Larry games follow a simple pattern: Larry is a ~40-years-old man who seeks true love, or at least true sex. With your help, he points and clicks his way through a set of lovely ladies who have needs and wants Larry has to fulfill (by solving funny puzzles). After making a girl happy, he's rewarded by... being somewhat (ab)used, missing out on sex due to hilarious circumstances, or being traumatized in a hilarious manner. It's never cruel, though; Larry is otherwise extremely lucky, plus now and then he is allowed to "score" for real. He always bounces up quickly. At the end of each game, there is a special girl who promises more than just a hot night (or, hot 5 minutes...), a girl who could be The One! Of course, no matter how great things look at the end of the game, there comes a sequel, and evil Al Lowe robs Larry of everything, throwing him into the dating scene once again. This game brings the same pattern into a modern setting. With the help of a local version of Tinder, he hooks up with sexy babes, turns their lives around for the better, and then prays. Sadly, he's also forced to date gay men, because supposedly he doesn't know what "sexual orientation" means, and perform a sex act on a drag queen. The devs considered that funny. It's not. Indeed, they failed to mimic the intentionally dry and corny humor of Al Lowe in general. Also, instead of the horny but harmless lovable loser he is, he's treated like a chauvinistic skirt chaser who'd hump a drainpipe, insulted in a mean-spirited way. Then there's the fact the devs decided to make an erotic game with all the erotic content censored. You will see a man deep-throating a corndog, but you're forbidden from seeing a female breast. Even during sex. This and other minor problems prevent the game from being great. Still, if you're able to swallow (he he) this, it's still a more than decent addition to the Larry series. Just, maybe get it on sale. P.S.: There's a lore-friendly nude mod on ModDB.
I don't understand, it simply doesn't deserve 5*. I wonder how many reached the botched final part. I do love the graphics. The island scenery, which you will see the most, is very nice. There are some lovely girls, but almost no animation, let alone face closeups. The few "reward" animations are either useless (Larry swinging over ravine...) or pale in comparison to your average animated fanart, plus they never show any nudity, even during those 3-4 tiny sex scenes. The voice acting is mostly great, but some lines have misplaced stress and other minor issues (other than bugs, see below). Dialogue content is a mixed bag. Pi and Larry are definitely the best characters, but the bar isn't set too high here. The main female villain is kinda fun, the main male villain is extremely cringeworthy (based on Gangnam Style's PSY...) The game starts with a boring tutorial and a "sensitivity lecture" with a reminder that "gender is diverse", then there's a pretty decent adventuring section, which later degrades into running back and forth while doing strange errands for random people and esoteric reasons. Some task chains lack any conclusion whatsoever. Unusable items, characters and locations never disappear, so you check them over and over, because you never know what is really useful and what's clutter. The final part is artificially inflated by ~2-3 hours using ~15 minutes of content (but they still had time to shoehorn another forced gay scene), and the ending leaves a very nasty aftertaste. It's supposedly emotional, but feels wrong, unfinished, made with recycled assets. There are also many technical issues: crashes, glitching through jail bars, premature dialogues, voices not matching text, unskippable "death sequences", loading times when checking some inventory items, etc. Buy it on sale only, the devs are gone anyway, and use a walkthrough when bored, your hard work won't be rewarded. Oh and, there's a nude mod on ModDB, makes the game slightly better.
This game is great, no matter what was the reason it caught your eye in the first place. The VN-RPG-Management part of the game is very solid. It's not a hardcore RPG of course, and this is reflected in the battles which went for a rather unique take, very fitting for a VNRPG. They are purposefully made kinda intimate (as in "intimate orchestra"), but this combined with inventive enemy designs, and the way adventuring works (card-based, kinda like Reigns) is perfectly enough to warrant a buy. As for the other part, where you build up a relationship with your female "roommate", is also really well done. There's a lot of events and activities (this applies also to SFW content), progress and outcome of which fully depends on your current mood, status, and status of your relationship, just like you would expect in real life. The game will let you finish all this after credits, if you happen to miss anything, which you probably would. I definitely disagree with the stated game length, it took me some 14 hours to complete the main storyline, and I still have things to do, both SFW and NSFW. I'd say a completionist run might take up to 20, I haven't even maxed out any of the other relationships (seemingly 2 other minor paths at least). Plus, soon there will be an expansion pack with a lot of new content. TL;DR: Time and feels great invested, unimanual play supported, I
A deceivingly complex game with an extreme amount of polish. Unless you dislike the genre, you ought to enjoy this one. From graphics, atmosphere, music and unobtrusive Simlish-like voice overs, to flavor texts on the cards—all perfect. Well, almost, but more on that at the end. As a card-based game, it's natural to expect some randomness, but it is a "curated randomness". You do have direct control over what happens in most instances, many cards trigger specific events, give you specific status effects, make specific cards appear or become available. Most of your choices *will* be purposeful. Moreover, each decision shows its rough effect on the 4 stats you have to keep within 0 and 100 in order to survive. You rarely depend on sheer luck, beyond not knowing what card comes next when no fixed series of cards is currently active. But even the pool of available cards is partially under your control. So, why the -1⚝? Basically, there is an important dungeon which requires luck to even enter, has a strict real-time limit, randomized chests, randomized paths, and a lot of fencing, result of which is random too. And unless it's just me, it's super easy to assume the dungeon is not important, only when you try everything else to get the best ending you might start to think "ok, it's probably the dungeon after all". Game Design Lesson: NEVER EVER force the player to face low-chance RNG and unknowable trial-error actions accessible only after they complete a series of events that are *also* random and/or require time-consuming preparation, let alone give misleading hints that might make the player go "heureka!", only to repeatedly undergo this ordeal and try performing the "correct" action in several ways. Especially not if it involves the main storyline... ____ P.S.: If you are not a completionist and using a walkthrough or leaving the game at "99%" doesn't bother you, ignore this last bit and make it 5⚝.
