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Review of Musumaker

SubjectMusumaker
ByHelpfulness: 2
tomtheerogeman on 2020-04-02 last updated on 2020-04-03
ReviewHaving recently read Musumaker after it was suggested to me almost a year ago, I can say that it was quite an interesting experience, but not entirely an entertaining one for me. I'd like to elaborate more on the kind of person who would enjoy this game, because some people generally like to rack their brains in figuring out how to get things to work, while for other people like myself this is not always the case. I recommend reading this before buying the game.

A lot of the discussions on VNDB and other places are of people trying to analyze what this game is about, what(if any) morals can be learned from it, that sort of thing. The comments I've seen from people who've played the game are accurate, however the only thing to note is that despite the orphanage being a brothel, you as the manager don't actually get to see paid sex going on. In fact the goal throughout much of the game is to take pure heroines and "train" them to become sex workers later in the game. By that I mean stretching their orifices by having sex with them, quelling any reserves they will have about having sex with strangers in the future, etc. So to say this game is about prostitution or a brothel is a bit misleading, it's more about training the girls to become prostitutes later.

The game explores BDSM as a fetish as well, but from what I could tell that's really only the case if you buy BDSM related products from the sex store, or make the "right" choices during the characters' routes. I'm not really into that, mostly because those typical leather or spandex bondage outfits cover too much skin to turn me on. The character designs are also a bit controversial at times. Daidouji Karin's hair is almost the same color as her skin, while the color palette for Akai Ichigo contains too much red and orange. Fortunately Ichigo's stupid hair loops are undone in most of the h scenes, she's so fucking cute without them, I don't know what the artists were thinking when they drew her.

After finishing Mikan's route and experimenting with the items sold at the sex store in my old save files, I decided to replay the game from the beginning, but instead of doing another character's route I went ahead and purposely failed to pay off the debt and receive a bad ending instead. I got the idea of doing so after using GARbro to fap to some CGs I didn't unlock yet, and I noticed some unusually graphic images in the game's files. You might've already seen a glimpse of this depending on how you got the game or what sites you visited that have official sample CGs and such. At least some of them appear when you pick the wrong choice late in the game, trying to force a bad ending by not paying off your debt will not unlock these gruesome scenes, at least not when I tried it.

There seems to be much more to Musumaker than what I wrote about, but I'm not interested in playing the game further. This is one of those games that I respect for going above and beyond, trying new things and so forth, but at the same time just isn't for me. Most loliges of this length and quality are about 40% H scenes from my experience, but this game is more like 60%. Unlike other games it should ideally be played only once every now and then, otherwise you may find yourself skipping some of the H scenes out of tedium as there's much more than enough to satisfy one's libido. There's a lot of figuring out to do in the beginning to pay off the initial debt installment, and after finishing Mikan's route you may still find yourself starting the game from the beginning several times just to figure out how to get to the other girl's routes. Like there's a walkthrough in Japanese but it's multiple pages long and even after reading how to get to Ichigo's route after Mikan's I'm still not successful at it. I probably misunderstood something, but the game is getting really repetitive at this point. Come to think of it, I probably spent about as much time trying to do things as I did actually enjoying the game.

If Mikan's route is any indication, the scenario writer did a great job on the character routes, so some of you might find it worth the time and effort. I would've probably done so as well if I didn't learn Japanese, because there aren't a lot of English translated loliges apart from Musumaker. If you were able to get to other character's routes or otherwise had a more positive experience playing the game than I did, I'd like to hear from you and if you make a good case for it then I might reconsider playing the game, if I'm in the right mood.
2 points
#1 by kanamechan90
2020-04-02 at 20:18
< report >I feel something similar regarding this game tbh but not sure.

Hopefully the full TL comes out soon.
#2 by j2cock
2021-07-11 at 13:18
< report >hey I like Ichigo's hair loops
I thought that sometimes it became a bit too over the top like in Mikan's bad end, which had such a grotesque CG that I couldn't take it seriously, but otherwise it's a fine game. Easy 7
#3 by maniakanime
2023-01-24 at 09:54
< report >I think that if developer cut out gay H-scene and scat training h-scene then more peaple will be interested in this VN.