Recent reviews by Shadowpheonix

I just finished my first play through of this game. I went with the romantic "good guy" route, so saw minimal sexy scenes. Despite that, it is by far the best VNs I have ever played.
The story is well written (although there are a few minor grammatical issues), and touches on some very deep emotional issues in a hard hitting, yet respectful manner. I am a 53 year old male and am not afraid to admit this VN brought me to tears several times (although I should also mention that I empathize extremely strongly with Cece and that my experience has been that the struggle does NOT get easier as you get older).

TLDR: If you are looking for a VN that has good writing, lovely eye candy, and a really intense emotional impact (and not necessarily a happy one), this is it.

Progress in this game is EXTREMELY slow unless you spend "gems", which of course trickle in at an absurdly slow rate but can be purchased for a ridiculously high amount of real world money via the in-game shop. FYI, when I say "ridiculously high amount" I mean you could get more time per dollar on a web-cam site.

I found this game to be quite addictive, with an intriguing story. Unfortunately, this is really just the first chapter in a series, and is fairly short at that - the main game took less than 6 hours to solve, and most of that was due to "OK, now go back to base and wait a day to see if what you tried actually did anything" type game-play. The so called "major expansion" of the 1st add-on consisted of a horrible (due to unresponsive controls) steer your raft mini-game, followed by a whopping 5 locations to travel around, and took less than 20 minutes to complete (and that is with more of the try something, then wait game-play).

I bought this game on sale for $12, and honestly feel I overpaid for what I received. If this game ever goes on sale for $5, then it might be worth it - until then, I would recommend avoiding it.

Don't bother with this buggy mess. It has a lot of potential, but the "micro" transactions are far too "macro" (meaning ridiculously expensive) and actual progress is painful without them - especially when you exit the game normally, only to login a few hours later and discover it completely forgot about the last mission or 2 that you completed.

Update:
I got bored and decided to give this game another shot. It is still a buggy mess, but the gameplay itself can be quite addictive. I have not spent a cent in their cash shop, nor will I unless they DRAMATICALLY reduce their prices. In my opinion, if they replaced all of the artwork with hi-res photos & videos of actual porn stars, their microtransactions would STILL be too expensive.

If you can get this game for 50% off, do not hesitate. However, it is not worth full price.
The story is quite good, although the non-chronological order they insist on using to tell it is annoying (although the ordering will kind of make sense when you reach the end).
The graphics are spectacular.
The voice acting is unexpectedly stiff in many places - it seems like Elliot Page & Willem Dafoe were just reading lines rather than acting their characters.
The animations are a weak point - I've seen more fluid facial animation on ventriloquist dummies.
The worst part about this game however is the controls - they will quite literally have you screaming in frustration at several points.

The "Townsmen VR" product they are selling here is actually just a short proof of concept teaser demo (the actual gameplay is less than 10 minutes - the rest of my "time played" was me poking around trying to figure out what I was missing in order to progress beyond the tutorial).

The developers have flat out indicated they are NOT going to update it. They claim that they are instead starting from scratch with a complete rewrite which they intend to release at a new price point once it is completely finished. It is not clear if those who purchased Townsmen VR will get that full game (should it ever actually materialize) at the price they have already paid, or be offered a chance to upgrade to the new game at a discount, or have to pay full price.

In other words - Townsmen VR was released to early access as nothing more than a marketing survey to decide if a full game in this genre could be potentially profitable.

Original review written on Sep 12, 2020...
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Released from Early Access, yet is still a buggy mess that should at best be considered beta software.
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Update on Feb 11, 2022:
Most (but definitely not all) of the bugs have been fixed. The game is now in a decently playable state, and can be a fair bit of fun.


Update on July 14, 2022:
Yeah, despite the removal of the "Early Access" label, this game is definitely still in the alpha/beta stages. The developers are still making dramatic, game altering changes and have no qualms about intentionally breaking or eliminating even the most basic features (such as quest tracking). Until they decide the game (or at least the basic functionality) is finished and no longer subject to change, I cannot recommend this game.