I just want to be very clear that this comment and I guess review is based on my playthrough of the first Pandora’s Box and I have not given Pandora’s Box 2 a try. I would have left my comment on the first Pandora’s Box page but I can’t seem to find the comment section on it’s page. I do really feel like this comment belongs here, since Pandora’s Box 2 highly nudges you to play the first one in order to take advantage of having the your progress from the previous story resumed.
With that out of the way here are my thoughts, and I want to start with the good because I feel if you’re even a small bit curious about Pandora’s Box as a whole you should definitely give it a try! If you are interested in the bad, it’s the second paragraph down (TL;DR’s included).
TL;DR on “The Good” – The art is amazing and Nadia is a gem, Eugene looks his part, and the supporting characters all fit their roles perfectly. Combined animations present a pleasant viewing experience. You should absolutely support this artist because they are amazing.
(Skip if just interested in the "bad" TL;DR)
So what’s good about Pandora’s Box? The visuals are by far the best thing about this story. Nadia, who is the female lead of this story and whom I was most interested in is absolutely stunning. Each image of her does a really amazing job at capturing her emotions, sexual and non-sexual, and I could really relate to her as the story progressed. Eugene, the male lead of the story was very well done as well. Their visual emotions made it so easy to get invested in what they were experiencing with each new bit of dialogue that accompanied them.
Speaking of animations, there are quite a bit of them and they vary from really yummy to kind of goofy looking. If I had to categorize what animations I felt stood out as good I would say anything close up such as oral, penetration focus, and fingering were super yummy. Anything that was a full spread of two or more individuals going at it was really stiff and kind of goofy. The way the two categories worked together though, with the mixing of animations during a “scene” it was actually a really good and highly recommended experience.
TL;DR on “The Bad” – The corruption and submissiveness system locks you out of all content unless you go all-in, locking you into a very linear playthrough. The story seemingly changes writers halfway through and goes from a realistic story of corruption to a sexually charged comic about corruption.
(Skip if not interested in my full thoughts on what was bad)
So what’s bad about Pandora’s Box? The story is by far the biggest let down I’ve yet to experience in my short time exploring adult visual novels. It’s not even in a blatant smack you in the face with a “absolutely written while horny out your mind and filled with grammatical mistakes and plot holes” way. I’d actually hold Pandora’s Box in higher regard if that was the case because I’d know what I was getting from the start. Instead, you are lured into a believable realistic story with great dialogue where the story explores the controversial topics of cheating, coercion and corruption. It only took the first few scenes to draw me in and make me look forward to the next “choice” I’d have to make.
However, the choices are where things first started to fall apart and it wasn’t even related to the actions behind the choices – it was the fact that I was locked out of most of them. Pandora’s Box utilizes a corruption point system for Nadia and a submissiveness point system for Eugene. To summarize what those actually mean, it’s how “sex driven” Nadia can be and how “cucky” Eugene can be. The flaw is that these systems do not compliment the length of the story that is presented. The scaling on corruption is set in a way that if you pass on even a single “corrupting” action, you risk missing out on doing anything exciting for the rest of the game.
Despite the flaw in the corruption system for Nadia, I was able to restart my playthrough with my knowledge of how it worked, and I was able to experience most of the content I wanted to experience – which I regret because the realistic portrayal of Nadia and having to make tough realistic choices quickly turned to what I can only describe as stepping into a comic book. Without spoiling the story itself I can only say this story changes directions very suddenly about 3/4ths into the game. It’s such a sudden change from realistic plausible and believable content to comical action and suspense movie content that I was left wondering if the game may have changed writers at some point. By the end of the game the story is trying to progress at such a high speed that it feels like the characters have been off screen from months or years between the supposedly “day” and “week” long time lapses. The story itself pretty much loses all plausibility and with it any sense of realism.