Game Review - Blog Posts
No big post today, but I beat Mario 64 and got all 120 stars! ⭐️
Some comments:
- The 100 coin stars were the WORST part of this whole thing… especially in Tick Tock Clock…
- Shifting Sand Land was the stage that annoyed me the most… it felt very cramped because of the quicksand…
- The Red Coin stage near Tick Tock Clock with the Wing Cap was tough but oddly fun, I had to do it a couple times though cause I kept missing the clouds and running out of Cap time in the air…
- Bowser is REALLY hard to aim when swinging, I usually only picked him up close to the explosives for the fight but that’s not really an option for the final battle… also is it just me or is his model in this game kinda… cute??? Like a Toy Dino
- That ending caught me for a LOOP when Peach started talking, “full spoken sentences??? In my Mario game!” In all seriousness why have they never brought this back? A Mario game with full spoken dialogue would be great! Well… you don’t have to voice EVERYONE… but some characters would be nice…
Overall 9/10
Fun game but when it’s tough it is TOUGH, also turning around is always risky…
Game Review 2: Meeting in the Flesh
4.5/5 (I dislike one character)
MitF is straightforward text adventure, with basically no combat, movement, or sex you can interact with. It is, by all accounts, a choose-your-own-adventure. And any CYOA fan can tell you to not count them out. MitF is about the best you can hope for from this genre, and only has a lower rating for personal preference and it's dubious game-hood.
Part 1: the premise and setting.
I adore the setting of this game, full fat no mixer, it's genius. It's set in a fleshy landscape filled to the brim with uncertain ground, acidic pustules, and wide salt fields to dry the groundsweat in. The people who call this place home as closer to the description of a creature than anything else, but have a love and genuine comfort for their home. As alien as the shapes and sights, the game reminds you there are people in all the ways that really matter.
They have holidays and customs, dietary restrictions and cultural cuisine, in groups, out groups, discrimination, farming, home decor, delivery services, lust for adventure, love of family, the list goes on and on. These are people. Sure, they kill criminals by bleeding them into a vat of salt to flavor it. Sure they subsist on literally nothing but salt. Sure they are twisted and have a few extra, fewer, or altered limbs and body structure. As alien as the environment, the feeling that struck me the most was how frequently this place did feel like their home, even in the parts the narrator consider boring.
Speaking of, the game is narrated from the perspective of our main character, a salt deliveryperson of unspecified gender or sex (not that it is even guaranteed to be adjacent to how humans tend to do it) who makes their living by using their unique build to sprint to and fro about the city. This is how you manage your time in the game, you decide what events you have time for based on who you engage with in-between your deliveries, since you only have the time to talk to one of the eligible bachelors each day.
The character feels as though they have a history, a story, and what strikes me is their need for that same comfort. They need a home to truly place their heart (or equivalent) in. The usual bad ending of the game is just, returning to your apartment. Alone. The room feels darker, and the night feels colder, and the contrast between your space and the revelry outside crushes your confidence. You sleep fitfully. It gives a sort of context of stakes that really makes them vulnerable. On the topic of writing...
Part 2: the quality of characterization
I am a person who likes to read aloud the events of my text based games. I find the voice acting to be engaging and fun, and it gets me more into the headspace of the characters. This is all to mention that at no point in the game did I grow confused as to who Is talking to who.
The character writing gives a unique writing style to each character that almost always tells you a lot about how they interact with the world. The protag's manager is rough and tumble but caring, the old man they deliver to seems amenable but quietly lonely, the people in the street are excited by the execution and lap their lips at the idea of the blood spilling on the cobblestones.
Each of the bachelors expresses themselves uniquely, whether cautious and reserved, calculating and intelligent, or wild and impulsive, they all have a unique style of speech that carries through in every word they say.
Okay so the text game is very good, but that's not what these reviews are about. I'm not here to give you something objective, I'm here to provide my opinion. So the most important question is, are the bachelors sexy and how good is the bone?
Part 3: Horny
To preface, the game has a SFW mode, where it doesn't get too explicit. Don't use it.
The writing of these bachelors is great 2/3rds of the time, not because it's on and off, but because I adored two of the bachelors and thought the last one was the coward pick for the uninitiated, and didn't like his character. The other two? Oh yeah.
First, the problem child. Brattan. B is a big, buff wolfman with an adventurous spirit and athletic bent. You'd think I'd love him, but I find him so irresponsible and abrasive. Routinely he drags your character beyond their comfort zone, assuming you don't play to be just as of not more reckless than he is, seems to genuinely not engage in empathetic thought, and overall has this 'jock wannabe' vibe that's just sort of uncomfortable. Plus, his ending centers around finding a portal to earth and becoming a strange, flimsy, hairless ape that has to pay taxes. And like, I get nothing out of those scenes, unironically. He was Beast, why would I want prince Adam's scrawny cousin. D tier bachelor.
Second is Yiestol, a lithe (almost effeminately designed) insectoid man. He works as the sole individual who watches over the citywide security system, and has a hardworking, if calculating, earnestness for his job. He wants to help people, protect people, he's not sure if he has the right perspective to help this place the best, so a lot of his conversations are long discussions about his beliefs. His story focuses around how he struggles with intuitive moral decisions (girl same) and how the protagonist's perspective could balance his calculation with kindness. He makes sure, double sure, triple sure, that you want to be his partner, that you know what it entails, and what you'd be getting into. When it ends, you climb into the security system together and he engages in something between sex and absorption, as he proceeds to melt with you into a collective goop like a butterfly getting rearranged in a cocoon. I'm not usually one for Vore but WOW this scene hits hard. It frames it as becoming one in body and soul, and in the end, you live on within him, and he within you, with his final design having four arms and a heart design on the chest. Extremely good, A tier Bachelor.
Finally. My sweet, my darling Nyargh. I have never claimed to be objective or even handed, he is my favorite. A mass of tendrils and mouths hovers and bobs like a balloon, slithering red mass shifts and undulates to mimic traditional speech. Speaking is hard for Nyargh, and coupled with his cagey and brusque demeanor, he would surely have no visitors if he didn't run the only honey store in town. The rarest of all, the third food beyond blood and salt is honey, and he makes a pretty penny by protecting and rearing fat, cat-sized bumblebees. Nyargh is unfriendly to most, and respects those who can respect his taciturn nature. Throughout his route he asks many questions of the player, and rather than the reckless or well considered answers of the last two, he prefers the voice of respect and kindness above all. Eventually, you help him at his shop enough that he trusts you enough to invite you into his private sanctum. A lushly furnished and comfortable space, the smell of the setting-equivalent cookies in the oven, and even rare and precious tea is served to you to repay you for your time. Nyargh reveals that he is not unfriendly, he is simply a very private man. His romance path is one of tenderness and kind gestures, gifts, treats, and smiles spent in quiet quality time. Eventually, it comes to a head when you learn the reason he is so secretive. His kind do not eat much salt, they thrive primarily on the pheromones of others. Specifically, Nyargh feeds off of happiness. He sells honey because people feel happy when they buy it, or buy it for a celebration or payday. If they knew he was feeding off them, he'd be ostracized or even killed. When the protagonist accepts him for who he is and truly believes his gestures of kindness to be honest, the result is the most tender scene of tentacle fondling and mutual body exploration i've maybe ever read. Though he has trouble with communication, I was glad to see him always asking for permission at every step. Consent is sexy as fuck, guys, and I'm not exaggerating on that.
Closing thoughts
I adore this title. It's writing is so natural that I was able to do Y and N's routes first try by literally just being honest with them. Would have preferred a route to tame B's wild side, but you need to give the people with mid taste something to eat I guess.
Quintuple S-tier on the visualnovel scale
Solid A for Games in general, and I don't mean that lightly.
Game Review 1: Tales of Androgyny.
Note, this is a personal review, I'm not a games journalist or anything.
3.5/5 - C
ToA is a game with 3 segments and approximately 1 theme. It's a text-based adventure game, it's a shockingly complicated combat system, and a gallery where you get to view the game's one and only theme: watching an effeminate man be structurally redesigned by penises, sometimes male, mostly otherwise.
First, the adventure game.
The adventure and role play mechanics are surprisingly weak, but are made up for in the skill check system and descriptions. The game has very vivid and imaginative descriptions, which, when coupled with the visuals, are highly effective. The mechanics are a lot weak, but what I find more interesting than the skills you get from levelling up are the skills for failure. When you fail enough in combat, get your organs rearranged enough, or even choose to seek out noncombat deviancy you obtain as red skill associated with that depravity. I love the idea of developing skills without a clunky menu, where your actions just make you more effective at those actions, but it's used almost always as a debuff in this. Ironically, though, the complexity of skills and difficulty of the game seems to ask you to play longer for content that repeats itself and grows stale quickly, especially considering it's penchant for bad ends that just make you reload.
Second, the gallery
The art of this game is extremely hit or extremely miss, depending on your tastes. It seems to be designed to appeal to hentai addicts that looked a little beyond their comfort zone. For me it sits firmly in the space of 'i'll find this art disgusting the moment I'm done' but, to be honest, due to the game's very high raunch factor, it kind of works to the benefit of the game's theming. It feels like something you're not supposed to enjoy, so if you can get into the headspace of a first-time kink discoverer, it's really very fun. I'm not sure how much of that is intentional or incidental, but y'know, death of the author and all that. Overall, the large spash-screen pictures are good, and the little zoom-in you get in combat or text are very fun and usually are distinct based on what enemy you're fighting. The morph-image animation ends up being fairly smooth and doesn't take you out of the action. Plus, I'll admit, watching my character get assembled like Ikea furniture by absurd phalli is always a blast.
Third, but not last, is combat.
The combat system of ToA is big. Like, really big. It consists of a flirtation system, attack, defense, dodge, mid-combat intercourse, and the most stressful of all stances. Most of these are exactly what you expect. Turn based, increase enemy flirt meter, try not to die or get seduced yourself. Classic. But stances are the bread and butter of this system. Basically, each stance you get into has a number of associated actions, some of which are attacks, flirts, sex, the usual, and some that change your stance through doing them. Some are straightforward, you can't swing a sword while prone, so you spend a turn getting up into a crouch. But some are closer to 'i'm in a guard, I'll make a shield bash which will set my opponent into the off balance stance and me into the reckless attack stance, I can chain that into hammer down which lets me put an off balance opponent prone, and puts me off balance, I'll ignore off balance by laying atop the enemy once they're prone and now I can proceed to ride them cowgirl, the one sex stance I put all my points into-' -gasp ok you get the point. It's complicated. Most of that wasn't even far from the truth. It's, to a beginner or consumer without much time to invest, completely esoteric and nigh impenetrable, but I don't dislike it at all. A lot of games of this ilk are just too complicated for anyone's good, and this seems like it really rides the line. It's got an interface that tries to explain what each thing does, specialized icons, and like, at least it isn't maneuvering a hex map. The UX does a lot to mitigate how confusing it all is, and early fights need little strategy so you end up picking it up as you go. To be fair, it's genuinely trying something different and makes sure not to just yoink what already works, and that counts for a lot in my books.
Lastly: pornographic content
Part of the reason why I first chose this to be my initial review is because I find this game to rank firmly in the middle in terms of depravity. If you think it's too depraved for that, you may find my blog a tad distressing. If you think it's not depraved enough for that, you're probably right, but the ugly bastard style of art makes me read it as a little deeper than it is. I will likely talk about games that are more vanilla in their themes, but that I play because they are exceptional in other ways. The specific content of the game in question is almost entirely watching a twink get Yoda death noise'd by every cylindrical piece of salami in a 3-mile radius, a grand majority of which, although changeable by a setting, is (by default) held by a number of amazons and monster girls, with notable exceptions I'll leave out here. Its content, while vanilla, is largely up my alley, and I find it misses a lot of opportunities to spice things up. I'd say if you are a recovering hentai addict, trying to see the best that the world of the internet has to offer, it's a great place to start but I wouldn't end here by any means. It's in this part of the review that you will notice that I've gotten to a point in my life in which I have forgotten that the ordinary amount of depravity is zero out of 100. I don't mean kinkiness, I do genuinely mean depravity in the sense of being devoid of value. This is a game for people who are sitting at 10 maybe 15 on that scale, and I think I'm just at a point in my life where I don't find that particularly engaging without anything else to prop it up. The game has little to no story, the writing is largely insulated to specific scenes, and the major villains don't seem to be all that important other than being very difficult to fight. So if you're still using the word 'Futanari' to describe what you're into, this is probably a decent first step into being a person of real culture. Maybe when the orcs and elves are not so novel, you'll be ready to move on to something a little more advanced, like that werewolf from early on in the game.
Overall:
It's certainly a high-effort, high-polish game, but misses out on a whole world of Anthro, Beast, Monster, and other more exotic kinks, and lacks a great deal of depth when compared to text-based games of a similar style. If you really want to fall in love with your characters, experience some transformation, or get down and dirty with less vanilla partners or more interesting activities, you're better off looking elsewhere.
3.5/5 - great for beginners.