Review for World of Sisters v0.25.90:
I started and stopped playing this game multiple times because I just couldn't get into it. I finally took the time to get through all of the available content I could. The gameplay is overly complicated and there are a lot of bugs that will block your progress or softlock content. I'm won't bother trying this game again until it's got a [completed] tag.
Story/Writing: 2/5 - Yeah, this game is full of "Engrish", and worse, there are literally hundreds of long and boring conversations of very poorly-written English to torture you. I find myself just frantically clicking so I don't have to read the awful dialogue. The story is practically cookie-cutter incest with a mom that doesn't get any loving from dad, one older sister that hates the MC, one younger sister that adores the MC, and, of course, an MC that's a complete retard. There are lots of plot holes and lots of total WTFs. The raunchy dialogue seems like it was written by a virgin teenager that has watched way too much European hard-core porn.
Art/Renders/Animations: 3/5 - I really want to like it, but the artwork varies from good to poor. Same for the animations.
Gameplay: 3/5 - The actual gameplay of discovering items and talking to NPCs is above average and even most of the minigames are above average, but the user interface ruins everything. I find the game is too complicated, too slow, and too "busy".
- The user interface is a cluster-fuck of flash and glitter. There's always way too much going on in the user interface and it distracts from the actual game. It looks like it was designed to appeal to kindergarteners.
- Sometimes, the messages and movements even interfere with playing the game, or even worse, the timed minigames (e.g. the sandwich making game where a big black bar covers a big portion of the screen when the next round starts, it's asinine).
- The slowness of the game is caused by everything in the user interface being cartoon-animated like it was designed to appeal to kindergarteners.
- There are also lots of boring animations in the game that are not skippable, like the MC getting dressed every morning, and several of the repeatable scenes. Just let players skip animations if they want to, for fuck's sake!
- There are all kinds of settings to control the slowness of the game, but they only eliminate about 60% of it.
- The game is too grindy with money and building relationships. I turned on the built-in cheat to increase the XP given for each action and it helped a lot.
- Some things like navigation tickets and paying for hints make it seem like a pay-to-win mobile game designed for micro-transactions.
- I read another review that said the game's slowness and grind are tied to a player's subscription level. If that's true, maybe a renaming of the game to "World of Shysters" is warranted.
- The quest/hint screen is a mess. The quest/hint system finally got a way to sort quests (e.g. by character) and a way to hide all blocked quests, but it doesn't work like you expect. There are quests that are "paused", but it's not clear what that means. Is it a dependency (i.e., you need to finish another task) or is the question not available in the current update? From what I've seen, it can be either, and players are allow to un-pause quests that are blocked, why even have that option? It's not really worth my time to figure it out.
- The game shows the relationship level of the MC with several men (e.g. dad and teacher) as "girlfriend" and "lover". What the actual fuck? Relationship levels for girls are just as dumb, though. A girl can have a relationship status of "Lover" when the only interaction she's had with the MC is talking in the hallway at school.
- There are continuity errors with the sandbox. For example, MC can get to the point where he performs cunnilingus on Katy, but then do the homework quests and Katy is embarrassed to show MC her breasts. There are many others.
- There are also the typical sandbox errors where the same person is frequently shown in two places at once.
On the upside of Gameplay:
- The ability to save and load anywhere and anytime is impressive.
- The hotspot highlighting works very well.
- The minigames aren't brain-dead. I do wish there was a way to re-read the instructions after starting a minigame, though. That's really annoying.
Bugs: 2/5 - There are quite a few bugs in the game and sometimes I don't know if I'm encountering bugs or just poor design/implementation, but there have been a ton of weird things that happened. I've seen menus where some of the menu choices had no text but you could still click on them and do something. Often, the quest/hint system says to do something and so you do, and you are just repeating the exact same conversation or two over again, but it doesn't appear to be for grind, it's more like the quest is stuck in a loop until something else triggers (i.e. some dependency that should be clear in the questline). This happened with Judy's quests where it looped between "Talk to Judy when the time is right" and "go to parents' bedroom in the morning". Then there are the cases where the quest/hint system says to do something, and you try do it, but you can't because the event doesn't trigger (e.g. find Katy in the shower or give Lola the guitar). I think these are also due to dependencies between other quests that aren't clear. The first time I had the MC go to the museum in the afternoon, it triggered a huge event that lasted into the evening, but afterward, the MC was back at school in the afternoon.
Other: I didn't find a list of planned tags, but we've already got the MC having sex with women that he knows are having sex with other men, and there is a lot of talk in the game's dialogue of both sharing and prostitution, which is probably going to turn into a whole different mess that makes me want to stay away from the discussion thread.