Honest question. Haven't gotten to play BaDIK yet but for months I've been wondering what's all the fuss about it.
What makes this game stand out so much over the rest?
It's a good game to me (and I've played it through Ep11), but not a great game. The renders and girls are pretty amazing (Madame notwithstanding), and the story is tight and well told (though when I'd ever have time to replay it for each girl individually I do not know). It's among a handful of games with the very best stories in this genre
But it has some pretty glaring issues - more so in the early seasons, but even now.
* The free roams are downright painful for the first season or so, until we get the fast travel. Free roams are rarely good (though they can be), but this is one of the worse ones, with invisible arrows until hovered over, camara turning wildly, so an arrow leading back doesn't actually lead back and so on. It basically commits every sin possible for a free roam. And even later on the fast travel is.. inconsistent in what places it allows you to travel, necessitating using the arrows sometimes.
* The "hide a render" all over free roams (and sometimes not free roams) is another painful mistake. Again particularly in the early episodes where they are hidden to the point that you can barely see a pixel or two sometimes. Combined with the pain of navigating the free roams... If you do this thing add an option to highlight them or otherwise help those that want to continue the phenomenal story and see more great lewd scenes, but don't care for studying every pixel of every background in the game.
* The forced minigames - sure you can turn them off, but then you don't get all the renders, which is a ****** stupid way to penalize players. Some of the minigames are actually pretty great - and all are amazingly well done in Renpy. But some are painful, some are incredibly time intensive, and some are very hard. I'm immensely grateful for how few drawing minigames there were - those made me nearly ragequit. Just let people skip the damn minigames if they have a hard time with some of them - and do it without penalizing them.
* This one is subjective, but I really wish we weren't railroaded into a branch so early. This is college, and we are even in the DIK frat. Just because Elena shares some "wisdom" one morning we suddenly turn monogamous - or forego basically every main girl in the game. But I know this one can be viewed differently.
* This one is minor, but don't try to stop people "cheating" in a single player story based game. Don't as game creator assume you are some God of the medium and your creative vision must be unsullied by dirty "cheats". Let your players enjoy your game how they want.
The game is still very much worth playing - for the story and the visual quality alone. But I'd recommend getting a gallery unlocker if it works for everything (I haven't tested), disable minigames, and don't give a **** about finding renders. You'll get a far better experience just enjoying the frankly phenomenal story with the fewest possible roadblocks.
