Yet Another Awkward Boy Fantasy.
We've seen this all before. A kid goes to college—he's bland, awkward, and has few redeeming qualities. And for whatever dumb reason, women can't stop throwing themselves at him.
It's been done so many times and so much better, too.
Visually, the game is above average, but lacks an attention to detail. Renders are inconsistent. Some of them are done with care, others are just kind of slapped together. Composition is super generic. Lighting and shadows rarely feel like a concern. Pictures are almost always framed the same way, slapped against the same cookie-cutter backgrounds you've seen in a bunch of other games. There's a healthy dose of animations, which are generally appreciated, but they're feel thrown in, or there for the sake of being there, rather than linked contextually. The actual moment-to-moment gameplay is not significantly enhanced by their presence.
Likewise, the MC is supposed to be some amazing amateur photographer, but all of the pictures he takes are bland and uninteresting. You'd think because they're supposedly professional level photos that they would at least be color-balanced? The developer could have spent all the time on pointless intro-animations (or blinking animations while they're posing for photos) into making some really, really high quality avant-garde renders and use them for the photography shots, which would add more to the game and fit the story.
Beyond the visuals, the game progresses in much the same way as plenty of games in the college life genre. He goes to a party, he goes to class, he meets almost exclusively women (who all want to sleep with him for reasons no one can understand). He bumbles and stutters and puts his foot in his mouth over and over, and for some fucked up reason every girl finds this endearing.
Speaking of the MC, he's beyond awkward and naive to the point of actually being cringe. He can't stop word salading every time he speaks to a girl (and then beating himself up for it). The first time might be humorous, the next couple of times might be cute. But it quickly becomes kitsch and annoying. There's no more humor or interest there, the act is worn so thin that it becomes annoying.
It also makes no sense in the context of the game because apparently he has great luck with every women he word vomits onto. You would think even Pavlov's dog would start to associate his "method" with success—or atleast get used to it via immersion therapy—and stop acting like the sky is falling when he sticks his foot in his mouth for the 37th time in the same 5 minute conversation.
Many lewd scenes are handled remarkably poorly. We're talking all the hallmarks of Patreon-milking bait-and-switching. Apparently Sophie now cums from giving handjobs, probably because the developer doesn't want to put in a scene where this weird, awkward ladykiller virgin fantasy man gets to have PIV sex yet. He gets rave reviews for his performance of... laying there? Obviously nothing else, because he later needs step-by-step instructions on how to finger a woman.
The lewd scenes are kind of awkward, in general. Rather than a fluid series of slides, we have a bunch of micro-scenes based on actions (kiss, grope, etc). Transitions between them are terrible, even on fully scripted events. It's like after animating a bunch of micro-scenes, the developer is rushing to conclude the scene as fast as humanly possible, because the continuation does not match the rest of the scene, to where it feels like there's a few panels missing in every erotic scene.
Even the choices are questionable. There's too many points-or-no-points choices, leading to an objectively correct way to play the game. Even beyond this, the "major" choices, considered irreversible, are just this girl vs that girl choices. It's understandable why they might be in there, but there really doesn't need to be 15 of these choices per chapter.
There's some overarching story about how one of the twins is kidnapped, but even this is done poorly and you're given little reason to actually care about it. The developer probably thinks that because you can choose which of the twins is kidnapped, that it's extra immersive to the story. It's just the opposite.
Because the game now has to fit one of two polar opposite characters being kidnapped, it's forced to be shallow and unconnected from the rest of the goings on. There's nothing specific about the investigation to either path. There's largely no difference in how the characters respond, if they respond at all. Hell, even the MC seems completely unbothered by it while he awkwardly bumbles between one girl and the next. You're left with the feeling like nothing happened, or that Generic Girl A or Generic Girl B is kidnapped, and it's painfully unfulfilling.
Ultimately, everything about this game just speaks to how mediocre it is. It takes no original ideas—from spending half the game staring at the phone app or swiping on a notTinder app, to being forced to listen to sixty pages (complete with 6 "choices" all of which have an objectively right or wrong answer) of shambling conversations, to a bunch of forced "basketball" scenes from a developer that doesn't seem to understand very much about basketball. We've seen the same thing from other games on this site, and many of them were done better.
It's purely a power fantasy involving an MC who is so awkward that he's surely on the autism spectrum. And if you're not that kind of person, you're not likely to enjoy this game. Everything about this game fits within that fantasy. It's a world where apparently athletes are on the bottom of the food chain and everyone goes for bland, nerdy, "tortured" "artist" types like the MC, instead. Yet no amount of flattery or attention or instant gratification can even marginally improve the MC's confidence or basic fucking social skills. The writing is beyond hard to justify.
It's about a 2.5-3. There's the bones for a good game, and the developer clearly cares, but it's hard to get through. Most love interests have few personality traits other than wanting to hop on the MC's dick. You get baited and blueballed because the developer doesn't want to lose the "charm" of the MC being a soulless, spineless virgin. The sex scenes you finally do get are often unsatisfactory because instead of writing a linear story you get a bunch of repeatable micro-scenes. And you have to sit through 30 slides of the main character furiously shoving his foot in his mouth every time there's a girl on the screen (which is most of the game when he's not chatting with the most annoying roommate). It's a challenge.
