Unity - Completed - Mystwood Manor [v1.1.2] [Faerin]

-- I"m hours of grinding into v1.1.0 and at Day 31.
I only just hit Level 3 hotel and so far ZERO sexy (unless you count some distance views of girls in their underwear) and zero nudity.

+ As a management game, it does a great job.

OVERALL:
A super, super slow burn...too slow.
But worth it for a hotel management game.

Really enjoyed the game and finished it in about 20h (did some grinding to get all the tarot cards).

Definitely a step up from MotH. I thought it was less grindy (no more finding easter eggs) and the payoff was better. The gallery system was also more convenient for replays.

I thought the resolution of the mystery and motivations of the big bad was a bit dumb (could have just moved away to avoid that weakness) but before that it was generally intriguing.

I feel like people are giving it low ratings due to the grind (which can be overcome via the cheats) or because all the sex happens at the end. I didn't mind either in this game.

Overall, I would say it is worth playing. Faerin's games generally have good writing and great renders, and the game mechanics are pretty unique for AVNs.

Excellent.

Never go around complaining about how there are no finished games, without promoting gems like this.

Management-game mixed with a VN, with fairly simple gameplay, that is still interesting enough to carry the game through.

Are there problems? Sure. I think the grind is a bit too much, and it takes a bit too long to reach the full sex-scenes for this type of game, and the writing isn't anything to write home about.
But what is here, works very well together, the renders are lovely, and it's all in the service of a pretty strong theme of harem power-fantasy with model-like girls. It can certainly support the level of tension and the ammount softcore-scenes it has, just on the strength of it's fundamentals.

A giant disappointment from the developer of Man of the House! I was expecting something similar, but he totally pivoted to a different game style. The story was clever, but not enough to save it. Also, layering the entire screen and text box with some old-timing frame was obnoxious (with no way to disable it).

It's a 5-star rating from me, but as for the top 10, I still have some doubts. I absolutely love this game; in fact, it's more of a management game than an AVN, and it's very well thought out. The spicy scenes are infrequent but all work, although I find the system of breaking scenes into pieces a bit lazy... a minor misstep, but it still works effectively. The girls are stunning, but there are a few animations that fall short, and the faces are often distorted, not always to their advantage. Those are the points that bothered me the most! That's it! Otherwise, the rest... WOW, it's perfect! Yes, the gameplay and interactions are enjoyable and immersive; sometimes I start the game just to engage in the management aspect. There are long teases, great not to have everything right away, I love that. And if we compare it to their first game, this one moves a bit faster, which is fortunate because Man of the House had some slow moments, and if you didn't cheat, it could be way too long at times. It's less repetitive because there are more characters, more management; we don't skip through dialogues, they're important. A blend of RPG and management for an adult game, what more could you ask for? It's exactly what we want.

The storyline isn't top-notch; I understand those who say they loved the story because there's a fairly well-written one, but the plot is predictable and, in this case, slows down the gaming pleasure. It forces you to step out of the management and interaction with the girls to join a not very significant story. But if it wasn't there, you'd feel something was missing... so, well. That's my opinion. It's been a long time since I came across such an interesting sandbox; I can't wait to play their next game. For now, it's a flawless one. If you're hesitating, go for it with your eyes closed... well, actually, keep your eyes open because the models are stunning!

This is a fun game, but I have a few nitpicks.
THE GOOD:
The characters look great, and you have a fair variety, each with their own personality, albeit fairly simple ones. (One caveat in the bad section.)
The management gameplay is fun.
The setting is awesome! I loved learning more about Mystwood as I played through the game.
There are cheats available to bypass almost all the grind if you want.

THE BAD:
First, and the biggest issue for me: About half the time the mouths dove headfirst into uncanny valley. The rest of the model and animation looked fantastic, but the mouth would be centered firmly in the uncanny valley. Really took me out of it.
Towards the end, the grind gets extreme to get all the content.
The bank doesn't tell you how much you owe. You only find out when you actually have that much in the game.
You cannot seem to pick from the unlocked outfits for the girls. They always wear the most revealing one. (or the halloween outfit) Small gripe, but I found I liked a couple of the lower tier outfits on specific girls, and once I was past them, I could not go back.

THE NEUTRAL:
I spent 18.5 hours on the game to get everything completed, and cheated to get all the Tarot cards without grinding, and added some money after I had bought everything there was to buy. I wanted to focus on getting the last few gallery images, without managing the guests any more, so I cheated the money to pay wages without worry. I didn't cheat until after 17 ish hours, as it didn't feel needed, but it would have added at least one more hour if I actually had to earn the last tarot cards.

All in all, I would give the game about 78/100. Good, but far from perfect. Definitely worth my time though.

Very nice game.

You have to manage your new hotel and meanwhile you meet new girls (future staff members, clients).
To help you to success, you can earn some special cards with different bonuses.
The playability is good. I haven't noticed any bugs except a few typos (I played it in French and some sentences are unfortunately not translated).
Animations and graphics are well done. The ladies are good looking.
One of the best part is the epilogue. Wow !
If you like management games with a good plot, this is for you.

Wish I could rate this higher but there are a couple fairly large issues that lower my enjoyment of the game considerably.

The Good

Beautiful and varied love interests. I enjoy the girls and their different personalities and appearances quite a bit. It's great that the Mum actually looks like a MILF instead of a 20 something faker. Sexy submissive nurse, and super fit dancing girl are my favorite.
Gameplay loop is not terrible, though lack of lewds for the majority of the game make it more of a grind than it should be. Tarot card and gear system is fun, and managing hotel and guests is enjoyable for the most part. Wish the final scenes with the female guests were repeatable though.
Story is decent and dialogue and character progression is pretty good for the most part. Would have liked more romance with the ladies as the story progresses, they don't seem particularly attached to the MC for most of the game.

The Not so Good

All the real sex scenes are in the last third of the game. If you don't cheat heavily, you will be grinding for a good 40 hours before you get to bang anyone. This is a major bummer and could have been pretty easily fixed by not having the girls all progress at the super slow pace and with the same steps. Really don't understand how this game got finished with that pretty obvious design flaw intact. Would not have been that difficult to make one of the girls want sex faster or have someone fall for the MC earlier in the story.
Player NEVER gets to choose where MC puts his children. This is a cardinal sin to me and loses an automatic star off any rating. It's just lazy to not do a couple extra renders for some variety in the cum shots.
Music is nice but needs more variety in a pretty bad way.
I appreciate some voice in the sex scenes, but when it's the same audio track for every girl in every scene, that's pretty disappointing. Some variety in the Voice and some sexy sound effects would have made the sexy time much better.
Only a few anal scenes, and only one of these shows any penetration. Every girl should have had at least had one in the natural progression of events.
As said before, the lack of real romantic dialogue and feelings with the ladies is an opportunity missed. The "L" word is only used a few times, and most of the girls treat the MC like he is just the most convenient dick to hop on, instead of having any real loving feelings, or interactions. There are some repeatable nighttime scenes, but for some reason the MC never spends the night with the girls, or has any wake-up scenes, which is a huge bummer.
So overall, a well presented but pretty deeply flawed gameplay experience, that could have been pretty easily fixed with more attention to detail, and better pacing.

Pretty decent management game.

The hotel management is a lot of fun and can get pretty challenging in the end, but there are cheats for those who just want to see the average story.

The story is okay, the mysterie was too easy, the stories of the characters are very simple nothing more.

The sex scenes have good animations but are very vanilla mostly so I got bored.

The personalitys of the characters are okay but not good I only really liked Hana and Laura everyone else was just kinda bland.

The models look pretty okay , no one is really ugly except the mother (I mean landlady) her face kinda looks like the Chad meme for me too muscular.

I also really like that the clothes of the characters get sluttier as you progress their stories.

If you want a management game you should play this.

Two words - Story mode.

Mystwood Manor was my second AVN and Faerin game. It's different from Man Of The House and for that part - comes with it's own strengths and shortcomings. I went about 80% on the normale mode, then succumbed and went for story mode. Glad I did, the grind was too much for my tastes. Two words - Story mode.

STORY
Being a light-fantasy story, Mystwood draws you in on a premise of running a mythical hotel. You'll be the boss of a growing crew of capable women, all who try their best to help make the hotel a great place. Upon growing the hotel, you'll find supernatural things are happening around you - guests are acting weird and strange things start to happen. It never really fully explains itself, but you get the gist of what actually happens in all of Mystwood. There's a myth of three sisters hoping for the validation of their mother and that's basically where all the crazy stuff originates.

In the end, the story wraps up into somewhat of a mystery which I won't further spoil - but the ending does connect to the beginning nicely. If you pay attention to the lore you'll see lots of dots to connect and even secret events that could happen, provided you're curious enough. It's story richer than "Man of the House" was, but you will still have to look for the story happening.

GRAPHICS
The game has a distinct style and great care was taken into creating a mostly believable environment. The women and guests are about as realistic as they can be, often interacting with each other and showing their unique personalities. Some encounters are standard, but the game shines when the personality of a girl makes for a totally unique interaction you couldn't have with anyone else. That happens a lot in this game. Kay has to by far be my favorite for just being such a braveheart.

There is so much in this game in terms of variety (multiple types and races of women, various styles of kinks and ways to switch between subjects) that it's easy to get lost. Plus the grind will take you a long time, even on story mode. But eventually, the careful way Faerin creates the intimatie scenes is reason enough to keep playing through the grind. The hotel looks great, menu's are pretty clear and you'll be drooling for more content in no time.

GAMEPLAY
You'll be a hotel manager while also trying to be a detective and fuck some women on the side. There is A LOT of managing going on in this game - figure out which girl works best in what room and what rooms are needed for which guests - so don't expect going into this for a wank and being done. This is Hotel Simcity with sex attached.

This wall of grinding drops the game one full poiny for me, because having this much grind actually doesn't do anything for the story in game - it just blocks me as a player. My recommendation is story mode and having a fun time, even if that means you're missing out on two parts of short bonus content. The second bonus is really nice, but it's worth losing the grind for.

OVERALL
If you are looking for sexual arousal around every corner, steer clear. This game will not play itself and it asks you to ease into the sexual content. When you get there however, it does get interesting. But it might be too little too late for most people. This is not a game about sex, this is a game with some sex scenes. Plus, spoiler alert, you won't be able to mess with the antagonist. Lord knows she needs a good fuck!

4/5

Solid game solid story
I would have appreciated a more in depth harem ending but beggars cant be choosers. The art is very detailed and feels consistent through out the game. My only real complaint would be the grind of earning reputation.

Awful mechanics to tell a story...it take more time to grind for the events than to follow a story I feel so disconnect with this story of the game because of grind you need to take so much time just to have 1 scene of the "story".

In my opinion this is a downgrade game from faerin...the previous one was a bit more better still also that one have the cancer of grind mechanic but is not that evasive to disconnect the story.

Conclusion is not worth you time to grind for every 1 scene of each girl...In my opinion the premise story was good but it implementing badly with cancer mechanic gameplay grind, the real score it would be for me 2 star don't deserver more.

First, let's talk about what its good.

For me, the first thing that stands out is the variety of the models and how good the skin looks on each. There's a variety of different types (blondes, redhead, hispanic, asian, etc) and the only thing I would have liked is to have had an ebony character, but that's a nitpick.

The other good thing, surprisingly, was the story. I don't expect much but this was well done and well written. There isn't much humor but there are some twists I didn't quite expect and I did feel a bit connected to it.

That said, there's one glaring problem that kept this from being five stars - the grind. I get its a management game, but holy hell do you get stuck haivng to grind in order to continue your progress. I finally broke down and got the cheat after I got all the guests to VIP status and just forced it to the next level.

But all in all, its a wonderful game. Highly recommend.

This game is really good. Too bad, there is more of nonsexual managing stuff (it would be fine, if it would be in balance with a sexual stuff). Small issues with: strange facial expression of some characters, absence of more stuff with more revealing clothes, slow animations.
Graphics: 4/5
Renders: 4/5
Hot female: 4/5
Fetish: 3/5
Clothes&Lingerie: 4/5
Animations: 3/5
Story: 4/5
Gameflow: 4/5
Amount of content: 3/5

The following review is based on my opinion, it may contain spoil, though I will try not to.

The bad (what I don't like):

• It has an end game, to be more specific, I like open or sand-box(I think that's what it's called) where you can continue playing like "Man of the house", after watching the end and event still trigger as you visit the right places, in this game when you choose to watch the end, you would have to reload save to see the other ends, it's a bit inconvenient. A small addition to that, sex scenes with the guests are not repeatable unless you watch it in Guest tab, the same for the scene around the manor unless you visit the staff at night or Staff tab.
• It has a farming mechanism, while it is possible to skip the farming by checking options in Settings, the game would feel boring as other sex games, but playing as it should be would take a long time, the pace feels especially slow from lv3.

The good(what I like):

• There are many girls and different kinds of fetishes, the devs must have seriously tried to satisfy the taste of players with milfs, red-head, blondie, rebellious, and even Lily from "Lily of the Valley", and they are hot.
• The story itself is very intriguing, at some point blank sex in daily life events would feel boring, the devs have created a bit creepy story, but also interesting, with mystery to solve and clues to investigate.

Overall I think this game is great, nice story, good renders, many girls, and an interesting mechanism.
Thank you for making a great game the generous Mode/Donor for uploading it here.

Mystwood Manor was an odd experience for me. I initially intended to write a one-star review, expressing just how tedious it was to go through the hotel management system for hours on end with a painfully slow progression and no rewards in sight. I even went so far as to delete the game in frustration when I attempted to start a Story Mode playthrough and it repeatedly crashed before I could finish the tutorial.


After some thought, I realized that part of the problem was the trackpad/keyboard combination I was using which made the hotel management more tedious that it would have been with a traditional keyboard and mouse, and that I enjoyed the hotel management mini-games even without any adult content, so I went ahead and reinstalled the game on a different computer with the classic keyboard/mouse setup and found that it was quite enjoyable. Enough for a two star review, pointing out that while the gameplay was enjoyable, it was a complete failure as an adult visual novel due to the tediously slow build-up with no real payoff until you’re 6 – 10 hours into the hotel management simulation.


So why a three star review? Well, because the buildup did finally pay off, and while I can levy plenty of criticisms at the game’s design (and I will below), the sudden cavalcade of adult content was reasonably well done for an older game with smooth animations accompanied by good writing, with a buildup that you look back on and say, “Yeah, I earned that.”


The biggest criticism I have for the game is the disconnect between the adult content and the hotel management simulation. While in other visual novels you’ll have scenes building up to a payoff, in Mystwood Manor you’ll be spending most of your time deciding which job you want to put which character in to take care of guests visiting your hotel. While not boring and actually quite fun on its own, it was probably the least sexy thing I could imagine adding to an adult visual novel. The hotel management also goes on far too long and could have been toned down so that it only took a few hours to begin seeing something beyond PG-13 content.


Another issue comes from the adult content being done in stages with an explanation of what needs to be done to unlock the next scene buried inside a few submenus. Most of these will happen organically or by accident while you’re managing the hotel while others are specific enough that you might need to check. There’s also an annoying and pointless gateway before you can move up a tier, requiring you to click on a newly unlocked outfit before the next tier opens up. Because this unlock is hidden behind several submenus, if you’re not paying close attention to how many events you’ve done for a character leading to their outfit being unlocked, you may end up finding a character still in the early tiers because you didn’t notice or had forgotten to periodically check to see if their next outfit has opened up. For me, my hotel was nearly maxed out before I noticed this “feature” which was quite frustrating.


Furthermore, the progression is too predictable. Often times in visual novels there will be one or two “sluttier” characters which allow for earlier adult content while other characters will have slower, more romantic progressions. This allows for the adult content to be spread evenly throughout the playtime with a mix of both short-term and long-term rewards. This is not the route chosen by the author of Mystwood Manor who decided to lock all of the adult content in the fourth and fifth tier for every character.


As for the story? It was fine. My standards aren’t very high for visual novels and I don’t go in expecting Shakespeare, so the murder mystery fantasy story was enjoyable enough. Sadly, the hotel management system ruins the pacing of the story. There are significant spans of time in-between story elements due to the need to advance the hotel to the next tier before the story continues. This could have been helped by, again, raising the payouts so that the hotel levels up two, maybe three times faster.


So what about the adult content? Once you get there, it’s surprisingly good. Not at the level of the most popular titles on F95, but it worked quite well and had strong writing and 60fps animations throughout. There’s also a decent amount of group content once you’ve wooed most of the hotel staff with some threesomes sprinkled through the fifth tier. It would have been more rewarding if it didn’t take 10 hours of hotel management to get there, but after finishing the game I can no longer say that it fails as an adult visual novel. It’s flawed, and the flaws are frustrating, but at least the hotel management grind was fun on its own even if it did feel like I was playing two different games.


Would I recommend it? Your mileage may vary. If your initial impression of the hotel management simulation is that it’s not your cup of tea, I would abandon ship quickly as there’s far more of that then there is of anything else. If you enjoy the hotel management simulation and don’t mind playing it for 8 – 10 hours until the end-game adult content starts to unlock, then it’s worth a playthrough. There are both positives and negatives to having the adult content unlock for every character around the same time, so as I said your mileage may vary. I look forward to the authors next project where hopefully he’s taken these criticisms to heart as I know other reviewers brought them up before I did.

Mystwood Manor is kind of a mixed genre game. Basically it's a hotel management game combined with visual novel and some sandbox elements.

PROS:
+ Really nice but unfortunately short plot with some Twin Peaks vibe in it. We have mysteries, bit of crime story, paranormal activities... Game lore even explains why all the girls are so horny and willing to have sex with MC (something most games skip).
+ Beautiful and sexy girls shown on good quality pictures and animations with close-up shots. Someone may even complain that they're almost too perfect and cute to the point where it's unreal.
+ Nice background music. Rest of audio is also ok even if all the girls use exactly same set of few moans.
+ Really well made interface, graphics and all management stuff. Game is simple but still can be bit challenging and at the same time not too grindy. There are even cheats and limited pure story mode for lazy ones. UI is animated and whole system works smoothly without bugs or crashes. This is solid peace of game when it comes to quality aspect.
+ Different game languages and 3 possible endings.

CONS:
- We have only one yet important issue here... Why such a detailed and really good made game have such limited content when it comes to interactions with girls? Yea sure we have a lots of scenes with each one but 2/3 of them are simple and short chatting. There's so much wasted potential. Like every time of day we have opportunity to explore whole bunch of locations or check crew/visitors. And 90% of this actions are placeholders with no effect - something happens only if certain action is required to progress through one of story chains. Instead there could be some random events, quickies in work places, spying/touching/creeping on night time, more interactive bed scenes with choices. But... No. While adult content has very good quality it's sadly limited to rather short kinetic novel chains and few repeatable pop-ups. All we can do is see them again in gallery mode.

So is this a good game? Well let's put this together. Game is progressed through separate kinetic novel story chains (nice and well made but short). Some are interactions with certain characters other are MC doing his exploring or investigations. But in order to access certain story points some things should be done like being at the right place on the right time and meeting requirements from hotel development or other story chains. Most of the time however game focuses purely on hotel running.

So... If you are looking for nice and simple hotel management simulator with mystery and sexy-romance plot additions this is really great game to play. But if you want fap game with lots of sex scenes all the time better look for something different. Personally I can recomend it.

I don't really want to do a very deep review, others have done it already.

Just wanted to leave my mark because I loved the game. I loved the obvious passion it was developped with, I loved the girls, the story, the pace (rarer and rarer quality), the gameplay.

I loved the corruption and transformation of the girls, I loved the way we could choose their outfits and the progression of these outfits.

It's just a great adult game all around, gameplay is engaging and fun and there's really not much things I would have to have seen modified.

Solid AF and great hopes for the next game.

Really more of a 4.5/5, but since we can't do half stars decided to round up.

The management/gameplay aspect is actually moderately fun, though there is a "Story" mode if you want to skip all that noise (or just make use of the cheats instead, since some bonus smut is only available in the Normal mode).

Plot is fine, renders are good, and a decent variety of personalities among the characters. If the concept and genre tags are appealing at all to you, this will probably be worth your time.

There is a lot to love in this game, honestly one of the greatest in the genre.

Short review: Amazing CGs, interesting premise/gameplay, shallow corruption, hope you like grinding, buckle up for a long tutorial.

I just 100%d this game today, and I honestly don't feel my time was wasted. There's plenty of aspects that this game absolutely nails, far beyond what pure happenstance would accomplish. This is made by someone who knew what they were doing and had a vision to finish it just as strong as it began.

Praise --

I found this by looking at corruption sims, and boy does this deliver. You begin running a hotel with scant few harem members to help, and they're not particularly interested in the MC. Circumstances change this over time, along with clever use of fantasy elements.

The girls are a treat to look at, with very little to complain about in the looks department. Each of them has their own "brand" that they inhabit, which do cross over from time to time. The guests that visit your hotel are also fun to look at, either as humorous charicatures or additional eye candy. A lot of care was taken to visually set this game apart, and it shows. The models are well done, well lit, and mostly well posed. There's also something to be said for the menus all being meticulously designed and animated, too.

Managing the hotel is an interesting game mechanic. Choosing when to bench certain girls or making sure you don't bite off more than you can chew with higher level patrons is a must, which helps to make the pacing of the game more believable.

Middle of the road --

The game has sections of town you can visit and interact with, but for the most part it's on a quest by quest basis. Don't expect a free world to explore, until the very end of the game when there's a scavenger hunt. I didn't come expecting that, so I wasn't miffed by it.

Sound is pretty hit or miss. I can see the creator wanted to fully flesh out the soundscape of the menus, but that lead to a lot of repeated sound effects. It is what it is.

Room for Improvement --

This game wants you to spend a lot of time on it to get to the endings. I understand that. I unfortunately reached a point where there was no challenge left in managing the sim and was using an autoclicker just to speed up scenes. All the menus and animations are very pretty, but one day cycle can be anywhere from 10 seconds at best, to 2 minutes at worst. By the time the calendar hits day 60, you'll be hunting for ways to speed things up*.

As is the case for most of these adult games, each girl hits a wall of attraction where they're just begging for excuses to sleep with you. I get it as a culmination of moving forward with each girl, but there's no teasing or mystery once you've slept with any of the girls. They're happy to be yours at the drop of a dime with no conjecture or confusion or way to heighten the experience. I really dislike when sex becomes a checklist and this game unfortunately doesn't avoid that issue.

The tarot card mechanic sucks, to put it plainly. There's an implication that using more destiny points will give better chances for higher rarity cards, but it turns out all the rewards are tiered. You can't get level 3 cards with a level 1 offering, nor can you get a level 1 card with a level 3 offering. It doesn't feel great, especially in hindsight that rerolls for the best cards are so plentiful and the bonuses so minor.

Conclusion --

Do recommend to anyone who is second guessing. Just because there are some ways that this game could be improved doesn't keep it from being one of the best I've ever played. Props to the dev!

*Pro tip: Turn off all menu animations and hit the skip button twice to move through interactions at double speed.