The first season of BaDIK was among the best AVNs of its time. The second season built from that strong base. These were, especially upon release, 5 star offerings.
The third and current season has lost all momentum. Gameplay and plot are both unfocused and poorly paced. There is too much to do, and we move through it all very slowly. The sex scenes, relationships, and plot complications (of which there are many) feel rote, lacking emotional power / eroticism.
There's still something here. It could be salvaged. But Episode 3 has been on a disappointing slide, and earlier weaknesses have become more obvious as the overall game loses strength.
Characters look and act differently from scene to scene and chapter to chapter, undermining the drama and chipping away at the cohesion of the world. Subplots arise and are dropped without cause. As a result, actions and plot points are beginning to seem more driven by authorial caprice than by character, environment, or the player. The more complex things get, the more arbitrary everything feels.
Finally, the long and lengthening delays between chapters make it harder to maintain investment, as the writing drowns in its author's decisions and quirks.
Through Chapter 9, I had something like 9 paths open, and was still excited about where these different stories might lead. For the last two chapters. I've barely managed two paths, with less and less enthusiasm. Now I'm not sure if I'll even play the next release.
Each new overlong flashback into someone else's (typically sad) background is a slog, and then you have to skip that text dump in each subsequent playthough (and there are a lot of paths, whatwith 5 main LIs and several sides, so anyone who wants to see everything will have to make many playthroughs). This hurts the pacing, even the first time through.
Most of these flashbacks do nothing to enrich the story or advance the plot. They often seem focused on building empathy for characters who have otherwise been villainized, or lacked a presence in the main story. The other sort of tragic flashback adds info, expositionally destroying mysteries and crushing subtleties so that we know exactly what happened. It flattens characters and makes things less interesting. This is the wrong way to follow the maxim, "Show, don't tell."
The best thing to come from this, occasionally, is a strong and insightful emotional discussion between the main characters. But then these same people with surprisingly deep and mature insights turn around and act as though they have zero emotional intelligence, which adds to the overall sense of arbitrariness and a lack of cohesion.
Another problem is the increasing number of required minigames. There are too many; they come up too often; and they disrupt the flow of the game and its storytelling. Some of them are bland and boring. None of them are why I am playing this. Best-case scenario, they might offer a challenge and a brief distraction from the unfolding drama. But when you're going through the same minigame again (different path, or something went wrong) just to move on to the next scene, that isn't fun. It's an unrewarding waste of time, blocking you from (ideally) enjoying the story. Even if you turn minigames off, instead of actually skipping them, you just have a smaller minigame to get through. You are also penalized for this decision in various ways.
IMO the free-roams are also bloated, occasionally confusing, and mess with the flow of the storytelling. It's like time moves very quickly, and then there's a random slowdown so you can feed some fish, browse your phone, and wander around your room aimlessly. Then everything is a blur until a party that goes on forever, without much happening. Then you attend a couple classes. It doesn't establish a rhythm: time jerks or plods haphazardly.
I am losing interest due to the slowing plot (as it broadens and unravels), the weird choice restrictions forced on the player (alongside strange options that make no sense for the path you're on), and the game's loss of focus. If you suffer the same, you might just quit and delete BaDIK after running into one too many annoying minigames or flashbacks.
Hopefully, things improve in subsequent chapters. But I doubt it. The plot and characters have become too confused. Even if he starts tightening up the pacing and stops adding new distractions, it will be hard for the author to bring everything back together in a satisfying manner.
