VN - Ren'Py - Where It All Began [S1 Ch.4 Steam] [Oceanlab]

what a waste. completely ruined the original game, story and characters. replaced with a frankly boring and uninteresting one.

avoiding censoring could've been done in a more easier way. leaving a 'backdoor' to bring back old the original story for those that like it and kept it 'clean' enough for subscription platforms. completely gutting the story of the fetish/kink that was one of the main draws of the game has ruined that excitement or anticipation of where the OG story would go with certain characters.

kick in the teeth for those waiting all these years for something that will never happen.

S1 Ch4
This game is absolutely terrible and I cannot understand how there are so many high ratings.

While the renders and animations are high quality, the story and content are the most unashamed cock tease I've seen yet in a VN. Perhaps its better if you allow NTR, but even then its still an awful cock tease because then the MCs still not getting action. The MC is surrounded by women that act suggestively, but they never actually do anything. On top of that the story is so unbelievably convoluted with biker gangs, the mob, unknown other parties. You could call the story a mile wide and an inch deep.

I wouldn't recommend spending the time to try this out.

Similar to Summer's Gone, this game suffers from significant development issues. After over six years in production, the developer has failed to complete the original vision and instead chose to completely rewrite the entire storyline. While the visual quality is impressive, that's where the positives end. I strongly recommend avoiding this game to spare yourself the disappointment of seeing what could have been a masterpiece reduced to its current state. The lack of intimate content beyond one character (Miru) is particularly frustrating. I believe the developer will eventually abandon both this project and Summer's Gone, as it appears they're simply capitalizing on Patreon funding without delivering meaningful progress. This has been a major letdown for someone who deeply appreciates adult visual novels.

A message to the developer: Focus on moving forward with the current storyline rather than continuing rewrites. Players want romantic content with other love interests, more frequent updates, and genuine effort toward completing both games. The AVN community deserves better than endless development cycles without substantial progress.

Review from an ardent hardcore AVN lover!

Almost 7 years, and we still haven't been able to fuck any girls besides MC's girlfriend.
Its just a bunch of boring, dragged-out nonsense.

Finally got this update after waiting years, and there's no surprise—just endless teasing and blueballs. Besides the renders and the female models, this game is terrible.
The plot, the dialogue, everything is boring.

Not recommended

Another game ruined by a greedy dev, zero progress for the longest time just to completely remove the only decent aspects of the game. Story makes zero sense now, can't wait for it to get 1 or 2 more updates before it's abruptly brought to an end. Not worth playing. Don't support. Avoid like the plague.

A great AVN.
A good plot, lots of characters with prescribed characters.
Stunning graphics with the right lighting and well-chosen music and SFX. There's a lot of content for 4 episodes.
I am glad that the developer has finally removed incest from the game, ultimately it will only benefit the game.
Of the disadvantages, I note the lack of languages other than English, but this is not even a disadvantage of the game.
I look forward to the continuation of the story.

garbage , so much yapping/blabbering , the only good thing is the renders , besides that , nothing at all and this game is what ?? almost 7 years old? wtf? renpy devs are absolutely infested with patreon monthly milk. it's only the monthly milk that matters.

Ocean was one of my favorite VN creators...WAS. The constant rewrites/reworks he does of his games... at this point it will be 20 years by the the time he actually completes one of them. Which I dont see actually happening I see more rewrites in both his games futures until he burns out and abandons them. Waiting a year for this muddled update that completely destroys a games 5+ year storyline for another rework is absurd. His complete reworking WIAB storyline again was the straw that broke this camels back.

This game no longer deserves the rating it has. Dev destroyed what was a solid game to appease patreon...which i understand...but he changed it so much the story has gone from hard to believe to WTF did he come back to these complete assholes for. Most devs write out incest in a way that a patch allows the story to be told the way they intended when they are forced to change their story, but this dev exploded the story and made it incomprehensible why the MC would return "home".

Really good renders. Beautiful characters. Had lots of animations in the beginning, but there aren't many anymore. Time between updates has increased while quality has gone down.

It feels like this project’s stuck in a rut. Four or five years ago, it was at the top of the AVN game, but the plot changes, the endless wait between updates (and how slow the story moves), and now the lack of cinematics that gave it that high-quality vibe just leave us with a collection of gorgeous renders and not much else...

Very good game, with a very good story and awesome renders. Of course its not a game for everyone as it will give more importance to the plot and story over tons of nonsense sex scenes (but relax, there is sex scenes on it already since first release).
The game suffered a rework, but since then theres a lot of content imo, but it takes more time between releases, but nothing much different from others AAA games here on F95...but on the content regard this depends on what point you considerate things, if it is from the first release of the old game or if it is from the rework. But in this regard you just need to think if its worth the wait or not, if its not just go and play something else, its not hard. But there are HOURS of gameplay on it already.
Other good thing is that this game is connected to the same universe of devs other game.
From my part is a very recommended game...but if you are the kind of player that just plays on "skip mode" to see sex scenes and masturbate, not the game for you. The best tip i can give you here is: Understand yourself. There are games here on F95 for many type of players, theres plenty of mindless fuckfest games here, and if you dont like to read dialogue, dont like plot development, you will easily find something to play. But if you like better developed games, with good plot, good dialogue and all, you will probably like this one, and understand that to make something very good takes time, just remember that most triple A games here that delivers good amount of story, content and renders have longer times between updates.

The game has been in development for six years and is still in its infancy. In that time, we've seen Covid. The war in Afghanistan has ended, the war in Ukraine has begun. Somebody got married, somebody got divorced. What's changed in the game? A lot. Gone is the story of one dysfunctional family, and in its place is a mafia mess.

The graphics have improved, unfortunately at the expense of everything else.

The story drags and despite the creator's best efforts, it's obvious that the original storyline has been heavily interfered with. The final impression is a mess.

* If all you expect from the game is beautiful pictures, this is the game for you.

* If you expect a superficial story without unnecessary bullshit and a lot of sex, this is not the game for you.

* If you want a solid, above average story with no major logic lapses and characters you can relate to... run and never look back.

Just like summer's gone its absolutely a piss poor drag fest that is like an infinite tease, Im convinced the dev has erectile dysfunction in real life because this game is a form of torture and dialogue diarrhea.

Its tease > exposition > tease > exposition. You stand a better chance getting lewd with your anime pillow than this game.

I finally finished playing it—oh fuck, what a bottomless pit Ocean dug themselves into! All this flirting, so much garbage across 4,800 renders, and the plot progression… Oh, and then this dumbass introduces a whole new storyline after eight years? The best idea his fried brain could come up with was taking a mafia world where we only knew Zane, Rivera, and the Petrovs… and dumping in an entire mafia nation?! Some people joked that John Wick doesn’t seem so unrealistic now—fine, whatever, keep the mafia. But then they cram in these medieval-ass marriage-of-convenience tropes? Brilliant plan! Take the mafia + arranged marriages + John Wick’s dog, chop it all up, flush it down the toilet, and hit ‘publish on Steam.’ A recipe as reliable as a Swiss watch. Now we’ve got seven more years of development for the rest of the mafia families, and if SS doesn’t ban incest, Ocean’s officially a clown. How they’ll dig themselves out of this mess? I don’t even care anymore. I refunded it on Steam. I supported a different game—one with actual logic and none of this mafia bullshit. And yes, ‘Giuseppe’ is a first name, not a surname. Germany was Italy’s ally—embarrassing not to know that. Whatever you’re smoking, quit it. Drugs are bad. For all your pedantry, how could you write this nonsense? Hire a student screenwriter. Stop wasting money on music.

And how easy it would have been to avoid all this bullshit, just leave William as Zane, and make Katie and Leah adopted by anyone in fact, and then at least some sense would have appeared, even in the nonsense that we have now.

Another banger update, the plot is going forward at relative slow pace but in an amazing direction, new faces, new drama, the classic Ocean giving a lot of teasing , potential new lovers, possible cheating in future (Miru dream) (NTR?) we have to wait and see, it leaves u with all these crazy ideas in ur head on what/could happen in the future, and the best of it is the shared universe with SG, makes the experience a lot more fun and interesting, it is sad to see some people giving low ratings because short sighted things , or even dumber things like update time too long, like bro, there are 10000 other games here, if you are impatient just let it cook for a couple of years then come back, writing a low review just because the game is taking long to update is the dumbest thing ive seen

As a fan of the original game before Ocean decided to do his reboot, I find this version bloated with excess content. The pacing of the original was much better. This view no doubt upsets some of the dev's die-hard fans that have an irrational need to defend against any criticism of the devs games regardless how valid it is. I think it's important to address weak updates rather than just accept without question whatever is served up.

Yes, the renders are stunning in the reboot but when you wade through hours of small talk, vague plotline machinations and very little actual character advancement coupled with long times between updates, it's going to take years to actually achieve any meaningful amount of individual content. I would then suggest that making each update have maximum enjoyable impact for the player is critical.

A convoluted mess is not the way to go.

I think the dev is so obssessed with making his games look so visually appealing that the actual storyline and character advancement suffer in comparison.

After wading through his latest update with 4,000 + renders, all I was left at the end of it was a feeling of dissatisfaction. The vaguely referenced plot hooks that MC and others drop in conversation just came across as feeling superfluous.

Wili the MC not only comes across as a total jerk, but all the girls know it and treat him accordingly. One minute he can try to be decent and then right back to being a real twat.

Ocean's obssession with the word "bibi" is getting tiresome. It was funny at first but gets so overused in both games that it lost it's effect long ago.

Graphically, yes, this one is visually stunning. His renders are up there at the top.. If the dev's plots and character development matched his renders then this would be an amazing AVN!

When after playing this lengthy update full of blah blah "bibi", blah blah "nugget", blah blah "fish" and endless posing and posturing by characters meant to be provocative or alluring, the only memorable or vaguely exciting thing to happen was someone hit on the head by a rock, it kind of tells you something.

The club section alone felt needlessly long...I was hoping for a rival gang to start shooting up the place to liven things up!

Hopefully it picks up when the next update lands probably in 2026 or something unless Ocean decides again he's not happy about something and remasters the remaster...

6 years 8 months 6 days since it was introduced on F95 (as of today when i write this review) and its simply not good in any other category other that renders are pretty lol i played it when it was new and then couple times over the years (before and after rework) and also today i simply cant recomment it.

Haven't and won't even touch Season 1 Chapter 4 after reading all the reviews. This game was in my S Tier list. With the family dynamic gone (you leave because you had feelings for a roommate??? [What are we in first grade?])

I tried to ask about what the reason was in Ocean's discord, what I got was they lost support for it? (I feel like that is a lie but w/e) Sad to see a half decent game go into the trash.

With it being so long since either this or Summer's Gone had an update, I forgot just how good Ocean is.

This game is stunning. Arguably the best visuals on the site. That is, of course, the main selling point. On top of that, the writing is quite good if you ignore the infrequent grammar mistakes. My personal favorite thing about the game though, is how well the character relationships develop. Obviously, as for all AVNs, some suspension of disbelief is needed, but not an excessive amount. A baseline relationship is defined, and over time the boundaries of it expand and evolve in ways that can be easily followed.

A simple thing, but one several AVNs miss out on.