There are a lot of things I really like about this game, and I very much wished it dealt better with some of the problems I'm about to describe, but unfortunately, they're present. I won't waste much time talking about the things the game does right, most of the reviews here already do that. If you're only going to read this one, just know it's a good game, and I'm deliberately only commenting on things that could be improved.
The game is about a young man who's had his easygoing life completely uprooted when a big prophecy starts to mess with everyone he knows. It's a little overdone, but the sci-fi spin on it freshens things up a bit. From there, the game turns into a bit of a coming of age story as he's forced to step up as leader of his ragtag bunch.
There are some problems with the plot structure, where the very relaxed flow of the story betrays the very real urgency the plot puts on finding the missing sister and vice versa, but for the first half a dozen chapters or so, this isn't that big of a problem. Relationships develop nicely and the mix of social events with plot beats are done pretty well. But things start getting a little hazy further in.
As relationships start all culminating into romances the game runs into the all too common problem of spreading itself too thin. Personal scenes, sexual or otherwise need to be compressed down so as to not have them ruin the pre-estabilished pacing. There's something perhaps intentional about this, as it does put the player in the shoes of the MC, who's also having his fair share of problems juggling all his relationships, which leads us to another problem.
The MC is baaad about keeping things running smoothly. This once again bears some intentionality, I think. The character developments mirror the story in the sense that the MC is learning as he goes, but that doesn't mean it all makes sense. His criteria for who to keep in the dark about his poligamous streak is baffingly random.
I understand the need to ease people he's already in a relationship with slowly, so as to not fuck everything, but when he continues to develop romances with no preclaimer, that's just stupid. The conflicts that arrive from it are, as a result, perceived as shallow.
Next is a problem I wouldn't usually comment on because porn is just porn, who cares, but the sheer ubiquity of sex scenes means it bears mentioning: For a game with such a wide variety of partners and circumstences, the sex is incredibly dull. You're presented with the same sex scene with different backgrounds time and time again. To the devs credit, an attempt to change this does seem to be in the plans, with Ziv topping, pregnant Aven and Celine anal all showing up in the most recent chapters.
My last complaint is that the characters, though they all feel real and grounded in the context of the story, seem to only exist when the MC is around. They all have their own relationships, but almost all of it happens offscreen. Poor Kit seems to live in a pocket dimension for 95% of the game. Characters that should, by all means, constantly be on scenes together without the MC are just implied to have hung out at some point between the last personal scene and the current one, if at all. Raene and Ziv seemingly stop interacting at all, which is strange, Eva and Lilly just talk about hanging out but are seldom seen actually doing it, even Aven and Nadya only have a relationship when the cutscenes are on. Celine and Lilly, alleged best friends only have scenes together when they're fighting about the MC.
Half of this is the way the game is structured. We very rarely see things that are happening far away from the MC, but there doesn't seem to be any particular reason as to why that is. I think the game would be greately improved if we saw any of the characters pass the Bechdel test once or twice.
The game is about a young man who's had his easygoing life completely uprooted when a big prophecy starts to mess with everyone he knows. It's a little overdone, but the sci-fi spin on it freshens things up a bit. From there, the game turns into a bit of a coming of age story as he's forced to step up as leader of his ragtag bunch.
There are some problems with the plot structure, where the very relaxed flow of the story betrays the very real urgency the plot puts on finding the missing sister and vice versa, but for the first half a dozen chapters or so, this isn't that big of a problem. Relationships develop nicely and the mix of social events with plot beats are done pretty well. But things start getting a little hazy further in.
As relationships start all culminating into romances the game runs into the all too common problem of spreading itself too thin. Personal scenes, sexual or otherwise need to be compressed down so as to not have them ruin the pre-estabilished pacing. There's something perhaps intentional about this, as it does put the player in the shoes of the MC, who's also having his fair share of problems juggling all his relationships, which leads us to another problem.
The MC is baaad about keeping things running smoothly. This once again bears some intentionality, I think. The character developments mirror the story in the sense that the MC is learning as he goes, but that doesn't mean it all makes sense. His criteria for who to keep in the dark about his poligamous streak is baffingly random.
I understand the need to ease people he's already in a relationship with slowly, so as to not fuck everything, but when he continues to develop romances with no preclaimer, that's just stupid. The conflicts that arrive from it are, as a result, perceived as shallow.
Next is a problem I wouldn't usually comment on because porn is just porn, who cares, but the sheer ubiquity of sex scenes means it bears mentioning: For a game with such a wide variety of partners and circumstences, the sex is incredibly dull. You're presented with the same sex scene with different backgrounds time and time again. To the devs credit, an attempt to change this does seem to be in the plans, with Ziv topping, pregnant Aven and Celine anal all showing up in the most recent chapters.
My last complaint is that the characters, though they all feel real and grounded in the context of the story, seem to only exist when the MC is around. They all have their own relationships, but almost all of it happens offscreen. Poor Kit seems to live in a pocket dimension for 95% of the game. Characters that should, by all means, constantly be on scenes together without the MC are just implied to have hung out at some point between the last personal scene and the current one, if at all. Raene and Ziv seemingly stop interacting at all, which is strange, Eva and Lilly just talk about hanging out but are seldom seen actually doing it, even Aven and Nadya only have a relationship when the cutscenes are on. Celine and Lilly, alleged best friends only have scenes together when they're fighting about the MC.
Half of this is the way the game is structured. We very rarely see things that are happening far away from the MC, but there doesn't seem to be any particular reason as to why that is. I think the game would be greately improved if we saw any of the characters pass the Bechdel test once or twice.