Do you mean saving at the end? There is no save system implemented for Book 3 yet - that only gets added when the next book is nearly done.
Spoilers
Anyone able to NOT lose relationship points w mom when/if u bring her on your mission?
I didn’t check the values in my playthrough, but I don’t think I lost points. At what times, exactly, did you lose points with her? Did you fail to keep up the ruse?
My relationship with her is typically so low that I gained points.
I have a flashback of her having to leave in the middle of my birthday party as a child, and my 3 choices after seem to all lose points. I go from 92 pts to 83
Hmm, I’ll check when I get there in this playthrough.
I think relationship points with mom go both ways. If you made choices in which you are upset with her, you lose points with her, not because she likes you less, but because you have possibly shown that you like her less/are still hurt by her absence during your childhood.
I went from 6 to 13, lol!
I managed to keep it up until the end/the rescue by Rebecca went through and UB came in. So I don’t think it’s dependent on if you succeed or fail, I think it’s determined before that, back where you either agree or disagree with allowing her plan to be the one you follow rather than insisting on going in alone.
But both you and hapamama took her along, and you gained points while she lost. Or I’m misreading something.
Oh my fc-n gosh,.my heart is breaking so baaad. Still awake, no sleep because.of this book . A route
Exactly the same with mine. And I always choose the best options with Rebecca, I was also at 92% and those 3 choices dropped me to 83% no matter what.
Review:
I really liked this chapter of this story. Overall I give it a positive review and my endorsement, especially for those who enjoyed the second book. I’m like 90% sure if you liked book 2, you will like this one.
Specifics:
The Good - The romance storylines are handled very well. While there is an overall arc across the series, even within this one book there is good romance arcs where you feel growth. The writing gets you invested and is pretty good at manipulating the readers feelings so you feel what the author wants you to feel in each particular scene.
I also thought the worldbuilding was pretty good. I would actually say this is an improvement from the previous installments (which I thought were fine when it came to worldbuilding). I liked how various factions and leaders were introduced and used. And I get the feeling that the author is going to allow the players some agency in how the main character is going to shape the various conflicts between factions that come up. And that makes the roleplaying really engaging and helps let the worldbuilding pay off. Some of the best authors are capable of giving the various factions nuance, without “falling in love” with them to allow the players/readers/protagonists to make “choices that matter” in regards to them. As I said, by the way its written I see this forecasted for future installments, but even within this installment, there are a variety of choices in how to interact both aggressively and cooperatively with both antagonist and non-antagonistic factions. And those were some of my favorite scenes to roleplay.
And finally I want to highlight the characters. Both the romance options and the supporting characters. Its hard to describe how well the characters are written. Even those that are more static-y villains/heroes, they are still fun. And I feel like those are in the minority, most characters are very nuanced. This game uses gender-variable NPCs, which usually is a red flag for me because I think it ends up hurting the writing as everyone feels very androgynous and kinda unbelievable. But this story continues to do GVNPCs right. The characters remain romantically desirable, act and are described appropriately, yet don’t fall into stereotypical tropes. A GVNPC who combat oriented, will retain that characteristic between both genders, yet you never feel like its just a gender swap, they still very much read as either a man or a woman. Similarly a GVNPC who has more of a nurturing personality type is written in a way that I don’t feel like the author “meant” the character to be a certain gender and then just coded it with a simple pronoun switch. This is a hard balance to strike, and personally, I felt this story is one of the best examples of doing this correctly.
The Meh - There is a pretty significant plothole in one of the B storylines. It comes up fairly often through the story until it resolves around halfway through the book. Every time it comes up its kinda jarring and I think you are supposed to just “go with it” to make the plot work and to add drama/interest to that particular storyline. I had to think about whether I should put this here or in the con category, but I settled for neutral because while it strains the suspension of disbelief a bit and will probably take you a bit out of the story because of its silliness, I can kinda understand what the author was trying to set up plotwise and the emotions they were trying to get out of the reader for those scenes, and I’m not entirely sure if there was a way to get that drama/tension that didn’t require you to turn off your brain just a little. It is a story about vampires and magic, so its not like suspension of disbelief isn’t required, but for those readers who like to nitpick plotholes, be warned you should go into this story trying to enjoy it and just go with it.
The Cons - I’m actually not really sure what I would put here. I feel like this is as perfect of a story as is humanly possible given our human imperfections. It could have probably done with maybe a month more of polish to fix various typos and scripting errors. And could probably used some more feedback from other perspectives to make some minor adjustments to scenes to more satisfy a larger audience. But even then its hard to criticize that because the game needs to be “finished” eventually and it really is fine. There can always be room for improvement, but with as long as the development cycle for each installment is already, I think the audience would prefer even faster cycles then what we are currently getting with less polish, than having to wait a half century to get the “perfect” series.
All in all, I would give the experience a 5/5. Would highly recommend starting from the first book though rather than picking up this one and starting mid-series. Looking forward to the next installment.
Yeah, but my relationship with her is so low that I think that’s affecting it too. I think the real determining factor is either taking her along or the birthday memory and your reaction to it (or maybe both,) but not failing at the ruse.
Honestly, this was more than worth bursting past the first two books again.
Not to say that the first two books are bad, not by a longshot, but the series keeps improving with each iteration and this is the best one yet.
This one truly breaks open the doors on the world building, what with the many, many relationship scenes that are so adorable it almost made my teeth fall out, the long stay with the team home making it feel more and more like a family, the greater expansion on the Agency, both on the ground and in the inner workings, the new supernaturals, etc.
A good bit of the early choices also start bearing fruit here too like with Elidor, which was a late choice in the first book that I didn’t expect mattering so hard in the climax and whether or not Verda(or Tina, iirc) know of the supernatural .
It also does kinda help on my end that charisma characters (which I usually try to head for in games with any sort of relationship values) really get some love in this series (which kinda makes sense since you can supplement the lack of muscle with your vampire allies) and can help make allies that you wouldn’t otherwise.
The only minor dig I have is that the rogue supernatural plot teased in the last book didn’t really pop in here. For another book, I suppose.
All in all, while the first two are solid entries in their own right, this is the best of the series yet (I am seeing it just under Choice of Robots in terms of quality, which is high praise for me) and cannot wait for the next book.
Also, N is adorable, and seeing their pain
in the fear of human fragility, the vampiric urge and their bloody past is both painful and delicious to experience along with the wonderful relationship building.
Bruh.
I thought I was gonna be a Ride or Die A-Romancer for the series, but Book 3 M got me feeling so soft I might be jumping ship.
Or why not both?
Majority of the time I read/play VNs or IF or simulation games, I only have one RO that interest me. WHC is probably the only exception so far that made me create a couple more OCs. XD
Mmmm, the M Romancer in me has been well fed with Book 3. All things considered, for a CoG it’s a slow burn but it’s been great watching the relationship develop. Took the detective and Morgan long enough to stop being oblivious.
Although doing the recap made me wonder something. What happened to our gun? Feels like there’s been more than a few situations in this book where pulling out our piece would be a more than valid option lmao.
Congratulations for the successful release! I’ve been (im)patiently waiting for it haha. Now time to binge-read it in once sitting and regret finishing a book too fast. Again.
Wish I was more skilled at writing so I could give more constructive criticism, but for now I think it suffices to say your work counts amongst many others from this website that made me go back to writing in my spare time, regardless of it feeling subpar (to me) so far. It might be odd to say, but thanks for mustering the courage to show your creativity out there, and make some well earned profit from it to boot. It’s inspiring.
Hm, I’m not sure it’s this, but I discovered in TWC that there’s a choice where, if your psychology skills are at 0, and you select an option that is programmed for you to lose more psychology skills, it ends up actually adding 1%. So my detective was so bad at people skills that the game gave them an extra point.
I’m not sure who else has this issue with Rebecca’s stats, but if someone who had low points ended up gaining in that scene where you had lost them, is it possible that the game glitched out, and instead of adding 9 points, which would have pushed you to 101, it instead reversed and subtracted 9 points and dropped you to 83?
I have experienced hapamama’s decreased with Rebecca’s stat even though… Is it because of fairmath? I haven’t check the code yet.
@RedRoses @hapamama93
Ok. I checked the code. There’s *set mothernewr %-10
if your relationship with Rebecca relationship was (mothernewr >= 70 and 65)
, there’s not change if (mothernewr >= 36)
It seems to be intended. This is during the birthday flashback (Chapter 17)
You can check with this fairmath calculator as well. I tried it out with 91% relationship with Rebecca and it resulted in the same outcome in-game.
https://dashingdon.com/play/lucid/fairmath/mygame/index.php?cb=94064