Ren'Py - Completed - Midnight Paradise [v1.0f Extra] [Lewdlab]

I'd say this is a decent but not fantastic game, sometimes very grindy.

The main girls are pretty hot and fun to hang around, it's not very deep and touching but fun, and the sex scenes are pretty hot.
The girls never properly cross each others paths into a real harem until the ending which was disappointing.
I would've liked to see them going "WTH you are also banging her? I thought what we had was special!!!" and then having to calm them down for some family bonding time...

The main story is whatever... the game spends most of it's time in relationship building and the main quest becames the boring thing you do, and barely remember, after going on a date.
And the at some point the game suddenly asks "do you wanna finish the main story?" Sure, i guess so.

Again, this game is good, better than a guilty pleasure, well worth a shot... but not fantastic.

Slow burn sandbox corruption game with beautiful love interests.

Pros

• Excellent renders
• Excellent character models overall
• Beautiful love interests
• Decent MC
• Above average writing
• Above average sex scenes (most)
• Good English
• Good character development (although slow)
• Helpful schedule system (without this the game would be too frustrating to play)

Cons

• Females are generally larger than the MC and most males in the game. Lots of authors have this problem for some reason. Large boned females and small boned males. In real life, males are generally 15% - 25% larger than females.
• The MC is supposedly enrolled in school but never has to attend. Tutoring is all that's required.
• Too much repetition to advance storylines and character relationships! I would have removed all repetition and moved things along at a faster more reasonable pace.
• Game becomes boring at times due to the endless clicking and repetition. If you're going to do a slow burn story, you have to keep things fresh and interesting, which it often isn't.
• Out of place progression with Isabel. Early in the game the author allows the MC to grope her naked breasts and suck on her nipples. The game then takes several months to get back to this point and you end up doing less intimate things with Isabel for at least two whole months before you arrive at the earlier intimacy level.
• Story paths feel disjoined and half missing. The detective storyline with Thorne gets put on ice for 90% of the game. You do some things with Thorne at the beginning of the game and at the end. The Russian mob storyline has the same problem. It starts in the middle of the story and then gets mostly forgotten.
• Some paths feel very light or weak. Examples: Natsuko, Celine, Amy. So much more could have been done with these three characters!
• Rushed/lackluster ending - doesn't feel complete - no ending sex events for the main characters after you finish their stories
• Some characters forget about intimacy progress you've made in the game. One LI even says she can't go any further when you've already had sex with her.
• Animations are smooth but are far too robotic. The author moved the bare minimum body parts in order to create the animations. Facial expressions never change, mouths and lips never move, eye contact never changes. All these problems make the animations feel emotionless as if the characters were heavily stoned while performing them. I applaud the effort but the animations are very average due to being too robotic and stiff.
• The author struggles writing sex scenes. Everyone is tight, including your mother who gave birth to three children. It took me so far out of immersion the dozen times the MC congratulated his mother on how tight her pussy was! Everyone's pussy is tight, everyone's pussy is dripping wet, all females orgasm at the slightest touch of the MC.
• Lots of boring dialog that should have been condensed. Inner dialog is overdone and excessive.

The sandbox portion of the game slows the story to a crawl. It's a lesson in patience. There was no need to repeat events, watching content you've already experienced a 2nd or 3rd time.

Too many story arcs feel empty or half finished - Natsuko, Celine, Amy, Thorne, and Tanya. I was so disappointed when I got to the end of the game and realized that these storylines are very thin/incomplete.

It's a 3.5 star game but I can't give it that rating. I'm being generous in giving the game a 4 star rating (rounding up).

I generally like sandbox games, but this was clunky. The MC moves back home after flunking out of uni and has to go to the local school. Yet he doesn't do anything there except for tutoring - and those are painful awkward interactions in my opinion.
The job story just died off. You go from criming for a "lawyer" then working with the Russian mob....then nothing. For days. No interactions at all . And with that I'm done

Excellent game, very complete and entertaining. It offers many options and varied scenes, ensuring a rich and satisfying experience. The models are very well designed and detailed, and it's one of the few games that is truly finished, which is greatly appreciated. Highly recommended for those looking for quality and abundant content. Definitely worth trying!

The quality of renders and animation is A-tier, but the overall experience is not that great. First of all, I'm not a fan of sandbox. But I can still enjoy a sandbox game (with mods and walkthroughs). But I feel the storyline with the main plot and the girls feels so disconnected with the sandbox elements in this game. You can do something with a girl in a main event, then go to a sandbox event and they talk like the main event never happened. It makes the flow of the game so off. Still a fun game, but I found myself so extremely bored at times, that it's hard to rate the game.

The teasing in this game is so boring, none of the the main girls have sex with you until waaaay later. it's so stupid when you have multiple girls rubbing genitals together with you, but no one wants to have sex. It feels very formulaic. I only gave it a high grade because of the overall quality of the game.
Also, there is way to much inner dialog. I like it when the MC has a personality, but I think inner dialog should be used rarely.

E: I am not a big fan of degeneration (name calling, domination, spanking, and stuff like that), and I wasn't gonna bring it up because it's my personal preference. I'm not gonna rate a game poorly because it doesn't meet my fetishes. But the MC is a dirtbag who has no problem raping his friends/family in their sleep, but then starts to stutter and get nervous when they want to have sex with him. It makes no sense. there is just so much inconsistency that I rated it a 3 star, instead of 4.

Springing NTR rape on the player 75% of the way through the game is pretty awful, especially since it becomes repeatedly referenced afterwards and it's so poorly written. Really ruined my favorite character.

Dialogue is repetitive and stretches far too long.

Way too much foot stuff/anal and no way to just flat out turn off the foot stuff.

I won't give it a 1 star just because the models look good and the pacing was solid.

I wish i could rate this game without have seen its ending, and because ive seen it i cant give more than 3 stars, its so disapointing that i cant even put it into words, its just crap work, i guess i should be thankfull to have an end to the game but honestly if i had to pick this mediucre ending or no ending i probably would pick the later

best game i've ever played, the animations and the graphics in this game are just in another level, every single character is extremely hot and the story is fine, i've enjoyed this game 10x more than dreams of desire, incredible.

I have to give this game a 3/5, as it doesn't feel like a complete product due to it being rushed like hell and there was no proper conclusion to the story, just to get the game out onto Steam.

Pros:
- The models look delicious.
- The writing and slow development of the relationship is quite satisfying (it's not completely realistic, but it also isn't an immediate jump from nothing to hardcore sex)
- The models are really freaking good in this one (had to repeat it).
- The sex scenes are kinda simple, but still cover all the bases.

Cons:
- The story is horrible and doesn't have a proper conclusion. What happened with the whole detective storyline - that just got thrown out..
- A lot of characters have half-assed development (ex: The teacher is slowly being corrupted, you will get her into different stuff, and then it suddenly cuts off and the content ends.)
- Gameplay is rather simple, not exactly interesting as you'll have to start skipping days just to get to events after some point. Lots of areas stop being used after some point, which clutters the map.
- I kinda disliked the dominative character that the MC became. It's a matter of taste, but due to the plot trying to make the MC into a sort of "illegal activities" sort of guy, it tried to present him as a "go-getter". But frankly I feel like as a failure that the MC was initially, the change from a "horny rich son who lost everything" to "shotcaller who f's his family" wasn't well developed. I kinda dislike this sort of setting - would've liked there to be less illegal activities in the story, and more "pulling ourselves out by our bootstraps, while bringing love to a neglected mom".

It's a quality porn game, but there's nothing interesting regarding the story. There were a few details such as your fathers job and stuff that you had to mess with, but nothing really comes from it afterwards.

The models are a 5/5, while the rest is around 2.5/5 (average). It kinda averages out at a 3.5/5, but I'll make it a 3/5 due to the way how the storylines were rushed just to get a "complete" (half-assed) product onto Steam.

I recommend this game to people who like incest/family relations settings, or the people who just enjoy looking at pretty models. You will get a few good wanks off the models and move on while forgetting about it.. Unless you really enjoyed the models enough to keep going back to it.

5/5 renders, animations, and girls. 3/5 everything else.

The story was boring and uninteresting like most games, like most games nobody would care to read it if it wasn’t included in a porn game, and like most games the game would be better off if less time/content was focused on the story and more was focused on the girls/relationships.

The calendar events were a good idea, but poorly executed. You can tell less effort was put into them than the rest of the game and they were just tacked on towards the end of the game’s development to add more content. And that’s fine, it’s better to have them than not, but hopefully in his future games more effort is put into these events. Particularly the writing. He literally just copy/pasted significant chunks of each event that you’re constantly repeating over and over again until you get to the new content. And I gotta say I wish that as you progressed the relationship their schedule and events would change, because doing the same events from the beginning to the end of the game gets boring. And it was such a missed opportunity to not include any events with multiple girls, especially the mom and sisters. It would have been way more interesting to get new events and harem events as the game goes on rather than a 7th yoga event or event by the pool.

The dialogue can be pretty cringey at times especially because the MC is such an arrogant, cocky, douche. And the sex/dirty talk can get pretty cringey too but that’s kinda expected since there’s only so much stuff you can say until you get to a point where you have nothing left to say that isn’t cringey. But maybe sometimes less is more because I felt a lot of times scenes/dialogue dragged on way longer than they needed too. It’s like he felt he needed scenes to be a certain length so he made them way longer than they needed to be, and that was particularly noticeable during the trip with the mom. I get he wanted to make it a big pay off especially since it took so many years to get too, but so many of the scenes there just dragged and made the event worse not better.

Overall though still a good game with lots of good faps, but it’s carried by the visuals. Idk if he has a writer or not, but hopefully for his next one he gets one (or a better one) because it’s a shame to see this level of visuals paired with this level of writing quality. He certainly is making more than enough to hire a quality writer.

I really enjoyed this game. Great amount of content, nice looking females (to have fun with). I feel that it has an interesting story that you don't get bored from.

What you might be bored at is that you will have to look (click on) at the phone to see text messages/reply to them.
I usually don't like games in sandbox mode because of the "clicking" around on the map/inside buildings, on props etc but this game I feel uses it right with not making every single item on screen clickable.

Extra! One thing I would have like or loved more would have been more scenes with the girl(s) in latex!

Shame there's no 3.5-star rating, because that's my real score.

Aside from the renders and animations (which after the remake, are basically on par with this game), it felt like a downgrade from Dreams of Desire.

Partly because the story felt like it didn’t exist. I just felt like I was leveling up relationships with the characters and then doing a quick event to progress further. For me, the story only started to get interesting near the end of the game, but it was quickly finished. It also felt more vanilla than the previous game, probably because of the lack of mind control, which was only present in the ending. Besides that, it was only mentioned briefly during the story.

This sandbox implementation serves no purpose in my opinion. All it does is scatter the scenes and make the plot feel inconsistent. At least it’s well-made technically, with a schedule and an indicator when you have an event you haven’t seen yet. But if it weren’t for the visuals, I would never have finished this game. I’d suggest sticking with VNs or drawing conclusions from this “sandbox experiment” and coming up with a better sandbox design for the next game. A design where the sandbox actually adds value to the game instead of making it worse, like in the vast majority of games. I will say that I at least appreciate the schedule with the new event indicator because, without it, it would be a nightmare to check each event manually.

I hope Lewdlab will take the various reviews into account and implement changes in his next project. I wish him luck because I really enjoy his character designs and renders.

It's a very boring game. 80-90% of the time you read phone messages from the characters in this game. You also constantly need to catch time events. There are also these repetitive "moving" actions to delay the plot. Character development takes place in a teaspoon per year. I'm fucked up. The graphics, idea, and style are cool, but the game itself is slow and boring.

I can't remove too many stars, due to the models and animations, that are some of the BEST on this site.

I would give 1 or 2 stars, and not recommend it, but I have to admit that I had fun with the game for 4 or 5 real life days before it went to sh**.

The first half of the game is well done, with plenty of interesting scenes and flows, that keeps the atmosphere going. The game looses it's direction once you complete the game's main stories.
What does that mean?
All girls have a sandbox story and a main game story which are independent from each other. Meaning that you might make a girl your lover/plaything in her story, but then see events in the sandbox where she acts like she sees you naked for the first time.
Sandbox stories are even independent from themselves. Meaning that you might fuck a girl in the pool, but then she will act surprised and not let you see her naked in the shower.

The game's story starts by saying "1 year ago" when you start playing and I suppose it doesn't lie, because it took me roughly 1 in-game year (360 days) of running around the map to unlock the sandbox scenes and try to progress them for all the girls. Again, the game looses all meaning and immersion after completing the girl's main stories, and transforms into an easter-egg hunt, running around the map and progressing at a snail's pace with every girl, even though they swallowed your children after 3~4 months (in-game). At that point, even though the scenes are sexy, if you like a story or natural progression that makes the scenes hotter and leweder, you will have a hard time "staying hard". From a VN, that game transforms into those cheap puzzle games where you get frustrated for a few minutes to unlock a single scene (instead of puzzles you simply have the same events on repeat over and over unlocking a bit each time).

The ending is also a bit rushed, with no extended scenes with your girls.

• If you are the type of player that simply watches scenes, and doesn't care about the context, this is an awesome game. The galllery is also filled with bonus/elite scenes that you never see inserted in the game's story or sandbox which for me is a major let-down. If you like a natural progression, and want things to make sense, you will enjoy only a part of the game, while being frustrated in the other.

After finishing the game I can't give this more than 2 stars. If the visuals weren't so good it would get just 1.

Other than the visuals there is not really much to like about the game.
The writing is not good and the player gets blue balled for 90% of the game just to get a super rushed ending. Unless you have blowjob or handjob fetish, you should probably avoid this game. The pay off is definitely not worth the time.

Midnight Paradise has been a ride to say the least following it through years of development. It started out with incredible promise: amazing character models, stylish game UI and locations, and a few plot questions hanging in the air to keep you interested. Ultimately, after finally seeing the game come to a hasty close, it's hard not to say that much of that potential was squandered.

Gameplay

For starters, this game doesn't need to be a sandbox. It plays loosely with the notion that it would like to have location specific day-in-the-life events, but they all have a specific grindy order to them which kind of defeats the purpose of open world implementation. I really felt like a number of design choices were made with the expectation that the dev would get to fleshing them out later, but that largely never happens and at some point playing the game you just give up hope and realize that this is a mostly linear VN chopped up into pieces and the open world is just a pacing barrier.

Story

The story - again - starts promising but fizzles out mid game pretty quick. There's a slow burn of progressing with the ladies which is fine if it weren't for that pacing getting thrown out the window by the end of the game. If you're going to do a slow build up with the characters then let us enjoy the payoff of it too, we've earned it by being patient for years of development and grinding away for hours. Two anal scenes with the girls near the end of the game, although mostly well done, just isn't enough of a payoff for a game's worth of effort.

There's a number of plot contrivances at play which also make you gloss over the importance of the story too. Your father character is mostly out of the story for the duration of the game and same with your twin brother, both characters with concerning mystery around them. The game focuses on Connor being a drug lord despite your gameplay having almost nothing to do with actually seling the drugs as you instead do little incrimental interactions with the ladies of the story. There are a few main story plot points which deal with the severity of you being a drug boss, but from scene to scene it's mostly just used as a tool to explain why Conner has some money and influence.

Controversy

Now for the elephant in the room... The quality of writing. On the whole, it's your typical porn VN kind of stuff; you're a pushy *tenant* who kind of annoys his way into the hearts and pants of the ladies around him. It's not great, it's not terrible, it's just pretty standard fare for the genre. *However*, there are a number of moments later in the story that I take major issue with.

This caused a pretty big fire in the forum when it was introduced, but let's talk about Isabelle and the kidnap/potential rape scene. It's just juvenile, the execution, the mentality behind including it, and the way Isabelle reacts to it all. It reeks of a writer who has never dealt with real world people who have suffered events like these. Isabelle is kidnapped, drugged, bound, and possibly raped on camera if you are too slow in getting to her. You resolve this by rescuing her, taking that camera's SD card (and never looking at it for some insane reason), not telling the cops because you selfishly fear that would harm you as a drug lord, and you return her to the same bedroom she was kidnapped from. Later Isabelle goes to a spa with you and tells you that the whole scenario turned her on and that *now* she's finally ready to have sex with you. As for it's inclusion in the game, the quote floating around from the dev was along the lines of, "NTR is a popular kink and if including that expands the audience for the game then we're going to do that." Stunning. *Years* deep in development and they decide now is the time to drop a rape scene with one of your love interests in your lap as the lone instance of possible NTR. Seriously, who was this for? NTR fans don't want to waste hours grinding to get to the only scene of it in the game, and the rest of the fans don't want to see Isa get raped! Also, NTR fan =/= NTR *rape* fan. It would honestly be insulting if it weren't for how assinine its inclusion was.

Adding to the juvenile writing list is Amy.
Amy is Logan's asexual girlfriend who arbirarly dies at the end of the game by overdosing on the Halo sex drug Connor sells. She takes the drug in hopes of "fixing her asexuality and being normal" for Logan. Again, it's stunning the level of childish ignorance in which this topic is handled with and it again tells of a writer who has little understanding of what a real asexual person is like. For reference, many asexual people have and do enjoy sex, and it's not viewed as a malidy that needs to be cured. It more just a case that sex isn't an impulse they have themselves, it's something that they can be turned on to in the moment if offered to them. It's like never having the notion to order pizza, but if there's pizza already on the table then yeah, I'll have a slice and enjoy it.

Anyways, this is a pointless death in the story used just to add some forced drama to the ending while it's ultimately undeserved. I'd even add that in a game where you get pretty much every girl you could see and want, *not* getting Amy, your antagonist twin brother's girlfriend when she looks as good as she does is a missed opportunity.

Ending Impressions

The ending is rushed, no doubt about it and it will leave numerous plot questions unanswered. The multiple endings largely stick the landing giving you slightly different wrap up cutscenes, but it just really goes to point out how much fun you could have been having with the characters if the game ever decided to let you get there with them before the end. A harem ending should be an in-game reward you get to play out and enjoy, not just a two image cutscene.

There's more, but I digress. The short of it is don't play this game for the story. At best it's a run of the mill porn VN with a few nice character moments, at worst it is shockingly detatched from how real people act.

That said, the models are really top teir. Ruby, Isabelle, Joyce, the maid, your teacher, and several others, all are unique looking and georgeous in their own right. That's a large reason why the game feels so disappointing at times - the character models are fantastic and you'll spend the game wishing you could find more substatial things to do with them.

Final Thoughts

Overall, this is a game where you can tell the dev fell out of love with it mid-way. It shifts priorities a few times, underwent some needless UI changes, and wraps up in a way you'd expect from someone just wanting to finally move on to other things. Animations and renders get more glitchy as the game goes on which is a sign of just some lost passion and care for your project. The game isn't bad, in fact it still manages to stand out of the crowd for it's excellent looking characters and style, but you play it and quickly realize that there just isn't the substance you're hoping for.

You can tell when a writer doesn't really care about what they are writing about and that feeling is contagious to the reader. By the time major "shocking" events of the story unfold you'll be pretty mentally checked out. The characters aren't treated with the level of respect that I think their initial designs and stories warranted and that's a shame.

It's a game worth playing, but struggles to retain your respect as a player despite it trying to be more serious in tone at times. Go in with average expectations and you should be able to enjoy it just fine.

3 stars out of 5

There is a lot to like about this game, bogged down mostly by the main story, which unfortunately is where you'll be spending most of your time.

Starting with the good, the sandbox content is some of the best I have ever seen. The 3 main women are in different locations doing different activities 3 times a day for each of the 7 days. You get the opportunity to flirt and test the waters with them in unique ways depending on where you are and what activity you are interrupting. There is a lot of content here. Most of the events happen 1 or 2 times per week, with 3 being the maximum, so every day there will be something fresh. As your relationship evolves with the women they might change what they are doing or wear something new, which unlocks a whole new set of options. There is so much to love about this sandbox, I really wish the game leaned harder into it.

Another thing to love is the quality of the renders and of the UI. The women look fantastic, and they keep their appearances fresh with new outfits, hairstyles, and makeup frequently. Something about the lighting or camera makes everything in the background look better too. I recognized a few assets from other games, but somehow they look better in this game. Clearly the developer has a great attention to detail, which carries over into their UI. The UI is fast, and clearly and concisely shows information you need. Very well designed overall. The one exception is the cell phone, with mandatory pauses after every text message sent that gets very frustrating.

The big negative here is the main story, which is just painfully boring. If you play this game, I recommend you turn on "skip unseen text" and then press tab every time you start a main story plotline. There is just nothing at all compelling there. The characterization of the MC is that he is a cool badass and sometimes random women you just met and will never meet again want some no strings fun. It is an adolescent self-insert wish fulfillment fantasy and nothing more, and it is LONG. Most of your time playing this game will be through the main story. Even if you skip the dialogue, a lot of text comes from the cell phone, which can't be skipped. The game would easily be 4* without the story, and 5* with even a minimal implementation of something else on top of the sandbox. What a horrendous waste of potential here.

Another problem with the story is that it is not very well intertwined with the sandbox. Unless you focus almost entirely on the sandbox and neglect the story, you will notice that women will say things during the sandbox that completely ignores what you have done with them in their stories. You might come back from a sex filled weekend vacation with one woman only for her to get shy about being seen in her underwear. This will happen very frequently the later get you get into the game. I wish the developer had taken more time to tie together sandbox progression with story progression.

Overall, I can't recommend playing this, even though there are so many good qualities. You might enjoy this game if you import a save that has the main story already completed, or if you have low self-esteem and don't value your free time very highly. I will check out the next project from this developer, becasue there is a lot of potential here, but I don't believe that they can deliver on that potential.

It's not a perfect game, so giving it 5 stars might seem odd, but no game is perfect. This one is as close as I've seen. From the characters and renders, to the story itself. There's some grinding, but also lots to do within that grinding. Suggest progressing the girls evenly regardless of favorites, as it makes the game more linear.
Enjoy.

This game is the closest to perfection I've ever played on F95ZONE.

Outstanding character visuals.
Sandbox game style that maximizes its strengths.
A convenient interface.
Even the MOD melted really well into this game.

It's a little disappointing, though.
I'm not a big fan of normal Netorare, but I do like Netorare who competes.
It would have been nice to see MC compete with LOGAN or DAD.
When I have that kind of tension in the game, I have a more thrilling sense of accomplishment.

But this is just my personal preference, and in terms of Midnight Paradise itself, this is a really good game and I would highly recommend it.

This, along with a man of the house, have been the 2 best games for me, the perfect girls, the perfect sandbox, the mix between history and sandbox is incredible.

10/10

Waiting for the next game they make.