So,
NeonGhosts, I
think I've completely finished the dark playthrough with Ashe and I've had time to think about it. Sorry for the big fat fucking wall, btw.. I really have mostly nothing but praise to give; loved the pill scene; loved all the different little branches of choice and the dialogue and reactions and narrative beats that resulted from them; they all felt special and unique in their own way.
Having said that, I do think I agree with others who have said the branching (for the dark route anyways) got a tad out of hand. I think I get where your heart was on this... I'm not a writer, but I think I've been in that situation where there's so many interesting possibilities that you creatively fall in love with, that it's hard to scrap one or synthesize two. But, I really do think it would've benefited both yourself and the players if you had streamlined a little.
I'm not sure if you're planning on making any changes or simply leaving it as is, but if the former, there's a few sequences that come to mind. For example:
letting Ashe leave after dinner could've been meshed with apologizing in the hot tub, as for me, they felt very similar in vibes. I think I get why you logically separated them, though; letting her leave doesn't drastically change the dynamic and maintains her fear of you and is probably purely a move of caution for the MC; apologizing, however, completely changes the dynamic and instead makes her angry; but I'm still convinced it'd be better to just merge them. Whether that'd be moving the apology to post-dinner rather than the hot tub, or what, I don't know, but I feel it would've been the right thing.
You could've also done away with the option to rape her straight after dinner and instead forced the hot tub and then the rape since it's the exact same route if you choose to double-down on the abuse. Or, alternatively, you potentially could've just removed the sober rape entirely since it wasn't really a scene anyways and instead crowned the pill scene as 'the rape scene' (may have to change how the pills are obtained, not sure). This would keep the hot tub sequence purely as a branching point to either continue the abuse, albeit in a toned-down way, by toying with her and rubbing her nose in it (and that pissing part btw, good lord) leading to that beautifully horrible scene of the MC leaving her crying for 30 mins while he nonchalantly watches TV; or to attempt to apply the breaks and apologize, leading to that whole confused and angry reaction from her (with a hint of pity at the end, loved that, chef's kiss). I truly honestly think this would make Ashe's date so much cleaner from every perspective, but perhaps you don't agree.
Those are the main choices/scenes I can think of off the top of my head, but there may be others that could be shored up a little. For example,
perhaps combine the OnlyFans & orc tv choices into one, since I fail to see the point in the orc choice remaining by itself, especially from a player's perspective; why skip opportunities with the girls for some monster girl scenes on TV? I'm of course completely open to the idea that the payoff of all these splits will more than make up for it, so maybe you can ignore this criticism. But from a player's perspective, it was honestly quite overwhelming.
Other than that, I think you forgot to branch the pill scene properly;
if you give her pills, you have to calm her down in order for her to conk out and begin that scene. If you're instead mean to her, she acts as if you never gave the pills and it's impossible to start that sequence. And there's a few scenes here and there that are missing images, but I'm sure others have already bug reported them.
Anyways, thanks again for all your incredible hard work! I can't put into words how appreciative these milked gonads are, homie. I think I'm going to continue my good playthrough today; I look forward to reflecting on my thoughts about it here at a later time
