The Guardian

Right out the gate, The Guardian drops you into this weirdly specific fantasy. You're a made guy in the Delucci Family, got the whole mobster vibe going, and then boom, someone tries to clip your ex-wife and her kids. Now the boss says you gotta play bodyguard. Guardian, get it? The whole setup is pure pulp novel trash and I'm kinda here for it. The art is that standard CG hentai style, nothing groundbreaking, but the MILF ex-wife character model? They knew what they were doing. Her proportions are absolutely ridiculous, like she shops for bras at a structural engineering firm. The real juice is the tension between keeping your gangster life secret from the kids and, well, not. There's this one scene early on where the eldest daughter is giving you serious side-eye over dinner, and the dialogue tree basically lets you either play it cool or lean into the whole "I know people" menace. I picked the menace option and the way her expression shifts, this mix of fear and something else, is the whole game in a nutshell. The visual novel mechanics are bare bones, mostly just clicking through text and picking a choice every few minutes. But the writing, when it's not drowning in clunky exposition about family honor, has these sharp little moments. The son is a complete non-entity though, just a plot device with a bad haircut. I wish the game let you actually fail at hiding your criminal side more dynamically, instead of just gating scenes behind a single choice. Like, let me slip up in a conversation and have to deal with the fallout in real time. Won't happen, but a man can dream. What's weirdly missing from the main path is any real exploration of the gangster side of things. You get told you're a made man, but you mostly just hang around the house. The spicy scenes are all about that forbidden family tension, which is the point, I guess. There's one unlockable with the ex-wife in the kitchen after the kids are asleep that's pure, uncut guilty pleasure. The way the text describes her trying to stay quiet while you're both listening for footsteps? Chef's kiss. The community over on F95 has already ripped the CGs and are doing some basic modding, swapping character models and such. Someone made a patch that puts the mom in a leopard print dress that's so tacky it circles back to being essential. The replay value is basically just to see all the degenerate paths you didn't pick the first time, which is exactly what you're here for. The soundtrack is just three loops of what sounds like royalty-free jazz and it will haunt my dreams.

• visual novel
• criminal
• cg hentai
• milf
• family