Family Matters

I have to admit that I was initially drawn to Family Matters by the very eye-catching title image which I thought looked interesting and gave the game a kind of “mystery adventure” vibe so I was pretty excited to check it out. What we actually have here with this game is a lewd visual novel that is very, very linear. Hey, I have played some great kinetic visual novels over the years, but this one is trying to pretend that the player has a lot of choice in regards to the way the story unfolds and that simply is not true.

We All Need A Little Motivation

I really wish that I could tell you what the big picture is when it comes to the story in Family Matters, but I for the life of me could not tell you what it is! Our main protagonist is a guy that has relationships with many kinds of women from a prostitute who seems like she could be a sweet girl to this really annoying chick called Scarlet that has a real attitude problem. The game implies that the player gets to shape the story, but that is not actually the case.

Pretending To Choose

The biggest issue that I have with Family Matters is the illusion of choice. This is pretty much a kinetic visual novel. You will be reading a huge wall of text and then a choice will pop up, like literally one choice! What is the point of this? It just slows things down and it is very frustrating. There are also many times where you will be given a couple of choices such as going through a door, I selected no, but then two screens later, I go through the door! No matter the choices you make in this game, you are taken the way the story wants you to go.

Sexual Progression

I will say that the renders in Family Matters are pretty damn good. You have some excellent looking ladies here and I like how they are on the verge of being realistic, but they do all have these dream bodies! The XXX content in the game follows a very formulaic path. You start with a hand job and have to build up to full sex, it is like this for every girl. There is no meter or anything like that, it is just each girl follows this exact path and it can make things much less interesting. Oh, I also forgot to mention that while the renders are amazing, there is no animation in this game which is such a shame as the renders do look good.

Pros:

• Some of the girls were easy on the eyes
• You can pretty much “autoplay” this game if you just want to see the XXX content
• It does not take up too much of your time
• The renders are very good so I would like to see the developer take another crack at this

Cons:

• This is pretty much a kinetic visual novel as your choices do not matter
• The story and characters are very weak and uninteresting