Never mind, the trucker finally showed up. But I still have no idea what the RED / BLUE / YELLOW designations mean, lol. Whatever, no worries.
Anyway, this is generally a very good game all round.
However, I think that there is a huge lost opportunity for additional eroticism. In my opinion, the greatest potential for eroticism occurs inside the mind of the main character, and their internal responses to the circumstances & events happening to them. Many games focus only on presenting the external events / circumstances / dialogues / physical actions, and miss the internal aspects completely.
Fashion Business does make consistent attempts to present some internal dialog, and this is commendable. But the internal content still misses the mark in my opinion.
In Monica's case, we have an internal dialog that is comprised primarily of disgust / anger / resistance / complaining / hatred / etc. And this would be totally understandable coming from someone who is presented with an unpleasant circumstance, and then immediately runs away in horror.
But Monica does not run away. She proceeds headlong into bad situations and participates in the activities, often to a greater degree than any normal person ever would. And yet she remains almost entirely unaffected by it. Her only internal response is that she hates it. And this response has remained fairly consistent throughout Episodes 1-3. There have been only a couple of occasions where she acknowledges the erotic aspects or the pleasant sensations connected to the activities. This doesn't make sense, and is a lost opportunity in my opinion.
Monica has unwillingly engaged in more sexual activities with more partners than most people would ever have opportunity to do, even if they were totally willing. She is a sex maniac without actually being a sexual person. That is an interesting dichotomy, but it does not make sense to leave it as static condition.
No semi-normal human being could sustain that dichotomy without eventually responding to it somehow; even if just as a coping mechanism. At some point, a person would evaluate their goals verses the personal costs of attaining those goals. Monica sometimes does this in a superficial sense, but it does not seem very meaningful, and it doesn't seem to make any difference to her overall actions. It usually occurs before or after the event, and so does not contribute any erotic quality during the event itself. It actually feels more like the writer's attempt to justify the improbable choices made by their main character.
I believe that there needs to be a gradual arc in her internal response to all of the activities she engages in. And it should be possible to have this internal 'response arc' occur while leaving her primary ambitions intact. Most sexual experiences are inherently pleasurable because that's sort of how biology works. And even if the experience is not pleasurable because of the circumstances, it will certainly be deeply felt by the participant because that's how the central nervous system works. So Monica cannot be left physically & emotionally unaffected by her experiences. She is not a sex robot.
I suspect that the developer's response to all this would be, “How a normal person behaves here is irrelevant. This is an erotic fantasy game.” Fair enough. However, that still leaves the missed opportunity of increased eroticism unaddressed. “This is an erotic fantasy game” after all. And of course, the target audience of this game is comprised of real human beings that do have internal dialogues from which erotic tendencies originate from. So we can't dispense with psychological & emotional realism entirely here.
Another interesting game is called
Downfall - A Story of Corruption. The game itself is much shorter, has a totally different style of play, and is a different story. But the writers did decent job of presenting the MC's internal response arc to their experiences. And that internal response arc is one of the most erotic aspects of the game. You find yourself asking - “How does she feel while she is doing this? How will she feel about this after experiencing it? Does / did it turn her on? Will she acknowledge this fact? How will it influence her future actions?” These questions lingering in the background make the physical aspects of the sexual situations on-screen much more arousing. The MC in this story often acknowledges the unsavoury aspect of the situations, but revels in the naughtiness & pleasure of the physical sensations – which is very erotic. She is responding sexually.
In Fashion Business, Monica frequently acknowledges the unsavoury aspect of her situations, but makes very little acknowledgement of the physical sensations – which is very mundane and un-erotic. She is not responding sexually, and thus, the player (you & me) might also have reduced sexual response.
If there needs to be a persistent dichotomy in Monica's character, it would be more interesting to have it grow into a situation where she starts to really enjoy the sensations of the sex, while still disliking the circumstances & the other characters. In fact, this internal conflict can turn into an ongoing thematic element of its own. The writers are providing the raw materials for this conflict within the general framework of the story, but are not really using or developing these materials to proper effect.
Even if Monica persistently hates everyone & everything, my question is – When will she start enjoying the sex?
Because that is when I (the reader) will also start enjoying it more too.
