Welcome to a Sexy, Open World! (Adult Content)

When it comes to these types of games, what is it you're looking for? This might seem like a strange way to start a review but I think it's a question worth asking. There is a cliché I've heard of where someone who's been caught reading Playboy will claim that they are just reading it for the articles, a defense that often falls flat. However, I'm sure there are some who actually do want to read those articles! Similarly, I think there are many people who look for more from erotic media than simply the visual side of things. Perhaps that might be the humour, the emotional impact or the relatability of the characters. However, it's also clear that some just want attractive artwork and sex scenes galore! Whatever the case, the answer to this is entirely up to the individual and every piece of art will end up being appreciated by someone, somewhere. Taking that into account, I'm going to do my best to examine Welcome to a Sexy, Open World! to the best of my abilities in the hope that you will be able to make an informed decision on whether you'd be interested in this game or not.

Welcome to a Sexy, Open World! is an isekai which sees our protagonist Sejima Seiya, a young man saddened at his lack of interaction with the opposite sex and the fact that he's a virgin, whisked away to a fantasy world called Laurentide after he leaps out in front of a car to save a dog. As it turns out, he's a hero spoken of in prophecy whose children will themselves be heroes who will save the world. However, it's not known who the mother of these children will be and so, in order to increase the chances of the prophecy being fulfilled, he must gather a number of wives and successfully impregnate them.

I think it's fair to say that this isn't a spectacularly original premise but, even with the glut of isekai in the modern day, there's still potential if the execution is strong. However, I will admit that this isn't a title that ended up appealing to me. Due to his status as a hero, the girls are practically, and sometimes literally, bending over backwards to please Seiya. They talk of falling in love with him due to his apparently handsome features and nice personality but it always felt too quick and half-baked. I couldn't actually believe that these women could fall in love so quickly and that he himself could fall in love so quickly in return. That's not to say that there aren't some charming interactions sometimes and maybe some people will enjoy the title for the calm, almost slice of life feeling in the story but this brings up another issue I have which is the worldbuilding.

We are told time and time again that this world is in a horrific state of war and that this is why heroes are needed to bring peace back but this is very much a case of telling, not showing. We spend the entire game in the one city that has apparently managed to escape the conflict raging throughout the lands and the closest we ever come to seeing the effects of this are a few people telling us how they fled their homelands. There also doesn't seem to be any significant consequences to the city in terms of trade, supply or diplomatic tension so it becomes incredibly easy to forget why we're doing this in the first place. I'm sure this issue will not seem important to many but it did end up bothering me as I mulled over the ways that the story could've progressed with this premise and how it ends up falling flat in the end.

Now that we've come to the topic of pacing, it's time to introduce the gameplay, how it seemed neat and refreshing at first glance and how it ended up overstaying its welcome by the end. The initial hours of the game introduce you to these seven love interests who all proceed to offer their virginity to you with gameplay being limited to progressing through text, the ability to name the dog you saved at the beginning and a false choice which results in barely a change in a line of dialogue before progressing exactly the same way. However, something that kept catching my eye was a calendar at the bottom right of the screen which would tell me that it was unavailable at the moment. I was curious how it would eventually function and it turns out that, during a festival that takes place over the course of a month in the game, the calendar keeps track of which days the women are most fertile and showing how many times you must sleep with them in order to get them pregnant.

Looking past the creepy factor that you know when best to bed them, I was initially refreshed to see this. "Ah, I can actually make choices now!" I remember thinking to myself. However, this ended up slowing the game down to a crawl as, day by day, you chose a girl to briefly hang out with before moving into a sex scene. These scenes are easily as long as the buildup if not longer and the repetition soon started to numb my mind. Additionally, if you are looking to successfully impregnate everyone, which I would presume is the canon ending, you ultimately don't get to make many choices. Given that Sunday is a break day, it turns out that you must rigidly plan out who you're going to be with as you have no extra days to mess about or spend extra time with someone (excluding Sunday where you can make a choice but which seems to overlap with several others). I do wish that there was more substance to this as I do think there is a decent idea here but this would require fleshing out the interactions through dialogue choices, minigames etc. and significantly improving the sexual content by introducing greater variety as well as more impact through story progression, comedy, emotions etc.

It would probably also help to have more interesting and nuanced characters. Sejima Seiya is an underwhelming although not terrible protagonist. He harbours doubts about himself but is soon determined to carry out his task both for the sake of the world and for himself and his lovers. A plotline regarding a childhood friend and some trauma falls flat, not really developing into anything substantial but he could be worse, and believe me that he could be! There are seven women that are looking to develop a relationship with him as well as bear his child but I feel like they suffer due to the pacing in particular. Seven characters in general is a lot to try to flesh out and the result is that a lot of them end up feeling underdeveloped. They have their gimmicks, such as a fox lady who tells fortunes or the elf princess who struggles to express her emotions, but they all start to feel too similar, particularly when it comes to their relationship with Seiya who they actively pursue and encourage to sleep with them.

The artwork itself is fine although I will say that the character's...proportions do look a little off most of the time. The CG scenes which are mostly restricted to sexual activities fare better at convincing me that their body shapes are natural and there is a nice amount of detail although this is also where we get to the repetitive content. Each and every sex scene features an internal shot as well as two climaxes from the male once penetration has been achieved. This rigid adherence undermines attempts of variety such as changing camera angles and different sex positions. It's also a small note but it does bother me that when the characters are kissing, they are often merely depicted with their mouths hanging open far apart from each other. There are a couple of moments where we see some super deformed art which did catch my attention but was so rare that it was hardly noteworthy.

The music of the game was fine. Most of it blended into the background and quickly became repetitive enough that I only noticed when a brand new track that I never heard before was playing. The voice acting for the game is entirely in Japanese and is also fine with all of the female leads featuring good but unremarkable performances. A couple of other characters are voiced as well and they seemed to be the weak link as they sounded a little stiff and awkward, but it was minor enough that it shouldn't pose much of a bother.

The max resolution for the game seems to be 1080p which I found a little disappointing considering I used a 1440p monitor, but you can set it to full screen if you're willing to see some minor blurring. There's some options that allow you to rewatch CGs and sex scenes that you've unlocked as well as adjust things such as the ejaculation countdown timer, that seems to be a thing in these games in general, but I do want to note an odd quirk where sometimes, if I selected to go to settings or open the save screen, the game would spend time loading, a surprising amount of time. There were even a few times where I thought the game had softlocked but it would eventually work its way through. Barring these quibbles, the technical aspects of the game seem mostly sound.

Welcome to a Sexy, Open World! is definitely going to appeal to some people. I can imagine that there are quite a few people out there whose fantasy consists of impregnating a harem of beautiful women and, if that's the case, I can say that this game is for you. However, this is not what I seek from these games and so I found myself quite thankful to be done by the time the credits rolled.