Its not that people complain about the party, not at all. At least i dont think so... but more about the fact that the whole episode contains the party and not much else. That was a problem. Each episode progresses some story-plots and relationships, some more, some less, but at least still a good amount of progress and most of the episodes has very different scenes and content regarding the paths you are on... Episode 9 lacked at all of it. The whole experience wasnt that different, DIK affinity, chick affinity or neutral... which girl you are with... the differences were only "small" and nearly nothing that happened in the episode does matter or is progressing anything in a meaningful way. Most of the time the episode felt like a waste of time. To have fun in the game, fun scenes without bigger meaning is ok. But not an entire episode. And of course the more or less biggest upset was the end-cliffhanger of episode 8 and the resolution of it in episode 9... which was... just a really really bad joke. And of course... the free roams are not liked by much people anyways. I kinda struggle with them too and think especially the navigation through them could be WAY better. Its really a struggle with every playthrough to go through them again and again. a whole episode designed as a free roam is kinda... torture for many people. I dont hate the free roams, many times i like them, but if the get too big and too long... its really not a good thing. especially if its all the same environment. Make different free roams in different locations, just like he did before episode 9 and now with 10 again, and its fine... episode 9 was free roam overkill. And last... the long wait for it and many people didnt liked the episode... so for many people the long wait wasnt worth it.
Totally agreed; ep 9 was free roam overkill.
But I’m pretty sure the thing people hate about free roams
isn’t the slow story progress, cuz it’s not
that slow. What slows the whole episode down is the fact we now have to
navigate. Can’t just immediately move on to the next scene and the next choice; we gotta go to the next room, go up the stairs, enter the next room, enter the hallway, turn around, go through the door, go down
that hallway… I really appreciate the fast-navigation button, but even
that takes time as you scroll through all the rooms and discover the porch isn’t one of them, and how the fuck do you get to the porch again?… Oh yeah, left hallway. Pain in the ass.
Because navigation slowed down the story, it concealed the fact there wasn’t as much story as in other episodes. There’s a lot of content, cuz there are five different paths through it (the Jill events unique to if she’s the MC’s girlfriend now, Bella events, Josy and Maya events, Sage events, and others events which include four variant endings) but you’re not gonna
see all the content in one run. And look at all the players on F95 who insist on
only playing with their favorite LI.
Though I could’ve told you (and I think I did say so in a previous post) the cliffhangers regularly have anticlimactic resolutions, so I don’t fret about them. So
what if Sage is a Burke?—it was only an issue if the MC fucked Jade. It
could have been an issue if Sage and Tybalt were actually close siblings and best buddies; that would’ve been a fun but irritating monkeywrench thrown into the story! But nope; Sage hates him as much as the MC does, so it’s not only irrelevant, but means she and Jill can be besties now. Happy resolution! Meh.
