Ren'Py - 2Sides [v0.04.0] [BadMustard]

Review of version 0.03.01.

This is a pretty good kinetic novel. (There are no player choices here.)

The twist in the presentation here is that the story is told from the perspective of two protagonists in fully separate paths. We see the story first from one character's perspective and then from the other's. This technique is especially effective during the parts of the story when the two characters are away from each other. It's less interesting during the earlier sections when they are essentially together all the time. There are options at the beginning of the story to totally skip this method of story flow and to only see one side or another of the story, although it's unclear to me why anyone would choose to do this.

As with most kinetic novels, any success hangs on the story and writing, and both are good here. The story is more TV movie than great literature, but that's perfectly fine in this context. The various characters have distinct personalities, and, at least to me, act in a fairly plausible manner. As in most TV movies, their actions depend a bit more on misunderstandings and miscommunication than they should.

I should also mention the excellent work done here to place the characters in distinct and accurately-depicted real-life locations such as UMD, the Eastern Shore, and the coast of Catalonia.

Among contemporary games, the renders/graphics are only serviceable here. This is not a huge problem, considering the focus is on the story, but they certainly could be improved and be more of an asset to the game. At the moment they are low-ish res and the colors and lighting are generally muddy.

Overall, though, I am enjoying this story and interested in finding out how things turn out for our star-crossed lovers.

not a game. strictly a story. but because you can choose the perspective to follow, you get different elements of the story revealed in at different points which adds some depth though you wish it would factor in more. like a formulaic episode of television, you know trouble is a coming because things are too happy too soon.

in the count of monte cristo fashion, if there is to be a happy ending no matter what that looks like, it will mean more based on the lows the characters have gone through. that said this is a good example of young people communicating poorly and compounding their problems by how they deal with them or don't deal with them as it were. this story would be less dramatic if characters could have a reasonable and honest conversation. then again if they did that, maybe it wouldn't be story worthy.

renders are grainy and not great and character models are bland, serving as an accompaniment to the story, not being the main focus or selling point. it was brave and realistic to split up characters and put them with other people in this sort of game because people tend to feel strongly about that sort of thing. i foresee many awkward family holidays in their future. not sure how i feel about the mom, she withheld crucial information that children have a right to know, and then kind of dropped it like a bomb destroying her family. not that it wasnt the right thing to do, but there were no qualms or consideration about how to address things and what is best and is the past worth coming out and what are the potential outcomes. i think there may have been a more delicate way of handling it that doesn't destroy your family. the kids made the initial decisions, which were less than ideal, but they kind of have the plausible deniability of ignorance. i think a mom would be more doubtful and reflective as to what the right thing was or how could things have turned out if she had handled it differently after her children kind of fall apart.

the most popular games have some player agency, the renders look beautiful, and the story is good. this has only the story element. the upshot of this is that the dev can tell a very specific story. the downside of this is that you wonder if it would be better purely as a story. some text based games with good mechanics are more enjoyable than a bad renpy game. not that this is bad, but highlight the strengths and hide the weaknesses.

Review for 0.3 version.

Story: First two chapter(4.5/5), chapter 3(0.5/5)

Render: 1/5

Romance Level: 5/5 in first two chapter, 0/5 in chapter 3

Character consistency/development : 1/5

Pros:
1. A good romantic story at start only.

Cons:
1. Throw out all the romance previously developed in first two chaprers in chapter 3

2. Poor renders, hardly notice the emotion change from the characters

3. Unnecessary plot twist just to create drama

Overall review:
If you are finding a sibling pure love story, this game is not for you.
The game is really toxic so give it a try if you want.

This is a review up to version 3.0

I'll start by saying this, if you are looking for a feels good story about a brother and sister, or about a couple this is not what you are looking for.

Story - Chapters 1 and 2 I would give a 4.5/5
- Chapter 3 I would give a 1 / 5

There isnt anything unique about the story, its a typical step sister joins the family and it shows the relationship between the brother and sister. The dialog is quite good, and the first two chapters do a good job of showing the impact of the male MCs actions being a positive influence on the female mc (Gwen). It does a great job of showing them growing up and how their interactions influence each other.

Chapter 3 decides to throw that away in an effort to create some drama and adds a specific story element that many people dont like. The main couple breaks up, they find other people and start a relationship with other people doing what you expect happens when you are in a relationship. The decision to have the MCs date other people is so far out of character it just doesnt make sense and feels like forced drama. I dont want to spend too much time on this other than to say it was an extremely disappointing direction for the game to go in.

Renders - 2/5

Rendering has just gotten insane nowadays and these float between bad and mediocre at best. Often times its difficult to make out facial expressions .

Text / Font - 2 / 5

There are two different styles that you will see, spoken dialog and internal. The text that shows spoken dialog is fine, however the internal dialog is extremely difficult to read.

Overall pre chapter 3 release Id say the story was good enough to carry the subpar renders to 3.4-4 stars, however with the recent plot development that came from chapter 3 it really did ruin the story in my opinion.

Review of version 0.03.0

Just going to start this off with a warning to new players or returning players from previous versions. If you are looking for a pure bro-sis romance game, keep moving. With the addition of the newest chapter that is no longer the case. I won't mention it here anymore but you are welcome to go to around page 8-9 of this forum and read what other players are thinking about the new "content".

Starting off with the visuals of the game. They are honestly not very good. There are certainly worse looking games out there but there are also much better looking games aswell. Many of the images are grainy and lack detail where you would expect it. The posing of the characters feels awkward at times. Even though this is an emotional game none of the characters faces ever change to show this emotion so it just feels out of place. There are many many instances of the text referencing something cosmetic that the renders do not reflect leading to a conflit between what you are being told is happening vs what is actually shown.

Moving on to the story. It's nothing super new or super exciting but it doesn't have to be if done right, and it isn't. At least in my opinion. Parents in an unhappy marriage struggle to raise son, adopt daughter to try to renew focus into the family and save marriage. It doesn't work leaving mom alone to raise 2 kids. Like honestly even writing that out for my review you can probably think of a handful of similar games. What does differ though is the titular "2 sides" mechanic. This allows you to experience the story from both the brother's and sister's perspectives and is honestly pretty neat. This is also where you run into the issue that for at least the first 2 chapters not much really changes from one perspective to the next since they are extremely similar leading to you essentially reading the same story twice with very minor text changes. And there is a LOT of text here. In chapter 3 the perspectives are vastly different so that's where it is most noticeable.

The writing is honestly the highlight of this game. Throughout the entire 3 chapters I don't think I saw one spelling mistake or grammatical error. Yea I'm one of the people that actually reads all the text. The writing also seems to be well researched with the areas that the game portrays getting city names, school names and distances between correct. While I'm not sure how important that is to most players it shows that the dev has at least some attention to detail.

So why am I overall giving this a 2/5? Mostly becasue I feel that I was decieved. Everything in the overview, tags, dev notes, genre spoilers point to this being a fairly vanilla bro-sis romance game. Like I said in the beginning of this review that is true up until the 3rd chapter. From there it devolves into pointless drama that could have been solved many, many different ways while still keeping the groundwork that the first 2 chapters laid down intact. Instead it's all ripped up and thrown away with how the characters decide to handle things leaving the overall experience feeling tainted. Honestly at the end of chapter 3 I found myself not liking either of the main characters of this game. They both just kinda suck for different reasons.

Anyway I think I've rambled enough hopefully this will help prospective players to decide whether or not to give this game a try. I will not be coming back to play any future chapters of this game. Seriously chapter 3 just left a bad taste in my mouth. Not to mention hours of wasted reading.

Review for the 0.02.0 Chapter 2 release.

My initial interest for this was the previous work of the Dev, which I liked very much, so I didn't even bother reading the Overview and anything else.

The "Game":
I was puzzled (obviously) by the "choices" presented to how to read this. I chose Hers First then his for every chapter. And I'm glad I did. I didn't try the other options, because I was completely satisfied with what I chose.

Since I hadn't bothered to even look at the Tags, I was a bit surprised of the Text on screen. I was thinking, it must be a Prologue thing... It wasn't.

This is a text HEAVY story, yes there's more than enough visuals, but the text on screen is ever present. If you don't like to read, be aware. Since I am a compulsive reader since early childhood, I am really in my element.

The story:

The duality of view points and perspectives, giving extra depth to what is happening along with very good writing and the captivating personality of both protagonists, make what could be a trivial "come of age" story into a very enjoyable tale of how they discover love. The Incest undertones of forbidden love along with a deep connection between the siblings, brought me to tears more than once.

Reasons for my Rating:

The writing. Both Sides feel Real.
The presentation. Even if a more legible font could be preferable for smaller screens, it worked well on my 4K.
The surprise of how well this worked and felt natural.
The graphics and lewds are decent and more than enough to allow immersion into the story, even if there's some lighting issues, it wasn't actually bad enough to degrade my classification.

I enjoyed it very much and will be waiting for the continuation of this.

Good Job Bad Mustard

Peace