2021-05-19

What's Mine Is Yours: Season 2 Review

 
Title: What's Mine Is Yours: Season 2
Release date: 2020-09-27
Developer & publisher: VitalSigns
 
Sometimes when writing a review it's a good idea to observe the developer's perspective about his creation. That gives us some insight into the creator's mindset and how they feel about their game. So, let's go and see what VitalSigns says about the continuation of of his cuckqueaning adventure:
Season 2 is probably the worst part of the series, it quickly became a case study in "what not to do" as I systemically fell into every pitfall new writers make.
Okay... Hmmm, I didn't expect that, but at least the author is self-critical. Let's see if his criticism has a basis in reality, shall we?

If you haven't forgotten yet, Season 1 dealt with married schoolteachers Molly and Logan exploring the cuckqueaning lifestyle, and while Logan was somewhat reluctant at first, he soon ends up engaging in various sexual acts with his students, to the pleasure of both him and his wife.
If you have time to complain, you have time to workout.
Now, WMIY Season 2 starts in a very promising manner, with one of Logan's lovers, Karen, engaging in a workout session with the kinky couple. It shows that his students are more than just sexual playthings to Logan, and he engages in normal everyday activities with them too. The workout ends up with some sexual teasing between Karen and Molly, which also captures that the girls are getting more used to the unusual lifestyle they got involved with.

Logan is still somewhat struggling with trying to get a good grasp of Molly's fetish, but at least he is starting to get used to the new normal. Of course, it's not long before Molly tries to introduce some freshness to the current status quo and Logan once more ends up feeling like a fish out of the water. It's no surprise he laments that the girls are much more understanding of Molly's needs than he is, but frankly I find him somewhat unsympathetic in this, as he seems to put very little effort to research Molly's fetish in order to fully understand it. In essence, he goes along with it, but always shows some reluctance at the worst moment that almost ends up ruining the roleplaying fantasies of the girls.
A proper way to spend a school break.
As for the girls, all of the previous culprits from Season 1 return for more. However, here the developer made his biggest mistake, as he thought that the path to freshness is introducing even more girls to the scenario. More bang for the buck, am I right? Sadly, the game has almost the same length as the previous season and I have finished it in 2:50 h. With twice the number of girls, there is less time to be spent with individual characters, and most of the newcomers end up poorly represented. Hell, most of the returning girls end up as sideshow attractions and barely have any presence.

I'd say that the returning character who establishes herself as the most important for Season 2 is our nerdy exhibitionist Emily, because her sister Lauren is actually one of the newly introduced girls. Lauren is blind and relies a lot on her sister to help her. She also has a secret fetish that I find very interesting and rarely shown in visual novels. Lauren's kink is sensory deprivation. She already lacks eyesight, and when her sister is not home, she loves to reduce the input she receives from other senses by wearing earphones and a rubber suit to reduce hearing and tactile sensation. Lauren's ultimate goal is to experience sex under sensory deprivation, as she imagines the sensation would be even more intense with all the senses muted. Considering the kind of game this is, it's not long before her desire is fulfilled.
Of course Molly knows how to encourage her husband's lovers.
Sadly, every other girl, including the newcomers and most of the returning girls, is completely underemployed. They appear in a single scene, and disappear without creating a lasting impression. One of the newcomers is Rena Thomas, who has probably the most mundane fetish. In fact, most people wouldn't even consider it really a fetish, myself included. She likes it up the ass. She deals with the stress by sticking the toys up the brown town, but will not be satisfied until she feels a real thing. Of course, Logan will be happy to oblige. Yes, that's it, though I do have to admit that the scene of Rena visiting Molly's home was quite funny. It's not everyday you walk in on your teacher engaged in bondage and with nipple clamps on. :-) I should also mention that Rena has tan-lines from her swimming suit, which I find pretty sexy, but her whole storyline was mostly boring and could have been easily excised in favour of other girls.
Scrambled eggs, milk, bondage...
Lisa Doyle is a bullied albino girl, whose father had been killed by a drunk driver. She has always loved her father, and in his absence developed a father complex. *sigh* Yes, you know what's coming - incest roleplay. One day Lisa witnesses Molly and Logan engaged in public sex, and since that moment starts to imagine him as a father figure, which in her head mixes with sexual feelings.

Ashley Zhang is a half-Korean student, who is quite distrustful of boys, as she has experienced that most of them just want to get close to her due to the "yellow fever". Ashley has a serious pregnancy fetish and who is better out there than Logan to satisfy her. Now here is the other thing that really hurts this VN, other than too many characters with little time devoted for them. The game fears commitment, like the devil fears a cross. Pregnancy fetish is one kink that could really force characters to a discussion table and could have real consequences. But of course, we cannot have that. We have to show more useless sex scenes with inconsequential characters.
No, you are every guy's wet dream.
WMIY Season 2 is basically a kinetic novel, like the preceding season, though there is a single choice, and it directly relates to Ashley. Oh, no, it's not a choice that would allow us to impregnate Ashley, as that would have consequences, and we cannot have that! No, the choice allows Logan to... fantasize what would happen if Ashley got pregnant... No, seriously, I'm not even making this up. I don't know what the developer was smoking while wrapping up the game, but I don't want any of it.

Not to say that the game doesn't have good scenes. Everything involving Emily and Lauren is gold. Moreover, Molly's desire to take her cuckqueaning to the next level results in a very hot scene between Logan, Chelsey, and her friend Mary. In fact, Mary is an archetype on which Molly based her roleplaying persona in Season 1. She is a bit of a slut, but the her interaction with Logan ends up being pretty comedic, as he ends up failing to correctly interpret her advances. The threesome eventually ensuing in a hotel room is probably the hottest scene of this season. The girls not only have sex with Logan, but also make a video taunting Molly, fully knowing that she will get off on it. Oh, how I wish that Mary were given a larger role to play in this game, instead of Rena, Lisa or Ashley, who all were pretty much useless.
Amateur pornography.
That is, with the exception of one scene. The girls get together with Molly, and the more experienced girls end up teaching Rena how to gang up on Molly and bully her (with her consent of course). The scene is so silly, funny and at the same time heartwarming. Sadly, just like I have mentioned before, there is simply no time in this game for more such scenes and everything moves from one sex scene to another. It barely feels like a cuckqueaning game and more like any other nukige with a harem of young beauties. Not that it's necessarily bad, but there surely were more expectations after Season 1.
 
And then the game abruptly ends. The dev himself admits he wrote himself into a corner and didn't know what to do anymore, so he wrapped it all up with "We continued cuckqueaning for a while but then the girls graduated and moved away. C'est la vie."
A small reminder that Molly and Logan are actually a family.
So, how would I personally fix Season 2 into a better shape? First of all, I would remove every newcomer girl, except for Lauren and Mary. Instead of barely connected string of H-scenes, I would tie them with a storyline, for example all the girls coming together to whisk Lauren away on a sexual adventure. More time would be devoted to Molly and Logan simply being a family. After all, it's sometimes hard to remember that they have a daughter, as she appears in a single scene within this season. More time would be devoted to the returning girls: Karen and Kendal basically carried Season 1 on their shoulders, and them barely being side characters in Season 2 should be a felony. And finally, the ending should be completely changed, either wrapping up the season in a definitive manner, or creating a sequel hook.

Ultimately, it's a decent nukige with some hot scenes rendered in Koikatsu, but plot-wise it's a steep step down from it's predecessor, which has created some expectations, plus the non-ending leaves an annoying feeling. And it seems like the developer has contracted a case of a writer's block. He has tried to do Season 3 as a soft reboot of the series, but that project has been stuck for some time in a development hell, the remake of Season 1 has been halted, and a spin-off game "The Desired Affair" has been outright abandoned. Not sure when the dev returns to form, but I for one would love to see some more cuckqueaning adventures and see what he has learned from his mistakes while crafting Season 2.

Links of Interest

 
Final Verdict: 61%

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