Hey, kids!
I think I'm a little too old to be called a k-
Have you ever wanted to be sucked into a vortex and spit out into a world full of talking animals?
I've never really thought about that but not especi-
A walk in the woods turns into something a lot cooler when you and your friend are transported to a land much like ours.... but with talking dragons and upright, walking, talking animals of various species.
I don't know about "cooler". Maybe I should jus-
Want to date a porcupine? You can do that.
Look, I'm sorry, but there's been a HUGE misunderst-
Also: optional NSFW additions to all of the optional sex scenes. Short, text-based scenarios.
Okay, well, there was going to be one of these games eventually.
Story-wise, this is probably about what you think it is. Our protagonist self-insert is about who I'd expect: slightly nerdy, with anxiety, orbits the furry fandom a fair bit. All-in-all, all people involved seem to take this event in stride. People end up in Furryland through portals, and there's intrigue going on about the whys and how-to-get-backs. In-between mandatory plot events, you get to choose who to visit and interact with and, indeed, potentially find the animal person of your dreams.
...How do you write about visual novels? Hell, how do you write about games in general? I am unequipped in every way one could be unequipped for both this particular game and the blog in general.
What am I even doing.
Okay okay okay, whatever. I did three routes. The first, I went with my instinct of "no thank you, can I go home please". The second, I actually tried to hook up with a character and comically failed at this, although round three I was more successful.
Scientist Dragon Lady is my true soulmate and/or the character I thought would be the least effort to influence to see how the ending would change.
The second and third rounds kind of highlighted the problems in the writing. There are some obvious ones: typos here and there, some stiltedness and conversations ending abruptly. The characters were cute enough, with maybe a bit too much dependency on everybody being socially awkward.
The plot goes absolutely bonkers off-the-rails at the absolute last minute of what was up until that point a semi-chill game of hanging around and learning the skeletons in people's closets. It's foreshadowed a bit, but unless there's something I missing in another route, enby-howdy does that escalate quickly. The dating stuff is mostly two fixed points of deciding who to visit, which were mostly a single bout of dialogue hardly more extensive than the usual detours you can make.
Being self-aware about it doesn't earn you points in my book, unless you're drop-dead hilarious at it. This ain't it.
You can keep the dating stuff off to the side, sure, I can see that being a valid decision in favor of letting the story go up front. But in that case the story needs to be pretty well-done too, and, uh, there's really no pacing at all here. By the way, none of my actions really seemed to matter story-wise: there didn't seem to be "routes" so much as optional drive-thrus you could visit along the main story highway. Maybe they were a little too ambitious with what they wanted to do.
Also, there aren't really any dogs in the game. Wonder what's up with that.
I just realized I went for dragons every time.
Not thinking about that too hard.
I, uh... I played the game and I have no idea how to feel about this experience. Uhhhhhh.... hm, you know what, I'm gonna go ahead and say Furries & Scalies & Bears OH MY!: Ultimate Edition is probably an okay game maybe, but really any potential appeal is a hard bounce-off for me, so can I really say either way? I dunno. help