Not the best harem visual novel, not the worst. Several elements of Astral Lust are very derivative. This wouldn't be bad, but it's in many ways worse than the sum of its parts. I like and empathize with many of the characters, which is why it's worse that the main character is mysteriously an asshole to them. Combat feels tacked on. Fetch quests feel like arbitrary road blocks.
The supernatural elements are the biggest disappointment. There's one or two really good scares there, but ultimately the rest of the game uses the concept of eldritch horror in an uninspiring way. The atmosphere is just not rich enough when you're chilling out in the hotel, which is 99% of where the game takes place. Random encounters in the wild are either repetitive or feel like ass-pulls with very little in between. Sanity is too easy to recover, scavenging (a mechanic seemingly borrowed and expanded upon from MIST) is not very engaging and you can go the whole game without doing it if it weren't for arbitrary blocks put up in several story quests, like finding alcohol for Mina or antibiotics for Alice, or being required to build additional rooms in the hotel. This means that going outside is mostly a chore, and that moments there that SHOULD be tense aren't.
The protagonist's relationship with consent is bad even by adult harem game standards. Grace is infantilized to a degree that makes her scenes deeply uncomfortable. I don't know if she's supposed to be secretly more self-aware than we're shown, or if the protagonist is sincerely molesting someone with an obvious mental disorder. Mina's romance route has the player sticking with her purely on the pretense that once her lesbian crush gets rejected she'll have no choice but to pick him. The kinder option is friendship in my opinion, but being given that choice at all feels a little skeevy. Lexi is clearly not as okay with polygamy but the circumstances force her to accept it anyway. When NOT dealing with the main group of girls, the protagonist is okay with doing some pretty monsterous stuff. Blackmail, emotional manipulation, paying for sex with women who are clearly not in a healthy spot. This would be fine if we were playing a game with a villain protagonist, but nothing else seems to indicate to me that he's supposed to come across as ruthless or evil.
After all that, why a three out of five? Well, despite all that, this game never reaches the depths of eroge shovelware. It's consistently interesting, even when the story is offensive or the scares are bland. Most of the worst of it fades to the background. And, it's still early in development despite being over three years old. I think there's room for it to balance the grind and bring back a little spice to the day to day activities, it just needs the will to change a few things.
The supernatural elements are the biggest disappointment. There's one or two really good scares there, but ultimately the rest of the game uses the concept of eldritch horror in an uninspiring way. The atmosphere is just not rich enough when you're chilling out in the hotel, which is 99% of where the game takes place. Random encounters in the wild are either repetitive or feel like ass-pulls with very little in between. Sanity is too easy to recover, scavenging (a mechanic seemingly borrowed and expanded upon from MIST) is not very engaging and you can go the whole game without doing it if it weren't for arbitrary blocks put up in several story quests, like finding alcohol for Mina or antibiotics for Alice, or being required to build additional rooms in the hotel. This means that going outside is mostly a chore, and that moments there that SHOULD be tense aren't.
The protagonist's relationship with consent is bad even by adult harem game standards. Grace is infantilized to a degree that makes her scenes deeply uncomfortable. I don't know if she's supposed to be secretly more self-aware than we're shown, or if the protagonist is sincerely molesting someone with an obvious mental disorder. Mina's romance route has the player sticking with her purely on the pretense that once her lesbian crush gets rejected she'll have no choice but to pick him. The kinder option is friendship in my opinion, but being given that choice at all feels a little skeevy. Lexi is clearly not as okay with polygamy but the circumstances force her to accept it anyway. When NOT dealing with the main group of girls, the protagonist is okay with doing some pretty monsterous stuff. Blackmail, emotional manipulation, paying for sex with women who are clearly not in a healthy spot. This would be fine if we were playing a game with a villain protagonist, but nothing else seems to indicate to me that he's supposed to come across as ruthless or evil.
After all that, why a three out of five? Well, despite all that, this game never reaches the depths of eroge shovelware. It's consistently interesting, even when the story is offensive or the scares are bland. Most of the worst of it fades to the background. And, it's still early in development despite being over three years old. I think there's room for it to balance the grind and bring back a little spice to the day to day activities, it just needs the will to change a few things.
