This is, essentially, a complaint, but it is meant as constructive criticism. This is an easily solvable problem. The TL/DR is that I feel like I wasted my whole first play-through, because I didn't know I had limited time, which seems like an unexpected feature for a sandbox game. Also, the game's reference to "chapter 1" at a certain point, led me to believe it would tell me when I hit "chapter 2," which it doesn't.
I just came in on this update, my first time playing. Upon reaching the point where it says, "This is the end of chapter 4 ... you can continue, but games saved after this point won't work in the next update," I became VERY confused. My first thought was, "when did I get to chapter 4?" By continuing on anyway to see what would happen, I saw there is a lot I could have done that I haven't.
I stopped talking to Suzy a while ago, when it said I had maxed her affection "for chapter 1." When I saw that, I had been expecting that something might trigger some sort of "chapter 2" title screen that never came. I expected it to relate to the main story, so I never called the Detective. I was kind of guessing that might be the trigger to start "chapter 2," so I was putting it off to try and complete everything in "chapter 1."
If by "chapter" you really just mean "update," than I would recommend just using the word update. The purpose of chapters is to break up a large story into clearly defined parts. If there is no clear separation, start, or end to the "chapters," than that's not really chapters, and it feels confusing.
I saw that the actual calendar date is tracked, but I didn't really think much about that. I figured the days would just go on indefinitely until I completed all the available content, like most sandbox style adult games I've played.
Eventually, I read through all the updates in the change-log and I think I understand now. It's sandbox, but you have a limited number of days to play, and not enough time to do everything that can be done. So, you'd have to play more than once to see all the scenes with all the different characters (which is fairly common), and if you divide your time wrong you might not reach the end of paths you've been following before running out of time (that's a new one for me). If that's the case, it would be really nice for the game to make that clear at the beginning.
Usually, games like this that end after a given number of days don't also feature sandbox game-play and freely trainable stat points. I'm not used to thinking of game time and game progress as potentially conflicting factors, at least not in this genre of games. If this works the way I now suspect it does, that's ... interesting, and kind of cool (I think?). It does make it seem more "game-like" in the sense that I could "run out of time" to solve the mystery of what happened to dad if I'm too distracted by dating, like there's some actual challenge happening in the game. I would even say it makes the game more realistic too, but ... again, I wish I'd known this when I started.
For instance, I would have kept separate save tracks for different characters. Now, I feel like I've kind of blown the whole thing by exploring too much or wasting too much time training at the gym instead of focusing on specific characters, and I should just delete all my saves to start over. So, not only do I have to play it more than once, which is fine, but this entire first play-through is a bust and a waste of time that could have been prevented if the game told me this was how it would work. It kind of feels like I've been punished for exploring ... in a sandbox game.
As someone who grew up in an age where you were expected to read the instruction manual rather than being fed all the how-to during play, I don't think I've EVER said this before, but I kind of wish this game had started with a tutorial.
