Tailor Tales -- No Spoiler Review
Tailor Tales
System: PC
Price: Free (Subscribing to the “Plus” tier on Patreon will give additional content and 18+ epilogues)
Voice Acting: Partial? (Characters have soundbites without words)
ESRB Rating: Not Rated, Reviewer suggests: M (17+), AO (18+) with Patreon Plus version
Overall Rating: Stole 3/10 ♥s
Pre-Game Perception: Run a business and figure out how to balance career and dating in the modern age for a modern woman. Also, something about a tailoring mini-game.
Morning-After Reflection: A painful example of MC who can do no wrong, not really navigating relationships so much as tearing them apart and stitching the shreds haphazardly back together. Also something about a business that rarely gets mentioned outside of plot.
Story: “Design clothing and romance a guy of your choice. Tailor Tales is an otome that has you playing a female fashion designer who runs her own boutique. Set in a fictional European country, her life gets complicated when she meets a certain guy in a fateful encounter. Throughout the game she'll be required to design clothes for clients to earn enough gold to purchase the next chapter of the story.
Customize your main character's looks and choose whether to be 'fierce' or 'kind' with your guy. Perhaps you'd like to kiss him first, or would rather he take the lead; it's all your choice and there are no bad endings! Each guy has his own unique route so you can jump right in and experience a completely different story.”
Interest Rating: 4/10 I picked up this game because it was free, and after playing Cinderella Phenomenon I thought I should check out the free to play games offered on Steam. I was slightly more interested when I found out I could purchase 18+ scenes (which I did).
MC: Although the game claims each route is completely different, the MC doesn’t change much between routes, nor does her best friend, Sarah. It feels very much like an alternate universe where the MC stays practically the same, with the same life experiences that shape her until her college years, and then things branch into different realities. So, instead of breaking MC down into the three available routes, I’m going to tackle her as a whole. First, MC has no sprite, she is not voiced (no surprise there), and she shows up in roughly 35% of the CGs.
MC starts out named Joselina Hearth, both names are changeable. A feature that doesn’t matter much since there are no actual voiced lines, but you’ll be seeing the name a lot, so I suggest you input a name you enjoy. The best thing about Tailor Tales and the MC is the customization available. On startup you have access to four skin tones which range from your expected light to unexpected dark. I’m not used to seeing persons of color represented in an otoge, and I sorely miss it from my MMO days. If you sub for the Plus version, you have access to several more varying natural shades, and then there’s pink, Mystique, and seafoam. I assume that’s in anticipation of James’ route which functions in the first fantasy setting, a world where superheroes exist.
You also get the choice of hair color, hair style, eye color, eye style, and of course the clothes. Many, many options for clothes. It is mentioned that hair color and eye color will be reflected in CGs, and this was the case for my red-headed, green-eyed MC, but I’m not sure if the skin tone is reflected in the CGs. I picked a medium shade, and it didn’t appear to be used, I got a standard Caucasian skin tone in the pictures. Plus, hairstyle doesn’t matter, just color. Which makes me wonder about the hairstyles that are not straight locks to shoulder blades, because that could be a bit of a bait and switch to think you’ll finally get some afro puffs going and then suddenly your MC has long, straight hair.
As I said, that was the best part. :sigh: Now onto the actual character. MC is… frankly, I find her vile at her worst, and annoying at her best. I found her to be mean-spirited despite her belief that she is somehow the good one in every situation. The lows that she sinks could have been cushioned if the writer presented it better, but they don’t, so MC turns into a self-absorbed, vapid, combative, cruel person. I assumed we’d be presented with a MC that is stronk and sassy as it seems the western market clamors for, and we get that… to a degree, and then overshoot it by a f*cking mile all in the name of humor. But no one is laughing except maybe the MC and her equally combative, unfiltered friend, Sarah. Then, in the same route, MC turns around and loses all agency as she tells herself she literally has no right to say no to working for free because the LI tries to rope her into some power dynamic. I guess that’s how it works. I guess a woman that owns her own business and picks fights with strangers would assume she has no say in her industry. That wasn’t the worst part for me, that was just the annoying bit. There were more than enough uncomfortable scenes where I had no doubt that what MC was doing was not only morally reprehensible, but illegal in my country. Which! I do understand that the developer is not part of my country, so maybe that shit flies over there; but I couldn’t stomach it since I was playing the game, doing these things, and had no choice in the matter. This was the MC. This was what I was given.
And, ya’ know, it wouldn’t have been so bad if I had some say in these acts. Like when options are given they shape MC’s personality, or do more than give you three sentences of what you want, then jump back into what the author wanted MC to be like, giving me whiplash in the process. I understand that that type of personality building is a lot of writing and programming, but why give me an option if the choice has already been made? Why let me be kind if you’re going to make me play something much more than fierce? We’re in asshole territory, here. The choices are pointless and made the whole character even less enjoyable because I was forced to believe she could be better than she was, when it was all a fallacy so people could be like the MC and think “at least I tried, that makes me good enough.” Oh yeah, and she never grows or develops as a character. She is the same unlikeable person from the beginning to the end, except that her flaws are seen as endearing once the prospect of sex is on the table.
Likability Rating: Fuka. If boundaries are a thing you want an MC to completely ignore, both her own and anyone else’s, then this MC is for you. She cares not for anyone’s rules as long as she wins. But what is she winning? A bad rating from me, that’s for sure.
Plot: There really isn’t a plot. With no common route, and each route being self-contained, the plot is… kind of just be successful and date a guy? Neither of which you actually get to make choices for. Each story tries to have some sort of plot and conflict and most of them are extremely obtuse, tropey, shallow, and needless as it does nothing to advance a story that doesn’t exist. The game suffers from poor writing and flounders around for ⅔ of the provided material before the couple is magically in love and it’s time to bone. I’d say something about seeing porn with more plot, but the unfortunate thing is I have. That’s about how deep the characters are as well.
The whole game is episodic with no clear goal. Each route is separated into chapters that you purchase with the gold you earn from the mini-game. There are 28 chapters (including the epilogue) and when a conflict arises it typically covers five chapters before resolution, so you really just get a bunch of short stories with no overall purpose. It’s very slice-of-life-y, if that’s your thing. It also is very repetitive, literally, with the same thoughts continuously brought up in order to remind the reader that this thought happened earlier in the (very short) chapter; possibly more than once, and possibly in an earlier chapter four other times as well. So it’s still valid. In case you forgot. They’ll let you know.
Replayability Rating: ★★★☆☆ Each route is different? I guess since they don’t cover (all) the same themes, they’re different enough to warrant running through with the current LI of your choice. But the story isn’t worth more than one look per character.
Love Interests: Are you ready to meet the men you’re going to emotionally abuse :cough: walk all over :hack: romance? I sure am! They are the only thing worth anything in this game, and that’s not saying much. The end-goal for the developer of Tailor Tales is to release six LIs/routes. Currently (January 2021) there are only three available, with Patreon Plus members able to read most of the fourth, but it isn’t finished yet. It takes roughly a year for the developer to get a route done, so in two-and-a-half more years the game should be completed, but I won’t be reviewing it again. F*ck that.
Each route has two endings, with one epilogue that is supposed to work for both. There are no bad ends. Since each route is self-contained there is no recommended order. I had gone from first released to most recently released, but I really can’t say what would be best since every route had serious issues outside of the LI’s control (except Neil, he’s just a hemorrhoid so he sucks just as much as the MC and it is his fault as much as the MC’s). If you’re still reading, and still considering “buying” this game (it’s free), do the dudes however you want to do them. I’ll try to highlight the best, and not dwell on the worst of each route.
Let’s start with Neil then, why don’t we? I wasn’t too fond of his appearance in the beginning, and in the end I guess I could have maybe liked it if he wasn’t such an asshole. That’s all I see when I look at Neil, a puckering asshole. He’s supposed to be a tsundere, but it takes too long for him to come around to the dere (we’re talking 15 god damned chapters into the game), and long before that I didn’t care about him and his cruel attitude, or MC and her cruel attitude, or if either of them end up happy. I was certain hate-f*cking was the only place it could go. Sorry, I’m supposed to talk about the highlights but Neil has absolutely no redeeming qualities, except that he’s rich? It’s not a question if he is rich - because he is - but that’s the only thing he really has going for him. I think they were going for some sort of power-swap here, but it utterly failed for me. Anyways, this is Neil. He’ll act completely contrary to how he was supposedly raised when it suits the plot. There is no fairytale romance here, despite the developer claiming this route will contain it.
Next up is Dimitri. Dimitri is tall. We know this because MC tells us at least twice a chapter. When Dimitri is not being tall (but more often when he is, because he’s tall, guys), he’s the little brother of the ex that MC is so over-but-really-not-even-though-it's-been-three-years. Dimitri doesn’t deserve all the baggage that MC is dragging along with her and about to force him to carry. From the beginning we’re told how nice of a guy he is, because he’s the only character in this game that treats anyone like a normal human being. Unfortunately, I still didn’t like the MC or the writing and soon found it a borefest full of annoyingly inaccurate references to tasks that really don’t work that way. MC does mellow out in the cruelty department, but she’s still mean-spirited, and thinks insulting people is so funny-- ya’ know, because it’s just a joke. I’m sorry, Dimitri. They attempt to make him claim that he likes it, but the writing fails to express that besides telling us that it has to be the case.
Caine is our last victim eventual boyfriend. This is the one I was really looking forward to on looks alone. But lo and behold, he’s another tsundere. Technically, only two out of the six expected characters are tsunderes, but the fact that two out of three of the current characters are tsunderes doesn’t appeal to me, especially after the bad taste Neil left in my eyes. And the MC for that matter, since this is route number three for me and she has yet to be something I would consider a decent human being. This one is a doozy. This one at least has some sort of plot or theme, but again it is so full of filler that it is needlessly bloated like my reviews and could have been summed up in ⅓ of the length of the route. It also has MC and her friend Sarah at their worst, probably because they’re portrayed at being at their best. The “good” people of the story. They certainly are not.
Boy Crazy Rating: 45% None are husbando material for me. Dimitri is the only reason this rating isn’t lower, and honestly, I’ll forget his paper-thin character in a week.
Romance: You’d think with so much filler and slice-of-life moments that this game is high on the romance, but I found it lacking. There are times the story attempts to make something flirty or romantic, and it just comes out awkward and excessively uncomfortable, then typically leads to conflict. As much as I like drama, I’m conflict-avoidant in real life, so being exposed to it so often, and forced to participate by making choices like to slap people or yell at them really bothered me. A lot. I’m getting away from things here; the point is, you get little romance for as romance-focused this game tries to be. The last ten chapters (out of 28) often head towards the romance route, which isn’t surprising for a game that is plot-heavy because romance typically doesn’t show up until the last ⅓ of the story; but for a game with little to no plot - this one - the whole reason to be playing should be the romance, and it’s very absent.
Heart Palpitation Rating: F. These are not the relationships you are looking for.
Spice: I think I’m going to have to approach this from two angles; the base game, and the Plus game which contains additional 18+ material in the epilogue.
If we talk about the base game, it’s pretty bland. There’s an attempt to build sexual tension which often just comes across as creepy and distressing and relies on overused tropes that elicit a heavy eye-roll from me. There are sprites without shirts (rarely) so it’s not like we’re just eating plain rice, and there are a few naked, or partially clothed scenes, but they’re not sexy scenes; so even though we get a little of the visuals, we don’t really get to enjoy it because it’s not hot. I’m not sure how spicy the epilogue gets in the normal version of the game, because once you apply the Plus version, you can’t play the normal (as far as I know, and I didn’t care to try it out since I didn’t want to see it get worse). There are some make-out scenes, but the developer made a choice I found comically disturbing. The LI sprite gets his close-up. Okay, we’re fine. But then when the snogging is happening, they drew the LI with his tongue hanging out of his mouth so you can see what sort of tongue battle the MC and LI are getting into, except there’s no MC. It’s just a close-up of a guy with his tongue all twisted so it appears like he’s really enjoying licking the computer screen. That might be hot for some people, but not me.
Now we move onto the really steamy stuff! At least, that’s what I’d like to say. I mean, it is explicit 18+ content, there’s no doubt about that. It’s just that it is only given in the epilogue, and once in Caine’s route when the normal version apparently has a cloud over a very flaccid penis. The price is a little steep for some sexing, since it isn’t a set price and instead a subscription, so I’m left wondering what happens when my sub runs out? Will it resort to the normal version? Price aside, with what’s currently released in the game, you get three scenes of sexy material that cranks the spice-level up to hot, hot, hot… if you can get past the several grammatical errors, the wandering tongue sprite, the weird choice of words and phrasing at times, the sound effects, the overused tropes that are amateurish and honestly a bit sexist, and a very stressful first person experience for those that just want to read some smut instead of self-inserting as actually having sex with the LI. The sprite… moves. It f*cking moves! Sitting in front of my computer, reading my fanfic-level smut, the half-naked sprite slides on up to front and center of the screen - so far normal for the make-out sessions in this game - and then proceeds to move closer and further to imitate thrusting. It was unexpected and distracting, and a little threatening since the sprite is coming at you. Add in that attack-tongue sprite doing all this thrusting while I’m just trying to read about MC and LI f*cking preferably with a good CG and I was so turned off, I just couldn’t find it sexy at all. I didn’t know if I should laugh or abandon my computer to the horror that occupied it.
Cold Shower Rating: Fail. The game left me feeling violated, and not in the fun way. Maybe I would just rather watch porn or read professionally published erotica. This whole experience took my interest in female-perspective eroge down about 12 notches, and I was only at 9 to start with.
Angst: This is the point that I decide I draw a line between angst and drama. Normally I like to combine the two, since angst causes some delicious drama, but with Tailor Tales it’s just drama. It’s so shallow. It’s so forced. It’s so unneeded. And a lot of it is so fictitious that even in a make-believe world I can’t suspend my disbelief enough to buy it. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying of making mountains out of molehills, that’s what I see when I try to follow the drama in Tailor Tales. Most of these aren’t problems. And the way these non-issues are resolved is typically with things that should actually be issues, but are not in this game. Not to mention that the non-issues are grasped so tightly that you’d think it’s the only lifeline the story has to keep it from being completely empty and pointless - because it is. It really feels like the writer didn’t have any idea how to approach big ticket issues in life, so everything seems really poorly executed and meaningless and instead they’re trying to get you to care about this tiny event that won’t matter in a week, let alone the months the story covers, or years later that it apparently is still a problem. In the end, I’d say the angst is really minimal, but the drama is turned past the 10 on the dial.
Drama Llama Rating: 3/10. Take your pictures of the drama llama while you can, it’s docile for now. No real angst, but plenty of petty conflict.
Voice Acting: Tailor Tales’ page lists its voice acting as partial, but this partial is even more partial than any other partial I’ve come across. There are no words. What you get is a series of sounds associated with an emotion that gets played anytime the character says something so you can (semi-)understand the intended delivery. With a brief chuckle here. And a disgusted “uhg” there. Here a sigh. There a sigh. Everywhere an annoyed sigh. I think you get the idea. This soundbite is played at the beginning of the text, as would make sense for coding. It’s not bad. It’s better than nothing, but there are no actual words anywhere in the game and the novelty wears off with some characters. If you sub for the 18+ version, there is quite a bit of muffled moaning/grunting during the sex scene; but I had so many issues with the scene otherwise that I couldn’t even enjoy the sound of someone grunting in my ear - a sound I typically would like. To each their own. When it comes down to it, the quality works, the bites work, so it isn’t completely needless as it can help explain intonation we’re supposed to be reading the text with.
Expression Rating: Nin. While voice actors were used for Tailor Tales, there are no spoken words, only sounds. Other games that have implemented the same “partial” voice acting also include a section for speech that is part of the gameplay, and since Tailor Tales gives less than that, the score must be lower than previous rated games that give more.
Art: This is not your traditional anime-style art, because it is not supposed to be the traditional anime-style art. And that’s fine with me! I tend to believe that I’m cool with different styles as long as it isn’t too exaggerated in proportions and is consistent. Tailor Tales offers that in their sprites and backgrounds. The backgrounds are detailed enough that it’s clear it isn’t just slapdash, but nothing I find amazing. It’s pleasant. The sprites are all different, so it isn’t as if the reader would confuse one character for another. I do like the dark, hard lines for art, so I don’t mind the less realistic look, especially with the backgrounds provided. They have a variety of facial expressions, and LIs have costume changes, though side characters largely don’t. On that note, there aren’t many side characters to begin with, but that’s fine. A lot of games don’t even introduce sprites for side characters.
The sprites are also partially animated, which I have mixed feelings on. For instance, they blink. Super awesome. Now I don’t feel like I’m just watching pictures on the screen. They move their mouths when speaking. Okay, that’s cool. I’ve never been a fan of the work that goes into the mouth-flap, but I know some enjoy it. But they also breathe, which is not as awesome. Cool in theory, but you can barely see it on some sprites unless you’re looking for it, so it gives this uncanny valley feeling if you’re not aware it’s a thing. Then, it’s not just the chest that moves, it’s everything below the neck, so if you move the textbox you end up seeing the characters’ crotch area rise and fall with their breathing. And (as I mentioned in the spice section) in the 18+ scene, the LIs thrust. Super uncomfortable for me. Also, the choice for a tongue out, close up sprite when things get hot and heavy in the 17+ version is a little much. I don’t find it attractive and I’ve made that clear in the spice section of my review.
Still Picture Rating: ★★★☆☆ Many blinks. Such questionable. Very complicated feelings.
CGs: What we have of Tailor Tales has been a long time in the making. It appears that the developer is a one-person team, so they write, they draw, and they program (perhaps?). The point I’m trying to get at is to not diminish the work that this person (or persons) has put into the game, but to also note that the latest route that has been released is significantly improved over the first route that was released in terms of art. That being said, it’s pretty okay. The sprites are decent enough on their own, they’re just put into a CG, so it’s not really more detailed so much as it is just better at showing what is going on at the moment. The blinking feature has been added to most of the CGs, except where it would be more apropo to not blink.
I appreciate the CGs we get. Roughly ten per route, with a few with multiple slight changes in picture, or zooming in, so really we get closer to 15 per route. The 18+ gets at least one additional R-rated CG per route. I found the quality on the 18+ CG to be lacking, unfortunately. Proportions are a bit wonky in those, which is unfortunate, but they’re still okay to look at I guess. I think my biggest issue here is that I don’t really want to see the CGs that were chosen. They highlight the most cliché and tropey moments of the route, and it almost feels formulated in what you end up getting. You have your “oops!” moment, with both characters. You have your embarrassing moment for the LI. You have your “side of him you didn’t expect” moment. Your romantic moment. I think you get the picture. Perhaps it’s because of the way each story is written that each route’s CGs seem to follow the same pattern. And perhaps it’s because I really didn’t enjoy this game that I have little care for the CGs. But in the end, they’re okay and that’s about all I can say about it. They don’t really speak to me or make me recall feelings except an apathetic, blasé, fuzzy recollection of what went on then. It’s a little sad that my favorite CGs are the ones you get for completing a route. Those are quite cute and very much in line with my tastes, so I guess I have a few I’m keeping, but the rest can disappear in short order.
Look at this Photograph Rating: 68%. Largely forgettable choices to keep as the highlights for the route. My favorite was the “Thank you” CG for route completion.
UI/Mechanics: I spent a lot of time debating if I would have received Tailor Tales better if it was a phone game instead of a computer game, and I don’t think I would have because I still don’t like the things I don’t like, and none of that really has to do with the way the game is presented. But, this game is set up like a mobage. There are several short chapters - granted, longer than the average phone game chapter - and you grind out tailoring orders in order to buy each chapter. It seems like a neat mechanic, and I can’t give objective feedback on if it is or not because I didn’t have to deal with it paying for the Plus version. However, I hear it’s a bit of a nightmare the further in the game you go. There’s something about buying patterns and colors in order to make the clothes that the customer orders, and sometimes the shades are difficult to distinguish, or the pattern is hard to figure out because of the fabric. Then the fact that you use gold both for patterns and dyes for the mini-game and the chapters means you have to prioritize where your earned money goes. This, of course, is all hearsay, so I’m not including it in my rating scale; but it is there to note that some don’t seem to like the mini-game. I was also told that the gold required to unlock chapters grows exponentially, and gold for completing orders doesn’t, so you end up doing several orders per chapter once you’ve passed your first route. Again, I have no knowledge of this, but it is another mechanic to consider.
The general UI looks nice. I didn’t get confused on the main screen, and easily found most things I was looking for in the menu. I did have a hard time finding how to select chapters that I had already read, or had unlocked in my case. But once I figured out that you just clicked on a LI from the left-side menu, it was easy to find and navigate each additional time. There’s a short tutorial on key-mapping at the beginning of the game that you can ignore if you want (but why would you?). The sound effects were incredibly loud by default, it scared me because of how sudden the slapping of shoes were when I’d been chillaxing to the relaxing beach-like guitar music. So check your volume controls on start-up.
I found it odd that there was no exit game option in the itch.io version, you simply closed the game once you popped it out of fullscreen mode. The addition of moving rain is neat, and I do like the blinking sprites, but they don’t need to be blinking in the CGs, imo. The sprites also move their mouths when speaking, sometimes? I don’t know when this happened and didn’t, because I wrote it down at the beginning of the game, but I clearly remember later in the game when it doesn’t happen. Perhaps for the 18+ scene it doesn’t? But now I can’t pinpoint when it was there or not. Also, there is no skip feature besides holding down the left mouse button and watching it go by at what feels like a snail’s pace compared to other speed options that I can force to auto-run. There is an auto-run option, but that is dreadfully slow for skipping, and the fastest it moves is an easily readable pace, which is what it’s intended for. And I couldn’t figure out how to end my gameplay in a chapter without finishing it, besides closing the game with that non-existent exit feature.
What’s this button do? Rating: C+. Decent UI with some extras, but also missing the extras I’ve grown to appreciate. No way to save during the story, only between chapters. Mini-game difficulty and gold-bought chapters not considered in this rating.
Errors: Tailor Tails is an OELVN (Original English Language Visual Novel) so I expected great things from a game that didn’t need to be translated. Unfortunately, those things were not delivered, nor offered, and I soon found myself grumbling about how it dearly needed some proof-reading and editing. I recently did a review about a game I put 54 hours into, with 80 errors throughout the entirety of it. Tailor Tales is much, much, much shorter, clocking in with 12 for me (a slow outlier in howlongtobeat.com). Point is, there were more errors in Tailor Tales, a 12-hour OELVN, than a translated game nearly 5x the length. That’s a hard fail from me on this game. I understand that the developer is largely working on their own, but two things are rather important for a visual novel: the art (being the visual aspect) and the writing (since it is a novel). The mistakes and general feel of the writing left me thinking I was reading someone’s YA fanfiction. It isn’t unreadable, but it had many mistakes that took away from the tone and mood and resulted in something that comes across as unprofessional.
As for UI/mechanics and such, I found no errors dealing with the UI. There aren’t exactly save files, but my game never seemed to resort to a previous save. There was one issue with the dress-up aspect, in that you can layer tops and bottoms with costumes, which can make it appear odd when a skirt is sticking out of the overlaid mermaid tail, not on top, under it. Basically, most of the programming of the game is working as intended.
Here there be Bugs Rating: Fail. Termites are a terrible thing when your house is made of wood. And this house is made of wood and lacks insecticides. UI/Mechanics seem to be error-free, but there are too many spelling, punctuation, and grammar issues for me to ignore.
Background Music: It’s a’ight. It has this very chill score that I thought was pleasant, but nothing that got me excited about the game. I could have played with or without it, as I don’t think it really added anything, but I also don’t think it distracted from the game either. I know this next part is not BGM, but instead sound effects, but in the 18+ scenes they make some questionable choices on sound effects. One word: splooge.
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