Wish I had saved all of L&P's statements regarding his animations, but I guess most regulars in this thread know very well what had been said, so if anyone still believes that there's a professional animator creating these animations, I don't even know what to tell you. The animation's trailer we've seen weeks ago was better than these poor couple second loops that ended up in the game. Pretty clear to me that L&P was simply baiting people with the hype and his statements, making everyone think that we'd get to see those "minutes long", "best of the best" animations which "takes professionals several months to make". Animations which where supposed to put other developers out there to shame, but many of us saw it coming, so I'm not all that surprised.
When he released the trailer, people weren't exactly hyped about those animations, but who would have expected for L&P to use most of the animations created, melding them together and then come out with a trailer that's acting as straight up bait to keep the hype up? Anyone remember when L&P said the trailer would only be showing one animation with the lowest quality of them all? Kinda funny as the trailer consists of several animations and the quality didn't get any better, just a couple more few second long loops nobody would lose their shit about.
Remember when L&P came here and started shitting on other developers, saying how much better his animations are going to be? That he's got a professional, highly skilled artist creating animations on a much higher level, better than anything we've seen in other games? How other developers' animations would look amateurish in comparison? That those animations wouldn't just be a couple second long loops, but actual minutes of high quality content? And he didn't stop with these claims here on F95, he's also said the exact same things on his very own Patreon page, misleading everyone, Supporters and Pirates alike. He's literally lied about everything regarding his animations.
So now the results are very visible. We've got a lackluster update that should have been released months ago. L&P said the update wouldn't have worked without the animations, and that we'd see why after just a tiny bit more patience (which turned out to be months). I played through the entire update and I'm still failing to see how this is the case, like, at all. L&P could have literally added 2 or 3 renders as a placeholder for the Aiden/Andre/Jenn scene and release both updates months ago. Even his highest tier patrons asked why he can't release the updates, and he's simply lied to their faces.
Anyway. Besides the animation disaster, the actual update is extremely mediocre to me. I've actually had to force myself to play through it all the way which has never been the case for me before, I guess mostly thanks to the baseless effort from L&P hyping everything up for no reason with all his contradictive, cocky and arrogant statements. I'm personally not a fan of Aiden's character, but the only thing I was looking forward to was the 4th task as I find the naughty situations Sophia finds herself in quite entertaining, thinking that they would become hotter with every following task. But not so here, as the 4th task to me is simply a recycled and fluffed up version of previous ones, exception being the "Zac incident", which still was just slightly more than the infamous fabric touching in the end. The writing, as always, felt very inconsistent and at times even rushed, just like some of the scenes and transitions. I'm not going deeper into it so not to spoil anything for others, so I'll leave the following scenes out of my "review". But just for good measure; Nothing in this update was particularly mindblowing, but not completely terrible either. It's just pure mediocrity, which for a 5 month long wait is really disappointing, but also expected, unfortunately.
Also, the amount of re-used renders with only slightly different camera angles or positioning of hands, legs or whatever really makes me wonder if we can even consider this an update with ~520 renders, as in many conversations between the characters it looked like there was barely any difference at all, making me think that this can't take an experienced creator that long to make once the main scene is set up. Slightly move a body part, change a camera angle here, raise an eyebrow there. That's the impression I got in many renders, and some were actually completely reused with simply dialogue slapped onto them, making it seem like watching two plastic dolls having a conversation, with the camera going back and forth between the participants.
The 5 months were clearly spend on animations rather than the stills, which to me just confirms our theories of L&P not having anyone creating these animations. I've also checked the credits, just incase we would see a "Thank you XXX for creating the animations" or something along those lines, but obviously there's nothing. And after seeing these few second long loops, it's pretty clear why.
I give this update a 5/10 just because L&P's art is never a letdown. Could have been a much higher rating if he didn't waste all that time on animations, putting more work in the dialogue and more renders. But since that's not the case, everything else is just a huge disappointment.