City of Broken Dreamers

A sex-fueled cyberpunk story about a mercenary/ghost that tries to do the good thing and goes against an evil corp. The LIs are interesting and plentiful, although you can only choose one. The sex scenes are various but lack variety (they mainly focus on BJ and anal). The points system is there to lock options and "guide" you to select your final LI. The story can end in different ways, depending your choices. The music is nice, there also some sound FX occasionally (some explosions and bullets). Overall, it's another classic game to try, either you are here for the story or for the bouncy titties!

This is one of the best games that has actually been completed on this entire site imo. Amazing story, characters, and it is just so damn immsersive and fun. The sex scenes may not be amazing, but they are still pretty good. I honestly wish there was more from this creator since I also loved Depraved Awakening but unfortunately he seems to be inactive now );

Very solid game. Great writing, atmosphere, and characters (models included). One thing I enjoy is that choices you make are constantly influencing conversations and events, it didn't feel like just a bland affection point system. Definitely one of those games that you begin for the hot women, then end up staying for the story. Sex scenes aren't bad (they're still hot and sometimes kinky), but also not a core, which I don't think is a bad thing for this game specifically. Great time.

Great Work Here!!! The graphics and story all come together to create a suspenseful vibe. I especially enjoy the mood lighting! I look forward to your future projects and will share this to spread the word.

v1.15.0 (reviewed at the end of chapter 7) This is not a porn game. This is prime book material. At the beginning I thought the story was too convoluted, now, it seems like the beginning of the story is this way because the dev was trying to add sex scenes to a story that is already great without them. I advise to not play another game at the same time because there are a lot of names and I personnally got lost a few times. But now, I'm hooked and I need to know how the story will go. Apart from that, renders and animations are great. I mostly play without sound but the scene at the end of Chapter 7 had music that gave me chills.

I played this game very late in my AVN journey as I'm not a fan of the whole cyberpunk thing. However, the dev's previous game, Depraved Awakening, gave me hope, so I tried it and didn't regret. It is now in my Top-10. Pros: 1) A good story with some branching; 2) Lots of action; 3) Very good visuals; 4) The LIs are an upgrade over the previous game too; 5) Specific Girls: Katie is a sweetheart, and Victoria is an interesting character with lots of variability; 6) Lots of porn; 7) The MC is a badass on the good guy path; 8) Completed. Cons: 1) The MC is significantly less competent on the evil path; 2) The evil path doesn't deviate from the good one enough. As the result, we get the MC who wants to do something evil, screws up, and reverts back to being a nice guy ; 3) The whole The Pit storyline late in the game feels like it's unnecessarily dragging the story; 4) Some of the LIs' personalities could be deeper explored. 5 stars; a certain recommendation for someone wanting a porn action movie or just a completed game with good visuals, but don't expect much bad guy roleplay from the evil path.

A stunningly beautiful AVN with a story so deep it makes AAA cyberpunk games look like cheap fan fiction. Top notch lewd scenes, a chilling soundtrack, interesting characters and meaningful choices make City of Broken Dreamers an unforgetable experience.

I give it 5 stars. The story is nice and something else - not always the same old. There are several endings therefore choices matter! Graphics and animations are really good. There are some kinky things but you can mostly avoid it.

City of Broken Dreamers [v1.15.0 – Chapter 15] - Completed The good thing about an outstanding AVN is that the review can be kept short. I first played City of Broken Dreamers about three years ago, then put it aside and only recently noticed that it had since been completed. Because I already liked it back then, I wanted to finish it properly this time. And it did not disappoint. Renders: 7/5 ⭐ Animations: 7/5 ⭐ Female Models: 6/5 ⭐ Male Models: 4/5 (–1 for the MC’s mask) Story: 4/5 H-Scene Writing: 5/5 Background Music: 5/5 SFX: 2/5 Choices Matter: 5/5 Renders and visuals are top-notch. The LIs are attractive and remain interesting thanks to their different looks, body types, and intimate details. The story is fairly straightforward, but still engaging enough to keep you hooked. Choices have consequences, and there are multiple endings. I also really enjoyed the music selection. There are three points I still want to criticize: ○ Hiding the MC’s face behind that silly mask was a bad design choice and often broke immersion. A good-looking face would have worked to identify with the MC. ○ SFX are very sparse. Better and more frequent sound effects, especially moaning during H-scenes, would have helped a lot. ○ Most H-scenes feel overloaded with positions and practices. Less would have been more. For me, City of Broken Dreamers clearly ranks among the best AVNs out there. There really isn’t much more to say.

This is what a game should be it has everything. I found it very entertaining and the charactors are great!! The story is riveting and engaging as well. The renders and animations are top. Must play game.

One of the best games on the site. You must save Gloria from some evil bastards and along the way plenty of sex scenes with good looking females the only issue is no harem ending if you are into that, the story is about saving Gloria from evil corporations. I do not like giving many details about stories as i hate spoilers even minor ones, just play the game like most reviews say it is great. Story. 9.5/10 Sex. 9.5/10 needs rimming, girls love getting their ass eating. Characters. 10/10 Art/renders/animations. 10/10 Being honest sex is for most people a 10/10 but i love eating ass.

This game has all the pieces of a top tier AVN: great visuals, multiple paths, unique environment with coherent plot. However, it somewhat fails to combine these pieces into a great story. I think the biggest issue is the failure to create chemistry between any of the characters, mostly due to the MC and his terrible personality. The MC in this game is truly annoying and has absolutely zero natural charisma or charm. He makes non-stop sarcastic or edgy jokes, constantly teasing and attempting witty banter like a high schooler to his crush. Even when he's clappin cheeks he's still trying to have a witty back and forth, creating a jarring disconnect from what you're seeing vs what you are reading/feeling. I ended up just fast forwarding the sex scenes because they feel like you're watching a cringy high schooler have sex with a prostitute who is doing her best to play along with his autistic inability to shutup. This game could be a 5/5 if the developers hired someone who's actually had sex to write all the dialogue for the MC.

I played City of Broken Dreamers all the way through and while the story was good, I never found the sex scenes particularly satisfying. Full disclosure, sex scenes are the most important part of an adult game for me, so I rated this game Average. I think the issue for me boils down to two major things: The developer of the game made the creative decision to not show the MC's face. This meant often you were talking to other characters wearing a silly helmet the whole time. It also meant sex scenes were often limited to POV (which I'm not a fan of) or closeups in order to crop out your head. I assume that was done to aid the player in thinking it was them in the action, but I didn't feel it was successful. While there are MANY sex scenes throughout the game, each position was limited to a few still shots and a single 2-3 second looping animation. I would have much preferred fewer sex scenes that were more significant with more varied animations, the ability to control the looping speed, the ability to change camera angles, etc. The story was fine, but no surprises or twists. Pretty much a standard story of a military guy fighting an evil corporation and protecting a damsel in distress. I will say the game did a great job at world building. Creating an interesting location, telling a history to set the stage, even incorporating new lingo. Totally prime! I would have liked even more on how the world came to be the way it was, but still, very good. If you are looking for great sex scenes, I would not recommend the game. But if you like a decent story peppered with adult content, you may enjoy it.

Apart from the occasional word repetition and cringe dialogue this AVN has a great story and writing, would even make a great series or movie. The render+animation quality is top tier. A really high quality, and enjoyable AVN, if you can stomach a useless, faceless MC, who is constantly berated, belittled and namecalled who does NOTHING on his own merit. I mean it, the MC in this AVN is among the worst i've ever seen. First of all, it's a tragedy to go for 15 chapters with an MC that has NO FACE. Almost no scenes with the MC and a LI seen together from 3rd person view, and whenever the MC is seen fully, he's wearing his mask, which just goofy in most scenes. In addition to having no face, the MC is the most useless person in the whole story. Literally not one cool feat, or moment. Constantly has to be saved, literally feels like a side character . The MC alone dragged my rating of this otherwise great AVN to a 3/5.

This game is a journey. From start to finish a path through a cyberpunk future with attention to detail, a protagonist you can root for or hate if you want, many LIs for you to choose from, and an action packed narrative. A story of redemption or ultimately falling into corporate corruption. Even if you took out all of the sex, the narrative is good enough to carry to game on its own. The sound track is damn good. Honestly its probably one of the top 5 VNs on this site. A shame more haven't fallen suit with how great this is.

Great game, I think all the reviewers said already the good thing in this game, whether its characters, the dialogue, the setting and the premise, it is in my opinion perfect. Really well executed game and got a nice ending in all route. The antagonist in this game got a good twist on it depends on which route you go, best to play all the route to see all of this game offers. Lastly, I don't know what is the cons on playing this game, maybe the only con is because it is already completed that you'll crave more after you finish this game or the fluidity of sex scene if you like to little bit nitpick on it but yeah all in all it is a nice game.

One of the modern greats of the VN genre. Below will be plenty of mithering on with pros and cons for your information, but TLDR is that it is a high production value VN with a cracking story, hot porn, decent writing & some replayability. Detractions mainly stem from areas where I think it could have taken a little more of a leap. Got around to playing this finally, it’s on many fave lists. I believe I played the first chapter a long long time ago. The game has a nice luxury art style, and occasional cinematics add class. The music is decent (sometimes the music is great, top qual effort, like when setting off for the final mission) – overall good production value. There are a couple of major set-pieces (Chapter 8 for example) that are really very impressive action movie style pieces, considering it’s a porn game. Models of characters are decent – thankfully not all the same proportions. I think a little more imagination could have been used in some cases to fit the cyberpunk theme. There are one or two more cyberpunk looking women in it, but they tend to be side characters. The majority of the main women are very vanilla looking big breast long hair no tattoo types, and the fashion style is generally just strappy tops and beach-type clothing. There is future dystopia aesthetic available but I feel like it could be more central. Maybe it would put some people off? Also all the women wear just underwear about 80% of the time – I get it’s a porn game but occasionally it did seem a bit much, immersion breaking – especially considering the MC has all skin apart from hands covered 80% of the time, doesn’t even have a face model. I enjoyed the story, which is of decent length and has reasonable replayability and roleplay potential. Writing is smooth, the characters reasonably well drawn, and overall it is an improvement on developer’s previous game. One difference is that the story is well paced enough that the roster of women doesn’t feel insanely crammed in. The cyberpunk future worldbuilding is not bad, the corps, gangs, Asia war history. Good stuff. Even if there was no erotic content the story would be fun. Some interesting dated vocab that really situates when the game came out – Gloria goes on about hipsters, there’s a Disco Elysium reference. Surprisingly not much 2077 influence. Also, I’d say about Kay. If you are going to have a trans character no need to be weird about it – I feel like the early scene option to opt in or not should gate it – but if you opted in it’s kind of annoying having the MC be a bit conservative about the whole thing (saying ‘she’ and so on). On the other hand, to be fair, it does get contextualised during the drinking convo with Ellen. Regarding the spread of content – it’s kind of funny. The four women with devoted love interest paths are the more boring women, with the most vanilla looks and personalities. Katie, Gloria, Ellen and romance plotline Victoria are basically all just nice women, at heart. The edge is found outside this, with corpo Victoria, Shanlon and Teri, or Sasha. Just slightly more interesting dynamics. I think the best personal dynamic is between MC and Sonja and she doesn’t have an ending, and honestly Abby and Sasha were more to my taste appearance-wise, and they also don’t have endings. There is a sex robot who is gradually gaining a personality and she also has no full ending. I just feel like it’s a bit unambitious in resource allocation in terms of plotting. The funny thing is, throughout the story there is actually a lot of Shanlon, Chandra, and Sonja content, so it seems even stranger it can’t really go anywhere. (Though I do recognise that there are after credits scenes, and the alone endings can hint and continuing relationships with Sonja and Chandra). Anyway, enough ranting, may be more personal taste than anything, and I know not every character can have a ending. As far as the porn goes, the sex is hot, and well animated. It’s mainly vanilla or hardcore, occasionally getting very rough with hints of BDSM with a particular side character. It’s pretty decent. Clear anal fixation towards the end. Overall, a real corker, an industry standard. I’d like to see the developer do another. Maybe fantasy, and maybe translate some of that production ambition to some more adventurous narrative or character choices.

This visual novel has great atmosphere and is visually beautiful, with well-made characters. Unfortunately, that’s all I can really praise. The sex scenes are quite simple, and all the endings are open-ended, which most likely hints at a sequel. I don't know for sure, I just know that the endings I could get were pretty mediocre. Besides the fact that the story is interesting, there came a point where I asked myself if I was still playing a pornographic visual novel. It became difficult to stay interested in replaying, and I ended up just fast-forwarding through some dialogue I had already read because getting all the endings was exhausting.

Short review: A very solid game with tons of well-made animations, an interesting cyberpunk corporate dystopia story, kinda meh h-scenes, and nice, albeit a bit flat (definitely not in the bust-size sense), LIs. A major jump in writing quality over the dev's previous game. Definitely worth playing. Spoiler: My notes while playing - Extremely high quality visuals, the intro is quite "2014 movie trailer" cinematic but is still impressive. - I don't generally care too much for it, but given the high quality of most visuals and animations, the h-scenes feel extremely lackluster. They are short (during the first half of the game), dialogue is not the best (often with too much repetition of the protagonist's nickname), orgasms are lackluster (both for protag and LIs), and they have less animation than many other aspects of the game. I'd have absolutely no issue with these facts if the h-scenes weren't as prevalent as they are: either it's a porn game and you have plenty of h-scenes and they are well made, or it's a narrative game with erotic elements, and you can have lower quality scenes, but they are also more sparse. This game chooses to have them everywhere but they aren't really that great. - There are some small continuity issues if you go from not romancing a character to romancing them later on where the game assumes you've seen their previous h-scenes even if you haven't in that save. This shows up even if you never actually engage in any of the scenes with some characters ( Chandra at the end of the game, for example, soliciting you with "one last time" even if you never had anything with her and said you never would when you had the chance). - A few choices that IRL would just be you being friendly award you lust points with LIs, or lock you into sex scenes with them in the following few dialogues. It's always quick to rollback and revert, but still felt very odd when it did happen, and I got a lust point with Ellen that I have no idea how via that, even though most others I noticed quickly enough to reload a save and change a choice. A lot of times you do have off-ramps if it locks you into something sexual, but it still feels weird to get lust points from literally just comforting someone with a hug or not picking the choice the makes you sound like an asshole. Not a major gripe, but a frequent one during the first two thirds of the game. - The ending chapter is not bad, but it's also not executed as well as it perhaps should have been, imo. The main thing that bugs me is your character making so many... strange? choices that you as a player don't have a say on, such as demanding Gloria kills the Red Moon (very character-breaking for the way my protagonist was behaving until that scene) or keeping Katie in the dark for a week through a time-skip even though she was my only partner in the game and my protagonist said he'd literally marry her (why the time skip? if it was to justify other routes, I wasn't on them, so it feels like my route was a bit ignored) . As always, even if it's small things, if they happen during the end, they stick more with you. - Overall, after a playthrough with just Katie as LI, I have to say the game is a 4.0/5.0 to me. Some visuals are impressive, but that's the only 'wow' factor the game had for me, and that to me just matters so much less than the characters, the story, and the polish, and the latter ones were all quite nice but not excellent, and without something that sticks with me (the visuals are good but not good enough to be what I remember the game for), that means I just rate the game as "Good". This is a big positive jump in quality from the dev's previous game tho, for me, and some technical aspects are impressive, so congratulations are still in order.

CITY OF BROKEN DREAMERS: The Official PatreonGamer Review General Verdict: A visually gorgeous and emotionally vibrant, if slightly predictable, dystopian sci-fi porn experience that, unfortunately, runs out of fresh ideas in its second half . City Of Broken Dreamers is the second and so far the last AVN by PhillyGames, whose previous title, Depraved Awakening , as I have already written elsewhere, is easily my favorite AVN of all time, if (maybe?) for all the wrong reasons. Technically, however, DA was a water-testing effort from Philly: relatively short, graphically and sonically underwhelming, and only slowly getting better and more confident in itself as it went along. So, naturally, for his second game expectations were set pretty high — there was a clear unique talent here that was finally on the verge of being properly supported by technical expertise. And by all means, Philly leaves no one disappointed, as, from the very start, CoBD demonstrated a huge leap forward in effort. Static renders became more detailed and exquisite. Animations became plentiful and properly rendered, no longer confined to simple 2-3-frame repetition as it was in the early stages of DA — and not just confined to the sex scenes, either, as they now served additional purposes of marking classy screen entrances for the ladies, or, sometimes, just to illustrate the overall atmosphere of the game. There was much more music, much more exposition, extra little game-y details like «secrets» to look for... overall, on the technical front, CoBD remains an important milestone. Every now and then you can hear somebody grumble about how the render and animation quality has become antiquated for the standards of the mid-2020s, but that’s just nitpicking. If you’re expecting atmosphere and seduction rather than graphic-card-taxing heavy-duty realism, CoBD remains every bit as visually stunning today as it was on the day when Philly unleashed the first episode upon us. Genre-wise, CoBD at first seems to go in a completely different direction from DA : where Philly’s first game was a blatant tribute to the classic «noir» genre, focusing on a private detective investigating the dirty, seedy underbelly of the modern big city, CoBD takes us into a sci-fi, cyber-punkish, dystopian future where... uhm, a private mercenary is investigating the dirty, seedy underbelly of the futuristic big city. As you can see, not that much has changed: Philly merely transports us a few imaginary decades into the future, where the corps and the creeps are running things even more ruthlessly than today, and sex, just as it was in DA , acts as one of the most common commodities for bad and good guys alike. The atmosphere may be more Blade Runner now than it was a Chinatown / Requiem For A Dream mix in the earlier game, but the essence remains the same: you are going to meet a lot of impossibly hot women, some of whom will be trying to corrupt you with sex and some will be trying to save you with it — and some will offer a mixture of both at the same time. However, unlike it happens in DA , here the sex itself is formally not at the center of the game itself, but rather acts as a peripheral device, framing all the circumstances of the main plot — in which you have to help rescue a young persecuted girl in distress from the usual evil corporate overlords while exposing the evil corporate overlords’ corrupt schemes to the public. The plot, as many have pointed out already, is not particularly original and not particularly thrilling to deserve such multiple layers of convolution — but I do not think we should be too harsh on it, given that this is, after all, a porn game first and an ambitious take on the cyberpunk genre only second . On its own, without all the sexual content, it would hardly have a chance to endure as a sci-fi classic; but as a derivative exercise whose main goal is to provide a credible, immersive context for all the dick-and-pussy action, it certainly holds up better than most of the plot-based porn movies I’ve ever seen — and the sheer love that PhillyGames holds for the genre is evident from just about every single shot of the game. Speaking of the sexual content itself, I am a little on the fence here. On one hand, there is no arguing that the design of the girls is gorgeous. Of the five or six characters with whom you are going to get intimate on a regular basis (or not — it’s your free choice to enter or not to enter in a relationship with each of them), each single one has a distinct appearance and personality, and these personalities are going to determine the dynamics of their sexual evolution as well. Sure, they may be somewhat stereotypical and cliched, but in this day and age, good luck finding a well-written character that is not stereotypical anyway. What matters is how believable (and fappable) these stereotypes are — and I found myself drooling over most of them. Dr. Katie Hamilton is the classic «intellectual cutie with big tits» nerd dream, shy and blushing and polite and still adventurous enough to both accompany the MC on his dangerous missions and to try out anal penetration after having explored all the conventional boundaries. Ellen Lane is the feisty, dominant punk MILF with an attitude, though surprisingly resistant to anal action for her type (she’s not my favorite for all the tattoos and weird hairdstyles, but I’m still glad she’s in the game). Then there’s Chandra, the adorable-slash-terrifying glitzy spoiled teen brat who finds it fun to fuck older strangers just to piss off her corporate Mom — but Philly paints her as psychologically mature and stable enough to handle the consequences of those actions, and there’s an irresistible artistry to her narcissistic depravity that has, understandably, made her a particular fan favorite. Her horned friend Abby (the horns have to do with her medical condition, which is the central theme of the game) has an even more interesting character arc, going from being emotionally broken and suicidal to gradual redemption and a «healthier» embracing of her sexual urges as she eventually begins to represent a more mature and responsible counterpart to Chandra, while being every bit as wild on the carnal side of things. And Shanlon Russell is probably the quintessential image of the «corrupt TV celebrity slut» we all have in our minds: dashing, bossy, and bitchy in public — and a big fan of rough BDSM activities in private (the scenes with her and, later, with her loyal-but-treacherous assistant Teri, while not particularly disturbing, are still among the nastiest PhillyGames ever created). The two «main» characters (appearing most frequently and generally serving as the game’s primary advertising cards) have the largest amount of character evolution and are also notable in that they are «moldable»: depending on your actions in the game, you can put them on very different paths — a Paragon or a Renegade one, to use a Mass Effect analogy, with the Paragon one providing more moral satisfaction and the Renegade one essentially leading to more dirty and salacious outcomes which (you guessed it) also offer far more tasty sexual rewards. (The ruthless part is not really quintessentially «evil», though, so you’ll feel more like Donald Trump than Hitler for taking it — yes, with all that sweet pussy in tow.) Gloria, the innocent, traumatized blonde beauty whose warden you eventually become, is basically the equivalent of Judy from DA (except this time around, at least you’re not her father — CoBD is completely incest-free, by the way): you help her find the meaning of life and happiness not so much by saving her from the corps or curing her condition as you do through romance and sexual kinks ( or you result in making her shape a far more cynical and nihilistic outlook on life, which reflects poorly on romance but does even more wonders on the sexual kinks). Her sex scenes come late in the game and are a bit on the so-so side at first, but quickly heat up to 100% (the "corrupt" finale with Victoria and Meredith is an unforgettable experience). And then, of course, there’s Victoria Shields. With Vicky, I think Philly’s goal was pretty obvious: create the ideal 3D woman for us — classy, intelligent, traditionally-aristocratically beautiful, perfectly shaped everywhere where it matters, bold, uninhibited, and a demon in the sack, just the kind of lady for one night with whom some people might agree to sacrifice their lives in the real world. On the whole, I would say he succeeded: at the time when Victoria first appeared on our screens (in 2019), there was nobody like her in the entire AVN business. Much more perfectly engineered than Mass Effect ’s Miranda Lawson (the red hair and freckles alone are worth an extra million), she is the quintessential devil-in-disguise — although as you proceed with your choices, you have the subtle option to either transform her and make her find redemption, or, on the contrary, be transformed by her and dissolve yourself in her overriding, ruthless, dominant personality. (I always try to keep both paths open with different saves). Some might complain that, perhaps, she gives in to the MC way too early (we can go all the way with her already in the very first episode), but I think that Philly himself knew — with a gal like Victoria, there’s no such thing as too early. You can ravage her as many times as you want and you’ll always be left wanting more of the same as if it were the first time all over again. Seriously, every time a scene with Victoria comes along I am reminded of why I love these 3D AVNs so much: there is hardly a single real porn actress alive who would exude as much sexuality and do it with such devilish flair. That said, while I like, love, or adore all of Philly’s characters, it is also hard not to acknowledge that many of the sex scenes feel a bit... gratuitous . In DA , where the actual plot all revolved around sex — perverted sex clubs, sex trafficking, sexual addiction, etc. — the scenes were always in their perfect place. City Of Broken Dreamers , on the other hand, is not really a game about sex. It is about preservation or loss of humanity, about fighting against The System, about survival, about technology, about dystopia — seriously, you could cut out pretty much every sex scene out of the game and it would have still made sense (though, as I said, the relatively generic plot would not have left a lot of space for serious enjoyment). Much of the action follows along the lines of « oh, we have about an hour to kill before the mission, wanna fuck? » or « hey, we might not be alive tomorrow if the plan goes wrong, wanna fuck just in case? » or « I feel really shitty right now because of all the terrible things going on in the world, can you just fuck me to make me feel better? ». Yes, you can actually establish strong romantic connections with one of several potential love interests — but this comes very late in the game, by which time you’ll probably already have had sex with everything that moves (strangely enough, Philly is quite conservative in that he gives us no harem endings). Of course, this cannot be a serious criticism, because this is a porn game supposed to have a lot of gratuitous sex; I’m just saying that every now and then there will be a sex scene feeling weirdly out of context — and that the overall plot is a bit undermined by that, as if we’re being instructed that in the technologically advanced, morally dystopian world of tomorrow everything will be beginning and ending with sex. If you’re OK with that, no problems. My main problem with the game — a serious one, though it still won’t deprive the title of a 5-star rating because I like to judge games by their strengths, not weaknesses — is the sheer length . I think that Philly made pretty much the same mistake as his main competition in the world of AVNs, Dr. PinkCake, is still continuing to make: after the success of Depraved Awakening and all the newly-gained confidence in his own strengths, he decided to stretch out his next title for as long as possible. My full recorded playthrough of the game takes about 50 hours as compared to DA ’s 19, and, frankly, much of that — even including some of the sex scenes — is padding. The plot eventually runs out of fresh ideas, turning into an endless series of similar action scenes (run, hide, save a party member, have sex, run, hide, have sex, save a party member, run, hide, have sex, rinse and repeat over and over again). Worse, the sex scenes eventually run out of ideas. In the first third of the game, we are already introduced (including carnally introduced) to all the main characters. In the second third of the game, we pretty much get to go as far with all of them as possible (in Philly’s case, "as far as possible" usually means anal — really rough stuff is restricted to a few totally freaky characters like Shanlon, and it is introduced very early on). In the final third, it’s mostly just going through the motions, and it feels like the creator himself was getting tired of his creations — most of the final scenes seem very perfunctory and unsatisfying, unlike in DA , where Philly was just getting into the proper mood as he rounded off the plot. (The only exception is the final scene with Gloria, Victoria, and eventually Meredith — because it is the only scene from the finale that introduced a new angle to one of the characters). In other words, CoBD overstayed its welcome by a good 4–5 episodes at least — ironically, it still leaves us somewhat hanging, since it is clearly shown in the end that the "bad guys" have only suffered a temporary setback, and that the story about a few good guys battling futuristic corporate evil is only just beginning. It is unlikely, however, given the tired feel of the final episodes, that a sequel to this will ever happen — and maybe that’s for the better, since the game must have creatively drained Philly, for a while at least. That said, when CoBD is at its best, it shines like a bright cyberpunk star against the background of so many uninspired or unskilled other titles. Katie, Victoria, Chandra, Gloria, Abby, even Venus the nearly-sentient sexbot (is it just me, by the way, or did Philly sarcastically model her face after Taylor Swift?) — they’re all among the best-written and best-rendered characters in 3D AVNs of all time. Romancing all of them feels almost cathartic (even Chandra, the glitzy brat who seems to just want to use you as a revenge tool against her mother, shows a human heart under the pretentious facade), and there’s always a touch of exquisiteness in Philly’s approach to rendering and animation that makes you feel elevated even when you’re at your dirtiest. It’s like watching all those old «glamorous» Europorn movie scenes from studios like Private, but with ladies that are both prettier and warmer in terms of personality. Gameplay-wise, CoBD is the same choice-based AVN as Depraved Awakening , with your choices largely serving to determine which of the girls you want to pursue / keep around as your sex partners / romantic interests and how kinky / depraved you want to get with them. A few really stupid choices can lead to the death of several of these characters, so it’s not entirely a matter of totally random clicking, but if you read what you click on you don’t really need any walkthrough to make the right selections. Other than that, the only addition are small random «secrets» (hotspots) to click on in order to unlock extra gallery renders — since the game always flashes a warning at you whenever these come up, this is extremely simple, not much of a challenge at all. (Then again, it might be preferable to all those non-advertised easily missable secret images in Dr. PinkCake’s Being A DIK , where you either have to play with a walkthrough under your nose all the time or waste hours of time on each new screen to find tiny clickable journals or rolls of toilet paper). As usual, Philly shows excellent taste in his music selections — this time, he picks out a bunch of extremely moody, atmospheric «futuristic» tracks from the electronic music circuit that sound appropriately «sinister», «romantic», or «nasty» depending on the particular plot or sex scene they are supposed to illustrate. The only problem is that there are not a lot of them, and with 50 or so gameplay hours to burn they will quickly become too overtly familiar. But in the early episodes they really helped spice up the experience for me (I even ended up adding a few of them to my casual playlists). Overall, I noticed that CoBD is one of those games that commands quiet respect on the part of the average player (it remains one of the top-rated titles at F95Zone, for instance) but is not actually played nearly as often as that respect would surmise. Possibly, this is because of its glamorous and exquisite setting, rather than in spite of it — experience shows that many more people are interested in games depicting the usual «girls next door» (preferably with big T&A) than these kinds of exotic personalities and settings which they find more difficult to identify with and, on the whole, more boring. In other words, CoBD may be too much of a weird fantasy for people to take in, and I can see that point of view (again, same reason why more people watch casual gonzo porn than lavish big-budget Private movies). But those of us who do hold a soft spot for high production values and hi-class glamour girls with a futuristic flair will have to agree, I think, that few, if any, other titles match these values when filtered through PhillyGames’ vision — at least, for as long as that vision remained fresh and inspired, which is still quite a long period.