Negligee: Love Stories

A enjoyable novel game. plenty of choices and humour.

Like that most of Dharker Studio games take place in the same town.
Alot more content then normal
four stories following the characters Karen, Charlotte, Sophie and Jasmin in their early lives.
Pretty good stories. For sure added to the story way more then some of the other games.
CG quality is alot higher then the older and some of the new games.

I really enjoyed the first game, so I thought I would give this a shot. However, I really couldn't get into it, especially when it seemed that a lot of the stories had rapey vibes. It's not my thing, but definitely don't recommend getting this if you think it's going to be like the first game.

It's okay, Not as good as the original Negligee, but not bad either.

The fact that there's far less yuri is a bummer and there are a decent amount of narrative inconsistencies between this (which serves as a prequel) and the original, but overall, I'd still say it's worth it if you enjoyed Negligee.

Love this game ! Only had to play for an hour for me to see the true value of this game. It is a must buy and the storys really make you think!

You get about 6 choices during each story to affect the outcome. The scenes are picture, not moving, but do a pretty good job of displaying what is happening in the dialogue. There is enough dialogue to get into character. After playing it for three hours, I would recommend this game. I am looking forward to trying out some of the variations.

Game seemed enjoyable

Pros
Gorgeous (uncensored) art
Good well written story
Lovely characters

Recommended solely for the pros

Cons
Too many Patreon advertisements once is more than enough!

This has now driven me away from buying from this dev unless too good a deal to pass up. I do not agree with multiple advertisement in a game. We are supporting in our own way but to see PATREON 3X no thank you!

As the developers yes they have the right to do this but please tell me, I'm not the only one who finds this very unpleasant?

The promotion is misleading. The game content is poor and the storyline is boring. There are free html/javascript games a lot better than thus out there. I am sorry that I actually paid for this game.

If you have not played the first game the chances of you enjoying this are slim because all of the main characters are reused from the last game and no context is given. However, it is a prequel so it doesn't necessarily need to be explained, but you don't need to have played the first game, you'll just get more enjoyment if you have. This game is all about the somewhat... interesting pasts of the three girls that go to work at Negligee in the first game, Sophie, Jasmine, and Charlotte, and the original manager Karen. Since there are four different characters each one has a seperate story focusing on them. So I will section this review into a few parts, a story review, an art review, replayability, and then finally give some thoughts as to wether or not you should buy this.

- The Story -
The first story you are going to play is Karen's. She's in an unfaithful marriage to a man who married her because her dad was his boss at the company he worked at. The marriage is very unhappy and because of this Karen falls to some tempations. This story has three endings, giving it more replay value than the last two. However, one of the endings is hilariously fast and forced with no hints as to why it happened. I legitimately found myself (like a terrible person) laughing at the absurdity of it. Crime is a serious topic and to see it adressed in such a light especailly in a game like this where it was not advertised, and you would not think it happens from the first game is surprising.
The second story of the game focuses on Jasmine, one of the three main girls from the original game. As she said in the first game she's working a job at a strip club. However her boss tells her to think about her future and then she does. This leads to two different encounters you will have which you can choose to be sexual with or almost completely ignore. This is the second and last story with three endings. The good ending is definitely heart warming since you could see in the first game that Jasmine was a good person. Of course, for anyone who wants it the other two endings are a bit more... not so heart warming. However if you want to see Jasmin pretty much become a prostitute go ahead, you can do that.
The third story is about Charlotte, and how she needs to come to terms about how she's lesbian. To be honest this was definitely the shortest and weakest part of the game. Most of the cgs were reused and only slightly changed and was light to compared to the other sections. The story only has two endings making it feel a bit bland and you only get three choices throughout the path. The value of this story will completely go over your head unless you played the first game, or like to see a yuri lesbian become a true lesbian.
The fourth story is about Sophie, and well if you played the first game you'd guess this was the wildest one, and you'd be right. Well, the least I can say is this is the polarizing story. If you like your R18 content non vanilla and non consenmsual you will probably enjoy this. However, if you don''t you will probably abhor what you see and be turned off. from this game. This story also only has two endings, and neither of them feel as if they really matter because they basically just both end the same way.

- The Art -
The art in this game I would say personally is an improvement over the first game. I see more detail in hair and face and since it's uncensored from the get go you could defintely tell Dharker Studio is still trying to figure out how to draw d***s. Since they mostly do Yuri it's annoying that they would even try this because it depreciates the value of the game in my opinion. But other than that an improvement over the first game. It take a highly anime reminiscent art style and I would personally give it an 8/10.

- The Replayability -
If you've played any virtual novel before you know the drill. Make your choices and see if they actually affect the outcome of the story. The only stories that actually have big changes in their endings that make you feel like your choices mattered are the first two. However, while Sophie's story does end in the same way either way Charlotte's doesn't. Overall I would say this is slightly better than most visual novels on Steam in terms of choices. Definitely better than the Sakura games.

- The Finale -
Thank you for reading through this multi paragraph review of an anime p0rn game on Steam, congrats you can now consider yourself an intellectual. Overall, I would have to say this game is pretty good, wait for a sale however if you can't get behind the art in the trailers. But, I would personally give it a 8 out of 10. It's not the best thing in the world but it's definitely an improvement over what we've seen on Steam so far and it's the first game to be released that is completely uncensored. (Minus Melty's Quest but that was a patch) So if you have an interest in being a sad sad little man and fancy the idea of watching anime chicks get banged (not always in consensual situations), this is probably the game for you. However, if you expect all yuri like the first game you will probably be dissapointed. If you're a die hard fan, Charlotte's story is probably the only one you will want to play, however she does originally start off with a boyfriend so there's always going to be unskippable MaleXFemale action. Time you will spend playing if you do everything: About 2 and a half to 4 hours.
(Ps this is too long for me to proofread so I apologize for any mispellings but yeah I'm lazy but it should still be somewhat understandable and comprehendable.) (PPS. it will only say I have five minutes on the game because I played it offline, however I have all the achievements because I did actually play the game.)

Negligee: Love Stories is a simple game pioneering for what I hope to be a new era of gaming, that said when this game says uncensored it just isn't talking about nudity, this game can excalate from a 0 to an 11 in some stories while and covers some dark topics outside of sex. Overall this is a solid adult-themed visiual novel game that is worth the price tag.

Before I delve into this too much I want to say that I -only- recommend this game to those of you who have played the previous game before.

Positives:
1.) One of Steam's first uncut games that doesn't need a third party patch! (so glad to be alive in these times)
2.) If you liked the first game then getting the back story on the characters from the first game (minus Hannah and Emily) is quite enjoyable (especially Karen's backstory)
3.) Charlotte ending back up with Mikka in the epilogue was a wonderful way to end it
4.) UNCUT VN ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Negatives:
1.) If you haven't played the first, do not buy this game. As a standalone this game doesn't feel complete enough to really justify the price (maybe if it was 50% off)
2.) (In my opinion) I really do not like how they drew hannah this time around. Why doesn't she look as she did in the first one? Why would they change her character model so much? I understand the time difference, so it made sense during the main story to have her look younger, like she does in this, but during the epilogue look just like the main story? No, I cannot accept that.
3.) The stories do not intertwine at all. There is a slight bit there in the epilogues, but it is so vague that it just feels incomplete. I was really hoping that there was more story connecting this game with the first, but there really isn't.
4.) Lack of artwork... When Chris gets beat up by Johnathan and mentions him wiping blood off his face and getting really beat up. Why don't they make artwork of his character being all bruised and battered and leave it in just text format? It really took away from the experience to get that ending where Chris and Karen run away together and he looks perfectly fine after being beaten near death.

Overall:
I would have to say this game is average and if there was a middle-ground way of doing a review, I would post it as informational. But in my honest opinion I cannot recommend this game because it just feels like there is not enough heart in it. I appreciate Dharker for making a prequel/sequel, but compaired to the first the story and art seem a little lacking. In the first game there were scenes that had motions (basically short video clips on loop) and I liked that aspect (though I was sad when the quality of it was worse than the quality of the still images, but it was still neat!), I just wish they brought that back for each story line, but it didn't happen.

PS: Love your games Dharker Studios, but I really hope you bring back the video loop element in My Senpai (which I did the Beta access tier in hopes the 3rd is better)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dharkerfigurine/mysenpai?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=my%20senpai
link for anyone who is curious, has 7 days to go as of this post.
I hope the 3rd installment is better, especially considering how well past the goal it is.

Hope this review helps!

Being one of the first uncensored games to be released on steam, I will gladly support this. Steam has a bright future ahead of it!

This game has one of the best graphics i've seen in adult games, and it being uncencored is
the best of all!
The story is intriguing and you'll get four of them which is a very good approach imo.
Thing is some games have one story and it takes a long time and it feels like a click
through game but Love Stories is so much more fun!

There is only one thing that bothers me...and that's the UI which is not adjustable.
The textbox is large and covers all interesting parts of the screen, there is no option in the
menu that can make it more transparent of even better, Just see the text without textbox
like in a real movie, you don't see a textbox either.

Aside from this ''minor.....'' thing i recommend the game absolutely, you could go back to
the gallery and check out the unlocked scenes after the story.
But expieriencing both at the same time would be bliss ;)

your basic VN dating sim game from what i can tell. Very similar to many japanese VN games I have played however, there is no voice acting and as another person mentioned, the scenes are fairly static and tame (so far). after half an hour, i can confirm it is uncensored and I am surprised to see something like this on steam but not condeming it at all. I really just pruchased to see if it truely was uncensored as was claimed and sure enough, as another comment stated, maybe steam finally has grown up.

Okay. This is a prequel/sequel to Negligee. The main stories are the prequels, with the epilogues taking place two years after Negligee... oh, and the epilogues of the three love interests seem to imply you chose someone other than that particular one. Now, one of the stories is about Karen, who... was the boss who suddenly quit and left Hannah to run the store in the original Negligee. And well... one of the endings of her story tells you how that happened.

And do note, there are themes in here other than you willingly have sex with this guy (or girl). Some of the routes involve instances where the act has... consent issues. Easiest way to say it, because I can only remember one or two instances where it goes from very weak consent to none at all. At least one of those the girl whacks the offending dude with a lamp, so that scene at least felt somewhat cathartic...

While you don't need to read the original Negligee, I would suggest doing so. Frankly, it is much more satisfying than two of the good endings, and slighty more satisfying than a third (at least if you play Jasmin's route where you don't give into the temptation for money... well money for certain acts). Charlotte's good ending actually feels a bit more satisfying, as it is a true love story... even if it ends slilghtly abruptly but don't worry the epilogue works out well.

Would recommend, but get it on discount and perhaps in a bundle.

So the positives:

1. Uncensored. Probably the biggest reason to get it and support future titles of this genre.
2. Artwork. It's japanese style hentai. Nothing wrong here.
3. It's a porn game. It doesn't pretend to be something else.

The negatives:
1. Gameplay. There practically isn't any. You're mostly given a choice of accepting some sort of sexual proposal or not accepting the proposal. I finished everything in an hour (including the epilogue). Speed button is not available until after you read through the story the first time. This means a lot of clicking through long dialogues. There are 4 stories to play through, 2 or 3 endings each, and an epilogue.
2. Story. The stories are heavily into rape, domestic violence (Karen's story), and a lot of moments where you behave like a whore. You're basically playing as one of four women in the game allowing (or not allowing) a man (or woman) to fuck you. That's basically it.
3. Music. Generic happy music.
4. CG gallery. While the uncensored images can be beautiful to view, there isn't much packed into the game.

I was prepared to like this game, but after playing House Party (which I recommend trying out), this is sorely disappointing. Even at 13.99, this is not worth the money.

tl;dr; version:
This is pornography. Make no mistake about that. Unlike the previous game, this one is almost purely hetero-sexual.
And I have to say, I really loved this. Your mileage may vary greatly however, but I don't think I can get into those reasons in a short version.

Long version:
Negligee: Love Stories is a sequel to Negligee, though it happens before the previous game. Uh, does that make it a prequel? Well, whatever. It doesn't seem like I made a review for Negligee, so in short; it was a great game, but it had one glaring flaw. You could end up masturbating in your office which means that you'd miss out on one of the three girls for the rest of the game. That in itself wouldn't be so bad, but this route was clearly not polished properly. The discussions were often just slightly off since one person's dialog wasn't there, and a few key scenes for the plot didn't happen AT ALL. So there was a bad feeling of disconnect if you went that way first, and you probably did since... well... that's the first H scene. Punishing players by having an incomplete route just because they wanted to see the thing they (most likely) most wanted - porn - was NOT a good design. Otherwise, again, it was pretty great all around.

Negligee: Love Stories doesn't fall into the same trap, though possibly because it has been simplified. The game is split into four entirely separate stories, one for each girl. Each story is fairly short, but with four of them, there's still a decent amount of content. Not as much as Negligee I'd think, but getting close-ish. Anyway. There are 3+3+2+2 endings, some of which are NOT nice. At all. Those took me off guard quite badly. If you don't like that, this game might not be for you. Oh, and for the stories with 3 endings, the way to reach one of them tends to be reaaaally specific and non-intuitive, so be prepared to look up a guide for those. After you find the canon ending, the epilogue opens up for that character. These happen AFTER Negligee happens, so Negliee: Love Stories is a... a sequel? Prequel+sequel? Pre-sequel? Well, whatever. Anyway, these are EXTREMELY short and just... cut off. Literally just suddenly end and throw you to the title screen. Umm, would a THE END and/or a fade to black been too much to ask? At least they give a fair amount of closure of what happened after Negligee, I guess.

As for the stories themselves, well, they handle some relatively heavy stuff for a porn game. For example, Jasmin is a stripper. Her story deals with the feelings of shame and guilt, the excuses she makes to keep doing it and her sexuality (as she doesn't really enjoy shaking it for the guys). All the routes tackle something similar; human drama and emotions. Sticking to Jasmin, I find it really refreshing that the storyline isn't just the usual porn storyline of "she's a slut and she loves it" -thing. But if you don't like the idea of a pornographic game handling actual human emotions, well, this game might not be for you. But are the stories REALISTIC realistic? Uuh, I don't know. I don't know any strippers from whom to ask those questions. But all the stories felt authentic to me and none of them overstayed their welcome. So, I can really only give it 9/10 for the plot. Your mileage may vary wildly. Oh, and the only reason why it's not 10/10 is because I opened up Negligee afterwards and refreshed myself of the start of the game; it didn't connect with Love Stories by 100%. It's pretty close, but there are some slight inconsistencies. Yes, I am probably the only person in the whole world who cares and I am proud of it, thank you very much.

Execution wise, the game REALLY could've used some sort of "thought-indicator." There is constantly text where the current heroine of the story has her name-tag showing up, despite not actually talking. The only way you know if they said something out loud or if they were thinking is by seeing if the other party reacts to it or not. Why not just use ( ) to indicate thoughts or something? Meh. Anyway, other than that, no real complaints. Well, there was two typos I noticed, both cases of "your" which should've been "you're." In consecutive lines. Tsk tsk.

As for the porn, the biggest thing that strikes me is that it's pretty much purely hetero-sexual now. Considering how Negligee was purely girl-on-girl action, this is a rather odd choice. I don't mind, but I'd imagine that many previous fans are going to mind quite a lot. And mind you, this is a cast of mainly lesbians. There's going to be emotional baggage that comes after the deed with males. I already mentioned the heavy stuff before, but just as a reminder. Anyway... an annoying flaw is that there's no obvious way to HIDE THE UI. The usual suspects - spacebar, right-mouse button or a UI element (like "X" in a corner or a "Hide" button) - are not there! There's probably a button for it, but damned if knew where! That should be more obvious! I want to have a proper look at the tiddies without going to the main menu and CG section, damn you!

The drawings themselves are drop-dead gorgeous - but of course your preferences may differ. I had to double-check was it the same person working on the art in both Negligee games, and yes, both games credit Kopi Anget. Damn, son. That much progress in just two years? Nice. I tip my hat to you, good sir. As such, I guess my biggest complaint would be the inconsistent amount of CGs used per scene. For example, Jasmin's blowjob scene has a whopping 20 variations to it. Meanwhile, Charlotte's lesbian scene has 5 variations to it - and there certainly was a lack of CG updating on that one! I wonder what happened, was there poor art direction? Or did they not really know the scale of the budget and this Jasmin scene was the first one produced? I don't think we'll ever know, but I hope the devs learned their lessons. Oh, and Hannah has a new sprite which is... just... off. Well, it's not her game (that's Negligee!) so you hardly even see her, thus maybe it was just a matter of not getting used to it.

Music was okay. The only one I really liked was the stripclub beats, but I never disliked any of the background tracks.

And lastly, I guess I should mention that since this game basically pioneered the whole "one-click porn" thing on Steam, not quite everything went as planned. Apparently in the future Dharker Studio will be releasing games as all-ages with free adult-only DLC. This way, all countries will be able to buy the game itself, and those countries where pornography is allowed (read: not Germany(*)) will have their porn on Steam with two clicks instead. Lessons learned, other game devs will most likely follow that route. So the "one-click porn" thing lasted only for two days, long live the "two-click porn" thing! It is a lot better than the old "click, find the developer website, download patch, check how to patch, do the patch" thing.
(*) Actually, the full list is closer to Australia (because of reasons mate), Russia (probably because of homo-sexual content?), Japan (pixels too small), South Korea (not enough Pylons) and China (because pornography is bad for you, get back to work peasant). And a big bunch of strongly Islamic countries which don't approve of human sexuality outside of procreation. And maybe a few countries that I missed. Germany is a bit of a special case here because porn is allowed, but Steam's age verification system doesn't meet the German standards. So technically, Germans could get it eventually. But Valve probably won't bother so... don't get your hopes up.

Sooooo... yeah. All in all, in case it wasn't clear already, I really loved the game. As soon as the DLC bonus tidbits come off the first-week sale, I will certainly be buying them for full price. Take all my money, and thank you for the game.

Okay then. So.. I'm gonna review each of the stories here individually as this the best way to get my thoughts out.

Before that though, y'all had me confused looking at Hannah's updated artwork. I thought I was going crazy, but it just turns out she looks different in Love Stories than she did in Negligee.

For Karen's Awakening: Man, the beginning hurt my soul. I got pretty sad. It explores a failed marriage(That isn't physically abusive, surprisingly) to the extent that Karen finds herself an affair while on the job and all forms of sex and some funny lines ensue. It's pretty cute overall, but it really gets serious at the end. You can figure that out yourself as that ending is pretty easy to get on a first run-through.
Her epilogue is kind of depressing, though. Especially with everything that happened to her. I'll give this epilogue a 4/5 cause it made me sad.

For Jasmin's Stripping: This one doesn't hurt the soul too much, but you gotta feel for Jasmin. She makes it pretty clear that this isn't enjoyable of a profession, even with the money she's earning. So getting her canon ending that ties in with Negligee is pretty enjoyable.
Her epilogue is just plain cute. 5/5 from me on that one.

For Charlotte's First Love: Cinnamon Roll. That's all I got. It's a cinnamon roll story with some sin.
Her epilogue is also cinnamon roll. Also a good ending. 5/5 on the score for this one.

For Sophie's Temptation: I'll be honest, I forgot a lot of Sophie's story in Negligee, so seeing how she was portrayed in the beginning for this story really threw me off with her. Sex addicted and whatnot. But then I did a complete 180 when it got really bad for her to the extent she seeked out counseling. It was actually kinda rough to read on a personal level just due to the nature of the subject matter. Overall, I really liked Sophie's Temptation at the turning point, so 5/5 on this.
Her epilogue is good, too. Spoilers, she goes back to school to pursue her dream. :D

Now for the general stuff:
Artwork: It's good, Hannah's art still throws me off, but that's it. Everything is top tier.
Spelling: I think I only saw like.. two spelling errors? Nothing big or noticeable.
Music: It's okay. It's not repetitive, but it's also not memorable. The most memorable song was probably the one used in the epilogues. It just fit.
Story: I've got no complaints with the story, there's always gonna be room for more story regardless of what you write... While the time leaps are a bit over-used, it's not something that I'd mark as negative.

And that's it. Holy crap this is long.

It seems so pushed for some reason. Everything needs to go so fast in the game. You jump from today to "4 months later" to "2 years later". All the things happening in the story are like your wildest fantasies happening with a girl/boy. It's still good, but i expected a bit more Love 'STORIES' instead of jumping from a sex scene to another :/
7/10

I really love it
11/10.
Play it with your family, your dog and your pet goldfish.
Rated E for Everyone

Steam has finally grown up. Now I have LITERALLY everything I want or need on PC with the launch of this title, the first of its kind. Keep the mature content c*mming.