Very good quality renders, good quality & fairly realistic sex animations, and a well written story with charactes I ended up caring for...came for the porn stayed for the story (as I have seen others say), TLDL at end of review.
I am new to this site and these types of games, this is my 1st post and 1st review so I hope that I can be informative enough in this review; I found Acting Lessons very engaging and hard to put down (I play on Android). Most decisions you make as the MC in the early and mid game (Episodes 1 to 3 and most decisions in 4) have very little effect on the end, but some decisions will change the options available, change the dialogue for future scenes, and include/remove some scenes entirely.
The narrative of the story pushes you in a definitive direction (as stated at the opening of the game) that cannot be deviated from and most decisions do not change how the game story progresses for the most part, although there are some changes that your decisions effect. I think it would have been nice to have a menu to see what the relationship stats/points are with individual charters during game-play beyond the update screens at the end of each episode (there is a walkthrough that does help a lot with this but I recommend not using a walkthrough until you have played the game once or twice).
I am on my 3rd play through now; there are some fun and interesting choices and scenes that I did not see in my first two playthroughs because of different choices made, I think that multiple play-throughs are required to unlock all of the scenes in the gallery. It is difficult, at times, to know the affects of some of the decisions even with the hints on for the episodes and some decisions have a cumulative effect on future scenes.
The renders are very good quality with realistic lighting and a strong depth-of-field. The sex animations are also good quality with close to realistic movement. I like that there are multiple poses during the longer dialogue scenes and not just when a characters change expression because of a decision; characters have some small changes, like the mouth opening and closing like they are talking (not animations), during standard dialogue.
I would have liked to have a little more control over the positions during some of the sex scenes, many sex scenes do have a lot of control with some positions becoming available because of the attribute chosen at the beginning of the game and/or available based on the woman's option of you based on decisions you have made. I would have also liked to have some control of where to "finish" and some more emphasize on the women's climaxing or more climaxing in some scenes.
Overall, I think that I could play this VN a half dozen times and still enjoys it.
TLDR
Pros:
- Very good renders
- Good and fairly realistic animation (sex)
- Engaging and well written story...came for the porn stayed for the story
- Ended up caring for the characters
- Good replayability to explore many of the different decisions (needed to unlock scenes in the gallery)
Cons:
- Some sex scenes could be more interactive
- No control over where to finish (sex scenes)
- Kind of difficult to tell what impact your choices have, even with the hints on and the relationship status updates at the end of each episode .
- Although it is needed for the narrative of the story; most of the decisions you make have very little consequence and have little effect
I believe that if you like adult visual novals this is worth a play-through.