Something new from feierflei is exciting. Sunville is among my favorites so I had to see what's up with this one.
The most important thing to me in any story is the character writing. And I love the characters in Auriga Nine already. To the point where I'm almost sad that Sunville's characters don't live up to this new standard. It might be because of the more serious tone in Auriga Nine and the chosen plot involving politics, economy and crime which forces the characters into situations with conflict. Not to say that a light tone isn't conducive to good character writing, but conflict usually brings out something in people that wouldn't otherwise be apparent.
I love the different reactions to the protagonist's role as commander and how each of the characters adapt. I love the disagreements. And I also love that none of it devolves into blackmail, corruption or any kind of serious malice. Despite their differences and reluctance, the characters are forced into the same boat and have to make it work somehow.
The scene where you get Sam to be less of an asshole was honestly one of the best scenes I've seen in anything available on F95. It is not only logical within the plot but also uses it as fuel for the interaction, it respects the characters within, it reveals their personalities a little more to the reader and it changes the dynamic between them in such a satisfying way that Sam instantly became my favorite character.
I hope there is more of this caliber of interaction between the characters in the future. You've shown me what you can do and now I need more.
Thank you so much for this massive review
And I'm happy to hear that you like the characters so much. They've been a lot of fun to write, and as you said, with the more serious setting, I can go to places I would never in Sunville, so it's been a breath of fresh air in more ways than one. And helped me massively with getting un-stuck in Sunville xD
Those relationship stats make me a little worried. I really hope the intent isn't to turn all of these strongly characterized people into obedient slaves without their own will. I hope a balance can be struck between their personalities and one of the obvious main kinks presented here being domination. I haven't gone through making different choices to see if there are consequences so I have to wonder if the choices are only there to maximize relationship stats or if there is a serious benefit to, say, keeping affection low for any of the girls and get different scenes.
The relationship stats will mostly be a measure of character plot progression and willingness to put on kinky outfits, nothing along the lines of brainwashing. Not my style. xD
Statwise, it's entirely possible to "make up" for choices made during events with side and random events. However, many of them set background variables that influence the plot, some minor, some... well, not major, but noticeable.
Keeping stats low will do nothing for you, the higher, the better.
Management games aren't my thing so it's hard for me to say if it's good or not. I found myself getting bored of looking everywhere for people to talk to only to end up concluding I should go to my room and "advance time" instead. Over and over again. Maybe I will be less unimpressed in future versions with more content and more finished gameplay features? I hope so.
Yeah, there's a distinct lack of non-story "fluff" content right now, and I'll be doing my best to remedy that over coming releases. But you will still have to deal with extended periods of hitting "advance time", since it's just impossible for me to fill the potentially hundreds of days with non-repeating interesting content.
I was very annoyed that I had to click the middle of the screen every time the MC says anything. I don't see the point of making everything the protagonist says a "choice" even when there is no choice. It makes skipping with Ctrl unnecessarily painful. Was it for immersion? Didn't work for me.
That's something others have criticized before, but I'm not going to change it, because I personally like how it feels.
EDIT: I'll be looking into ways to make the single choices get automatically picked while holding down
ctrl. I assume it's possible, just need to figure out how.
Because of the structure and gameplay I don't think I will be playing every new version that comes out as I do with Sunville. But I have high hopes for the story and will certainly have to come back to see what's going on with these girls. I love them.
Yeah, I had already assumed that a significant portion of
Sunville enjoyers wouldn't have much fun with the gameplay. It's very different, and to be honest, a large part of it is just me flexing my "dev muscles" to contrast the coding atrophy that is Sunville xD
Still, I am very happy to hear that you'll be checking in on the girls again!
