Based on the (as yet) unfinished v0.5.3A.
My usual disclaimers when writing reviews on here are that A. I am here for the "plot" not the plot and B. I generally dislike visual novels. So take both of those into consideration for my review when thinking about this game.
Pros
- Honey select models are usually enjoyable to play with and hot - while obviously not the "photorealistic" style many other games prefer, I have always been a fan of Honey Select and think it makes for an enjoyable experience to play with. Plus the renders and animations are all quite nice.
- Content - There is already a whole swathe of content and it's clear that the dev is churning more and more out (given that it's only been on F95 for ~1 year at this point and is already in v0.5). Always a good sign.
Mehs
- High level of "story" content - I put this as a meh as some people might enjoy this a lot more than me. In essence, it takes a LONG time to get to any of the sexual stuff with the girls... A LONG time... And while that in itself isn't inherently bad, I'll direct you to my negative points.
Cons
- Inept male - I've seen a few reviews of other games on here complaining about useless male protagonists and usually avoided them, but nobody is mentioning it here and it is ABSOLUTELY the case. Lucky (the protag) is fucking clueless and useless. There are multiple scenes where a girl is basically getting naked and rubbing herself on him like a cat in heat and his response is "Oo err this is bad." Fuck off with that dick-teasing weaboo shit.
- Melodrama and edgy story - ALL of the characters (bar none) do not behave like any semblance of real people. The protagonist is constantly bemoaning how he cannot allow anybody to get close to him, the girls constantly insist they cannot love him because he won't allow himself to get close to them (which was news to me given that I was hoping they'd get their tits out), but simultaneously they all immediately fall in love with him, but then will refuse to actually have anything resembling an open or honest conversation with him. Not to mention that to a one every character (again including the protag) have almost ludicrously tragic backstories which means they refuse to trust/love anyone or do anything that would make them happy. It's all FAR too "I am 14 and this is deep" to take remotely seriously.
I have mentioned in about half of my reviews that I am a fan of
Harem Hotel and on the surface,
Lucky Paradox looks like it could very easily fall into the exact same category of game. Lots of content, honey select girls, hot and kinky harem shenanigans. Unfortunately, the similarities are only surface level and after an hour or so in the game this starts becoming more and more apparent.
From the perspective of sexual content (which I am here for) it takes WAY too long for anything to actually happen and usually for no good reason. It's like the dev will just arbitrarily go "you can only see this much titty right now, no more! Not until you've done this same event another 3 times!" It's just exhausting. Particularly as many times when it seems obvious that sexual content will happen it then doesn't.
This is largely due to the behaviour of the characters and protagonist, which I've already said are just so far away from reality. Both the girls and the guy will regularly refuse each other for really bizarre, nonsensical reasons. Mostly for the sake of melodrama. Note: I said "melodrama" NOT "drama"... It's just the sort of "oh woe is me, I am so sad and do not deserve love or sex, but you can still sort of touch my boobs because I need to tease you". And god it's just frustrating.
A lot of the other reviews have said how good it is that all the girls have their own personalities rather than "box for you to stick you dick into" and in principle I agree, but their personalities are also by-and-large very extreme tropes of "difficult".
I think perhaps a big part of my frustration might be due to the fact that Lucky has a very defined personality. He doesn't feel like a character who I can self-insert on. In most H-game you are given a defined goal ("save the Princess", "get revenge", "bang your sister" etc) but here you have more than that. Lucky has a goal (of sorts, which isn't terribly clear) but also has his own character and makes decisions based on this, leading to regular occurrences of me going "what the fuck, why the hell did I say that??"
For all of this, you might note I'm not rating it extremely negatively. This is because I feel that if the decisions made are stupid the writing is at least decent and the sexual content (what there is) is very enjoyable. It just is such a slog to reach it that I'm not convinced I'd recommend it.