Post by Grizzlebubs in My Bully is My Lover comments

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I absolutely enjoy this game, the writing and humor is well thought out and the reasoning behind WHY you were bullied is surprisingly understandable. It takes a few odd turns, but most often those plot twists help progress the story in a good direction. That being said, I have only three real criticisms, all of which are related to Sky / Klara.

Note these are personal preferences and not a criticism of people who enjoy those genres.

(Potential Spoilers, OBVIOUSLY, so continue reading at your own risk)

1. How you define the relationship for Klara and Sky. With no real contectual dialog changes, it can break emersion when people are 'shocked' you are having sex with your roomate. All of the consequences / reactions to continuing down the 'roommate' and 'landlord' route are very ovbiously written as though you are related to Klara and Sky. This annoyed me and I personally just gave up and set them as Sister / Mother considering everyone treated them as relatives regardless.

2. Sex scenes that you have no agency to decide whether or not you will participate. Even if these mandatory sex scenes are contained within flashbacks, not having the power to choose slightly annoyed me. In both cases they dramatically change the relationship dynamic, so I do understand to some extent. I suppose stems from one of the mandatory sex scenes being incest related. Though the removal of agency for in the other still irked me.

3. Speaking of a mandatory sex scenes, having a second incest sex scene be required if you wish to FULLY explore a different character's route seems odd to me. Anyone who wishes to fully explore Gwen's route must have sex on the beach with their sister. This feels bad for those who wish to experience Gwen's story but are not fond of incest. I would much rather Sky's beach date to be allowed the choice between platonic / sexual to allow Gwen's route to not force incest, if desired.

I understand that all three of the above criticisms are nitpicking, with the first one being nearly impossible to fix (requiring developing large amounts of additional dialog to differentiate between sister / roommate). The game is well thought out and I am thoroughly looking forward to Chapter 2!

codyskater3176 days ago(+1)

i'm sure you have caught on to this but just to be sure cause you seem to think there is suppose to be a distinction between roommate/landlady and sister/mother. but it's basically code in adult visual novels cause if they try and sell a game with incest things like itchi and patreon will remove their content. it's basically just the universal work around and if seen should just been assumed it's incest.

kinda in the same way an anime might have characters to go to "wacdonalds" for burger and fries. we all know what it really is but it makes it legal distinct enough to get around the drama that comes with it.

i get that's not everyone's cup tea but if you go into it not expecting that your setting your self up for unrealistic expectations.

i understand your not trying to tear this game down over it or anything and i actually haven't played this yet but i plan to soon. but it seems a bit odd that if something looks like a duck and quacks like a duck to be annoyed when it turned out to be a duck.

Grizzlebubs76 days ago (1 edit)

I appreciate the reply and I do see you point as incest is a taboo that can turn many potential customers off from purchasing. That is why I only word my criticism as an 'annoyance'. I personally enjoy My Bully is my Lover, it is one of my favorite AVNs. For me, like with everything I enjoy I (personally) have things with it I would think would make it better and merely voiced them in that comment.

Truth is, I believe the main reason roommate / landlady are coded identically as sister / mother is because of the added development time and has nothing to do with Patreon / itchi removing content. The reason I say this is just 'search' the term incest on itchi and you will find a lot of games with explicit incest content.

Having different dialog / renders for sister / mother and roommate / landlady could dramatically increase the word count, which would increase development / testing time. The realistic solution is how MBML (and most other AVNs) implements it and just has a relationship option with identical dialog / renders and calls it a day. For me this observation / criticism isn't exclusive to MBM as I am annoyed, but understanding when it is in any AVN (not just MBML) with this functionality.

codyskater3176 days ago(+1)

yeah i got the feeling it wasn't a deal breaker or anything and you are right that if they could they would have dialogue for both but it's too much work. but i have been around the block enough times to know it is a whole legal thing about putting incest in.

granted i don't know why itchi and patreon don't use an equal hand for all things like that but i have seen a fair share of them either be deleted from the platform or have to edit the game in such a way that their is enough ambiguity. a lot even do it just to not take any risks at all cause it's an easy addition at the start and cuts off any drama.

most that have issues like that will tend to use an "unofficial" patch that weirdly lines up perfectly since they already have attention on them.

kind of in the same way you might see react channels on youtube using the legal 10 minutes of a show but still fighting strikes all the time but only for certain properties.

i even took a quick peek on their rules and guidelines for adult content just to be sure yes depicting incest is one of them at least for patreon anyway.

i'm sure the author has no issue if you would rather them not be incest and being able to pick that but that being one of the fetishes they are going for it has to be pretty explicit in the dialog and they can't have it both ways.

all i'm saying is i have yet to see a game where where they use the set your roommate's and landlady's role and not have the dialog be clear it's incest. so going in without those expectations is wishful thinking on your part.

i feel like i'm going a bit overboard with this cause at the end of the day i don't think anyone is truly upset here. just thought it was odd that you would think that meant other wise and wanted to clear that up.

Grizzlebubs76 days ago

It's all good and perhaps in my original post I came on too strong and made it appear I was diametrically opposed to the game, that is definitely not the case.

The only game I can think of that has dialog toggle is Genex Love, where it lets you change your relationship status and clarify whether or not you are blood related (and dialog changes based on blood relation toggle). But you are correct that is the exception, almost all AVN use Roommate / Landlady as a mere legal work around.

Regardless I appreciate your clarification on Itch / Patreon's legal terms regarding incest. That was something I was not aware of.

codyskater3176 days ago(-1)

this is gonna be a bit off topic but i thought your profile pick was an owl till i clicked the notification and saw it up close lol.

and nah you were not coming off too strong or anything it was just me being ocd when i saw something that seemed odd to me.

also slightly off topic genex love is a game i had my eye on but wasn't sure if i should try, do you recommend that? i can't remember from where but i got the impression you can miss content if your not on the ball about it and i hate having to be on the ball or do homework to make sure i don't miss anything but the page it had did looks interesting.

Grizzlebubs76 days ago

Ha, I am just a huge fan of The Apothecary Diaries and Maomao's sass.

Regarding Genex Love, it is entertaining. Neither good, nor bad; honestly more on the silly side with some of the premisis. The only content I could see you miss is regarding more of the extreme fetishes as it is very clear when a dialog choice will end a route.

At the start of the game it has around 5 to 6 questions on which fetishes you care about including / excluding. Excluding those fetishes doesn't change the story line, but does (obviously) exclude content. That being said, the game on itch is mostly a demo, with about half of part 1's story locked behind a paywall.

codyskater3176 days ago(+1)

cool i might give it shot for the demo at least and if i get hooked the full game. just booting this game up now and got crimson high lined up as well atm but i'll slot that into the list of games i want to try.

been on a bit of a binge of these games lately and just came off the heels of cozy cafe and out of touch.

Grizzlebubs76 days ago

Oh man, Cozy Cafe is my favorite AVN, in my opinion and am currently reading through Out of Touch. If you liked Cozy Cafe, I'd also recommend Pale Carnations. Though it leans heavily into extreme BDSM and Objectification, so if that isn't your cup of tea...

I enjoy story heavy AVN more, which is why AVN like MBML, Cozy Cafe, Ripples, Eternum, Pale Carnations, Shale Hill Secrets, Streaming for Love, et cetera are among my favorites.

codyskater3176 days ago

seen about half of those myself and yeah the ones i have seen are fantastic. i actually left a review in the comments for both of the games i told you about with out of touch just being yesterday and cozy cafe being about a week ago if you wanted my full thoughts on them. dunno how far you are into out of touch but the start is pretty rough honestly but it gets really good if you stick it out for a bit.

and yeah i'll check out pale carnations not super into bdsm but it's not really a turn off for me and i do like male dom and objectification. i haven't seen any of the ones you wrote after eternum so ill put those on my radar. got a week off work so i've just been bingeing this stuff.

itch.io

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