This is one of the longer-running, highly-rated games on the site, that I've avoided for a long time, and well...
It has good parts.
What this game lacks, even more than budget, is restraint. I believe a project with this level of high-effort deserves to be judged more harshly for what that effort has been directed towards.
A good lewd game is usually one that has a strong theme that's supported by strong technical execution and enticing lewd scenes. Here, there is some heart, and some effort put towards the strong central theme of power-fantasy/harem-protagonist stuff, but the game very rarely directs it's full attention to those core central scenes and mechanics that matter, and it just throws "content" at you. More stats, characters, scenes, random events, whatever the creators could get out of the Koikatsu-visuals. Just dozens and dozens of scenes that can be viewed in any desired order, being relatively free-form, but also lacking proper pacing outside the better, restricted sections.
The game has no problems throwing stock-animations with stock-porn-music at you with a couple of lines of dialogue over and over again. Sometimes the game bothers to add in the context for the scenes, but not often enough. There are scenes that are slightly better executed, but I have yet to see a properly built up erotic scene. The pacing reminds me of serialized fan-fiction more than anything else, where "content" has been added based on a need for the current update, rather than the project as a whole.
As for the story, I think there is a strong core of magic-power fantasy hiding behind everything else, but it is kind of hampered by the adherence to harem-anime tropes, that don't always go together. At minimum, they should have given the MC at least one original character-trait, because having character-dialogue that consists of "I like to eat Ice Cream!" is actual brain-poison. The strong parts of the writing feel like they're being suffocated by all the stuff that is bad on purpose.
Without going deeper into the plot and decisions made, I think the game would genuinely be better if there was less of it. Less heroines, with sharper more interconnected storylines, more high-effort, well paced sections between periods of resource/relationship/stat-building sections, and a better presentation of the sex scenes. Limit the dev to one random joke-area that they can make using whatever assets are in the Koikatsu-editor, and make everything else be story-areas connected to plotlines related to the main themes of the work, which would be domination, mind control, mental changes, magic-use and power-fantasy. Also limit the number of things the MC is good at, and just use those limited strengths to get whatever the MC desires.
...not saying anything actually needs to happen with this project, as it seems very near feature-complete, but just as general opinions on what type of experience I would enjoy more in this formula.
It has good parts.
What this game lacks, even more than budget, is restraint. I believe a project with this level of high-effort deserves to be judged more harshly for what that effort has been directed towards.
A good lewd game is usually one that has a strong theme that's supported by strong technical execution and enticing lewd scenes. Here, there is some heart, and some effort put towards the strong central theme of power-fantasy/harem-protagonist stuff, but the game very rarely directs it's full attention to those core central scenes and mechanics that matter, and it just throws "content" at you. More stats, characters, scenes, random events, whatever the creators could get out of the Koikatsu-visuals. Just dozens and dozens of scenes that can be viewed in any desired order, being relatively free-form, but also lacking proper pacing outside the better, restricted sections.
The game has no problems throwing stock-animations with stock-porn-music at you with a couple of lines of dialogue over and over again. Sometimes the game bothers to add in the context for the scenes, but not often enough. There are scenes that are slightly better executed, but I have yet to see a properly built up erotic scene. The pacing reminds me of serialized fan-fiction more than anything else, where "content" has been added based on a need for the current update, rather than the project as a whole.
As for the story, I think there is a strong core of magic-power fantasy hiding behind everything else, but it is kind of hampered by the adherence to harem-anime tropes, that don't always go together. At minimum, they should have given the MC at least one original character-trait, because having character-dialogue that consists of "I like to eat Ice Cream!" is actual brain-poison. The strong parts of the writing feel like they're being suffocated by all the stuff that is bad on purpose.
Without going deeper into the plot and decisions made, I think the game would genuinely be better if there was less of it. Less heroines, with sharper more interconnected storylines, more high-effort, well paced sections between periods of resource/relationship/stat-building sections, and a better presentation of the sex scenes. Limit the dev to one random joke-area that they can make using whatever assets are in the Koikatsu-editor, and make everything else be story-areas connected to plotlines related to the main themes of the work, which would be domination, mind control, mental changes, magic-use and power-fantasy. Also limit the number of things the MC is good at, and just use those limited strengths to get whatever the MC desires.
...not saying anything actually needs to happen with this project, as it seems very near feature-complete, but just as general opinions on what type of experience I would enjoy more in this formula.