Ok first and foremost, I really like this game. The premise is top notch, a gritty, dirty dystopian world where ancient motives mix with modern ones. Survival is tough in this world and it shows. Rather fittingly the safe haven "communities" are basically sheltered cities ruled by monarchs and crimelords working hand in hand with slavery, drugs and poverty being a normality. So far, so believable and cool. The implementation of modern surveillance and military kinda clashes with the survival theming but concerning the fictional dystopian premise, it works.
The characters are mostly caricatures but still it kinda works. Your main mc can be played in different ways and due to frequent choices you can immerse yourself decently in this world. There are multiple reappearing male characters in this game (though still more female ones) so that helps to in a sense of believability of this world. Thankfully its not just the cliché 1 guy (your mc), 1 bad guy/best friend and a bunch of ladys. You can choose bad guy o good guy options for your mc and the game tracks decently what choices you picked resulting in later, differing scenes and some dialogue changes coming your way. If you wanna be bad u can do it, if you wanna be good u can do it too. At least most times, every game that does sth like that is comendable.
The visuals imop are great and I love the background music and noises. No weird background noise or music was picked. Its all rather fitting an immersive. (there are strange sound effects frequently like laughing but u get used to it pretty quickly.
The story is intersting and there are still some questions remaining concerning what has happenend to characters in the past leading to a vertain intrigue. An overarching plot kinda isnt really there but it is told in multiple sideplots which seem to be intertwining ín the future. All good imop.
There are minigames and QTEs but both can be turned off or on at will. Great implementation of such a system in the game. I turned off the QTEs (I dont like such things in VNs) and it worked flawlessly. First playthrough, I played the minigames, 2nd one I turned them off. Both very good implemented.
The spicy stuff is very well done most of the time. Many hot situations and creative character combinations. You get what you expect from a AVN. Sometimes its too vanilla imop regarding the premise of the story and a certain grittyness is missing. But all in all it delivers on what it promises. LIs are all drop dead gorgeous. Some more intersting, some less. Personal favourite imop definetly the red-haired psycho psychologist. Here scenes are by far the hottest one in this game and your relationship regarding that character seems to be segmenting dom or sub. You can easily chose what you prefer. She is one of the few LIs that deliver on the gritty, dark tone of the premise. All LIs are sadly fully shaven and mostly look too clean and fully styled what is a thing that can really be improved. Let the ladys grow some hair dammit or make it optional for folks who prefer it more fitting the setting.
There is one major problem with the game and this is why I cant give it 5 stars, even though it probably deserves it knowing the rather low standarts of AVNs:
There are forced scenes where your character acts a certain way giving you no freedom how you want to react to a situation or even contradicting earlier choices you did. This imo isnt a problem in the beginning of the game but after the first few events of the story it starts to slowly appear and results in a dwindling quality of the games atmosphere and believability. Choices become less frequent and therefore the interactivity of the game lessens, your character starts to feel less controlled and more of his own will, what is in this case a bad thing. The mc should to an extent be a puppet controled by the player, its a game and no movie. These forced scenes could be easily avoided , sometimes a second dialogue option would be enough to have a more interesting scene, f. ex. there is a scene in a bathhouse of the queen from the community your mc is a part of and there is mostly one single conversation chain even though in earlier scenes you mostly had the opportunity to act with her differently. So the dialogue in the pool becomes dull and uninteresting.
Another example of a forced scene that plays out in exacly 1 way and therefore lacks any interesting involvement is a underground cult scene in which a pregnant woman is fed to a monster which the cultist worship and believe that through such a sacrifice can satisfy. Basically your mc tries to sabotage that feeding but ultimatly fails (rather dramatically) and get captured. So it is clear that the devs want to get him captured and want the victim to leave the story not becoming a LI. You could achieve the same result in multiple ways but thats the only way this scene devellops, no player freedom at all. The result could have f.ex. been achieved via 3 differing paths: one path where you do not sabotage the feeding scene but get captured anyway for snooping around, one path where you sucessfully sabotage the feeding and the victim flees the scene never to be seen again leading to your capture and the path that the story eventually takes. So you would not force the player to try to save the girl or see her being eaten. Would be a better experience to be able to interact with what happens to your mc.
Also there are some scenes where your mc actually has to options to interact with a scene but one is blocked due to your mc being to kind / too dumb / too distant / too dom or sub or whatever to chose option 2 therefore forcing you into chosing only option 1. Yeah thats sucks. Such bs doesnt work andvforces your character into earlier choices without you being actually able to even see why you know fail to get another way of acting in the current situation.
But all in all still great game, definetly deserving of 4 stars.
