Haha, I just noticed I apparently cannot count! I was looking for reason #3 and it wasn't there! oop!
HM features a story composed of different storylines playing around the two main characters (Jenny and Jim). IMHO, a simple linear mechanic would have reduced all the flavors of the story. It's true that you can advance in a storyline ignoring the others although there are some constraints in the advances that forces the player to a "parallel" advance in all the storylines.
The "functional overhaul" (i.e. the map/storylines UI) was done at the end of the first game phases (mainly to present the characters) and was planned since the start of the project.
I guess my main point here is, the way it's executed here makes it especially easy for a player to get lost in where to go next in the story correctly without going out of order. Example, say I try to progress in "My Prey" further than another sub plot such as "My Challenge". The game allows me to do this to enough extent that I will miss dialogue points that the game presumes have already occurred, but me as the gamer have not seen before as I have not yet completed enough of "My Challenge". This presents a pretty big problem to any newcomers to the game that choose not to use a walkthrough or have no previous knowledge of the game. It can be very confusing and leaves less incentive to keep playing at times.
It's true that it could be difficult to follow the evolution of the various storylines for the player. That's why the game presents the "Storylines Big Picture" screen (you can open it by clicking on the "Storylines" word above the map); in that screen you can follow the advancements in each storyline. Beside, in the map screen, by clicking on the storylines icons you can see all the step already played with a small descriptive text. All these features are there to help the player as much as possible to keep track of what's happening.
This basically tie's in to the previous problem. I think maybe locking out progressing in certain parts of the story until a separate but relevant and important other story has been accomplished would help with this. That way a player doesn't accidentally go out of order. This way I am not reading dialogue about a dinner event that I haven't seen yet.
You touch one of my "limits": I'm clearly not native English. Recently (since around CH7) I was so lucky to have two guys who's helping me with the dialogues (so many thanks to both of them!).
Anyway, I get your sample and will try to correct that text.
Again, I try not to criticize for something like this because I understand its difficulties on such a fickle language like English, and I appreciate any attempts to use it. It was just mentioned as a problem here because for me it was compounded by other issues in the game for me, and this is something that would have helped alleviate some of the other problems I ran into. If you have a transcript of the story dialogue, I could probably help some with that. I'm not even sure transcripts are a thing, as I am not a programmer.
Each storyline has it's own scope and ending. We're approaching the final stages of the game. In CH13 you'll see the first endings. I don't want to spoil anything, but endings are related to each other.
I brought this up because I felt like no matter what I did in a side story, it felt like I was going to have the same outcome in the end. For instance, will failing "the challenge" result in any changes to the ending? is it even possible to fail "the challenge"? Do failing some portions but not all, change the course of the story? I didn't get a clear sense that it did any of that.
Many players complained about this aspect. In effect the "Swinging, Cheating or Hotwife ?" storyline lives by itself in the scope of the main story/game. It's included in the first part, where Jenny and Jim are discovering new approaches to their living as a couple, experimenting the three different ways. That storyline ends in the early stages, letting the main characters continue their story, mixed with those of the side characters (i.e. the main storylines).
This is also why I had concerns about if any events mattered. In the cheating route, Jenny often mentions how they have an open relationship and they have and do each have fun with other people. As far as I remember, Jenny and Jim didn't really have this agreement in the cheating route, but somehow I ended up here anyways. Again, it just leads me to feel like nothing in the story will change the ending. Not saying it is true or not, because of course I do not know. But these types of dialogue and story missteps both confuse the gamer and discourage the gamer from moving forward in different directions.
I would be grateful if you kindly give me some more of your time listing the other "engine and game mechanics" that are annoying you. This can be useful and may also lead to modifications in the game to get it better (like the introduction of removal of avoidable hotspots, automatic placement of characters coohort in the map etc.).
As I mentioned, they aren't things I refuse to play a game over, and are generally minor, so I don't usually make a big deal over. But things like forced cut scenes with x time length, are pretty annoying to me. Especially so when I want to redo a route (which happens a lot). Anything that slows me down from playing the game a second, third, fourth time through, is discouraging. I get to see something once. Ok, but not being able to click through a handjob scene is annoying. It's also why I prefer ren'py instead of unity, because the game is faster and smoother and can quickly speed through if I want to on stuff I have already seen before.
Another game mechanic that was annoying to me for some reason. I'm not sure how or why, but I have never ran into the problem before (maybe coincidence?) but in windowed mode, when moving back and forth from game to walkthrough, often I would click back to the game and I would somehow click the change window size and mess up my ratio badly. As I said, it may have been a coincidence and nothing your game specifically does. It could be just a unity thing, but I have never come across the problem in other unity games before that I can remember. Is there no way to lock screen size in?
Also, the mouse curser is very big, distracting and annoyingly in the way pretty often for me.
I saw the dialouge options in the beginning offering stationary or not. But the non stationary dialogue seems less than ideally placed sometimes.
Again, those are nitpicking issues I have with the game, and I only mention them because you asked for them.
There may be other ones, but that's what I can think of right now. Hope I make sense on my points.
Edit: spell check! double oops!
