This is a huge divergence from the Breedtown series as usual. Gameplay is a major step forward - a fully developed mystery instead of a bunch of meaningless fetch quests. Tone wise it's a step back (at least for me), with the characters steeped in the despondence of cruelty and injustice. If hearing about how women's lives are ruined was something you only tolerated, you'll find this game considerably less sexy than its predecssors. If you don't care, or especially if you love the idea of getting to solve a mystery, play this game right away.
Lets start by talking about the major shift in tone that comes with the shift away from Brandon Reed as our playable character. We are now Inspector Nero who is tasked with following up after Brandon's latest Mass Impregnation Event as she interviews witnesses, goes on mini-quests, and tries to balance locating a whistleblower with her true goal of tracking down Reed himself. Unlike the previous titles where the plot skips town when the bastard father does, we start as the women are just coming to grips with their new reality. As such it's easy to put ourselves in the main character's place, particularly when her dissection and criticisms of Reed's misdeeds are absolutely on point. Now that you mention it, consent to have sex and consent to be impregnated are very different things, especially when the victim is convinced it's a roleplay exercise and their partner has in no way warned them of their magic ability. Quite a shift from the gleefull impregnator to the shattered lives he leaves behind.
The attitudes and circumstances of the women of the Breedtown series have always ran the gamut. Some women go into their sexual encounters with full understanding and consent, while others are lied to, coerced, kidnapped, and raped. The player is given an epilogue for each woman where it's made clear that some gladly welcomed and thrived under their new responsibilities, and others had their lives destroyed by the uncaring protagonist. It always seemed to me a bit strange to include the latter in a sex game.
Sex games are fun when they're light and sexy. I personally find nothing light or sexy about lying to, coercing, kidnapping, or raping women, or hearing about how their lives have been destroyed by an unfortunate encounter with a magical rapist. The scenes I love from this series are the ones where the women beg to be bred. There are typically a high enough ratio of the latter to the former that I can get off, and I can always skip past the scenes that I find personally distasteful before moving on to the next. I can ignore the harsh reality of the day after, because for the player there is no day after, and hey - it is just a game.
This whole game is the harsh reality of the day after. We meet these women as they try to come to grips with their lives as they know them being over, now in such dire financial straits there's little hope of a decent future. They are in the midst of being metaphorically fucked by a company that not only fires its women for getting pregnant, it issues them steep fines. Those foolish enough to seek understanding and compassion from their fellows are met with at best indifference, at worst outright hostility. One woman can't bring herself to have an abortion, even though she knows she'll lose her work Visa and have to return to a country that will most likely execute her for her "crimes". What's fun or sexy about any of that?
Some of these issues may be mitigated by the game's epilogues, which may even change based on the choices the player makes. Most players will find they won't have the time or inclination to play through the entire game again to find out, and it's largely irrelevant when the tone is so bleak for the game's vast majority. The player should not hold out hope their investigation will bring these issues to light, nor the system to justice. Neither of the twin major injustices of coerced/forced impregnation or economic destitution are addressed by the game's end.
Here's the thing, though: This was already there in the other games. Brandon's always been a bastard that does shit because it feels good. The consequences have never hurt him, always hurt the women, only now it's all front and center instead of in the background. I've given him my consent because I keep playing the games, so who's the real bastard here?
Gameplay wise, the game is a complete shift as well, this time in a great direction. The predecssors were Scene Collectors - little more than lists of activites to check off so you could get to the good stuff. Play them with an open walkthrough and you not only lose nothing from the experience, but you cut through a lot of bullshit. If you decide to give this one a try, do yourself a huge favor: Spoil as little as possible.
The game is a very good mystery, better than most non-erotic games that try to be great mysteries. I was excited to take notes with timelines of activities, a list of loose ends, relevant bits of information, and an ever changing To-Do list as each interview and discovery added another piece to the puzzle, or peeled back another layer of the mystery. Toward the end I was racking my brains to figure out which of the clues were most significant, which of the suspects eliminated from contention. The player can decide to choose to end the game far before they've seen everything it has to offer by arresting whomever they see fit. Rather than a cop-out this feels like a gentle dare. "Oh, come on... You're not gonna give up already, are you?"
The sex scenes feel very different. There are less scenes in this game than in the previous two and they happen at a slower rate, so if you're looking for a quick fap, look elsewhere. They now feature some simple animations, which is a change I personally appreciate, and they didn't get rid of the great dialogue. The main difference is before they felt like the reward for completing a fetch quest, the only enjoyment after slogging through what passed for gameplay. The gameplay's been elevated - the scenes now happen in the middle of an interesting puzzle. Before they were the appetizers and sides thrown together to take the place of a Main Course. Now they are the sides and appetizers to a delicious main course, made no worse except by comparison.
I find myself rewatching favorite scenes from Breedtowns 1 & 2, and I expect I won't be doing that for this one. On the contrary, I wouldn't want to play another Scene Collector like 1 or 2, but I'd love to play another in this vein. The artist is teasing that they'll grace us with a sequel, and if they manage to blend the gameplay of this game with the lighter tone and sexiness of the first two, it'll be an outstanding piece. This is a great piece that fans of mysteries and puzzles will definitely enjoy, just don't expect it to get you off as much as its predecessors.
