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:
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.
* 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:
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.