Review - Serenity

Review: Serenity by N2TheFire

Final Score: Highly Recommended

Serenity is a kinetic, adult visual novel. You lose your mother to cancer after caring for her for 5 years. She left you a magical book that transports you to Serenity Island... a paradise with nekos, romance, and adventure.

Serenity is about love, forgiveness, and acceptance in a world where pleasure feeds your magic, enabling you to build your paradise to live in peace with a harem of nekos, demons, and more. If you enjoy AVNs with a good-hearted MC, harem, nekos, comedy, romance, and just a touch of drama, then you're in the right place. Good wholesome and sexy fun is waiting!

In general I am not into visual novels so Serenity isn't normally the type of "game" I would pick up. And as visual novels go it has basically no "gameplay" since your choices aren't impactful at all. It's a linear page-flipper. You're reading a book. And like all books, unless you are driven by some third-party recommendation to keep persisting, either it hooks you quickly and keeps you going, or it doesn't and you drop it quickly.

• Serenity is predominantly an "adult" novel, meaning you probably found it while searching for sex-oriented games online. What I feel sets it above most visual novels is the storytelling. The basic framework is a basic loop of sexy time -> crisis -> crisis resolved -> sexy downtime -> even bigger crisis coming -> repeat. But the engaging pace and story-telling makes Serenity a real page-turner.
• The protagonist feels human and has likeable traits that make them "a good friend".
• This is a refreshing change from the cocky-alpha-male type that "relationship counsellors" have been trying to sell as how men should be.
• The protagonist is rightly respectful of other people, respects that relationships should be consensual, and also has very human sexual desires. For example, let's be honest, guys stare at girl "assets".
• So it is actually rather cathartic that this sexual expression of staring and desire happens (rather frequently) but instead of awkwardness or shame it is openly acknowledged in the story, allowed, and fun.
• And because of the sex-positive overall-positive atmosphere, the women being stared at don't feel creeped out at all, and the protagonist doesn't feel like a creep.
• This "nice guys finish first" fantasy is magic in Serenity because the women want him too and so both sides are freed from the fear of not just offending but violating the other. Both sides want each other just the way they are.
• The characters have distinct personalities and there's interesting interplay with them while managing to keep everyone co-existing harmoniously.
• Sex is basically preceded by a fun date with each girl filled with first-date awkwardness but still somehow managing to be fun and wonderful.
• The sex scenes aren't so drawn out as to tax your patience if you happen to not. Short but well-done animated sex also elevates this title above strictly static scene visual novels.
• Although it touches on various types of fantasies / fetishes, it is not really focussed on any one overly much unlike some very specific-fetish-focussed visual novels such as various titles by Cherry Kiss Games.
• Great sense of humor and fun recurring themes keeps things light and upbeat.
• Although the story promises "live in peace", this is sort of a lie since there has to be crisis / conflict to spice things up. And whereas the story does not simply resolve itself with all-too-common good-guys-beat-up-bad-guys, they do present very obvious foreshadowing about how things will be resolved.

So overall, Serenity comes highly recommended, not just as an adult visual novel but a sitcom / comedy drama.