Ren'Py - Onhold - When Everything's Red [v0.4] [Fallen Angel Productions and Empty Ears Game Studios]

Alright, let's dive right into my review. First things first, this game is incredibly boring. The majority of the girls look plain and downright creepy. The weird color filter used in the game makes all the graphics look low quality and just plain bad. I did try the 4k version, and while it's slightly better, overall the game is just meh. Now, let's talk about the dialogue. It's the worst part of the game. It sounds like it was written by someone with no understanding of human conversation. Everything just comes across as robotic and unnatural. The main character is annoying and clueless. The only redeeming quality of this game is the sex scenes, which are decent. However, the build-up to these scenes is practically non-existent. For example, the first sex scene happens less than 5 minutes into the game, and the setup is just terrible. It's like you come home after meeting a few people, and suddenly your "friend" jumps on you without any proper context. It's completely random and lacks any sort of relationship development. Sure, you can say no, but this kind of thing happens throughout the game without any good explanation. It would have been better if the girls actually looked good, but most of them are just unpleasant to look at. Now, I don't have anything against Honey Select, in fact, most of my favorite games are from Honey Select. But these models in this particular game just don't cut it. This game definitely needs a major overhaul. Fix the dialogue, hire a proofreader, and get someone who understands human interaction to write it. Only then will this game have a chance of being enjoyable.

I like the premise of the game and i think it has some potential overall just a pretty standard game.

Writing: 3/10
If you want to make the world feel more real and connected have the characters and environment adapt to the story
why is nobody surprised or even comment on the fact the MC went from being a recruit to guard captain? as with alot sandbox games the pacing can feel quite off if not done correctly and i think this game falls flat on that respect.

Renders: 6/10
there decent enough

Animations: 7/10
There good nothing incredible.

Choices 5/10
Love/corrupt routes outside of that there isn't any other choices to be made in the game from what i saw.

Suggestions:

1. Why doesn't the MC / other people in the town question why walken made the MC the new captain? isn't he meant to be a new recruit?

2. Some explanation of why the MC is getting blowies from luna a flashback to the first time they did something together or some form of explanation for why it's happening, (it's kinda hinted at this might be the first time there doing things if that's the case i think it needed a LITTLE more build up or explanation)

3. The mcs dialogue is kinda cringe at times would like to see that change.

4. Less focus on side characters and more on the main ones and fleshing them out i think would improve the story alot.

the game is promising. It knows what it is and no beating around the bush. Still, there are a lot of great sequences here. The overall scenes are decent. But the one that can easily push this game even further is the writing. Oh man, the writing needs to tone down its cringe level a bit. One tip I would like to give is that these types of games would benefit from the style of gameplay that has a yes or no direction instead of a love or corruption direction. Be more focused, to the point, less effort wasting.

The Mc had some character before he met the demon.
Now, he speaks like some mentally disabled individual everyone treats nicely because we now either want equal representation or because we are supposed to treat disabled people better than regular people so that they feel at an even playing field when considering their handicap. . .

since this is sandboxish. One recommendation I would make is.
When certain characters are unlocked to sex scenes, let either those scenes or another scene be repeatable.

Else, I shall apologize as someone did make an effort here. But the story and animations aren't working for this type of art like some other story and animations have worked very nicely for this art.

UPDATE FOR v0.2
Since my last review, the author has:

• created a money cheat (that's still desperately needed, and not publicly available)
• created a pair of mods that, for the age mod, require the content from BOTH mods AND some fooling around post-unzip to get things to their correct places (simply unzipping both mods ends up with images in the wrong, deeply nested folders)
• added a little additional content... some of which is sequentially encountered before some of the previous content, thus breaking old saves
• and added a couple lolis (one of which is an elf, so unless you're using the age mod to make them underaged you're still good in some locations... but the body types alone may make folks in some places scared to play due to local laws).

all in all, better than before, so I added a star. it's a decent game. I still don't like having to come up with 25k coins for the second lots of coins required quest event when it's entirely possible to get 2 to 4 coins per work shift at the barracks, but when I don't look at the journal and just play by the location event is here now tags, it's not quite as obnoxious. you still have to grind the coins forever, it's just something that can be done knowing you're not missing anything this way.

stopped playing before finishing the available content. it's sorta fun, but there are issues that surpassed my patience for now. hopefully it will get some needed attention for the next release.

• the story's OK
• the renders are acceptable for an HS game
• the animations... most are OK, but one was
  Spoiler: strange

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the things that drive me crazy:

1. there's a book to help guide you for where and when (in the sandbox) events can happen. it frequently lies. luckily I figured out that there's a red indicator in the GUI to help guide you further, but still, I don't like being given a tool I can't use as expected.
2. there are 4 time periods per day. the last one (night) has no events, meaning I have to click forward arrow to next day to end every day, when it could have just been 3 time periods OR if there is going to be something in that time period later in the story, there could be a recurring event each night at some location (you know, like home to go to sleep, which doesn't seem to happen in this game?) so you at least feel like you're not just being forced to click what's essentially "I can't do anything in any location on the map... so please let me out of this day."
3. and most importantly... the money grind. there's an event available (allegedly) on day 10. you learn that on day 7 (the journal says day 6 morning, but there's an event after clicking next day on day 5 that takes the place of day 6 morning... so you can't see the blacksmith morning event until day 7 morning). the follow up event requires 500 coin. you get anywhere from 2 to 50 or so coin per barracks "work" period on some kind of randomizer. I got to around 275 coin by day 11. not going to sit there ignoring all events to get to day 20 to 25 when I can finally see the event that I was told about on day 7 since I don't have the coin to see it. so... putting this down for now. if it gets better in that regard, I'll see what else there may be to see.

again, I'm enjoying the characters enough to want to see more of the story... but don't feel like putting in several more hours and many game days to make that happen.