Reviewed Dec 25 2021 : Version 0.10.0.1
The MC is a high school basketball megastar, and he commits to going to the worst D1 college so he can stay with his best friend and girlfriend. WVM is a hot mess of overambition and mediocre results. Let's discuss that.
The renders are weird. Individually, from many angles, the many girls are cute. When you get several together, which happens nearly all the time, the issues become apparent. It almost feels like every girl is a modified version of the same base model, because they all have the same high cheekbones, exaggerated large eyes, strong chin and jawline, and most memeably, excessive duck lips even when they are completely relaxed. Many of the girls feature obnoxiously large breasts and asses as well. They aren't unattractive, but they are repetitive and the identical prominent features being present in every girl are obnoxious and make otherwise attractive girls seem banal and trite. Finally, every scene starts and ends with a kiss and a hug. The number of "hair sniffing" renders I have seen while playing WVM is greater than the sum from every other game I have ever played. The sex scenes are good enough, but they do not completely redeem the flaws.
The writing is mediocre. It's not the worst I've ever seen, it didn't come off like a machine-translated ESL fest, and it also wasn't full of typos or mistakes like other games. With that said, it's not good, either. There is an overabundance of punctuation marks, ellipses and triple exclamation marks are regular occurrences. The biggest issue however is that every character speaks with the same voice. The writer has written every single character as if they are a high school sophomore, still coming into their own skin, still defining themselves. The girls who are meant to mastermind running a charity that runs the university, and the teachers, and the basketball coach and athletics advisor, and the nurse? They all have the same word choices and speech patterns as the freshmen students who are unsure of themselves and in awe of the basketball star who is gracing their presence. It's easy to just skip through much of the dialogue as well because there is just so god damn much of it. Everything is a long, drawn-out conversation with five people, where the MC has to reassure all of them individually, and then they all hug. It's a giant pot of white rice: it's not bad on its own but when there's so much of it and nothing else interesting going on, you start to hate it.
The plot is where things come to a head. It's an absolute fucking train wreck. There are no redeeming points here. The plot is insane while trying to convince you that it is totally serious. It is not trying to come across as tongue in cheek and over the top, it is trying to be a serious character drama. The biggest issue, of many, is that the main character must have some special time dilation superpower that is not addressed because, my god, he does more in an average day than I do in an average month. This massively accelerates the second issue: everything that happens has to be more insane and over the top than the thing that happened previously. The writer figured out at one point that stories, in general, rely upon increasing the tension and stakes to engage the audience and increase their investment. They have implemented this to a fault. The MC never has a chance to catch his breath, he never takes a break (to be fair, he takes several breaks during the last 20% of the current game, but since he has magic time manipulation powers, despite taking a break and resting he still does the same amount that day), and none of the problems really ever seem to be resolved. They are all bandaid patchwork solutions so that the writer can pull them open the next time he needs to increase the stakes again. Despite all of that, you never feel as if the MC is in real danger. The plot manages to feel like a Disney movie, in that despite terrible things happening and big challenges awaiting the MC, you have no doubt that he will succeed and everything will work out perfectly fine. At no point are you ever concerned for his permanent well-being, and the story suffers from it. Eventually, you get to a point where you are indifferent and apathetic to everything that happens. The MC is given some new insane challenge that no normal person can overcome in a month, but he walks through it relatively unscathed in half an hour while hugging every person he meets. Despite the stakes being escalated, you are less engaged than you were at the start because you know that the MC is actually untouchable.
Overall, WVM has some nice sex scenes, and the MC's girlfriend has a cuckqueen streak that might be interesting if it was explored more. The writing is tiresome and the plot is insane. If you come into this expecting anything more than a couple of nice renders, you will be disappointed. If you like duck lips and sniffing girls’ hair when you hug them, this is the game for you. I’ve been very direct in my criticisms and have not pulled any punches here. With everything that I’ve said, the game is OK. The dev is clearly investing a lot of effort and heart into the game. WVM is definitely not a bad game, and is worth playing, as evidenced by its overwhelming popularity and resounding financial success. It simply isn’t the pinnacle of the genre, like many of its fans might suggest.
Rating: C+ (3/5)
