When a game's been in development for 10 years, it does become a bit funny though.
Eternum will take around 10 years if the current development time remains as projected, because I think I read somewhere there are around 6 planned updates pending and even at 9 months per update and 12 months for the last update (it would contain the grand finales, with all the variations), it would take around those 10 years.
I agree this game pushes the quality of AVNs up, not by a huge branching (there is barely any), but by the quality of renders, animations, overall story, memorable characters and well placed music.
I don't know the finances behind AVNs, I know which one is raking the millions but I guess it's hard to intentionally make one that's successful, like doing movies or songs, there is a huge uncertainty factor. But at 10 years development for a game and thousands of people able to finance it with 5-20 USD/EUR a month, it starts to make sense to fund a bigger team to accelerate it.
What I liked about Once in a lifetime that I don't like about Eternum is that the MC in Eternum is slowly being turned into a pussy, specially in the last updates, like the girls are the ones running the show and he is just a submissive pet afterthought. I liked the pervert vibes of OIALT much more, where the MC was actually calling the shots in the harem he created. Now it's evident this is no longer the case and the last updates looked borderline femdom to me with the Calypso and Nancy scenes. I hope this improves in 0.9, except for Penny where he is actually dominant, with the others he is like saying
I'm sorry and grateful for any of your attention all the time.