doesn't do room exploration thank god, but the time system is pretty meh. There's not enough activities to actually fill most days, so you definitely find yourself just skipping a lot just to reach the arbitrary day/time something happens.

As for Art: Renders are servicable, but nothing exceptional. Models are attractive girls but all have extreme proportions that look like unnatural Second Life sex dolls with organless pencil thin waists. Also does weird shit like erections coming out of the top of pants because I assume the dev doesn't have a proper tent morph for clothing. The one lewd scene I reached was pretty primitive with a very mid 1 second keyframed anim loop, and pretty short with about 5 lines of dialogue before it ended. If your visual posing skills are weak, you need to carry the scenes with good dialogue to make the situation hot, neither is really being done here.

Overall, mostly just a minefield of unfinished routes with characters that look like extreme Skyrim bodyslides. I'd probally recommend holding off on it to see if the dev can better flesh it out or not. It does have potential, it's just not nearly there yet.

This one deserves some attention; yes it is very early days, and there are some issues, but the the fundamentals are actually great.

The corruption paths seem to be extremely hot, and the models are smoking as well. The corruption reminds me of Restore Her Career, but it is less drawn out.

This could be a banger if the dev keeps on it.

Edit; the sandbox is not annoying btw, Im usually not a fan either

The models are really nice, good basis for a storyline, but there are a few errors here and there that the developer is slowly zeroing in on. I think this will be a really fun game once it's finished. I'll check in on this again after a few more update so that all the stories are fleshed out and we're past the development phase.

My only critic would be to make the skill leveling a little less grindy. Ruins the pacing

University King has great artwork and a lot of potential. I know that the developer is very dedicated to constantly trying to improve his craft, and very much wants to bring the best product forward that he can. The game is in it's fledgling stage right now, but in time University King will continue to grow in story and content, and this will become a top notch game. Other than that there isn't anything to add that hasn't been said in the other reviews. But I have faith that a guy with a name like The Sexy Chinaman has to be someone who stands for quality!

As of R3, it's mostly just grinding. Couldn't complete some of the tasks. The women are attractive enough that after a few more releases this could be worth revisiting.

As someone that enjoys boobs of the larger size, this does appear to be where I parked my car.

As a first release, it's nice. Models are very appealing . Dialog is naturalistic. For now, it looks like it tries to be realistic, most of the time it succeeds. There are not any real sex scenes yet, but I hope the wording during those surpasses previous works. There's a skill system that I'm loving. Already in the beginning there's a small glance at what this system could mean for the whole game. The stats do change what choices you can make and what scenes you'll be able to see. In terms of UI, it has been improving with each update. The dialog text has a nice new font. The choices are ok, there's something that looks out of place with those buttons. The cellphone part is the one that needs the most work. Looking forward to where this goes.

At present this release 1 version is awful. extremely buggy, error screens here, error there. nothing to do sofar, unless im missing something.

renders look pretty good, not a fan of sandbox games, too grindy. weather this will turn into one of those, i have no idea.

also, whats with all the SHOUTING TEXT CONSTANTLY. makes its far harder to read, and just plain lazy on the devs part.

1/5 from me sofar. will track and update if any major changes.