One man's "tantric" is another man's "blue balls."
I don't care much for pirates, I like to steal and murder with my feet planted on solid ground, so it's a testament to this cyoa that I plopped money on the table after the demo. But this thing is like a Twinkie. The first bite is delicious but after that you realise it's simply hollow and sickeningly saccharine and not something you wanted after all.
I was willing to overlook the blandness of the love interests and their baffling contextless attraction to the protagonist. The writing seems to love them but never gives you any reason to. I found your first captain, your first love in Boston, even the man who attempts a coup to be more interesting and worthwhile. Consent is great but it's also fetishised to a hilarious, unpiratelike degree which took me right out of everything and only served to fatigue me. This unending "mother, may I" strangeness is further compounded when you reach scenes where your choices are all out of character and unideal. At one point you collapse and are princess carried away for treatment, which is absolutely fine and normal, but your only choices are being incredibly rude, ungrateful, stubborn or flirty about it. My health is on the line and I have a bunch of people who rely on me, the devil himself could be carrying me, I don't care.
The story chugs toward a final battle and depending on your choices, it feels inevitable. I was preparing myself for most of the story to go out in a blaze of glory, for brotherhood and freedom. I was willing to see my character, her crew, her love interest, and everyone die. So when I finally get to the destination and someone says rather uncharacteristically "this is impossible" then I'm immediately whisked to another page that tells me I just gave up without even trying and lived a comfy life, the end, I'm sorry, no. Perhaps there are a series of choices I could have picked that would unlock that final battle but given the swiftness of the end, I doubt the author invested the time writing up a satisfying siege scenario.
There is a terseness to the writing that I don't personally mind but looking at it as a whole, the entire thing feels like a first draft. Locations and actions will suddenly change, with your brain feeling confused as it expected a few more scenes in between. Everything in the final chapters feels incredibly rushed. The bones are kinda there, there's just no meat.
All of these shortcomings would be tolerable, I guess, if we didn't live in a world where several erotic pirate games exist, ones where you are quite convincingly a pirate who does pirate things, where the romance feels well formed, and where your choices don't suddenly stop mattering. I guess I wanted a raspberry Zinger instead.
I don't care much for pirates, I like to steal and murder with my feet planted on solid ground, so it's a testament to this cyoa that I plopped money on the table after the demo. But this thing is like a Twinkie. The first bite is delicious but after that you realise it's simply hollow and sickeningly saccharine and not something you wanted after all.
I was willing to overlook the blandness of the love interests and their baffling contextless attraction to the protagonist. The writing seems to love them but never gives you any reason to. I found your first captain, your first love in Boston, even the man who attempts a coup to be more interesting and worthwhile. Consent is great but it's also fetishised to a hilarious, unpiratelike degree which took me right out of everything and only served to fatigue me. This unending "mother, may I" strangeness is further compounded when you reach scenes where your choices are all out of character and unideal. At one point you collapse and are princess carried away for treatment, which is absolutely fine and normal, but your only choices are being incredibly rude, ungrateful, stubborn or flirty about it. My health is on the line and I have a bunch of people who rely on me, the devil himself could be carrying me, I don't care.
The story chugs toward a final battle and depending on your choices, it feels inevitable. I was preparing myself for most of the story to go out in a blaze of glory, for brotherhood and freedom. I was willing to see my character, her crew, her love interest, and everyone die. So when I finally get to the destination and someone says rather uncharacteristically "this is impossible" then I'm immediately whisked to another page that tells me I just gave up without even trying and lived a comfy life, the end, I'm sorry, no. Perhaps there are a series of choices I could have picked that would unlock that final battle but given the swiftness of the end, I doubt the author invested the time writing up a satisfying siege scenario.
There is a terseness to the writing that I don't personally mind but looking at it as a whole, the entire thing feels like a first draft. Locations and actions will suddenly change, with your brain feeling confused as it expected a few more scenes in between. Everything in the final chapters feels incredibly rushed. The bones are kinda there, there's just no meat.
All of these shortcomings would be tolerable, I guess, if we didn't live in a world where several erotic pirate games exist, ones where you are quite convincingly a pirate who does pirate things, where the romance feels well formed, and where your choices don't suddenly stop mattering. I guess I wanted a raspberry Zinger instead.