Genex Love is a VN with a resource management/combat side gig. It follows the story of an aspiring super hero with no super powers living in a world full of people with super powers and alien monster attacks. Naturally it turns out he does have super powers, which he acquires by fucking super heroes... what exactly did you expect on this site?
The game's core is a choice based VN. We follow the MC as he goes about his school life and make decisions as to whether he wishes to be a hero (frequently a doormat) or an antihero/villain (generally a huge asshole). So far there are a decent number of choices which dramatically change event outcomes before they bottleneck back to the main storyline. I have yet to notice any substantially different storyline outcomes based on your character’s past decisions, but it’s early in the game’s development cycle so I’m willing to give it a pass.
The sideshow in the game is a combat system/resource management game. Basically you train your character's stats with money in order to fight battles to reduce the danger level in the city. If the danger level gets too high, you lose. The combat system is determined almost entirely by the MC's stat line and offers very little in the way of finesse or decision making. There is an option to skip the combat, but you'll still need to play the resource management game, which will continue to influence the skipped combats. The gameplay is overall very forgettable, which leaves the story.
At first glance, the story is pretty good. There are some good scenes, some decent development in character relationships, and some climactic battles. However, as the story continues, things get more and more confusing. Planned events happen with little to no warning, characters spontaneously pop out of the woodwork for scenes, or the MC randomly runs into people. Individually, there are a lot of great scenes, but things are problematic as a whole.
The problem is that there’s no narrative arc. More accurately, the main story has a narrative arc and each of the girls have their own narrative arcs, but none of them are related to one another. It’s like trying to read a dozen unrelated books, and being forced to change between them each chapter. This type of story structure can be pulled off, but it requires a single narrative than can fit scenes from different characters instead of individual scenes which have no relation other than a shared character. Done well, you have Persona or Game of Thrones; done poorly, you have a series of short stories about the same people which feel like they happen at random.
This is definitely exacerbated by the sheer number of girls in the game. There’s nearly a dozen already with no guarantee there won’t be more. While I rather like most of them individually, jumping between them for events and interactions is a bit much. It definitely doesn’t aid the game’s cohesion.
Overall, Genex Love is a cool game in theory, but leaves a lot to be desired in practice. The boring combat/resource management sub-game could have been saved by a great story and characters, but it’s just not enough. If you've really got a thing for superhero stories and koikatu models, you might still enjoy it, but there are times when the game feels like a confusing mess.
The game's core is a choice based VN. We follow the MC as he goes about his school life and make decisions as to whether he wishes to be a hero (frequently a doormat) or an antihero/villain (generally a huge asshole). So far there are a decent number of choices which dramatically change event outcomes before they bottleneck back to the main storyline. I have yet to notice any substantially different storyline outcomes based on your character’s past decisions, but it’s early in the game’s development cycle so I’m willing to give it a pass.
The sideshow in the game is a combat system/resource management game. Basically you train your character's stats with money in order to fight battles to reduce the danger level in the city. If the danger level gets too high, you lose. The combat system is determined almost entirely by the MC's stat line and offers very little in the way of finesse or decision making. There is an option to skip the combat, but you'll still need to play the resource management game, which will continue to influence the skipped combats. The gameplay is overall very forgettable, which leaves the story.
At first glance, the story is pretty good. There are some good scenes, some decent development in character relationships, and some climactic battles. However, as the story continues, things get more and more confusing. Planned events happen with little to no warning, characters spontaneously pop out of the woodwork for scenes, or the MC randomly runs into people. Individually, there are a lot of great scenes, but things are problematic as a whole.
The problem is that there’s no narrative arc. More accurately, the main story has a narrative arc and each of the girls have their own narrative arcs, but none of them are related to one another. It’s like trying to read a dozen unrelated books, and being forced to change between them each chapter. This type of story structure can be pulled off, but it requires a single narrative than can fit scenes from different characters instead of individual scenes which have no relation other than a shared character. Done well, you have Persona or Game of Thrones; done poorly, you have a series of short stories about the same people which feel like they happen at random.
This is definitely exacerbated by the sheer number of girls in the game. There’s nearly a dozen already with no guarantee there won’t be more. While I rather like most of them individually, jumping between them for events and interactions is a bit much. It definitely doesn’t aid the game’s cohesion.
Overall, Genex Love is a cool game in theory, but leaves a lot to be desired in practice. The boring combat/resource management sub-game could have been saved by a great story and characters, but it’s just not enough. If you've really got a thing for superhero stories and koikatu models, you might still enjoy it, but there are times when the game feels like a confusing mess.