VN - Ren'Py - Rise of the Crime Lord [v0.12 Alpha 1 Extended] [IziRider]

As of 0.9

In short - desperately needs a proofreader.
It's not a bad game and the story, characters and choices are interesting. Sadly it's plagued by really bad grammar and outright untranslated lines, even in parts of the game released months ago. If you can stomach that - there is a ton of content and good promise for the future. If not - avoid.

I was pleasantly surprised with this game. I delayed playing it for a while as my expectations for another mafia/criminal based game are pretty low.

CONS:
The renders are all solid and they admittedly get better as the game has gone along, but some of the earlier images seemed a bit washed out and lacking any life. Also, the models are pretty standard and several of them look a like; plus they are a little dated although this game was started in 2018.

The biggest concern, however, is the English. Sometimes it's really good and other times it's clumsy and it pulls you out of the story. Cora's dialogue seems to be the worst and not sure why.

PROS:
The characters are great. They are all different and each of them brings something to the game. The exception might be Ashley, but otherwise, each character has a role with some meat to play and has an impact on the story.

I especially like the dual MCs. I like playing Rick and Cora as it really helps change the story to fit your mood. Part of it may just be me, as I have this weird thing about cheating wives and having them get caught by a faithful husband and then punished and put in their place (although we don't know that is going to happen yet). Regardless of my "fetish", it still makes the story interesting. You could have several different types of stories going on. They could both be faithful, one could be cheating, both could be cheating.... Plus, the interact with the other characters so differently as well.

So you have all of these characters, all with a role to play and a story that can be played several different ways and it makes for multiple playthroughs.

Finally, Rick, our main MC, while he can be a badass, he also makes mistakes. His is not one of those VN protagonists that never makes a mistake and always wins. He is flawed, questions his own decisions, and makes mistakes but at the same time, he does not shy away from making the tough calls.

Summary:
I think this VN could be a whole lot more popular than it is, but it does suffer from a slow release schedule. Also, I think the title and overview probably throws off potential fans. If you a looking for something different but entertaining, give this one a try.

Review for v 0.9
The Good:
All girls are beautiful
The animations are good

The Bad:
Most of the girls are just bait - no sex just lengthy extremely stupid conversations.
The story after the first 5 min becomes irrelevant
The point system is all over the place
Lots of teasing lewd content per Mb is insignificant.

The Ugly:
The worst Engrish imaginable! What makes it so horrible is that the writing is extremely pretentious - after the automatic translation probably google translate it becomes incomprehensible mess.
What makes it even worst - it is abundant! Even when flying over this drivel using <CTRL>key - it took almost an hour!
It is a mystery what is the purpose of this project
- as a porn entertainment it is just annoying;
- the story is unoriginal and needlessly convoluted;
- the writing is miserable failure.

I played the recent 0.9 extended version, and I must say that this is one of the best games I've ever played.

Pros:
Very good, tight storyline
I wanted to read through all the text and not just play the game solely for the sex scenes.
Engaging characters
No typical cliches or stereotypes here, all the characters are three dimensional and you actually care about the while playing the game i.e they're not just a dick or pussy, there's an actual person there.
Almost every choice matters
Every choice that you make matters and can change your relationship with the other characters in a significant way, which in turn leads to very different stories.
Attractive renders
All the character models in the story are attractive, though variability in body types is a bit missing.

Cons:
Horrendous translation
The translation from Hungarian to English is poorly done, and the game is littered with all sorts of English language errors in literally every sentence. I felt this was manageable enough given the game's other strengths. YMMV.
Less sex scenes
This one might not be true for all players as I made the mistake of playing without a walkthrough and might have simply missed many of the scenes.

TL,DR; This is a game that has a compelling plot, good characterization, the animations themselves were standard for your average Renpy game, character designs are all excellent. The only thing that lets it down is the horrible translation and its lower amount of sex scenes.
IMO, it's worth a try and deserves four stars.

[v0.9 Extended]

Honestly, this is an absolute 5* if it wasn't for one specific issue. The script could really be among the best of the best if it went through a proofreader. This is certainly not the worst Engrish you will see. In fact, it's actually really good for a non-native speaker. You have frequent grammar issues and odd usage of words here and there, but make no mistake, the characters do not come off as robotic or lifeless. They express themselves well. In fact, there were more than a few instances where the characters were saying some profound shit. So yes, I docked a point for the grammar issues, but only because I feel like it's holding back the script from reaching its true potential.

Before we even get into the review. This type of story isn't for everyone. It's dual protagonist for one thing. Plus, there is a lot of infidelity going on on all sides. It's just that type of setting. People cheated before, as swingers or otherwise. There are options to cheat or stay faithful, on both sides. Most side characters have cheated on their SOs before in some fashion. None of these characters are saints. This makes them interesting and real, at least if you are not one of those people that tries to find some pure woman to self insert romance in a game.

If you are still with me, what you will find is a gripping story that wouldn't be out of place in some TV crime drama. The people saying choices make no difference are talking out of their ass. The choices make a huge difference in how the characters view and interact with each other. It's also not just a binary thing. There is a whole bunch of intermediate states for these relationships and a bunch of combinations that could happen. This is a work of art in coding and execution in my opinion. I'm doing sort of an in between route with the wife (neither full spouse nor full divorce path) and the way the relationship is being balanced and how it evolves through the choices is pretty amazing.

I wasn't that sure about the dual protagonist at the start, but it certainly won me over by the end. I had a feeling that the wife's story was mainly just an excuse to add NTR. I love NTR in pure NTR stories, but I didn't feel like screwing over the male protagonist in this particular game. So I chose to remain faithful with her and mess around with the male MC to see how that turns out lol. Anyways, while the focus is definitely on the male side, the wife's story arc becomes rather interesting in its own right. The two sides intersect at some point and we get into a situation where we are following the big picture from 2 different angles. That's some great stuff.

The last thing I want to touch on is the sex scene. This is definitely above average in my view of what good scenes should be. There are some sexy dialogues during the scenes with different positions, and the length is generally long enough to be satisfying. Of course, there is always room for improvement, but it's certainly better than some half assed scenes in other games that end in 3 clicks.

Basically, this is a great crime drama if you are comfortable with characters showing questionable morals, including a lot of unfaithfulness going on everywhere (mostly in the past for the unavoidable cheating stuff). English has some issues, but the substance of the text is certainly more interesting to read than something from a poor writer with perfect English.

well till now i really enjoy the story, but i just played it now. There are already deep short cuts during each chapter, i'm afraid if u want to tell the story right u need like 20 more years, atleast i got plenty ideas how how it can workout. I don`t mind the rushes between chapters. So keep em up till we get to the end, later on u can do some esthecic changes or add more animations. But geez finish the story first pretty plz ^^. Just let him get to scarface faster.

Choices don't particularly effect characters, especially your wife who no matter what you do has cheated on you repeatedly in the past and who constantly considers cheating on you in the actual story. Again you can be a stand-up guy and never cheat or anything but she's still going to fantasize about every other guy even while on the next screen she's like: "But I luvh him too". Don't play if immersion is important(poorly done) and you're not a cuck on some level.

Messy story with terrible English, It's utterly confusing at times, add ontop of that multiple points of views straight off the bat (and later adding another protagonist to the mix) And you are left with a turdsandwich.

Renders are decent but the sex scenes are bad, the first scene is literally watching a ballsack move up and down over two stillframes.
Such a shame because I got a good impression during the initial banter between Timothy and Gabe, but suddently neither of them are a protagonist like one would have thought.

Get a proofreader, produce some animations or at the very least better renders during sex then stick to one protagonist and try to have more realistic dialogue and the game would surely be pretty decent even if all these aspects are executed with average quality and skill/effort.

The kindest word that can be used to describe this game is generic. Generic renders generic dialog, generic sexuall scenarios. And I'm unsure why this game is called Rise of the crime lord. It should be called The future Crime lords cheating wife. Miss it and save yourself some bandwidth.

I really like this one, is becoming one of my favourites

Excellent cast of characters, but especially CORA. I love every scene involving her (especially the cheating ones, very very well done, i need more)
I'm surprised the little support this dev has, i think this game has really good quality. And i'll support him for sure

always postponed to try this novel - because of huge amount of thoughts of characters. Yesterday forced myself to go through iit, and don't regret about it. Interesting and scenery, good characters with it's personality - a lot of emotionally filled situations. Have hirricane of thoughts about relationships in couple, trust, love. Very interesting. I shocked, why rating is so low. Thank You very much!Wish You all the best!

Well written (with some minor English snafu's, usually pronouns), enticing, with a lot of character depth, and a lot of variety in pathing. There is a "hump" in the start pretaining to some future LI being seen with others done in what is for the most part the past/prologue which may not appeal to all, and optional Netorare in the present but honestly I think letting that get in the way of really giving the game a try would be a loss to all involved. The characters are very well defined and realistic. There are plenty to choose from, but some are slow burns so you've been warned. Story itself is a homage to all the great Mob films, and paces itself like an epic, but worth every minute given the chance IMHO.

Not Interesting, More soap opera than mafia story. The fact that it took almost three years ( way too long ), to come up with only this much content, is really milking the patron cow. Animations are a little less than average, lots of decent looking female characters, with mostly soap opera scenario interactions. Bland story, edging on the point of boring. Gets a little confusing in regards to interactions with so many female characters, like many were thrown in just for content and not important to a main story line. I played this when it first came out and have a few times since. Disappointing that after almost THREE YEARS, it's just not interesting.

I have played the latest update of the game and I have the enjoyed it as much as I could. The game has a decent story-line and it has improved overtime, the images are good and so are the animations.
I may be nitpicking here but the grammar can be improved considerably. This to me is a non-issue since I get what the dev. wishes to convey but still there are mistakes that even a non-native English speaker like me can't ignore.
Having said that, I personally can't wait to see what happens in the next update.

My Rating (B+):

Pros:
+ Graphics Great
+ Characters Great
+ Great Dialogs
+ Crime Story
+ Nice Animation

Cons:
- Some Minor Spelling Errors
- Some sentences sound weird
- Update very short

Conclusion:
Didn't think much when I downloaded it, but boy was I wrong, hot wife, good looking MC, Nice Mafia settings, no bullshit double clicking around, and suspense of the game are just a few of the stuff you will Encounter in this game.

Overall:
A Hot Story, Great Characters.Crime Settings and a very good told story are just a few of the encounters of this game.
Damn worth the download and your probably gonna be surprised of the game like I was....

The story is good, it has generic themes but it's interesting, the characters are very likeable, but one thing, just one thing makes this game a completely no go for me, and it is the horrible, painful english, and i really mean painful, it hurts every time you see a big mistake, and trust me, you will see A LOT of mistakes, probably in every phrase. I kept playing it for a bit to see if the english mistakes were corrected or at least reduced, but for my surprise, it actually get way more worse, i'm not a native english speaker either, but damn, it seems that it was written by a 5 yo kid, or just translated in google translate, and if you don't know english very well or don't know english at all, i don't see why would you make a game in english. So it's a shame, i couldn't stand anymore and stoped playing this game.

There are quite a few problems with this game. One issue I see that keeps popping up and definitely the most glaring is the translation. Although that can't be entirely helped, it would definitely help if they had someone double check their work. Most of the time it feels as if its a machine translation. However, this doesn't entirely ruin the game. What makes this something worth skipping over entirely is everything else: the story and the renders.

The story is bland and predictable. It should remind you a lot of other games where you play a "mafia boss" or "gangster." The trope of a broken family and struggling marriage is also present from the start. The only "innovative" aspect of the story is the fact you can neglect your family and relationships.

The renders, well, they're also painfully generic and bland. You've probably seen most of these base models in other games as well. For example, the main character looks like a younger, slightly more clean cut version of Eric from Big Brother. The environments are marginally better and have less unused space compared to settings in other games but some areas are pretty sparse.

I could overlook the so-so renders and bad translation if the game wasn't so painfully generic. If it were only those two problems, I would give it at two, three at most if the scenes were top notch. But the story drags everything down.

This is a game that suffers greatly from the bad English translation.
When I played through it, it didn't feel as if it was badly written, but as if it had just been translated word for word in English, which leads to weird sentences and words which just don't have the same contextual meaning they probably have in the devs own tongue.

The game already has a lot of content at version 0.5. Hours of gameplay (due to the horrible Engrish I actually skipped a few bits here and there, so it would be even longer if you read every little conversation in full) and several sex scenes.

There are many gorgeous women and by having most of them already be well known to the MC, you can show quite a lot of sex early in the game, which is definitely a plus.

While not being terribly original, the characters and the story are well made and entertaining enough that I waded through a swamp of really horrible English to get to the end of the current build.

ROTCL would have easily gotten 4 stars from me, perhaps even five if the English was better.
That should be the devs first priority now, get someone to fix the English translation so that it doesn't drag an otherwise really good game down with it.

my thoughts for 0-5b

WHAT THE FUCK is happening who am i? who is this? why are these characters ugly? what the fuck is going on? who is my father who is my mother? what am i choosing? why my choise doesnt affect the game? why i only watch people fuck around?

and will i come back for second time? answer is no
there is literally no story you dont know whats happening and game wont tell you .

its just a waste of time

This VN has the potential to be flat out amazing, and arguably could be one of the greats. Reading the oh so painful English translation several times almost made me delete the game entirely. The renders are OK. Not horrible, but then again not anything to get all fired up about either. On the plus side though, while the renders are only fair the girls themselves are very good. Varied in appearance, unique, and sexy, the babes are just that....babes.
But here is where this VN shines like a diamond: the story. The story in this VN just grabbed me, and really pulled me in, and despite the horrible English translation that at points is almost unreadable, I found myself really wanting to know what was going to happen next.
Want more? The choices you make actually make a difference in the arc of the story. Just incredible.
So despite the so-so renders, and despite the terrible English translation, this is still a game I recommend.
Now can we get the Dev a strong translator to help with the English? That would make this game a 5 star game.
Bump up the render quality as well?.....this could end up being talked about with some of the other greats.
Really hope to see more. Congrats to the Dev on an amazing story and fun VN.