Finally got through all the stories plus some catchup from Chapter 7. I guess I don't need to bother with spoilers anymore.
First of all, the gut punch. Sage Burke, eh? Can't say I'm surprised. And I didn't have a problem with it. Until the realisation hit. If you combine my playthroughs this could be fun. You're with the daughter and should it last, "Mommy" is your real Mommy-in-Law all of a sudden, you undermined your Brother-in-Law at every opportunity and hurt his career chances, emasculated him, probably knocked some of his teeth out and effectively ruined all his chances with Jill (who drove the nail into the relationship herself). And on top of that, it looks like you wanted to save Maya, but drove her into Father-in-Law's prostitution ring. Yes, parties will definitely be fun.
However, there is one point: During his "Grey's Anatomy" narration even recognizes the house if you never pursued Jade.
Second point, while it's highly unusual to pick a love interest at the midway point, for me it felt strangely "liberating" doing the "right thing" for once. Even if it led to five saves that will have to be continued now (Neutral - Maya & Josy; DIK - Sage; DIK - Single; Chick - Isabella and Chick - Jill) and none of them will be smooth sailing. I can see problems with all of them:
* MJ: Balancing a throuple, every + sympathy point could be crucial with narrowing margin of error. Maya will probably have to be saved from prostitution. Patrick will hate our guts.
* S: see above
* B: relationship with a teacher should be as big no-no in the College Guide Book, and Jill is jealous and will likely cause problems, especially when everything has to be kept secret. Also, we still have the husband elephant in the room.
* J: okay, her friends liked the MC, but I felt uncomfortable around them. The fish out of the water will be worse with her parents, and I'm not so sure they will dig a poor guy for their remaining daughter.
* Single: I can only assume that this will be the road to expelling, especially if you role-play it as taking drugs from Quinn and failing the classes.
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Some smaller points:
* I feared back in episode 6 that it would be possible to screw up the mansion rebuild minigame. Maybe it is, but you would have to do a REALLY stupid points allocation. However, there is an inconsistency: It is possible to order the windows at the end of E7 (I did that on the old DIK playthrough), and have it celebrated at the table, but even then Rusty urges you to order the windows in E8.
* Pregnancy Test: We don't know when it will come into play. Meaning there is no way to know if the impregnation already happened or not, (we only know that there will be a guaranteed positive test.) If it did then pretty much all the main love interests are out. Our two romps with Isabella we get a ** or not choice. Jill is not brave enough to bring up protection during her first time, meaning she's definitely not on the pill, but again, you can choose not to ** her. As for Sage or Josy I honestly can't remember how their various scenes ended. For Maya you definitely ** her at her request in the classroom. However, the point is, there is a possibility that all of those scenes never happened just because you're not on that respective girl's path. That would also rule out Jade, Nicole, Sandy, Lily and the Restaurant Girls. So what would that leave us with:
-> Arieth and pretty much anybody
-> Zoey coming back from California preggers (but not from MC)
-> Sally and Magnar's perceived trouble in paradise
-> Elena and John Boy, even though we don't know anything about their protection plan
-> Dany and Jamie, even though he claims that she can't get pregnant (however, that is exactly the way to go)
-> Ashley and Anthony or Derek, whoever got to her first
-> Micha and Rusty (I am pretty sure that they got something going on)
-> Heather and Tommy, with the same caveat as E & JB
-> Tania and Tommy - explain that to Heather though
-> the Melon and Tybalt
* While Tara has a nice figure (her tits seem to sag a little though) I'd definitely recommend her to get a drug therapy soon, that doesn't look healthy.
* Midterms: The way Lily came back from the toilet on my DIK path, leaving the cheating papers in place (no opportunity to flush them) makes me think that she was the cheater.
* Jade: I would have expected her to be a tad more level-headed when you call it quits with her.
* Ending Montage: So did Tommy go back to Vinny for supplies?
So, as expected, Doctor Cake delivered a great update again, and I will have to go back one final time to unlock Quinn's render and 2D Art stuff for completionist's sake even though I hate her guts.
