Ren'Py - Completed - Never Meet Your Heroes [v2023-11-13 v2] [ITK]

10/10 Will play again. By the other way is there any way I can use another Super to give to Gertrude, I’m currently trying to figure that out with my 4th play through and I’m going to speed run it. Other than that once you get a grip of the gameplay it becomes an easy grind, you’re basically Batman and have prep time and you can technically unlock powers if you follow the vigilante storyline. Basically you need patience to understand the gameplay to fly through it in your next play through like it’s nothing and find things you’ve never saw before.

Game version: Final.

The best 2* game I have played in a long time.

The story is actually quite GOOD and well written. There is a lot of lewd content, even if you had to grind a lot to get there eventually.

These were the "good" things about this game.
Now come the bad ones:

Many, if not most of the quests are non-linear, especially in the mid- to endgame. Unfortunately, the games does not care about critical choices (like sparing <> killing vip npc's) and would then just leave you with unfinished quest lines- you can't even fail them properly!
I have had this issue with one certain storyline The whole game feels and plays like a 2023's game stuck inside a 1990's PC. Renpy is obviously NOT made for pure 3D modeling. Maybe there are rigs that are capable of playing games like this without horribly performance / fps issues, but let's be real, the requirements are most likely tripled just because it's running in Renpy- If you did it with engines like Unreal 4, it would probably run 10000 times better, even on 1990's PC rigs.

TL;DR:
A good concept with a great story, almost ruined by the wrong choice of engine.
I hope the Dev has learned a lot while programming this game and that he will use this knowledge to make his second game better. And PLEASE, add a gallery next time.

...and the end is non-existent, too. Disappointing..

Never Meet Your Heroes is one of the biggest games in size and animations that I've ever seen but that doesn't translate on its premise and mechanics that it presents. During my gameplay I've encountered some glitches, stuttering and even some poor animations when they wanted to make it more smooth and fluid. Storywise it wasn't bad but the theme that he wanted to present lacks empathy and it becomes easy to predict what's next for the MC. The whole cast is average, some girls are good but sometimes their faces becomes silly in some situations, the protagonist is like Elon Musk if he got the face surgery at his 20s. I give it an extra star just cause he added animations which is the standard for modern VNs at this point. I don't recommend it.

+/- All girls are meaty, I'm talking thighs, butts, breasts, all balloon size
- lots of 3D hiccups: camera movement not smooth, dead expression, clipping, weird poses
- MC's backstory fell out of thin air
- wooden dialogues

More like 3 stars, bump to 4 just because the dev dropped the whole game at once. Gigachad move.

After a long ride with my bandwidth, I decided to give this game a try. I'd read some reviews and thought this was finally a good game with an action-packed story. However, it was a huge letdown.

First and foremost, the positives: the intro was not bad, albeit a little strange with the mouse movements again, as I'll explain further down in my review. And the voiceovers are quite good. To be honest, I'm not sure if it was an AI or human voice, but it sounds like it was created by real people.

Unfortunately, the story is very cringe, and it makes you want to go out, chop a palm tree and place it in front of your face. Nothing stands out in the story; everything is pretty much something you already know or have seen somewhere else million times. Interaction between characters is tedious and pretty much expressionless; it's as if you're talking to bricks.

The character design isn't bad, but that's to be expected from the tool used by the developer to create these, including the animations. To be honest, I thought this was made with DAZ at first.

The animation is what you'd expect from VM, but it's not particularly good. The developer clearly moves the mouse in some scenes to make it more dynamic. It just looks weird, and there are much better ways to do this that he was probably unaware of.

This is a sandbox game, and I don't understand why the developer did this. There is nothing in the game that adds to the enjoyment of playing this game sandbox. Instead, this should have been a kinetic novel. Adult sandbox games are disliked by many people due to their poor quality. You can expect collectibles, items, and much more to waste your time if you play a non-adult sandbox game. These things are either collectible cards, funny Easter eggs, or mostly repeatable sex scenes in adult sandbox games. However, there is nothing in this game. It's just a complete waste of time.

[Reviewed for the initial release, will definitely be revised in the future.]
[Revised from ✭✭✭✭✭ to ✭✭✭✰✰ after having more time with this initial release - July 3rd, 2023]

Revision after almost completing the game:
Although everything I said in my original review still stands (and you can read it below), after having more time with the game, I can't in good conscience give it more than 3 stars.
The bugs, crashes, bad performance and some incomplete story lines pull this game down.
Based on the dev's claims however, this is meant to be more like a content-rich demo for the actual game that is being worked on and updated for Patreon and Steam. So if you fancy the game, you should go and purchase it for the actual experience.
But alas, I'm reviewing a game that's uploaded here and not on Steam/Patreon, hence my revision.

You can read my original review below:
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TLDR:
This game is a good time.
This is a sandbox game that carries a campy humorous story with decent animations. It is good enough to deserve full score in my book.

More Context:
Here's where it lands on the Adult-Porn spectrum IMO:
[Adult] - - - - - - X - - - [Porn]

Reading other reviews, I truly wonder if people rating this game poorly are living on the planet "Amazing Porn Games". This game is a good version of what it is.

However, Note:
Although it is tagged as Completed, and to be fair is playable from start to finish, I think it should be treated as an Early Access.
There are some bugs and UI issues, and some scenes are filled with place-holders instead of animations, etc.

Some of these are reportedly improved upon in a later version and the dev seems to be actively working on the game which is always a plus.

The dialogue is clearly proof-read which is a double plus.

To release a functional game, even if it is in early access deserves an extra round of applause.

I personally like the face models and body proportions a lot, but of course, this can be subjective.
I also think the dev understands how to make sex scenes erotic. The animations and the camera angels are smart. That's rare.

There are mini-games and some grind which is standard practice in sandbox games. They are there to gamify the experience. You may or may not like them.

Conclusions:
I recommend this game. The superhero story, although campy and corny at times, is mostly fun. And the erotic aspect is great enough to deserve your time.

I personally will keep an eye on the later version of this game, and the future games of this developer.

So far so good, character models sexy and immersive story, plus that radio host is funny af. The lore is quire interesting and so far enjoying it. Would give it 5 stars but not covered enough to be sure yet

O. M. G. the cringe....

Ok, fair is fair, this game on the visual stand point is very well cared. I might not like the cow look choosen for the women but the quality is there.

And the music selection is interesting.

But then... The story, the ****** story! I've never had seen a colossal bunch of borrowed ideas so huge... Really, how did anyone think this was ok? I'm shocked...

And in my life i've seen crap in the measure of the turkish rip off of Star Wars, the Japanese Spiderman (Supadaman), the Nigerian Spiderman who can shoot fireballs and stuff only nightmare would host

But i've never felt as cringy as with this game.

Still 3 for the technical quality.

The game is marked as completed, great. That means you can get every content available. But you probably won't.

PROS:

• Renders are good enough. Women are pretty and hot, for the most part.
• Story is passable. It's not the best but it's far from the worst out there.
• There's quite a lot of content.

CONS (nitpicks but imo, worth pointing out):

• There's a lot of unnecessary grind and repetition. I get it, you need to increase certain stats to progress, or do some tasks, but doing one thing, advancing like 1/10th of the way towards the next step is just bad.
• In some cutscenes, the way the camera moves to frame different angle is laughable. There are micro-pauses and jitters making it obvious that someone is simply moving their mouse to get the angle.
• UI and the entire game needs a lot of QOL changes. Like why am I only able to access my phone (to view my objectives) while I'm in my bedroom? Why can't I simply just click on the bed (which is a bigger target) to sleep and advance to next day? Instead, I have to click on tiny buttons at the top of the screen. (Look up Fitts's Law)
• The time of day system is a combination of being not fully thought and bugged.
• BUGS. Bugs everywhere. imo, the game is not ready yet for a full release. Dev should've spent some more time finding and resolving bugs. You'll be locked out of content without you knowing why.

The bugs I encountered include:

• Time of day. The displayed state rarely matches with what it currently is. "Gym is closed at night" but the game says it's already morning. One thing advances the time from morning to late night, another from morning to afternoon, another from morning to next day. It's confusing.
• Completing one objective does not guarantee it gets updated. It makes you wonder if you did the right thing or you missed something.
• You'll be locked out of certain paths without knowing the path is already dead. For example, that Adente Giant thing. Not choosing Gertrud would mean in your task list, you still have the objective to deal with the giant. But you can't do anything anymore so you're stuck in that path.
• No matter how many enemies I defeated, I couldn't get past level 6.
• Choosing either option in the ending gives the same cutscene of you going through the teleporter despite one option clearly saying you wanted to stay in the city. The only difference is that really going back to your universe takes you to the main menu while the other lets you continue the game.

I am sorry to inform your this but this game is FULL of bugs.
By the capital word "full" here mean i meant it.
Holy jesus, UI bugs, progress bugs, animated scenes is laggy, you name it....

Something to mention too is that the game have a time system, but some action interaction is really weird. Like, working out 4 times a day doesn't cost time, working as the coffee shop 3 times cost 1 time period but as long as u press the 4th time it will consume all the time and skip to night time.

Mechanics in the game is kinda clunky, laggy too.
At some point in the game, the UI even starting to show me "end game booty call" UI that supposely show up if u finished story with a certain girl. But the problem is i havent even progress or havent even started that girl story line. Just to show you how broken it is.

This game need extreme optimization.
There are efforts of content but not debugging/optimization.

Good concept and great visuals, but somewhat poor execution as you can get locked out of paths if you level up stats quickly and not in the order that the game wanted.
There is good amount of content (10+ hours depending on how you read) and the scene variation is also good. However there is unnecessary bloat and grind in storylines that serve no purpose other than padding up gametime.

Rating - 4/5, adding 0.5 because the game is complete.

Scenes are awesome, girls are awesome. I love fucking the Heroes in their suits and POV. Great use of VAM with high quality production. For the most part. Held back severely by glitches, sandbox design, and no gallery.

Grinding is a snoozefest here, meant to take your time. It'd be far better if a VN approach were used, but the writing is.... pretty bad. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. The game is carried barely by its premise. It's mostly carried by the H-scenes and the production quality which mainly occurs in the beginning portion. It'd be good if all H-scenes and girls are revisitable or have a gallery, but that's only really the case for a good half of them.

Disclaimer - I am adding a star for releasing a full game, which is massive and does a lot to make it more enjoyable, knowing you won't get cockblocked halfway through.

With that out of the way - it's a good game, 3/5. You can tell a lot of attention has gone into trying to polish visuals and while it's painfully clear it's a scrappy dev and not a proper studio with a huge budget, they're still pretty alright. Outside of some sex animations being a little wooden, they're mostly better than what you'd expect.

The story....it tosses a lot onto you and the MC is thrown into things, but it's passable. It's The Boys, in case you were wondering, pretty clearly. Not "it's kind of inspired by The Boys" or "there's some stuff from The Boys", it just IS. Right down to femlander, Herogasm and so on. That's fine by me, it's fresh, it's not bad.

On the gameplay side - mix of mini-games, exploration, grinding. Does the job. Not a kinetic novel, not a grindfest.

Sex side - passable, but I didn't like it so much. There's a concept most of them don't enjoy sex, so it was a little ehhh. Lots of sex, low eroticism.

Overall, it's still better than 90% of stuff, although clearly not good enough to fit into those elite few that you all know.

So why 3/5, if I drop the one star for it actually being completed?

Well, it's DAMN hard to figure out, even with the journal, what, where and who. Not in a way that promotes organic exploration, just convoluted. I enjoyed the Dia storyline, then at some point it just said "talk to dia" but there's no prompt for that. I'm pretty much done and I still hav eno idea where it is.

I stopped playing because it was frustrating to miss content and have no idea, but still, I enjoyed it.