Ren'Py - Fashion Business [Ep.4 v10.00 Extra] [DecentMonkey]

TL;DR: Beautiful artwork, but exhausting, stagnant story. For hardcore fans of the corruption/abuse/exploitation theme, highly recommended, although progression is slow. For anyone else, story not worth the time investment required.

* please have in mind my experience and thus this review is limited to the first three episodes of the game.

THE GOOD:

STORY: author managed to integrate well many different "questlines" and characters. There are plenty of characters, but they mostly make sense for the story and their screen time is relatively balanced, unlike some games which introduce dozens of characters most of which you only see once or twice and have no significant impact story wise. Equally, the different questlines seem organic, in the sense that they fit together well in the narrative - save for some minor issues explored below.

GRAPHICS: renders for Ep1 and 2 are ok, but there is a noticeable improvement in quality with Ep3. Models vary in quality, but the characters are well posed and scenes are set up well. Animations throughout these episodes range from ok to excellent, which is very positive, considering there are very few games which manage to pull off even decent animations at all. I particularly liked the eye animations in static renders of the main character, for example - which was something I found to be novel. It's a "minor" addition, but breathes life to the MC and was very well executed.


THE BAD (exhausting mechanics, Sisyphean story, game-breaking bugs):

Most of the issues exposed here are related, invariably, to the developer's choices in mechanics and story development. Fashion Business is a freeroam game, in which events are tied to specific days of the week or time of day. Some quests also require MC to complete specific activities - and all of it soon becomes a drag and boring because of its repetitiveness. We have all been there, I guess. Every time you wake up, the same two or three dialogue boxes of the MC complaining about this or that will greet you. Try travelling to a new location and many renders later you will discover you can't because of the specific outfit you're wearing. Try and go to sleep - you can't, as MC is hungry and must eat. Photoshoots will take at a minimum two tries to fully complete, and even longer as some you can only progress with enough corruption. In all, a lot of repetitive, generic dialogues which while the first or second time are ok, bloat the game with time and are no fun, artificially and unnecessarily inflating the game.

The game is long and spans four different episodes, but incredibly none of the episodes are fully finished themselves! There are story branches not yet implemented or only partly implemented, as well as greyed-out choices not available at all, which tricks you into thinking there's more content to unlock. Some questlines are also logically and chronologically inconsistent with when they are unlocked (for example, escort quest unlocks in Ep2; but the street prostitution questline only unlocks much later in Ep3! Why would Monica resort to selling herself for pocket change while earning much more as a high-class prostitute is beyond me). Although I understand much of it has to do with the developer's preferences and/or external pressures, I particularly find this development model counter-intuitive. And not only that, the asynchronic updating of episodes can lead to game-breaking issues as well. For example, if you start fresh with the latest version of Ep3, you will inevitably find a bug which essentially stops one of the main quests from advancing. The solution? Well, downgrade to an earlier version, load an earlier save compatible with it, finish said quest first, then upgrade to the latest version again to access and complete the new content. In a traditional non-freeroam game that may be incoveninet, but doable. In a game such as Fashion Business, this is simply not feasible. Because of this bug I ended up giving up on the rest of the game, as going back to fix it would be too time consuming.

Now for my main grip: the story. For anyone thinking of playing this game, please take into consideration this quote from the author:

Fashion Business is not a "vanilla" game and is primarily about the humiliating and blackmailing Monica Buckfett (MC) and some other girls, not about their pleasure. Although there are a lot of sex scenes and various fetishes/kinks are present, and MC is capable of experiencing orgasms, she doesn't like sex or any physical intimacy. FB is not the "happy slut simulator" that the most of adult VN games with a female protagonist are.

Click to expand...

This is important because it is not found in the intro page, but buried in a FAQ post, itself also not linked in the intro page. And I imagine that in light of this information, many, like me had I known, would not waste their time with this game. Is the story bad, per se? No. The idea is quite interesting. A rich, arrogant socialight suddenly finds herself ejected from her former glamourous life, a sucessful business woman now having to wonder the streets in search of food and shelter and exposed to a harsh new reality. The individual questlines that show Monica's downward spiral are not bad in themselves, either. It is actually quite interesting to see the ways in which the MC copes with this new reality, shifting the burden to her alter egos to clear her conscience. The problem is that the story never bursts this bubble: Monica vows revenge, strives to reach at least the illusion of power, but it is always for naught and comically frustrating. It's a Sisyphean cycle where Monica is always rolling that same boulder up and down, with no closure in sight. Yes, she manages to attain revenge against some minor characters and attain some position of relative authority, but it always seems the costs are greater than the gains - a one-step-forward, two-steps-back situation. Every character we encounter with the exception of a very few have a hidden agenda or are outright seeking to exploit Monica. To add insult to injury, there is no character growth. As per the author, Monica doesn't seem to enjoy sex. She herself has a cynic, exploitative personality, constantly in self-denial about what she is doing. While she paradoxically does show pride when she is praised for her body, looks and even performance (in line with her egocentric, narcissistic personality), she does not accept her new reality, sees no future in it, and strives to regain her status. From the player's point of view, why would you subject Monica to any of these adversities if in the end, there is no hope of getting her out of any of it? On the contrary, the further the story progresses, the more entangled she gets in all of it, while she herself enjoys none of it. Monica only does it in the hope of liberation, of achieving her goals. But we as the player know that it is unachievable. The answer: you only subject Monica to it because you, the player, enjoy watching her predicament.

In the end, for those who are simply looking to satisfy their humiliation/corruption/abuse fetish urges, this game, although tedious, can deliver that if you're patient and don't mind the slow burn; for those looking for something more, they will be sorely disappointed, as the story never manages to transcend it: on the contrary, corruption is the end in itself, and not the means to progress the story.

Great game! I love it! Nice story... good dialog, stimulate the imagination... The gameplay is better from episode to episode, I think the developers do this with a lot of love. Thanks for this versatile game ... I hope it will be further developed for a long time!

I have played Fashion Business EP 1 years ago, I dropped the series for a specific reason, too grindy and not much reward pretty much.
I picked up EP2 and feel I wasted some 6 hours and barely done content.

Story/Plot: They are interesting, it is good.

Sandbox: The sandbox part of the game is annoying too much, pretty much, you need to click on multiple location to reach the objective you have, it takes so much time to do especially as you need to do it everyday ingame. To unlock a scene you need to do the same action 3 or more times. The game loop is annoying.

Scenes: While the graphics are great, the scenes are rather short and don't always feel rewarding, for a 10 minutes of grinding you get a scene of 1 minute or so. Just annoying

I would rate this game even lower but yeah the concept is great, the grindness is too bad.

I found the first 3 episodes pretty grindy. But recently I started playing episode 4 and I found it much more enjoyable and less grindy compared to the first 3.

There is one particular ending in the fourth episode which was simply perfect for my liking, and after finishing episode 4, I am definitely going to revisit the first 3

Beautiful graphics (and animation).
- Lots of exciting and very detailed events (mostt based on humiliation and blackmail).
- Good text.
- Many character and nicee.
- The game is growing.

Fashion Business is a unique game with the story god damnn, enjoyable

Top quality renders, nice animations. Interesting story and still only 2 star rating.

After completing EP1 of the game I was amazed by the title. But EP2 is just simply terrible. They have made game that took me around 20 hours
(and still didn't complete it) while there's maybe 5 hours of contet.

Terrible ammount of grind and bad quest desing. The fact that you can do 1 part of specific questline per ingame week is just poor choice.

I'm not sure if this was improved in EP3 and then EP4 but to be honest after amount o grind i had to go through I don't even want to find out.

They really should re-work EP 2 and fix gltiches blocking progress of the game .

So yeah unless you really enjoy pointless grind i can recommend this. Otherwise just avoid this title..

the 4 stars are only because monica and other women are not the (huge tits, small or tiny waist, huge ass/thighs) alien looking like woman we see in 80% of the games .
i will not complain about the grind because there is not so much grind, i can see the dev made the effort to balance it in a good way, the grind/content ratio is quite good.
no complain about monica, she is quite hot,

for the rest, i won't mention all the flaws.
but the obvious bad things aboiut the game are :

sex scenes, man i'm not asking for raw and brutal sex but this game : sex scenes movements are so slow it's like 2 koalas are doing it.
which is comical because you get those dialogs " take that ... etc" while the guy is moving like a 90 year old granpa.
strangely enough the 2 sex scenes in chapter 1 with the waitress at the pool and the woman in the fuel station were rather good but sadly in chapter 2, 3 and 4 every sex scenes are slow and not exciting.

cartoonish villains, basically everybody is able to abuse monica, even a little brat kid like in this grotesque chapter 2, hell it's ok when smart and powerfull people can abuse but this game features too many "dumb and non powerfull" characters being able to do what they want with monica, it's like the dev wants the whole world to be able to do what they want : extreme cartoonish setup.
for sure you have the choice for monica to refuse which is good but when you do so, well you just miss game lewd content, so what's the point.
also the villains always smile, for exemple the car driver, it's so boring and cartoonish. this unthouchable boring victoria etc ....
btw how strange the dev decided to remove the little kids in chapter 3 and 4, probably realised how grotesque and boring it was storywise.

i don't know, what felt realistic or believable and pleasant ( for gamers searching "domination" stuff ) in games like "special request" or "the interview" is just not present in this game.
this game feels more like a tex avery version of those.

once again: the sex scenes , not sure why some people say they are good.
they're not, they are so slow they just put you to sleep so if you consider going throught this awfull tex avery story setup to see some good scenes, just forget about it.
you'll waste time for nothing.

for sure the game has some good moments and qualities, but they are ouclassed by bad design flaws,

i'm not blaming the devs, i think he gives the audience what they want, in the end, to make money, everybody will choose the option to please the maximum people.

sadly, i think this game is not grounded enough and is just an "abuse" fiesta just for the sake of it, without realism nor balance.
to the point that i cwouldn't be surprised if a dog in the street manage to convine monica to bang with it....

as i said at the beginning, 4 stars for monica and some women having realistic body, the rest.... just no.

The game starts off with a lot of promise, drawing you in with an intriguing opening that sets high expectations for what’s to come. Unfortunately, those expectations quickly begin to unravel as you realize that neither the story nor the characters evolve in any meaningful way. Each scene unfolds in a predictable pattern, with little to no character development or progression. The only element that changes is the renders, but even those feel hollow as they’re locked behind a frustratingly convoluted and grind-heavy progression system.

The game quickly devolves into a repetitive grindfest, where the player is left slogging through monotonous tasks just to unlock the next scene. This cycle not only diminishes any sense of excitement but also creates a sense of pointlessness. The primary draw of the game—its beautifully rendered images—becomes overshadowed by the sheer effort required to access them. Instead of enjoying the game’s content, you’re left wondering if the grind is truly worth it.

If your main interest is seeing high-quality renders, I’d recommend simply using the gallery unlocker rather than wasting time on the tedious progression. Unfortunately, the story, characters, and the grinding mechanics simply don't justify the effort, leaving you with a sense of disappointment rather than fulfillment.

Playing this game feels more like a tedious job than an enjoyable experience. The gameplay is a constant grind, where unlocking new images or scenes requires repetitive effort without much reward. The game’s interface is clunky and unintuitive, making it frustrating to navigate. Every action, from simple movements to interactions, feels like a chore rather than something engaging.

One of the most off-putting aspects is the stats system, which adds unnecessary complexity to the game. It seems designed to discourage progress rather than encourage it, and the only ways to make any real headway are through cheating or spending an excessive amount of time grinding. This system undermines any remaining enjoyment, as the focus shifts from exploration or narrative to simply “grinding” through a series of monotonous tasks.

Even something as basic as getting out of bed and walking outside requires multiple clicks, making every interaction feel laborious and drawn-out. The scenes themselves, which should be the highlight of the game, fail to justify the effort required to unlock them. Ultimately, the game feels more like an exercise in frustration than a fulfilling experience, leaving little incentive to continue playing.

This is a unique game with its story. Normally a game with this much sex becomes boring but that's not the case with this one. As every new scene brings new heights to the game.
The quests that Monica does are so diverse that you get every tag you desire for in FMC game.

Very pretty main character. I am impressed by the graphics in this game and all the quality of the erotic scenes. The plot may not be extraordinary, but I do not expect that from an erotic game. I like that we can turn the main character into a whore, because I like such games. Additionally, we have the opportunity to make various choices, which is important in the game world. The game also has humorous elements. I will add that if we become a stripper, we can expect hot views. I recommend the game.

I am not very good at writing reviews but I like this game so much.

The story, the musics, the porn is also good.

Normally i,m not a big van personally from Ren'py, there are only a few ren py games I like and this one certainly appeals to me.

And after I am done with this game I will definitely check the developer's other projects.

Visuals: 3.5, same body shape for all characters with no much variants

Character design: 2, All girls almost look the same body wise, not much variations.

Sounds: 2, generic porn sound

Story: 2, Makes no sense it is all about female characters getting humiliated over and over and over. This game is perfect for niche audiances who get off girls being mad lmao. And I am saying this for people playing this game for +6 years.

Gameplay: 1, There to waste time and drag content. Gameplay should make players anticipate the upcoming story progression but in this case you will be so happy to find out the cheating options

Performance: 3, bugs here and there but the community can help. There are few members here that will reply immediately to you.

Animations: 2, Almost the same over and over it gets tiring also the end/start of motions are not that fluid.

Amount of content: 3, this content is nothing if you know that its been developed for +6 years. And the content is in the same places, same characters with no much variations.

Conclusion: 2/5

It is clear to me that the developer has skills but their choices baffle me. This game is appealing for one type of audience who like:

• petite bodies only with no variation.
• humiliation and only this
• female ch not being happy with sex like the whole game is blue balling revenge arc.
• to get off on bad vibes
• variation to be minimum in everything

I made this review as detailed as I can. Play it and see for yourself.

This metaphor came to my mind while writing this. Slow cooked steak on low heat will get you a perfect piece of meat. But "this" steak is getting cooked on room temperature which will result in an inedible "thing"

Admittingly a bit of a slow burner in the first act but then it quickly ramps up and has continuous waves throughout. Love the multiple pathways and options to take the character through. Mains characters renders are some of the best I've come around, camera angles, lighting and animations are of high quality. After playing this a lot of other games seem dated in comparison .

+ Beautiful graphics (and animation).
+ Lots of exciting and very detailed events (most based on humiliation and blackmail).
+ There is a storyline and good text.
+ In the latest versions there is almost no grind.
+ The game is growing.

Fashion Business may not be the best game in the world, but it is objectively good. That's why I don't understand people who underrate the game.

Plot: Welcome to the Blackmail, humiliation, corruption paradise. Monica is a beautiful powerful businesswoman who hates everyone and everything including sex, she even hates orgasms. A secret organization governed by the most powerful men in the world "recruits" powerful women through abduction and financial destruction to transform them into 100% submissive to sexually serve animals in the mysterious Farm 218. For some reason, the recruiter helps Monica to not immediately go to the farm to be turned into an object and kicks her in the streets with no money, only with her powerful manipulative mind. Through sexual corruption and manipulation, she starts slowly climbing to her stolen throne, but the price is self-degradation and extreme humiliation.
Characters: Each character has a unique and strong personality, something rare to find in adult games.
Art: Brilliant. The female bodies are not exaggerated like almost all adult games, no extra huge tits and asses, but extremely realistic bodies and faces.

what can i say, this game had an insanely strong and promising start, but its inevitable downfall began with the bowing down to censorship, instead of migrating to a place that allows creators to deliver their original beautiful creations without too much over the top moderation, that ultimately damages the final product.

PROS
1. the story line starts off strong, with it being the strongest in the first two episodes, with so many different branching story lines, that are optional, but truly add to the entire games overall narrative of a spoilt bitch MC that ends up losing it all. you can choose to embrace the bitchiness or neglect it, that freedom is upto you. wanna be a prostitute? sure go ahead. stripper? go ahead, a exhibitionist? go ahead. it has most of the great things.

2. the animations. the first two eps have decent enough animations, but by episode 3, they improve drastically. from different angles, to more smooth transitions. it gives the player more control, which is always the best way to go.

3. the sex. now sex can be frequent or infrequent, it all depends on you and how you play. it ranges a few kinks, most of the more taboo natured like watersports ive noticed is locked behind further paywalls. but it offers a solid enough foundation. i however wished it allowed anal only playthroughs, as for my bitchy mc, she saw everyone beneath her, so it would make sense for her to give up her anal or oral vaginity before her vaginal.

4. the character models. theyre so refined here, with a diverse cast of different looking characters that dont look too alike eachother. sure their bodies could be abit more different to standout from eachother, being weight differences and all. and sure theres a couple. but for the most part, you can tell the developers have chosen to refine the existing renpy models over using the lack lustre default ones. BUTT HOLES LOOK LIKE BUTT HOLES, AND NOT RED RAW MONKEY ANUSES lmao. so thats great

5. the rpg freedoms. you can explore this game how you wish. wanna be a major bitch? sure go ahead an birate everything and everyone. wanna be sweet and niave? we've got that too. this game allows you to venture how you wish, and with your choices defining how you behave and act. and i loved that about this.


CONS

1. the deleted character and story line. so ep 1 and 2 remains to be the true versions of their vision. having a great story line of a fallen entitled mc, that gets manipulated by the residents son, and by doing so she has the choice to decline or fall victim to the son and his friends. and i loved that dynamic. it was my favourite of the story lines, and my favourite of the characters. as it felt refreshing to see that douche bag male character that we tend to play as the mc, but instead we're at the opposite ends of that perversions. now its been stripped, and for me my main interest and intruige of where that story and its choices will take me, has been taken away. what was otherwise gonna potentially be one of my rare 5 star reviews, is now average. and joins the long list of games that do exactly what this does, and at times better.

2. it updates systems for the sake of it, even if its for the worst. e.g. in ep 3, being able to just click "flash ass or flash tits" has been removed? why? why not do the logical thing and just expand further on the existing system? as what replaced it was essentially taking full sandbox freedom out of the players hands, and having it be decided for you. it was a step back in many aspect. id of loved ep 3 and onwards to of had that existing freedom ep 1 and 2 had, but of made it more lewder with the ongoing embrace of corruption.

3. the story started to become boring and tedious in ep 3, with the removal of the better branches of narrative. it became way too grindy, and now more generic.

4. the grind. lord have mercy. it has ALOT of grind before you get the more fun interactions. ALOT OF GRIND. so prepare

5. the navigation. i get immersion, but jesus. them first two episodes are rough. its a chore to just walk through one enviroment, let alone the entire map. however this has been rectified in newer episodes.


SUMMARY
This game is a good game, but it couldve been great, god tier even. however, it fell short to its censorship, and unnecessary "upgrades" to certain systems with intentions to add, but ultimately stripped the player of more choice. it has a solid foundation, and an interesting story, but i feel by episode 3 it started to fall flat with the censorship and just the story telling. if you want a good game, the first two episodes are the best in terms of story, but ep3 onwards are the best in terms of animations. this game couldve been god tierd, but ultimately censorship has stripped the game of its most unique and fun storyline. its alright, but its nothing to scream home about.

The game opens on a high note and leaves you with high expectations.

Those expectations come crashing down pretty quickly as you realise neither the story nor the characters are really going anywhere. Every scene plays out the same way, characters remain the same. The only thing that really changes is the renders. Renders that are extremely hard to get to because of the convoluted and grindy progression system.

It leaves you with a feeling of a grindfest and pointlessness. if you want to see some beautifully rendered porn. I'd recommend just getting the gallery unlocker. The story and the associated grinding are absolutely not worth it.

this is my first review so I hope I do it right.Surely this is a controversial game which either you love or hate.I love this game althought it gave me some hard time in the middle of episode 2 until the second Steve visit . After that point I believe the game porgress in a fast enough pace and the quality of progression and renders makes easy to forgive any faults you may encountered in the earlier stages. The models of some girls ( Monica , Melanie , Claire , Linda , Stephanie ) to name some of them are among the best I've seen in games. Easily one of my top-five games in the site. Sorry for my poor English as I am not a native spreaker

This game is rough. Not rough like needing more polish and work done to it, but just rooough. Not fun to play at all. Way too grindy. It's not sandboxy despite being set up like one. It's micromanaging a point and click game. "Game", sorry. The moment this game gets even remotely in the vicinity of interesting (waaaaay too far into the game, btw) it goes right back to boring random clicking with little sense of what to do or where to go.

I'm having more fun writing this review, which is fucking saaad.

Character models are okay. that's about the only plus. Story is dumb, the writing is bad, there is no gameplay but what "gameplay" there is is such a slog that you realize you just wasted hours of your weekend clicking incessantly through this shit sandwich trying to get to the first sex scene with the main character. Hours in, still nothing.

Avoid at all costs. Don't play this shit. Do literally anything else with your time and life.