Depressing. I appreciate the honesty I guess, but to call my game cryptic garbage and then to pretend you care about the gameplay is incredibly disingenuous.
Though I disagree on all accounts, clearly a lot of people share your opinion.
I'll refrain from posting unnecessary updates.
I apologize that i was a bit verbose,and you misunderstood my point, to rephrase it better- i LOVE the cryptic bits, it's why i am being honest with things even though it's disheartening, what i hate is the school bits, where there is no puzzles or interaction variety, like i said- they are making the game worse in their current state. Doesn't matter if people enjoy the narrative or not, the fact that they are both mandatory and devoid of variety is what kills it.
Anecdotally:
I lost my save file between the updates, and having to replay the same thing where i am locked off by countless invisible walls, having to go through the same motions for half an hour(yes, with message skip) before I'm let into the freeroam mode only to discover that with all the dialogue you piled on you failed to explain that the dreams you get now depend on your stats, locking me into a dream you get from low health that feels like "this is the end of the demo" as the FIRST dream did not leave a good impression, i wouldn't be suprised if a lot of new players experience something to the same degree, you promise Yume Nikki, but that game starts by throwing you in to freeroam first, and never pulls you out of it,wich is what arguably made it so popular, it's abstract and liberating.
I'm not an industry veteran, but from my humble 6 years of gamedev experience, i would suggest one of three options to go with:
1.Skip scene button, by far the easiest one and the least involved, nobody is going to blame you for implementing it,and you get to make the rest of the game the way you wanted it without any real need for change outside of that.
2.Make the school segments memories you have to find. Not only is that more engaging for players and more in line with the Yumme Nikki style of gameplay, it also will draw them in more since it will require investigating to piece everything together, you can do a lot with that, especially in terms of deception and omission of information.Moreover- this will allow people who already seen it or just came to a porn game
for porn to skip out on them with no detriment
3.Make the school segments interactive. Throughout all the cutscenes my first and preveiling thought was "what if i just left?" and the games answer always was the very artificial "i can't leave right now! i have to experience social embarrasment!" wich really grinded my gears.This is obviously the most labourious option, but allowing players to choose no will give at the very least replayability to an otherwise unremarkable cutscene.
