VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Melody [v1.00 Extras] [MrDots Games]

I'm forcing myself to give this 3 stars instead of 2 just because I like to avoid the "hater tag". This game is nothing but plain. The characters, the story and pacing... It's just really boring. The amout of one-choice moments it's quite annoying for me as well. It has some nice renders and I guess if you're about suggary storylines and LI, go for it.
Since I still feel like a hater giving such review, I'll suggarcoat it for the dev saying he did put way more effort than I ever will developing a game for us. Cheers for that!

As a musician, I can say that i enjoyed very much the game. It has a lot of references to rock and music in general. The soundtrack is a plus, as the game it's obviously a VN focused on music.

The animations and graphics aren't bad, but you can find games with better ones.

I would give a 4/5 to the story. It's not revolutionary or has big plot twists, but it makes you feel attached to progress on the game. Gotta make a 3rd run to get a freshier impression, but I recommend this game to every AVN player.

One of the best games ever! Loved the story and the interactions, especially with Melody, such a well developed protagonist. The artwork is also incredible, the developers should be very proud of the result.

It is definitely of the best porn games out there and one of my favorites. The story is the best part about it, you are likely to fall in love with Melody as the story goes on, and maybe even want to replay it. The graphics are still good even if not one of the best.

Excellent composition, Mr.Dot! (obvious pun is obvious). It felt like the character renders here were more expressive than in Sunshine Love, but this predates it, no? In any case, my only constructive criticisms are that I'd love to see more expression in character faces, and to get rid of the single choice options in future projects (they are pointless and kind of annoying).

Ideally, I'd give it a soft 9/10. But since this is out of 5, I round up and use this as a benchmark for a 5/5.
Melody is not ground-breaking by any means. It tells a sweet simple story, and it does it well. It also gets bonus marks for actually being completed without feeling ridiculously rushed, which is unfortunately all too common.
The adult VN genre has progressed so quickly in such a short time frame that people playing it now might perceive the renders to be undeserving of a 5, but I think it's unfair to penalise an older game for looking older. Melody nails all the fundamentals for a good adult VN.

"Melody" is too long, dull and sugar-coated... Quality of writing, which is poor and monotonous does not justify the length of this VN. Novelty of music industry setting soon wears off and all you're left with is love prattle between the protagonists, interesting as reading a telephone book. Melody, as the only meaningful love interest, is forced upon us, and cus I wanted to end up with Becca, more mature and lush psychology student, I couldn't bring myself to read another line after she broke our relationship... At least I got goodbye sex Recommended only to connoisseurs of saccharine, lovey-dovey, watery eyed love novels... For me it was stomach churning and cramp inducing as I drink my coffee über black

+ Good slowburn about romance
+ Sweet nice main LI, perhaps too sweet

- main route becomes boring like hell after some time
- "things" with side girls can't be called "routes"
- "Best" ending is (99.9%) impossible without cheating/walkthrough
- shitty made points/choises system killing all interest

Overall nice slowburn game about some vanilla romance, Melody is very sweet girl, side girls are also interesting... but not much 'bout them here tbh, and main route long boring path to nowhere, I lost interest in main LI a bit before first sex with her, then start skipping dialogs, after all loyal "White knight style" running around her, evading creampies, never cheating or even flirting with other girls, even being unrealistic 95% ideal slave for her... game ended with standard "good ending" cause you must be 100% ideal or her career fuck up, but I don't even looked that ending cause it was not even interesting for Me at that point

Game intended for playing with walkthrough... meh, author made some very stupid strange things here and killed potencially amazing game, Just feeling disappointed and frustrated

Edit: changed from 2/5 to 3/5 cause maybe a bit overreacted at first

very nice game about girl who becomes famous singer (as of intended path but there are other paths too) with help of older guy who has some experience on music industry.

while game doesn't have newest graphic arts it still looks good, story is realistic (mostly but can't make fully realistic adult game) and has enough sexscenes to satisfy most players.

overall good game where player guides young girl to stardom despite some obstacles (again on intended path, player can choose other girls or women to end up with but then misses big part of game).

Mellody, another one from MrDots, some good stuff right here, a simple tale and some testing of my musical knowledge xd, a fun time with some good cast. That was a pretty nice experience with some fitting endings.

play v1.00 with french trad (which explains my poor written English, sorry)

First of all, I would like to point out that I have played it for a while now and that I have just restarted it to write this review, so my opinion may include somewhat distorted assessments.

story: 5/5 It was for me the strong point of the game, it is a very successful love story!

characters: 4/5 There too, it's rather a success, we totally become our MC, and the characters are quite endearing, but I think that many are a little too "yucky love stuff"

sex scene: 3/5 I remember having sometimes flirted with the "fast forward" which is not a good sign for the frequency, but besides that I also remember that the scenes were still very well written and very erotic .

renders: 3/5 On this the game has clearly aged, I think if you start with this kind of game it's fine, but comparing it with many new games it seems quite poor in "diversity" and very "frozen".

animation: 2/5 Even more so than for the renderings, they have aged very badly, the fps are a little nonsense (often too fast) and the "loops" are very far from fluid. But we can still note that there is a good quantity.

sound: I believe there is no empty moment

gameplay: 4/5 The number of choices is very satisfying.

I'm planning to give this game 4.5 but I went to 5 since it's impossible here.

Melody is one female characters that have a remarkable personality. It's impossible not to fall for her because of her sweetness and caring attitude. I really love the slow burn romance between the MC and Melody which is really convincing and somehow realistic.

The lewd scenes are also hot but I think they are just bonus to the game. The story is enough to keep me invested in this game.

I really believe that slow burn romance and building up the tension is Mr Dots forte. The slow burn in Melody is what helped me decide to consider this as one of the my favorite games.

My only issue with this game is the usual weakness of Dots and that is the dialogue. Some sentences can be made shorter or less wordy. Sometimes the dialogues are too long which make them tiring to read.

Furthermore, the later part of the game feels weaker than the first part. The repetitive dates between MC and Melody feels like a chore and has no point. There's also little to no conflict in the story (except the Bethany one) which makes me less interested as the game reach its end.

But Melody , for me, is still a heart-warming and good game with nice animation and story. It is one of the classic here so you must try it!

Game is very enjoyable, hovewer it feels empty at times for reasons such as:
-Not enough choices / meaningless choices that do not influence timeline, it would heighten interaction and immersion in the game

-Low amount of side characters like bartenders etc. / it would be a lot of work but it would also increase immersion

Wonderful game! Super comfy, feel-good story especially with the 'Perfect ending'. Almost all aspects are well done: animations, renders, sound, story, etc. The custom tracks were a really nice touch, only downside I found is that you don't really get to hear them unless you stop and wait, I initially missed some of the vocals because I finished reading text before the track had finished its intro.

MY BONER FALL OFF
This game is just incredible, whether it's the scenario, the characters. Every action you do matters! It's just great and opens up so many different endings. The fact that it's different endings with Melody is already great but so is the fact that the other characters. Just WOW.
Perfect/5 .

This game is such a masterpiece!!! I just couldn't help myself from playing it all over again!!!
It's impossible not to fall in love with the character(s), especially with Melody. The story is well written with many possible endings.
It's a 10/10 for me!

Melody... oh Melody... sweet, innocent, just perfectly drawn and described personality... Impossible not to fall in love. The author/dev is a genius. Perfect romance VN. Played it twice and probably that is not the limit. 100/100

Just straight to the point MELODY is a game that "sexual content" is just a sidekick from what you gonna get inside the game so the animation is just there not a problem for me but for many other it's can be bad . the game itself have multiple endings, there's some. 5 different ending, 5 different outcome, 5 different wholesome. (i didn't play to every ending, it might have more than 5 endings.)
the story itself it's quite good. pretty typical and touchy. nothing out of the box but i can accept it. first time playing from MrDots games. looking forward to the other.

Well I enjoyed this game very much. It's very story oriented game, so the story was obviously what I paid most of my attention to, but couple other things could've been handled better. Animations looks stiff and background models at some places should've been better. Also without the walkthrough it would have been much harder to reach the 'perfect ending', as I had no idea what exaclty effected that. I'm rather harem fan, than single romance, so was a bit annoyed by the fact that every bit romance besides Melody basically ruled the best ending, but the author wrote it as he liked, so I guess no point in complaining about it.

BUT if I was to really complain about something, that would be one text bug. Sometimes, if there was a long statement (by long I mean longer than full four lines), any text below fourth line was also below the game screen, so rest of the words was totally unreadable. And I couldn't make it visible by stretching window, or doing anything else. As this game is purely story focused, when things like those happen, that I am unable to see some parts of the story, this makes me enjoy the whole game much less, so it would be best if this annoying thing would be fixed.

Must play game tbh, DMD went to the garbage bin after ch2 basically but this was good all the way through. Lets hope sunshine love also holds up till the end. (UPDATE: Surprise surprise Yuki was turned into a whore that by age of 18 has had sexual relations with several men. Disgusting. Negative reviews complaining about NTR on DMDs and sunshine loves page are removed completely. Mods most likely in cahoots with the dev. Wouldnt surprise me one bit. )

No harem option though keeping in mind so if you want that you aint gonna get it. More romance focused