The Long Way

I was drawn to this VN because it looked like there were different races. I really like original looking characters, which is why I'm drawn to scifi and fantasy settings. I don't know whether I'm doing something wrong, but the quality is downright terrible. The graphics are extremely low-res and extremely fuzzy. I find this unwatchable quality.

I like sci-fi but there's a lot of issues with this beyond the expected lack of content. As another reviewer said, what's the point of the free roam? There's a 'teleport to next event button' which is an outstanding feature that all free roam VNs should have; but it also just exposes that there's no actual purpose to letting the player move around and the game should have just been a straight VN. You're just going to mash that 'go to next button' once you realize there's nothing to do or see moving around manually. It even goes a step further by letting the player go to other sectors and planets, but there's still nothing to actually do beyond the scripted events. The initial cast is fine and could have been developed to stand out, but it keeps dropping in more and more samey looking characters. No writer can maintain such a large cast and develop them all, not to mention the player is just going to forget 90% of them. They even all have the exact same poses on the character screen, and the fact that the player can just rename anyone on the fly just further reinforces how faceless most of them are. Also some of more alien characters look horrifically bad. You can 'interact' with any of the characters but all you can do is hug or kiss them. Actual sex is locked to whoever has events for it. There are relationship stats, but they don't do anything beyond change whether the character is clothed when you check the character screen. This is very strange because this game isn't new at this point, it's been in development for a couple years now; and yet the game event flow and dialogue isn't taking the relationship stats into account at all. Either make it a VN, or make it a simulation/management game with actual gameplay. Right now it just feels like a lot of dev time is being wasted trying to pretend it's the latter. Also this dev is splitting their attention between two games now, the other still going unfinished after 5 years. That's a big red flag IMO. Edit: This game is apparently recycling a lot of renders and animations from the dev's previous game. It would seem the intent is to quietly abandon that previous project and start over while reusing as many assets as possible. Dropped to 1*.

It's interesting as a concept but it's incredibly janky in its execution. The stuttering "animations" are just completely unnecessary. It adds nothing but does make you think the game's about to crash. The sandbox is also completely unnecessary. Perhaps it gets better the further you go into the game but certainly to begin with you can meet random characters in different parts of the ship but given all you can do is talk kiss or hug them... what's the point? The game could be infinitely better if it was made into a more linear AVN and do away with the nonsense. By the third or forth event you're really just slamming the "next event" button so really what does the sandbox give you? As mentioned the story is interesting, like a cross between Andromeda and something Russ Meyer would release. Doesn't seem to take itself too seriously but on the flip side it feels like there's a lot of context missing, or rather a lot is summarised in a few paragraphs that probably should be drawn out. Yeah I get it's a porn game and all but with a little extra TLC and polish this could be great.

Started playing from v08 and I love the way it integrates with The Hard Way, The story seems to revolve around rebuilding an empire while battling an invading force, gathering a collection of rather nice looking girls. Characters age differently in this universe, so the girls all look young, but they're legal, with some interesting artistic license with the alien girls and human girls from heavy gravity worlds. The animations are specific to each girl, aside from the dance on the character menu. Though some don't like the dancing characters, I think it's a step up from the usual faces. They also do their little dance nude, once they like you enough. Would love to have pregnancy in this one too, but I suppose the devs are going a different route this time. If this game follows their previous games rapid development, it's going to be epic.

Animation is a bit static. Storyline is fairly common. Scripting needs some editing and perhaps a little more love. Overall this is a fairly OK game. Lots of good things here but feels a bit empty and disjointed, not sure if the characters are sexy or robotic.

I don’t know how to put it (more) polite… The same girls (with the same names) as in The Long Way and as in TLW always the same animations. I guess it quite not a good plan to split your attention to two games… The mainplot is the same too, you just collect a lot of girls… and what's this with these animated pics on the overview of the girls? If I would mention all the things that I’ve reconised it would quite be a roman…

Review of 0.03.5 on 2024/01/27 General: 'The Long Way' takes place in an epic sci-fi setting. We find Moose, the MC, on a ship hiding away between the remnants of a vast intergalactic empire. If you've seen Andromeda, you'll be familiar with this setup. The ship Moose finds himself on is the last surviving Sentinel, and due to the empire's technological decline, is now the most powerful warship in the known universe. Bina, the living avatar of the ship, found Moose in a life pod, accompanied by 3 NPCs (who are clones of people Moose knew), and the genetic material of 1000 different people. When the dev describes the game as “infinitely expandable”, this what he means. There's really no limit to the number of women, planets, or stories that he can tell. Discovering a new planet or cloning a new person is trivial, and the world building establishes this. My main worry here is that it could make the game seem an ocean wide but a puddle deep. If Love Interests are added because they're physically different, then I wonder if they'll have enough story for us to see their personality. Spoiler: General concerns (spoilers): The story seems on a railroad, with characters making statements they don't support with facts. Bina will state that Moose was abducted, and that the antagonist wants to take over his body. We haven't seen proof of this. In the case of the abduction, she could say that she found traces of a toxin/sleeping agent or physical trauma on the MC. The antagonist intending to take over the MC's body gets said before she knew the MC has royal DNA. It would've been better for her to be clueless to their motivation, and only start suspecting this after she finds out she's pregnant. When going to Dellane's personnel file, clicking “Captain” shows a transparent PNG (gray & white grid) on the background. Exploring this system is also the first time I noticed that the game uses points/statistics under the hood (like/love/want/corruption). This is a weird choice, since (so far) the game doesn't have any choices for players to influence these stats. Moose's backstory becomes confusing. He claims to having grown up on a planet that hasn't even explored its own solar system. We know he's a human, coming from Earth. Yet, he also knows of/about these aliens, which suggests they were living on Earth as well. This implies that Earth was part of the intergalactic government, and the MC grew up long after the downfall of the empire (no spaceflight). This happened 50,000 years ago, and he would've been a baby then, unless he's a distant relative. Dina said that Moose's DNA was 200 years old (Though there's also some mention of a 10x time dilation factor, and that's without taking special relativity into account.) If Moose has grown up long after the fall of the empire, he was hidden in time and space as a newborn. Yet, someone found him, abducted him and then sent him across a temporal divide to a distant galaxy? The whole situation is also pretty convenient. The clones who're talented/immediately useful find themselves already alive. As if they were planted for Bina to find them. Could one of them be a traitor? After meeting Uhura, when going to the Characters-page, Cammie is already on there. It's possible to change how Cammie addresses Moose, I changed it to “Sir”. During our first dialog with her, Moose will say “Call me Moose or Captain…”, in this case it would've made more sense to say “Call me Moose or Sir…” (Though I suspect this naming system isn't implemented yet.) Gameplay and interface: The game's main menu is largely unchanged from vanilla Ren'Py. There's no music or sound effects either, though I don't mind this personally. While playing, the UI is heavily customized, with easy access to intergalactic or planetary travel, a character overview and a quest book. A freeroam section lets the player navigate inside the ship to find NPCs and events. Spoiler: Gameplay criticisms & suggestions: Character renaming feels clumsy Renaming the MC comes a bit late. Until renaming him, it would be better for the textbox to say “you” instead of “Moose”. Same for Bina, have her be “unknown tiny woman” or “???” before she introduces herself. Infinitely expandable might work to the game's detriment: An example of this is when we meet Uhura. Our first interaction with her was too weird. Not only does Moose translocate to the ice planet unexpectedly (it happens immediately after a conversation with Bina), he's also unprepared (only wearing shorts). This could've been used for comedic effect, but Uhura's dialog falls short of that. She has to wonder how he survived in the cold, seeing as she doesn't know about translocation. Uhura seems immediately sexually attracted to Moose, foregoing any character building, atmosphere or personality. Freeroam: Because the events themselves are kinetic, the freeroam system itself falls flat. As far as I can tell, events have to be played in the order the quest book gives them. This makes the story and its events linear. Freeroam does get used to its effect by allowing players to replay events by clicking interactables or NPCs. The ship has three decks and countless rooms, which makes finding an NPC a hassle. By the end of the current game, I started to get a feel for where certain NPCs might be, but this required countless clicks. Spoiler: Freeroam criticisms & suggestions: The passage of time is unintuitive. Except for a UI element at the top of the screen, there's no indication what the time-of-day is. Moose doesn't seem to sleep or get tired, he doesn't have a daily ritual, or anything else that can indicate the passage of time. I'm not suggesting to implement: 'wake up' -> 'go to bathroom' -> 'click shower' -> 'click toilet' -> 'click sink' -> 'click toothbrush', or anything else that's extremely complex and repetitive. Instead, when a new day starts, Moose could find himself in bed with Bina waking him up, reminding him of his current quest/task. Simple interactions like greeting, hugging or kissing a crew member skip a time slot. This is counterintuitive, more so because navigating the massive ship doesn't pass any time. Instead, limit these interactions to once a day (concerning stat-gain). The “replay event” topic of conversation is ambiguous: This option shows a list of all interactions (dialog) we had with an NPC. While I like that this exists, I'd love it if these events also included a replay of sexual encounters if the event was connected to one. Currently, we can talk to Xena and ask about “Instincts and urges”, and she'll just tell the player to meet in Engineering. It would be good QoL if this event automatically triggered instead of only the dialog. Events could also be marked as being sexual, personal, or expanding on lore/world building, so players can more easily find events containing certain content or information. Navigating the ship is a pain: The quest book tells the players whom to see, but not where to go. Other games solve this issue by coloring the decks and rooms where an event is active, either with different colors per LI or to make a distinction between main- & side quests. An example: “Ask Bina how Dellane's reprogramming is progressing?” We have to scour the ship to find Bina, there's no indication where she is. It's not the brig, engineering, medbay or even command. Finally found her in the recreation room, which doesn't seem relevant to the reprogramming of the clone. The first thing Bina says is that the clone is back in the brig, but I just came from there and it's empty. Here, if the player goes to the brig, the now obedient clone could ask him to go find Bina in the recreational room. An alternative to this is an expansion of the quest book, where the MC can comm the NPC and fast-travel to their location. Visuals: Visually, the game is outstanding. The characters are visually varying and appealing. This setting allows the dev to use esoteric models, and he seems to be willing to use this to its full effect. The environments are detailed, with characters being sprites on top of them. Animation wise, I'd call the game innovative. We'll see Moose undress in a quick succession (not fluid animation) of rendered frames, which seamlessly transition into a sexual animation. The character screen will show the LI moving or dancing, which is a nice touch as well. Even during dialog, we'll sometimes be treated to a succession of renders that show an NPC walking around a table, or going from lying to sitting up. Spoiler: Visuals criticisms & suggestions: The firehose-dick when climaxing is too comedic for the setting: When the MC climaxes, his dick will pulse like a water hose in a cartoon. It's possible that this only happens in scenes before 0.03 because the last encounter with Zeyley didn't feature it. This effect is too exaggerated and comedic for the otherwise serious setting of the game. Because climaxing happens internally, it is difficult to show. This can be helped by Moose or the LI actually conversing or thinking during scenes. Orgasms also have other effects on the body, like arching of the back, closing the eyes, etc. Not much eroticism, just sex/lust. This is very subjective. Every NPC on the ship just seems to exist to be the MC's plaything. There's little build-up to encounters, and no real intimacy. Though I suspect this is deliberately to have actual content in the game, and introduce/streamline the point system later. Sometimes there's a lot of unused visual space, or small characters hidden behind the textbox With small characters, the MC could look down, centering them more on the screen. For instance: When Bina talks to the half-clone, there's a ton of space on the top of the render, yet the half-clone is mostly covered by the textbox. Having the camera pointed down to the half-clone's chest would make her higher up, and make her small animations more visible.