[Review as of Ch4]
I don't have a ton of good things to say about Twisted Fates. The plot is dull and the pacing is a mess. The porn dialogue is a mess and a turn-off. The rest of the dialogue and writing is just awkward, wooden, and boring.
The core plot utterly lacks tension. The MC has a long and storied past, but none of it is told to you at all, meaning the characters are constantly making decisions based on context you don't have. The overpowered MC plus lack of clarity on what's going on robs any tension with the scenes, so you just kind of watch as the MC SFXes his way through non-problems. I tend to enjoy fantasy, but I just can't bring myself to care about anything happening in Twisted Fates.
The VN is also tonally all over the place. It leaps between confrontations that are presumably supposed to be tense, teenage drinking games, and the like with seemingly no interest in continuity. Scenes are frequently set up for no reason and go nowhere: for instance, at one point in Ch4 several of the characters go to a spa, and we're showed a few lines of dialogue where they realize that it isn't open yet. That's it. This wasn't important, nothing happened, and it isn't returned to. And then a few moments later they're apparently going to some party or other out of nowhere, and again it's hard to care because it comes out of nowhere and means nothing. We're introduced to a bunch of throwaway characters without accomplishing anything in the narrative, and then that scene ends because it's time to go back to progressing the plot. It's like reading a sequence of vignettes which happen to involve the same characters, except none of them actually stand on their own either.
The porn, just... doesn't do anything for me. In addition to the characters being relatively bland, the dialogue is just atrocious. The scenes read like they're ripped from poorly translated JVNs, but the characters don't even maintain consistent personas during them. The MC, for instance, speaks like a blushing virgin one line and confident/controlled the next. The romantic relationships are just as bad: the MC and his main LI, both of whom are in their 30s or older, both act like fifteen year olds when asked about their relationship. Hell, not only do they conceal it from the world, they even conceal it from the reader. I'm four chapters in to a story, allegedly from the MC's POV, and I still barely know what he thinks about anyone.
I'm perplexed that, as of writing this, this VN is rated as high as it is. There are lots of VNs that I understand a wide range of scores for: they might have obvious rough edges, controversial material, strong stylistic choices, a bad first few chapters, or big weaknesses to offset their strengths. This is none of those. It's just poorly written and a reminder that, even by the low standards of fanfiction writing, the bar is often underground.
I can tell that a lot of effort went into putting this together and I hope it turns around, but I can't see myself returning to Twisted Fates. It needs a complete rewrite from the ground up. The dialogue needs fixing, the narration needs fixing, the plot needs fixing, the pacing needs fixing, the editing needs fixing. It's just a mess.
I don't have a ton of good things to say about Twisted Fates. The plot is dull and the pacing is a mess. The porn dialogue is a mess and a turn-off. The rest of the dialogue and writing is just awkward, wooden, and boring.
The core plot utterly lacks tension. The MC has a long and storied past, but none of it is told to you at all, meaning the characters are constantly making decisions based on context you don't have. The overpowered MC plus lack of clarity on what's going on robs any tension with the scenes, so you just kind of watch as the MC SFXes his way through non-problems. I tend to enjoy fantasy, but I just can't bring myself to care about anything happening in Twisted Fates.
The VN is also tonally all over the place. It leaps between confrontations that are presumably supposed to be tense, teenage drinking games, and the like with seemingly no interest in continuity. Scenes are frequently set up for no reason and go nowhere: for instance, at one point in Ch4 several of the characters go to a spa, and we're showed a few lines of dialogue where they realize that it isn't open yet. That's it. This wasn't important, nothing happened, and it isn't returned to. And then a few moments later they're apparently going to some party or other out of nowhere, and again it's hard to care because it comes out of nowhere and means nothing. We're introduced to a bunch of throwaway characters without accomplishing anything in the narrative, and then that scene ends because it's time to go back to progressing the plot. It's like reading a sequence of vignettes which happen to involve the same characters, except none of them actually stand on their own either.
The porn, just... doesn't do anything for me. In addition to the characters being relatively bland, the dialogue is just atrocious. The scenes read like they're ripped from poorly translated JVNs, but the characters don't even maintain consistent personas during them. The MC, for instance, speaks like a blushing virgin one line and confident/controlled the next. The romantic relationships are just as bad: the MC and his main LI, both of whom are in their 30s or older, both act like fifteen year olds when asked about their relationship. Hell, not only do they conceal it from the world, they even conceal it from the reader. I'm four chapters in to a story, allegedly from the MC's POV, and I still barely know what he thinks about anyone.
I'm perplexed that, as of writing this, this VN is rated as high as it is. There are lots of VNs that I understand a wide range of scores for: they might have obvious rough edges, controversial material, strong stylistic choices, a bad first few chapters, or big weaknesses to offset their strengths. This is none of those. It's just poorly written and a reminder that, even by the low standards of fanfiction writing, the bar is often underground.
I can tell that a lot of effort went into putting this together and I hope it turns around, but I can't see myself returning to Twisted Fates. It needs a complete rewrite from the ground up. The dialogue needs fixing, the narration needs fixing, the plot needs fixing, the pacing needs fixing, the editing needs fixing. It's just a mess.
