It me! I have come’d back once more to talk about the guiltiest of my pleasures: Mezz!!!! Is it alright to gush about it here? I know there’s a Game discussion thread but I figured I’d talk a lot so I made an individual post, hopefully it is fine!

Now, I took my sweet ass time playing this game, I had set aside a good time for every play session and man, they were a lot of play sessions because this is one meaty game! The original Cruel Serenade clocked in at a little shy of 3 hours for one of both pure and slut playthroughs, of course not counting every time I opened the game to rewatch a scene (they were that good), and y’know… the time translating it, but here? Every individual playthrough clocks in at that shy of 3 hours that the last game struggled to get to! And I had like 4 playthroughs because the game is just so open dear lord!

The absolute strongest aspect of the game is the story, the original game may have been a little shallow and hazy on world building but it still set up a great world and a Mezz living in it, and Gutter Trash absolutely builds a ton on top of it. Mezz as a character is put on a really bright spotlight and his depth shines so much, it’s nice to see him actually show desperation and reluctance after an adventure from which he can’t remember a scene where he didn’t have a smug smile, he has a lot more time and more characters to interact with in many more situations than just seconds before beating them up, it’s so much more enjoyable to root for him in the pure route where he is his cocky hero self but also see him cling to his dignity and prestige on the slut routes. The new characters though are very shallow, there’s practically nothing about Khazeem other than his position, Mahir is cool but there’s not a lot revealed about him (though that scene before the Entertainment district III with the red hypno? OOOOOOHHHH I literally shifted on my seat to the edge of it as I read) and Scratch is kinda just there, being the partner in crime of Mezz… or at least I think he is, there’s seriously nothing hinting at him being a friend, a brother, a mentor… I know he’ll probably be developed further in the coming chapters, but right now in this one, he’s the one I’m the saddest about being a new addition with not much to their character. On a little side note, while present-day Mezz was definitely expanded upon, there’s still not much about him, I mean, the mice at his Haven at least like him a little, but there’s not really a lot about what makes this supposed respected hero. The best part of the story, but also the biggest blunder, is the world building, it’s definitely weird that such important lore is presented in a little missable computer on a place you can’t backtrack to after the first 20 minutes of the game, moreso considering that the place it’s in greets you with cutscenes with very heavy use of terms whose definitions are only available to you after they end and you can access the computer. Sucks a bit because… that’s some super appreciated and interesting lore! All this talk about Havens, Towers, some kinda nanomachines that cover the sky, the freakin’ Rot!! (which btw, that may be some insane last chapter thing, but if you dare infect Mezz with it… I will do unspeakable things to society!!!!) are just so cool and interesting! I mean I wept when I read them because wanting to translate this game was fresh in my mind and that’s a lot of text, but really, the World created here is great! I just wish it was exposed better. The Haven in general could have a better storyline, spawning into the game and being set at a time before the original game, to then leave and immediately reappear where you started, but now weeks later after those events, but with no real indication that they happen… yeah, that’s pretty sluggish.

We’re here for the Scenes though right? Hooooohoooohooo these are good! And there’s so many too! Compared to the last game, they’ve got more shots, are way longer, involve way more poses and characters, some even change locations mid-scene! GOD THESE ARE SO GOOD! There’s enough variety in Mezz being conscious or under some influence, some where he’s teasy some where he’s angry, the jobs are definitely the highlights, the Bar job should’ve been my favorite, it goes on for a little longer than it should without introducing much variety (though it made me start making comments like “oh found your weak spot! let me help you with it” towards the clients and… was it successfully conditioning me? it was a funny kind of enjoyment…) but the storyline around it with Mezz’s popularity and him starting to enjoy it, being cherries on top of the great minigame, were probably my favorite part of the game… but I said should’ve been my favorite because the pornshop job singlehandedly stole that title by having the single best still of the entire series (It’s Porno 1 - D.png if you’re curious) he just looks so adorable there… Really the only “”””””“downside”””””””” of the scenes is that some of these are like DARK DARK, as in, I’m pretty sure Mezz’s death is implied in like two of them while straight up shown in Mahir’s game over, I call it a downside in a lot of quotations because sure they’re heavy, but really, I signed up for this so it’s more like “Wow that’s awful… I love it!”, and I just felt bad for the lil guy Mezz, that’s all.

My first playthrough was an accidental Slut mode route, one that was meant to be Pure but I kept sucking (HAH!), it clocked in at 2 hours 40 minutes and played with me sneaking through the first district then magically appearing at Khazeem’s and ending the game, my second playthrough was meant to be retaken from a save I conveniently made after meeting Mahir but it like, got deleted? I don’t know exactly what happened but I ended up loading a save just before my third game over of the previous playthrough, it clocked in at a total of 2:48, I set my own timer so really, it was only about 50 minutes of extra playtime, but you’d have to add like 30 minutes of me just dying and reloading to the last wave of hyenas of the third Ent. District HOLY FUCK I HATED THAT FIGHT IT FEELS SO LUCK BASED… I’ll get to it later. Then I reloaded both saves and got the game over scenes from Khazeem (Slut mode freakin’ delivers once again with some godly scenes btw, loss is fucking fantastic!!!!) and also the Good Luck Charm scene which I got by equipping it last second as I elected to keep, y’know, the interesting part of battles, for better or… for worse… Then after I reloaded a save that had only one loss with around 1:15 playtime, where I elected to cross The Lucky Rabbit instead of the district, I guess I was a better player because the total time for it was only 2:14 (with like 20 extra minutes to be added on because I lost the minigame a couple times… damn I suck, what did they put in the drinks to get Mezz so bad?). And then once more I reloaded to the same save and went through the Plaza instead of the first District for the minigame which was pretty dang easy, making my shortest playthrough at 1:49. After that it was just some scene cleanup like losing three times but choosing the pornshop this time, losing to Mahir, etc. which I sadly didn’t time.

Oh and by the way, I decided to stick to the 1.0.5 release, skipping the newest one but applying the lighting fixes you sent me! Happy to report that there were barely any frame drops or performance issues! There’s still a half-second loading screen on first launch, but after that, nothing else! I did notice a bit of stuttering when moving in big areas, but my fps probably didn’t go lower than 50 fps, so really, no issues!

With those in mind, I’d like to raise a couple issues I had with the gameplay, which was surprisingly hit or miss given the quality of everything else, for starters, the length of the game almost works against it when it comes to the battles, as 20 minutes in you encounter your first enemy: A hyena, and up to 6 hours later on your fourth playthrough, you can be encountering: The very same hyena, with no changes other than the overpowered variants that really don’t take long to adapt to. Speaking of the first enemy, The Barrens overstay its welcome so, so much. You’ll notice I always reloaded a save instead of starting over just because it takes so long to get going, I think the first Scene you can get, y’know, the reason you’re here, is Mahir’s game over, and I met him at around the 0:56 mark, almost an hour in! And for the record, I could never get the DataCrystal thing to work :c I’m sure I put it in the right place, I tried with both Good and Trained ends (btw there’s a glitch in the original CS where if you watch the fifth gallery scene, it would overwrite the DataCrystal with an empty slut file) but I just never got anything to pop up in the Haven which is where I THINK the boars should pop up. Little side note to say that the UI in battles and the inventory is still the default from RPGMaker, of course this isn’t a deal breaker, but it’s like I said last time, we’re in a fantastic Five star buffet being served with plastic cutlery, food’s still great but the presentation could be better (also the text box cuts through Mezz’s hole and covers it in Slut mode Khazeem’s game over and that’s just unfortunate I wanted to see that gape :c) When it comes to the Battlesex though, it’s hit or miss, the gameplay loop from the first game is mostly kept, with the Obedience mechanics being a welcome addition, but Mezz slipping and forcing a game over after four (?) mind breaks isn’t. It meant the hyenas could deal damage to either my pretty-big-but-not-infinite health pool that I could always restore with an item, or towards my three-hit-KO bar that I’d have no defense towards. It makes it pretty frustrating when going for a Pure run because it can make it feel super dependent on getting lucky that the three hyenas don’t all use the three-hit-KO move on the same turn and send you to the 20 minutes of game over cutscenes. Specially when (and this is a good thing) the world is so detailed that it can identify your amount of losses, I was shocked to see characters pretty deep referencing seeing Mezz on a tape, or him failing a plan to knock out a guard by instead sucking him off because he’s so much more broken after having taken more losses. That’s some insane attention to detail that… is sadly hard to appreciate given how frustrating it can be to maintain a “True” pure run. Despite that, I found the battlesex to be quite neat, and when I didn’t care about maintaining purity, it was quite enjoyable. Where I saw it falter though, is within Khazeem’s lair in slut mode, it just becomes so awkward to still have Fight mechanics that you can’t use yourself while micromanaging Relaxation timers and obeying orders, I would’ve preferred an entirely different system or HUD rather than what seriously felt like band-aiding a solution to Mezz being more broken. Finally, to wrap up my nagging, there were two points in the game, funnily enough both in Pure routes, that I seriously didn’t like: The kitsune quests, as these felt like straight up padding, almost by definition, one is the classic “backtrack through a route you’ve already gone through to find 3 items that weren’t there before” except it’s worse because there’s decoy glowy spots you’ll only find out were fake after having fought a guy, while the other quest is almost insulting by it just being a Kitsune pushing you around to solve a riddle with an answer that helps no one. I think I could’ve done without these really.

After all that nagging though, I can confidently say that Cruel Serenade: Gutter trash has some insanely higher highs, with lows that realistically, aren’t that bad. Pitting the bad things I brought up against the great things I loved, I would still call this a fantastic 9/10 experience. Mostly thanks to it’s incredible story and world building, dark and kinky and very well varied scenes, and these two mixing so well together! Really, I could still go on and on talking about this game, talk about the music that I really loved, the drawings that were really were made, the environments that are (mostly) well crafted, just how each scene tugged at either a heartstring or scratched a really niche ich! But this post has gone on a little longer than I expected. Agh, this is such a great game, such a great series… I can’t wait for the next chapter! I’ll also be looking into translating this one too! It may be… intimidating, but this was also an experience I seriously enjoyed, so I’d like to help this one too!

Ey, glad you finally finished out the game Braixen!

And...interesting feedback. I will say, you're probably one of the first to say "Where's all the lore, give more lore, give me worldbuilding!" I think for me it really comes down to context. The CS games are first and foremost horny games: they've gotta do that well, and they've gotta do that front and center. Story, setting, characters and so on exist as a support structure for this, because sex stuff is hotter if it occurs in a context and has meaning. But there's a limit to that.

I've actually given a lot of thought to this, and mentioned it in the past. I always have a kind of spectrum in my mind, with a little indicator arrow on it. "Porn" on one side, "Story" on the other. If you go too far one way, there's no depth and it's just flavorless sex scenes. If you go too far on the other, it's...just a story, with some explicit content here and there. Which is fine, but not what I'm shooting for. I have, for better or worse, played a LOT of these games, and the conclusion I came to long before making my games was that it wasn't really possible to be on the knife's edge of this spectrum: you either had to fall on one side, or the other. So I very deliberately have the CS games fall on the side of "Porn, but with a lot of character and story to support it".

I explain all this because I want to make it clear I've definitely thought a lot on it, and again, the games are how they are very deliberately, because I want to make a horny game with some flavor and identity, not an in-depth character drama with a little sex here and there. Itch is FLOODED with VNs like that, and I've just never been interested in that side of the spectrum. If you're going to have more sex in your story than an R rated movie, I really think it should be pushed over to the other side of the spectrum. The bit in the middle is...kinda lukewarm and doesn't really work either way. At least for me.

So it's an identity matter, but also just practical. MOST people would kill me if I spent even more time on story/character/setting etc. For most I was already pushing it a bit with how much there is in GT, but I wanted to have a LITTLE more context for things, especially going forward. And of course I only have so much time and energy as well. The more of the game I make that's story stuff, the less time in the budget there is for another scene where Mezz gets his brains turned to mush via sex. Always a balancing act.

BUT, that said, I'm glad you care! I'm glad you enjoy what is there! Just know that I arrive at the mix that's there very carefully, via an attempt to balance a lot of different things. That lore is on the computer because it would bog things down immensely if I tried to mix it all in somewhere.

Also, something that's very important to me, high up on the priority list, is AVOID ANNOYING PLAYERS. I have played so, so many games that just don't value their player's time or experience. So as much as possible, I try to carve things out and make things optional. You CAN read the lore on the computer, but you'll get the basics via osmosis and you can carry on playing the game without digging through ancient history if you prefer. You CAN play the game "legit", or you can somewhat cheat your way through in various ways if you just want to sight-see and don't care. It costs me very little in extra dev time to design like this, and I think it makes the games much more enjoyable to more people because they have that flexibility.

Ha, and all that said, I'm glad that putting my chips on the sex did at least pay off with you (it usually does).

"was it successfully conditioning me?"

You joke, but that's a very deliberate design intention of the games in general. There are many surprises and ambushes in the games, but nothing is every truly forced. It should be entirely possible (although extremely difficult) to go through both games without being "defiled" at all. Everything always has a slight air of "well, you let your guard down, you were sloppy." In-universe, to Mezz, but also to the player. It's this thing of "Well yeah, but you keep letting this happen. What does that say about you?" It's a very subtle meta humiliation kink thing. That's why there are only a handful of full ENDS, everything else just loops and builds, one slip up after another, and another, and another. That's not just hot because of what happens to Mezz. It's hot because YOU KEEP PUTTING HIM THROUGH THAT. While, to some degree, self-inserting.

I am very happy to hear you like Porno 1 - D, because DEAR GOD was that an obnoxious pose to work on, and I'm still not super happy with it. One of the weaker ones in the game IMHO. But that's why I've learned to never talk about stuff like that beforehand. Most of the time, the stuff YOU hate or think has issues as a creator, most people won't even notice. Lot of room for variation there.

And yes, game is definitely dark thematically (literally too, had to scale up the lighting from the earlier versions in some cases). I try not to go too extreme with it, or for too many of the scenes, but fundamentally these games are about psychological sadism and masochism. I like dark stuff, it's hot. I will say though, that it always has to fall into a kind of cartoony zone still. Fucked up cartoony, but still cartoony. Like Secret of NIMH is a DARK movie for its genre, but it's still not some psychologically devastating war movie or whatever. I hate things that are nihilistic, pointless, hopeless, that make you feel dead inside. But I DO enjoy stuff that has that sharp, bitter, stinging flavor here and there. It's so much more fun that way. Even cartoons and fables need STAKES. You said Mahir was flat for you, but I'd say that scene (and a few others) say a lot about him as a character, at least on a basic level.

Also, again, remember WHY Mezz is now brokenly serving cock in a hidden back room. YOU put him there. It didn't have to be like this.

"My first playthrough was an accidental Slut mode route, one that was meant to be Pure but I kept sucking."

This is literally the intended median playstyle. "Ok, I guess I'll play a clean playthrough first for reference...oh ooops. Oh, huh. Well, since I'm already HERE..." And thus the descent begins.

Oh I should say while I remember too, thanks for documenting play times. Like I said, I like to keep track, get a rough idea to quote people since MY playthroughs stopped being a representative sample a long time ago (if they ever were). And glad the patch/improvements are working well!

Alright, let's work through the issues raised:

-I've talked a lot about this, but the battle system is what it is. You'll notice it's better than CS at least! But again, limited time, limited energy. I always prioritize making the sex stuff work before having an amazing fight engine. Sorry to hear the battlesex didn't quite hit for you either, but that was more or less where the focus was. It is unfortunate and a little silly that there are effectively only three mob enemies, and two are just variations on the base. But unfortunately art is a huge time sink for me, and dev time would increase dramatically for every additional enemy added. There's also the complication of battlesex, because every new enemy either has to not do sex stuff (boring), or have some NEW thing that it does.

There are basically two ways you can go with this: have a bunch of enemies, and just have one, simple thing that they do sex wise. Many enemies, dead simple battlesex. Or you can have very few, and a more complex battlesex system. I opted for the latter, because again, this is a porn game. I want the porn stuff to have the most depth. I'd love to have BOTH the battlesex and the ordinary fights be deep and have a lot of variety, but given limited resources, a lot of choices have to be made. I'm banging together rocks here, I'm just happy I can pull off what I can.

-Basic UI: Again...think of this all like buying a run-down house cheap and fixing it up when you can. I get the basics working first, and then slooowly build out and improve fancy things when I'm able. UI is frosting. The basic one works well enough. I have considered tweaking it at various times, but doing so in a way that doesn't make it WORSE is harder than you'd think. Good UI design is a pretty big time sink, and one I just haven't been able to afford.

-On the battlesex again: I will say that the theming around GT is different than CS. CS is much more traditional and basic: you lose x number of times, and that's it. There are a number of games I've played that had a kind of "momentum" design to them, to play off the humiliation aspect, where it wasn't just a matter of winning or losing: you could keep picking yourself up, and fighting, but the more you lost the harder it became to fight legitimately, until it kind of became this "in denial" thing where you COULD fight, but it was utterly pathetic and you might as well give up. I built a slight bit of this into CS, but much, much more into GT. For someone interested in the lore, remember the context here: Mezz has already been COMPLETELY brainwashed into "entertainment" before even starting to fight through the Gutter, it's only a frail, artificial mental framework that's holding that back. So the Pure playthrough is supposed to be somewhat frustrating, especially after a few losses, because once that ball starts going down the hill it picks up speed FAST. Personaly if I was doing a "pure" playthrough (not 100% pure, just enough for the next game), I'd save scum and avoid ANY losses to the mobs, because once that starts you get stuck in the tar pit REAL quick.

To be fair though, and open to criticism, it is possible that the game would be better if the gameplay BEFORE that initial loss was a little easier. Then again, hard and easy are notoriously difficult to judge in a general sense. I DO "Mario Maker" my games, I play through stuff to make sure it's at least possible, and make note of the experience. But everyone has different expectations for this stuff, and a lot just aren't thinking in RPG terms (like topping off health after every battle, conserving items etc).

"Despite that, I found the battlesex to be quite neat, and when I didn’t care about maintaining purity, it was quite enjoyable. "

This is the unfortunate limitation of the games I think: because of the design priorities, Pure playthroughs are always going to be a. Very hard and b. Somewhat boring. That's why I elected to put Scratch's stuff on the pure side, just to have SOMETHING on that route. But you should really think of pure playthroughs as that mode a lot of games have where you deliberately make it harder just to prove you're up to the challenge.

-Sorry to hear the slutmode stuff in the lair didn't work for you. I will say I did understand that it is a lot of work to get through, which is why I only did it there, where you only have a handful of mobs to fight through. But it's there for a reason: that's the mechanic you use to "fight" Khazeem in that mode as well, and I needed to tutorialize it before the boss fight, or people would be confused when it hit suddenly.

-The kitsune stuff is very basic, yes, but I had to have SOMETHNG on the normal route besides just the fights. You have to have some downtime where it's more problem-solving for pacing issues. But yes, absolutely filler, but without them the whole thing would feel too short, and too basic. I will admit they are very basic elements of the game though.

I'm honestly surprised you still went with 9/10 given your frustration with some of the more "ordinary game" aspects of the game (and entirely valid complaints!). But I think this may underline my point: I'd love to do EVERYTHING great, but with limited resources only SOME things can be great, and you have to put the chips where you think they'll have the highest return. That 9/10 tells me I put them in the right place.

Regardless though, I'm glad you were finally able to play GT, and that you enjoyed it overall. And absolutely, I'd love to see a translation when you can manage it! Will take a while, but of course, no rush.

Edit: Just noticed re-reading: "(also the text box cuts through Mezz’s hole and covers it in Slut mode Khazeem’s game over and that’s just unfortunate I wanted to see that gape :c)"

As in most VNs you can toggle the text box at any time by right-clicking. Enjoy :D.