VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Welcome to Free Will [v0.6.0] [MrStrangelove]

My review on Welcome to Free Will

Story:

I think the story is overall great. I like the concept, I think the writing was good, although, there were some flaws to it as well.

I'd like to point out the positives first. Firstly, I really enjoyed the Free Will arc (ep 1-4), it had an interesting narration, there were captivating and strong moments, the bondings between the MC and girls individually as well as with his brother and friends.

And here are the flaws I want to highlight. The story was great overall, but it wasn't perfect or excellent. For instance, in the episode 5, I find the story was at a stalemate. To elaborate,1 month after leaving the Free Will, the MC decided to go out to spend some time outside with one of his chosen LIs. The problem was it was dragged for a bit too long.
With building a house, interviewing people for hire, I find those sections were the boring parts. I think I understand what the devs were trying to do, maybe they wanted to try to have the wholesome moments but the problem is it completely sidetracked the main interesting story.

Lastly, the closing chapter. I think the last episode and the ending was done well. I really liked the part where the MC in a dream while in a coma and his struggle for being unable to walk and finally able to in the end. It was wholesome overall and I enjoyed it. The only problem was I wish was I wish there are different endings as well, because the ending is always the same regardless of whom you choose to be engaged with.

Characters:

The characters here are made done very well I must say. The girls all looked great, and all with different body shapes, personalities and traits as well. The visualson them are pretty nice and sharp. My personal favorite girls are Lily and Kate and least favorite is definitely Flavia for being an addict. I find MC's brother great as well in terms of being a supporting character.

Visuals and Music:

Visuals are not bad overall, I wish the lighting is toned down a bit with the environment but the details on the characters are superb.

As for the music, it was simply excellent. I think the devs really put in a lot of work finding a songs fit for their game. Most of the soundtrack in-game was good and the main menu song was nice and wholesome.

Verdict:

The had potentials to earn full score because the nailed it in some aspects like the characters, music, and visuals. It's just unfortunate the story just didn't stick the landing. But overall, I do think this is a great AVN and I hope the devs will take this as a lesson and develop better games in the future.

4.5/5

Oof... where to start. Its a 6/10 game. Its not a bad game but not necessarily a great game either, just above avarage. It definitely is not a random low effort slop that was farted out, there is some quality to it. Its probably better than 90% of the games.
I really really wanted to like this game more than i actually did, everything looked like my type of game and after finishing it, it definetly is my type of game but it was lacking some things and/or was just not done super well.

The ideas are good, it was something different and fresh-ish. I really enjoyed episode 1 it was a 8/10 game till that point. Game was flowing nicely, i was immersed, everything made sense, nice variety of scenes/scenarios, characters were interesting, story was interesting. The game had a good balance of male and female characters, it did not feel like you are the only male on the planet, world felt alive. LIs looked to have agency, have their own lives, some had bfs and were already in a relationship which for me is super fun to try to win/steal the LI over, its always so cringe to me where all the 10/10 looking LIs have either never been in a relationships and are virgins or have not been in a relationship for 10 years and keeping themselves for the perfect MC. Its boring af and immersion breaking.
But the more the game goes on, the more it started to lack in different areas, there was no real structure at later stages, the scenes just came very suddenly and sometimes at wtf moments out of nowhere. The LI scenes felt like checklists where you have to give LI screentime in the game which did not feel organic at all, more like half-forced and inventing scenes just so theres some LI screentime. The LI relationships that they had with other guys.. well it turns out they were all fake, the guys were either gay and pretending to be in a relationship or just "bad" guys which ofcourse is classic so the player does not feel threatened by other guys in the game, again its boring at least for me. Ofcourse i dont like getting cucked and NTRed and all that other "fun" stuff, i like sensible realistic "NTR" where some of the LIs are in a legit relationship where u have the chance to win her over. Give me some challenge or sense of achievement that im winning over the LI, everything is just too easy and Lis just fall into your lap just because you are the MC.
MC was as avarage as it can get. There were legit some moments like wtf has MC ACTUALLY done to warrant this type of interest from some of the LIs, bro was just a normal guy, nothing special and for some reason they all loved him and wanted him. MC is also allergic to say nice things to LIs. Like brother pls, can you say anything else other than "oh wow you are so hot" or "i love your tits" at every conversation. How about try to say something more affectionate or intimate ESPECIALLY when you are in a relationship with someone. Sure you can say wow you are hot sometimes but its literally the only compliments that MC can give. The only thing MC seems to care about his partner is that "wow your body is so hot" Bro is 0iq.

Sex scenes are just empty emotionless fuck. I cant believe im saying this but the feet stuff was probably more sexy, erotic and had more emotion than the normal sex scenes. The sex scenes just felt like.. well lets get this over with, jobs done, moving on. The feet stuff though.. was really well done.

About pathings. I usually like to play 1-2 solo route saves and also do a manwhore route just to see if there are any consequences, dialogue changes, unique scenes or scenarios, basically find out the rules of the game. As far as i can tell, theres zero rules. Theres no point to actually reject anyone. You just manwhore around with zero consequences or changes in dialogue/world until the choice comes where it locks you to 1 path. After you are locked to single path you have no way to manwhore around which is good but the clusterfuck before that was cringe and fake as fuck. Bro says to everyone that "you are the love of my life" or that "i will never leave you", "i love you" and then moves on to next LI and says the same shit with zero remorse, theres no inner dialogues or conflicts about him banging every LI, theres 0 awknowledgement about that at all, its almost like all your relationships with different LIs are in bubble and isolated where noone knows, noone cares, they all think that you are in a relationship with only them. It just makes the solo path empty and meaningless.

After you make the choice where it locks you to 1 LI path, none of the other Lis who said that they love you or that you love them and are the love of their life, the LIs dont care, they dont show any dissapointment when you dont pick them. Theres actually zero dialogue, scenes or changes in the world, almost like all the past relationships you had with every other LI didnt happen. Its almost like MC WHO? who even is that guy?

There were some wtf story moments. Like for example There were many more other wtf situations im not gonna name them all.

I liked that it was not all roses and that there were some bold moments that dev had the balls to write. It was sometimes uncomfortable to read but it was necessary for the story and im glad that the dev had the balls to do SOMETHING different where not everything was happy and your classic feelsgood where nothing can go wrong (nothing wrong with those, i just prefer that not everything is roses and that there are some kind of negative moments so that in the end the positive moments are more powerful and meaningful). If everything is happy and positive, feelsgood and where nothing is wrong or can go wrong then it can become stale. Also i just want to clarify, the game has happy endings, there are no negative or dark endings, its just there are some bumps on the road so dont worry about that, i myself dont like negative or dark endings either.

EP1 for sure was the best, i pretty much enjoyed everything about that, didnt have any big flaws. After that it got more clusterfucky and less focused as the time went on. After EP4 where it locks you to 1 path it got back to more focused and pulled the games rating back higher.

Ending(s) i enjoyed too, pretty well done, would have wished for more variation depending on whose ending you got because as far as i can tell the endings are identical or almost identical, even has some same dialogue, only thing that is different is the LI you end up with but yeah at least it was well done and not just "fade to black" and live happily ever after, there were actually some nice moments in the ending and had good depth. Just for clarification, i tried 2 solo endings out of 7, maybe those other 5 are different but the 2 i did were 99% identical.

Some other quick notes.
-Music is great and fitting most of the time.
-lots of feet stuff, dev seems to be a fellow feet enjoyer
-loved the diary, nice recaps and cool seemingly hand drawn pictures.
-Would have loved to see more depth how Flavia got over her drug addiction. Im not asking to see the whole process how she gets clean but maybe show a couple of days after she said shes quiting drugs, show her struggles and how MC supported her through it. Right now its yep.. im quiting drugs.. yep.. all fixed, easy clap.

Thank you for finishing the game. Good first effort for your first game and good luck on your next game. Making games is hard.

I think this game deserves a 5-stars, barely, but still deserves it. Basically I liked mostly everything: The renders are great, the animations are more than decent, the music is fantastic (excellent choices), MC and main LIs' models are great as well (normally I don't care about how the MC looks in these games but I get this feeling that he was created with love and care ...or maybe he was just copypasted xD IDK), I also liked the freeroaming events most of the time (except for the ones in episode 6, dude come on...that was the freaking epilogue, those fet a bit tedious) and the minigames.

So what could've been better? First, definitely the Story, It's not that is bad, but, it has TOO many convenient events that I actually laughed a few times about them, also, I'm not sure if this game was planned to be HAREM but romancing everyone made some dialogs and interactions inconsistent. About sex scenes, I found them a bit too vanilla but that's just my taste. Also, too much unnecessary drama towards the end.

Overall I'd say this game is an 8.5/10 (as I said earlier, barely a 5 stars). I could see the effort and care put into this game, so, I think it's worth checking out.

Only just started, but putting this up due to another dev/writer making idiocy the major trait for the MC.

Deputy Thomas: "So, why are you here?"
MC: "We came here to talk to the sheriff."
Dep. Thomas: "Are you stupid? I'm not asking why you're at the station. I'm asking what brings you to this town."

They give moronic answers and statements like this to characters multiple times. When the brothers are in this town ONLY because it was the last place their mother was seen before seemingly disappearing, and they exhausted their last lead of searching the house of the last people she was going to see, and it appears empty and abandoned. The MC decides to question a woman walking on the sidewalk across the street from the house. He drills her with questions and admits to snooping in the windows and paints himself like he's a creeper. Realizing he's doing this, a normal person would LEAD with the statement, "My mother is missing, and these people were our last hope of maybe finding her." to remove the creeper flag and garner a sympathetic ear and assistance. But not this dev/writer. Oh no, leading with, "It's not what it looks like: I'm not a creep or anything." Because what woman who suspects you're a creep wouldn't feel completely reassured by, "I'm not a creep. Honest!"

I *think* this idiocy is supposed to be humorous. I suppose if internet trolling is your idea of clever and savvy humor, then, yes, I suppose this is humor. You probably also find, "Hey, pull my finger!" and "HAH, HAH! I GOT YOUR NOSE!" as highbrow humor as well.

I just identify it as lazy, weak writing. Preliminary review. I got pushed past my tolerance limit for this stupidity and had to start this review. Hopefully I remember to finish this one later.

Literally his first time calling that woman he talked to across the street, he cold calls her with, "Oh... ehm. Hello, it's me." Planned, intentional idiocy. How do you guys see "moron" as a main character trait?? Yeah, when I think of heroic, leading men, I look for someone with a drooling problem, that looks like they were dropped on their head FAR too many times as an infant.

A great game because it is very exquisite with a lot of story although I would have liked them to include options like the NTR or dominations of secondary characters towards women but I can't complain because it is very good.

Editing the script, playing this as a vn, this is a 15 hours masterpiece, drama story, probably loosing focus a bit after episode 4 but playing this was a wonderful experience. The critique about a rush end seems a bit too much since probably episode 5 should be the last.

Anyway, great cg's, when you get somehow familiar with the (lips) exaggerations, great animations, great story, great atmosphere. Top 10 drama story VN in this forum and a must play

Very mixed bag - on the plus side, it's complete and has a lot of content. Renders and LIs are decently executed, although the animation is a bit strange. Lots of reading if you like that.

What I didn't like - a very meandering storyline, especially what feel like filler content in the last 1/3 of the game (construction?!), mini-games that are once and done. Totally quantity over quality, so here's hoping the dev learns what was well received in this game and sticks to polishing that in the next one.

Worth one playthrough, if you're patient.

There is a lot to say about this game and a lot of it is potential lost. The LIs are all one note. The plot kinda burns itself out about 2/3 of the way through. You can tell the passion for the project disappeared a long time ago. The writing is okay. The renders are good for 2021. Most of the animations are meh. Then you look at the MC who is 100 lbs, has the worst haircut, and is forced to choose one girl. None of what is presented show why these women are just throwing themselves at this guy so he feels like a massive dev self insert. All that being said at least the dev finished the game.

RUSHED!!!
We didn’t even get proper time with the side girls. I’m talking about the new girl we were introduced to before the political event, the female cop, and the woman who offered her “attributes” during the accountant interview. Why bother setting up these characters and making us engage with them if there’s no real payoff? It feels pointless. And honestly, I expected even way more new scenes for the main girls smh. Six months of anticipation and for what? A rushed release with no real substance. Hugely disappointing...
But it's still better than the developer abandoning the game and leaving us itching to know how the rest of it could've unfolded.

Rushed, low effort garbage. Characters think and talk like robots, barely anything in story makes sense. I will not bother with examples, it's better to play for yourself to see how fucking dumb everything is.
Only things i liked were foot fetish scenes and some love interests (if they can be called that). Flavia and Rosa were most gorgeous women i ever saw in any AVN.

One of the best game with hot Li, plenty of side character s, lot of side branches and stroyline, though nbot branchiong as of the ch 2 , The game have high potential with the mystery/thrillwer plot underlying the story.
It gives vibe of a tennage rom,ance adventure of its genre, w/o being into forced relationship. The only relation that seems to come out of nowhere is with Li , the deveklopment there is too fast as opposed to other characetrs . Other than that the game is great.
For those who are offput by the MC and li character design in the start of ch 1 condiser is okaty but it gets improved tremendously as the story progress, especially as you get to familiarize with the mc character design .
4.4/5

Pros?
The renders are decent for the most part
There is a bunch of content (maybe thats a con?)
Lovely lis, a lot of scenes with them, although poorly animated

Cons
Story is all over the place. As some already said, it tries to mix supernatural with twin peaks and other stuff, which I thought was cool at first but it fails miserably and by the end you don't know what the hell is going on
The characters are as shallow as they can possibly be, getting no help at all from the terrible dialog.
This might be the only avn that I think may have too much renders, long scenes that dont really go anywhere and dont have any impact whatsover on either the story or the characters, and the dialog is torture.
Choices are nothing and continuty is a distant dream. I know that in these games choices dont REALLY matter but most of them tries to create the ilusion that it does. This game doesn't even try, you can do anything you want with little to no consequences to the story/relationships.
Pointless and tedious minigames. The last part of this is you playing a boring house building minigame that comes out of nowhere and you can't even win cause the devs don't know how math works apparently

If you want something more then decent renders and some pretty girls then you should look somewhere else. At first I thought it was pretty good but even early on you can notice the sloppy writting. After the first couple of episodes everything falls apart and I was convinced the whole plot and dialog was generate by chatgpt or something

Hard to rate this because what started off as a promising game with an intriguing story and relatively nice looking LIs has literally somehow lost the plot, sprinkled in with some random bigotry and misogyny out of nowhere. Absolutely baffling about how a story of finding your mum and unravelling the mystery of the town has ended up being a house construction minigame (????), and all the LIs have coalesced into one thread with jarring sex scenes that end as abruptly as they begin with zero connection to everything else.

For a while, this game was extremely hot and intriguing. There was a Twin Peaks-ish plotline going, where you and your brother travel to a small isolated town to find your mother, who has gone missing after your father died. There are intriguing plots with the mayor and the sheriff, and there are a number of sexy ladies, including the sheriff's daughter, an ex-girlfriend, your current girlfriend, your mom's friend who's running for mayor... Plus there's a car-building mini-game where you're collecting car parts from across multiple episodes.

Fast-forward a few episodes and everything has gone off the rails, or rather on the rails. The car minigame has been absolutely abandoned, there's no use for any of the cash you've collected throughout the game's free-roam sections, your mom and dad are both alive and safe and you have no idea why but apparently it's no big deal to anyone, and all the girls' storylines have melded together into a single homogenous LI. In the last half-episode, they just show up to bang you randomly, in 5 poorly-paced scenes that are mostly about 10-15 static shots each. A couple of the scenes are actually different, but most of them are just the same scene, with a different model substituted in.

The town, the mystery, the random sniper who was looking at you at the end of season 4, all gone now and months behind you. The car you collected parts for to rebuild, literally crashed and abandoned in a forest and forgotten. Your LIs ties to the town, your pasts together almost entirely forgotten.

Instead, apparently your dad (who just shows up again) and your brother and you have started a construction company! You're in charge of hiring! First decision: hire another construction worker. You can choose between a young guy, an old guy, and... nope, no third option, because we just get a weird sequence where a candidate screams they're NON-BINARY at you while you insist that you can only hire a MAN for the job. Don't worry though, the choice doesn't matter anyways, because all it does is change 1 worker in the house-building mini-game, which is impossible to win anyways because the dev didn't math out the numbers properly, which also doesn't matter, because all winning would have done is change a couple lines of dialogue about the house's state when you move into the house. You also have to choose between hiring 3 ladies to be an accountant. Why? Again, no idea! Maybe this construction company we've started and its finances are going to play a huge role in the last episode of the game somehow!

Everything about the last two, three episodes smells of a developer who has no clue how to finish the game. They've both bitten off more than they could chew and also have no ideas for how to keep it going. That the car we so painstakingly rebuilt is just abandoned in a forest somewhere in episode 5 is emblematic of how the end of the game has been lazily and systematically destroying every bit of quality and goodwill from the beginning.

(How did you and your LI leave the forest? Your brother came and picked you up in a hippie van, so you could have a couple sequences of fooling around with your LI and then a pointless sequence where you pretend to talk on the phone to wait for your boner to go down before you get out. Brilliant. I'm starting to wonder if this has become a parody game at this point.)

Girls are very fappable though and first 4 episodes of scenes are hot and not phoned in, so +1 star for that.

[v0.5.0] When your father dies and your mother becomes distant, you leave her and your brother behind to attend college alone. 4 years later, your mother has vanished and your brother needs your help to find her in a idyllic town called "Free Will". A town that has many secrets and even deadlier traditions.

First off, the game has great graphics and stunning women. There are about 6 or 7 main women to romance, all of whom are delightfully curvy and extremely beautiful. They each have their own individual stuggles, but the story doesn't veer too far from focusing on your own. Simply put, the cast of women is fantastic.

The game allows you to date all of them, only missing a scene here or there by trying for a harem. At the end of episode 4, you must choose ONE woman to spend the rest of the game with. Which ONE do you love? I love all of them, what a brutal choice! The girls never acknowledge that you dated them all at once (so far). Having to pick only one sucks for those like myself who don't want to choose and desire a less realistic harem ending. However, choosing one woman does allow for a more personal and intimate conclusion to the story. A double edged sword for sure!

Gameplay is linear with periodic free roam sections. The free roam sections are handled well. Areas to explore are small and you don't get lost in them. They never last too long and there are various scenes and mini-tasks to complete, as well as texting and phone calls. The interface of the game is well implemented and great, including a detailed and unique player diary to look at if you want. There are certainly decisions that impact the game's narrative, like I mentioned earlier, so multiple playthroughs are required to see everything. It also has some tonal issues, where very dramatic and time sensitive things are happening but the MC decides to call an unrelated woman and ask her on a date. Dude, focus up! People are going to die!

Sex scenes are hot! The game has a strong emphasis on foot fetish, and all the women have beautiful, sexy feet to grind on your cock, with or without stockings and thigh-high socks! A good chunk of these foot scenes are optional, but it will be distracting if you really don't like foot fetish (what's not to like, though?). There are no sexual sound effects and while it is animated and there are several positions for each sex scene, I found that the angles and positions chosen often disappoint. This makes sex scenes with stunning women a little frustrating when the darn camera sits back and doesn't show the good stuff!

In summary, the game features an interesting story with (maybe) supernatural elements. It has a cast of absolutely stunning women to date who are all very lovely in their own ways. There are plenty of sex scenes to enjoy, including a focus on foot play. And while I am certainly let down by the lack of a harem or multiple-girl endings, it does manage to remain interesting because that choice comes near the end of the game. Chapter 6 should be the final chapter.

If nothing else, we should all celebrate that a game with such great quality is actually going to be finished. Lord knows that most games on this site never get close to finishing and are often abandoned! I strongly recommend this game!

This is one of those games that I do not understand how it gained its relatively high rating. Full disclaimer, I did not make it through all the content.

The characters are boring, look really weird in places, there's a plot with mystery that barely advances. And what killed my playthrough, apart from the fact that other games are simply more worth playing, the game has pointless freeroam. It tries to be Being a DIK but it fails spectacularly. Whereas BaDIK has some fun moments and shenanigans nothing really happens in the freeroam here. And its just... Go here, do this, go there, do that. It's really boring. It wasn't an issue in the beginning but then you get several freeroam sections in what felt like two minutes and I'm out. Also, there's no conflict or anything of interest going on with the love interests. I assume the dev realized this was an issue and implemented a solution. Apparently, without any notice and for no real reason (which I totally believe after reading some of this story) the game is now monogamous. You choose a LI and that's that.

I feel like I completely wasted my time here.

What a rollercoaster ride trying to rate this game is... Well strap in boys and pretend internet girls here we go!

Let's start with the good and good-ish. Most of the rendering is great - hard to argue with that. The biggest marks against the gorgeous models are inconsistencies (looking at you Elyce) and/or borderline unrealistic features (those DSL's are pushing it for me). The sex-scenes and varied and cater to players choice, including plenty of options for the foot-freaks like myself, but almost entirely avoidable if not your cup of tea. *chefs kiss*. The plot is even mysterious and interesting, definitely not an idea that's been trampled to death.

But that's where we start going down-hill. This game is a premier example of plot blue-balls. Everything clearly revolves around the "secret of the town", but for 3-4+ episodes (hours of content) you learn basically nothing about it. Nothing, to the point of absurdity, in fact. The amount of filler-content to main plot progression here feels like a page out of One Piece's book. After a while, none of the character's actions make sense or feel grounded in logic. It feels as though occasionally the MC will point out the nonsense, everyone will say "Yeah that's weird" and then we move swiftly along to another filler scene that frankly feels like a way to squeeze in another sex-scene. Which, don't get me wrong, I haven't come across a sex-scene I didn't like yet and I've gone through most of them.

And for some people, with the quality of the renders and animations, that might be good enough. And I would be fine categorizing this in that particular mental box of mine, calling it fine, and moving along. But then the game does something that feels completely disjointed from this notion: it makes you pick 1 love-interest.

Now, I'm a Harem guy generally speaking, mostly because I'm a greedy collector who wants to see all the scenes and I get a sad sense of accomplishment from getting those organically (enough of this personal therapy session) BUT I can respect games that have a good reason and execution of this choice, especially considering there are more than enough fuck-em-all games out there. The problem is, Welcome to Free will has neither.

I've spent the entirety of the game fucking every single girl at every opportunity. My MC is such a heartless-sociopathic bastard that there was a 20-minute clip where I told every woman I encountered that I loved them including some poor girl that was driving across the country to be with me and my female cult. Despite being a flagrantly devious womanizer, none of these actions or choices seemed to really matter to the other characters. It's not like me video calling with my college girl friend Kate mattered to Nikki or either stopped me from continuing to romance the childhood sweetheart Candice. Just one day the author decided, "You know what, there should only be one path the MC gets to be on" - like it was the winning result of a Patreon poll or something. No exposition or internal struggle from the MC, no consequences of my actions - I received a pop-up menu that told me this choice was going to lock me into a path.......lol.

That's just lazy and boring. And frankly speaking, demonstrates that not a lot of thought is being put into the continuity of the story or it's longevity. So... why am I putting myself through plot blue-balls for this?

That's the question I ultimately asked myself as I continued plodding along through the head-scratching interactions and one-dimensional character dialogue until I realized there wasn't a good answer.

If these incongruities don't bother you and you're here for the n00ds not the plot, I think you'll generally like this one. But if you're looking for something more, I don't believe this will ultimately deliver. A for effort though, I guess?

3.5/5 stars from me, get an extra half a star for Flavia's ass.

Played through the first part of it.

1. Story - Is ok. Not logical at all, but you can sort of live ewith that. This is a pron game afterall...
2. renders - Ugh... They are all weird looking. Either the face is wrong, or the lips are wrong, or the body is out of proporstion, or the hair is terrible.
3. Sandbox is fine, but more of an irritant then anything.
4. Mini games - You can skip some of them, and that is fantastic! The rest... please stop>

3 stars - there is plenty of effort, and that is appreciated. If the renders were top notch, that would carry it... alas it is not.

This one just didn't click with me - bodies were oversized or misshapen, faces were usually disproportioned in different ways, free roam was unnecessary, music was a bit over the top and present most of the time. The MC's brother was an asshat. Most girls have larger than DD chests.

And the plot - ugh. Brother shows up unannounced after 4 years of specifically ignoring the MC, and expects him to drop everything RIGHT THEN and follow him out of the building, on a hunch. Then gets pissed at the MC if the MC gets a little ass before going.

I just didn't find any of it appealing. There's definitely some effort behind the game, but the net result wasn't entertaining.

the story and the game are great the worse part about this VN is the fact is you have to pick one woman to romance and run off with into the sunset with which is really a bummer because the renders to the ladies are very well done and the story as i said couldn't of been much better than it already is and are