The Gates of Stories

This game is a bit grindy and it is a little bit easier to get stuck than i would have like. But the premise, the character models and some of the characters themselves are very interesting. Definitely has a lot of potential. I hope the dev keeps at it.

I find the cut scenes and models fine, I even wanted to get to know and interact more with Cassandra and Martha, but everything else is horrible. It's like multiple game mechanics that players hate all rolled into one package. A clock time system thing that goes up five minutes per room that feels needless, an unnecessary free roam in my opinion, and a nightmare of multiple choices for dialog that can make you lose big points just asking questions and has no actual characters talking about the topics just a narration saying you did. If the creator ever wants to make a simple VN then I'll check it out, but this game makes me want to run far away, and never look back.

The downloading of paths isn't difficult, but its just inconvenient. It could've just been a choice (Which it ultimately is if you download them all), and it doesn't save that much space (Around 170 mb if you just choose one path). The game is a poorly designed sandbox. Content is hard to find, with no guidance or hints in the story or otherwise, and character relations work on a point basis. I gave up trying to get forward through the story, as even if you don't handhold your players, there should be some hint through plot or dialogue on where to go next. It seems more like a tech demo then anything else in reality, you aren't even given much of a plot in the beginning to follow through with, so there nothing to hook you into the game.

Review for [v0.0.2] Honestly, I can't even enjoy any of the story or visuals, because the UI is a fucking mess. "Realistic" timers/clocks are always fucking awful with AVNs, because it actively hampers and discourages exploration. 9 times out of 10, it's because there is nothing worth exploring. Then there's the interaction system, which is just such a ridiculous fucking monster. So you get about 40 options for topics of discussion. You can only pick 3 everyday. You get no indication as to what they will like. If they hate it, it pops up as red. If they like it, it becomes white. But guess what happens if they're just not interested? Nothing. It remains the same colour. So you have to remember which ones you pressed in different discussions with different people, until you find one they like, at which point you simply spam that 3 times because there's ZERO reason to try and find them all. Yet another issue is the personality choice. I picked 'Pervert', as I thought it would be interesting to get to bad-mouth others and see how they handle manipulating characters, as it takes skill. All I got was people who were bored, and then the main chick at the home got mad whenever I mentioned it. This is the way the dev simplifies their work: An over-complicated mess to confuse you, so you don't think about the fact you don't REALLY get any choices. You are instead given a grinder, and told to repeat the same clicks and button presses over and over and over again until some arbitrary number. It is kinetic with 10,000 more steps. Also, wanted to make a note that people who don't like NTR, probably won't like this either. I know it's a sticking point for a lot of people, I only really am fine with it so long as the writing makes it justified. Here, people are just kinda established to be sluts, so I guess it's contextual? But you know that LIs are fucking and see hints, so I'd consider that for people who loathe NTR period instead of just how poorly it's used on this site.

Great Graphics but terrible system in advancing with characters. The fact you just get one shotted and brought to the main menu with out a chance to save if your too tired made it final. Done with this until they make it easier and more practical to actually advance the story.