Ok.. so
DrunkenBird and
Areeb have pretty much hit it on the head as far as the 2 varying extremes of people who play these types of games, and yet look for entirely different things.
First.. the easy part.. Transformations.
Either you do the medical trials, and basically BRUTE FORCE your way down the girl path (which is fine, theres even some special content triggered mostly for flavor in doing that), or you do the super slow burn (like the original intent is) to get basically all the same things and play out the whole "slow magic burn M2F trope". Again this is even from games this one is inspired from. Old "Cursed" in old rags game engine, and GirlLife being the primary 2 influences.
Now to the "rent/grind/thing".. I'm going to pull this card.. and I pull it rarely cause Id rather not have to drill people..
YOU DIDNT READ!!! and then THINK just a TINY bit. The point of the game IS the slow burn, but its not nearly as grindy as it appears. Its a hell of a lot less grindy than Girlife which a good chunk of its code is based on and then heavily modified/hacked apart.
Fairhaven gives you basically a trial week for free. So after that first few days, you must pay DAILY. When you go to pay that rent.. if you dont have enough cash, or are at zero... even with relatively low fem scores, you are given options, to do "submissive girly things" to get that rent either reduced or even dropped to nothing (takes repeated attempts/occurrences).
Now the Hooters job... as stated when you get hired.. PAYS YOU ONCE A MONTH, and I quote "We make payroll the 15th of each month". So you get a huge pay influx then.. but otherwise you can go poor quick, unless you go for a few of the other money making side jobs which can be found at the community center job board in the biz district. Plus.. the med trials, give you cash too. (I for one usually when starting a new game, I just go for one eye treatment one, and then I play out the rest of the game from there). So between the other parts of the day that you dont work at Hooters, and/or if you do even one or 2 trials, you can get enough cash to hold you over as long as you dont over spend and can easily cover the Fairhaven costs.
If you do the dirty clothes thing to get forced to get a "donation pile" outfit, that saves you some cash, gives you further fem score, and contributes to getting the player char to open up to other options. If you go down Julia's path enough to get the free outfit she gives, she forces more things the character has to deal and come to terms with and opens up more options for the player. (If you keep going that can either get you kicked out of Fairhaven, push you down a therapist path to deal with your transformation (whether you lie about its intent or not), or just keep things going like "normal" with Julia occasionally trying to be a bit of a dom over you (which you can play or avoid for the most part).
The part about "walking around the city" .. to actually go from district to district doesnt take that much time walking, even less if you buy a bus ticket (daily weekly monthly options available). The whole part where you "walk around the city and loose an hour each time" thats when you are walking around to DISCOVER other areas. Once you find all the areas in the game currently available that option disappears.
Weight gain doesnt seem to have been too much of a problem.. but you get low (read as not healthy) meals at Fairhaven, but that doesnt hit you that hard on the calorie gain as long as you are not "overeating" .. meaning not eating when you have still a fairly full hunger bar in the stats. If you also then eat at Hooters, well.. there's your sign. As for the workout clothes.. they are not that expensive (read back to my money comments), but again.. if you play out the story.. and work at Hooters, and meet this girl there you become friends with.. she will invite you out to work out with her 2x a week.. which gets you in as a guest FOR FREE, and she gives you an outfit to borrow for that visit FOR FREE. Eventually when you figure out the money situation you can get your own membership to go anytime and afford your own clothes. But the weight gain isnt that far out of control that its that bad not going every day. (You could be teetering on the numbers in the stat that sets you going back and forth between overweight and not for a while until you get it under control).
And then Hygiene -- again GirlLife influences.. starts the same, but in this game its MUCH easier to start a positive path to improvement... just even taking care of yourself, showers/etc will get slow gains.. but.. hey.. there is this fancy place called a mall in the biz district... and inside is a beauty salon.. and.. they sell facial cream... i wonder what that does.
These games are FIRST about exploration as much as its about the "day to day slice of life" experience, then its a sex game SECOND. Look around for all the options. Save/quick save.. go test something out/explore, find out whats out there, then reload and plan. That IS kind of the whole deal with these types of games. If you dont like that game style.........I cant help you there.. find other games to play.
Forgive me for going full snark. Just play and enjoy the game the way its scoped and intended.
