Scions of the Divine

Great pacing and an interesting story with a lot of content for a single chapter. the renders are solid for Honey Select, especially with the dev reworking earlier chapters. characters are well written, and the plot flows nicely. overall a really enjoyable experience.

Played version 0.1 (completed Jan. 12. 2026). Rating summary: I will give this one a weak 5 star rating. Weak because it is literally the first version released and 2-ish hours is not enough to get a solid impression. Some features are still on the way like animations, a codex and changes to the character overview. What I can say is that the general quality levels are high, especially for a first release. Most of my issues are subjective and relate to structural and stylistic choices, many of which the average AVN reader won’t mind. Mostly nitpicks, but some are more significant. There will be 2-3 references below that very mildly spoils some plot. Pros: Fine music selection and background noise that matches with the scenes. Sounds of keyboard typing in an office setting as an example. - Dialogue flows well and sounds natural, which helps make the characters seem genuine. - The Active use of humor is less frequent compared to similar AVN’s and I like that. The few fully fledged jokes stick the landing. - Visual effects seem to go further than what I am used to. Beams, light, particles, sparks, etc. - Solid lineup of Li’s in terms of both looks and personalities. This is a very general comment, but an important one. - In extension of the LI’s, I think characters in general look great and the HS2 engine is used competently. I’ll point out that MC looks great for a male HS character, if perhaps a little uhhh, effeminate. Most other male models also avoid the janky look that is often associated with Honey Select, especially HS1. - We have a decent number of male characters present, and they exist beyond serving as comedy relief, goons and villains. - The MC, both his character and characterization, is handled well. He strikes a nice balance where his flaws prevent him from being a Gary-Stu, but the flaws aren’t shoved in your face either. Instead, they mostly manifest discreetly in his general behavior. He also doesn’t stray into any negative caricature that we often see in the medium like horndog, creep and the most relevant in this case, pushover. - The “dream” realm was interestingly done. Runes in place of Latin letters, vivid background art, ethereal music and beings. - Variety in boob textures. By that I mean that we aren’t seeing the same areola and nipples being copy pasted across all LI’s. They are similar but not identical. It looks like the same can be said about the skin textures of other body parts (navel, labia, etc.), because I believe to have seen at least 3 different designs so far. Great job. - Mostly good environmental assets. The cemetery and the base exterior however looked a bit more jury rigged. Mehs and hit/miss: I’d say the narrative was subdivided too finely. Each sub-chapter had a fitting title, but I felt they showed up too frequently and broke the immersion. - The style and tone of the story have some vibes that tick me off a tiny bit. The best way I can express it is to say that it all feels a bit chuuni-esque, juvenile and unnecessarily fantastical. The base infiltration is the main example where things happened a bit too easily and even with their scion powers it felt like MC and Astara they were simply winging it and suceeding, because that is how it goes in chuuni media. There’s also the fact that 3 of the LI’s seem to be prodigies within their respective fields. It’s a little too convenient that they all end up in the same group. - Immense fighting talent that emerged out of nowhere? At least narratively speaking that is. We do get a proper explanation with how MC had trained in the past, but as a reader I felt blindsided. I later loaded some earlier saves and checked out the different decisions. Apparently, I had missed some backstory there which helped lampshade the sudden appearance of his skills. - Sometimes the situations we find ourselves in can feel a little bit too random and like nonsense. Like, our friend Silas who runs a gym randomly starts cooking burgers in the lounge area like it’s nothing. I mean, shouldn’t training, running classes, doing administrative stuff be where he spends his time when working? Having snacks and drinks on offer in the lounge area of a gym makes perfect sense, but the preparation of fresh food just felt weird to me. I think you would need a license for something like that. - Some things are set up in ways that I personally find a bit too black and white, lacking in nuance. Mostly it relates to the good vs evil spectrum. So far scions are either normal people who are confused about what to do with their newfound powers or evil ones who want to use theirs in the same way a generic comic book villain would. World conquest! Also, the big and bad corporations are……BIG and…..BAD. - I noticed a few awkward posing-moments. Like with Layla driving the car but sitting a good 30 cm in front of the backrest just to reach the steering wheel. - Spontaneous use of magic for the lewd Layla scene was nice, but the climatic part was over and done real damn quick. What I would like to see was more text describing her reactions and also some text detailing the afterglow. The lead up was great, but then the scene just wrapped so suddenly. Cons: The prologue should be extended. It felt rushed, especially the MC’s backstory part. Felt like I was being told to care about characters I still didn’t know. The part with the magic and basic world order didn’t suffer nearly as much. I figure that a lot of lore i supposed to get introduced naturally as the story goes on. But getting a few more details nailed down initially would have been nice. I felt a bit blindsided when out of nowhere “elves and immortals” were brought up. At that point I had gotten used to the idea that we were in a techno-magical setting with only humans around. - MC seems pleasantly intelligent and levelheaded, despite also having some moments with apathy, stubborness and low confidence. Now the issue. He juuuuust had to straight up seek out the powerful red scion signature all on his own. This seriously felt out of character. I accepted it up till the point where he discovers the general location of the signature, a specific building. Doing some reconnaissance is reasonable enough, but when he didn’t turn around, I probably lost a few tufts of my hair. This really isn’t the behavior of a mostly meek and intelligent 23-year-old who knows of the potentially lethal danger he’s putting himself in. Depending on the definitions, he had already experienced 1-3 close encounters with death in a short timeframe, which should have been enough of a mental deterance from risky actions like that.

It's only first release but you can see the effort the dev put in the game. The playtime is more than one and up to 2 hours. Now for the rating: - Render: 4.5/5, very beautiful, the girls all look different, even the side character are polished. The main character look less standard compare to other HS game. Animation are smooth, not top notch though - Story: 4.5/5, I really like the worldbuilding, it is more interesting compare to other urban fantasy HS game, at least it raise my interest enough to care - Love Interest: 5/5, every girl is unique, as it unique personalities. They has their characteristic, goal, backstory,... Their conversation show the deep of the writing -Bonus: In-game walkthought, an absolute must for everyone that does not want to make the wrong choice.

Good pacing, interesting story, and a LOT of content for a single chapter. It looks like it uses Honey Select, but the renders are on the better side for that engine. I found the story to be interesting, the plot to unfold smoothly, the character building to be exceptional for a first-time developer, and the writing / grammar to be quite good. There were a few mistakes, but they were on the order of missing punctuation or incorrect use of 'you're' instead of 'your', not text that was bordering on incomprehensible. This will probably take you over an hour to complete, but I think you will find it an hour well spent.