From a game mechanics standpoint, I like the idea of archetypes that MC can influence. This leads to characters that have interests that can be tweaked to match whatever your personal kinks are a bit more closely.
I'm not a fan of the randomized topics though. It's partly mitigated by the existence of permanent topics that you can unlock but you still end up with large numbers of random topics that require constant micromanagement and frequently exceed the limit of how many total topics you can have in reserve. I think I remember him saying he doesn't like writing dialog and that's what prompted the idea of the randomized topics. I can understand the desire to do that since writing dialog can certainly be a challenge, but I think it could still use a lot of work to make the current system less tedious for the player.
I tend not to play each version and just take it out for another spin every 6 months or so, but I find it mostly unplayable without the cheat mod due to the grind. With the cheat mod I can mostly ignore the randomized topics and just periodically delete them all and still make progress but that pretty much circumvents most of the built in mechanics.
I'm not a fan of the randomized topics though. It's partly mitigated by the existence of permanent topics that you can unlock but you still end up with large numbers of random topics that require constant micromanagement and frequently exceed the limit of how many total topics you can have in reserve. I think I remember him saying he doesn't like writing dialog and that's what prompted the idea of the randomized topics. I can understand the desire to do that since writing dialog can certainly be a challenge, but I think it could still use a lot of work to make the current system less tedious for the player.
I tend not to play each version and just take it out for another spin every 6 months or so, but I find it mostly unplayable without the cheat mod due to the grind. With the cheat mod I can mostly ignore the randomized topics and just periodically delete them all and still make progress but that pretty much circumvents most of the built in mechanics.