Going echo the thoughts of many in this thread I think, I played through the demo about 2 times (I might try a third just to see if I missed anything but I don't think I can take much more visual novel reading)
One major complaint I have is the personality choice system, the way it is currently set up makes for an extremely frustrating playthrough in which it's impossible for the player to know which option will lead to gaining or losing a certain trait. The only way to know will be to look up a walkthrough guide or to play through the game dozens of times exploring each option and writing down what each option does. I do not know how the dev plans for anyone to be capable of going for any of the endings on purpose without consulting a guide especially when considering there are hidden dialogues that only unlock based on doing certain actions beforehand... and thats all well and fine, but it would be greatly appreciated if I could see "I can either increase my kindness, or increase my hatred for the 2 options". Early on in my run I got a cool power up (whip I think) which used violence to change how it worked and I decided I would try to pick the violent options if they ever popped up so I could see how it changed my power up, but it was nearly impossible for me to figure out which options gave or took away violence so I quickly gave up on that.
Like others have mentioned the silver databases are kinda a slog to get through, I tried my hardest to read all of them but it was hard to stop myself from just skipping through them, especially when many are just about random shit barely related to the world building or they are alluding to something in later levels, but bold of you to assume the player will remember anything from the silver databases when there are 30 of them in the first level alone. 2 examples of this might be the one about the nate clones, or the one about the vampire who inhaled nanomachines and no longer needed blood and just decided to wander the world eventually disappearing, I am unsure why these were worth mentioning to the plot. It took me nearly 2 hours to get through my first playthrough and that was with me skipping through dialogue reading rather than listening. I suspect listening to the full voice clips would turn this into a 4 hour playthrough.
I remember entering a room and seeing 2 databases next to eachother and just feeling dread. I dreaded coming across them. Because I want to enjoy the lore and immerse myself in the world, but the way the its set up makes it extremely difficult to because you're just bombarded with lore, names, places none of which mean anything to you and as soon as you learn about something you're just bombarded with unrelated lore that's sometimes not even relevant to the plot or world building. I feel exhausted after having played this, and I didn't even touch my dick once lol.
I've always been a fan of environmental story telling, for example in anthophobia I remember there was a barricaded room with a single normal zombie inside, after killing it you could discover in back of the room a tape? which contained the man's last words while also providing lore to the world, it was fantastic. I contrast that with this where you have a silver databank in a hole telling of a guy who died or a battle that took place and thats it. At very least could add a body or something.
As far as the NPC's are concerned, meh. I did 2 playthroughs one in which I picked top option, other I picked bottom option. Besides some minor changes in dialogue and nebulous personality trait gain/loss there's never a reason to not pick the obvious "this will generate lewd scene" there's some tiny bits of cool extra dialogue but you'll forget about it within 5 minutes because it was nothing ground breaking, or because you'll be bombarded with more lore, NPC's, databanks etc... There's probably some cool hidden secrets, for example in the lava room you can talk to the woman and she'll have unique dialogue for talking to her while you're in the lava and then again when you come back after turning the lava off you'll get +Kindness I think, but was it worth a 2nd playthrough in which I died talking to her and had to walk back? No. Cool, but a waste of time lol. Maybe that'll unlock some secret scene 3 levels later but I really can't see myself playing through this more than twice and that second playthrough will be a slog, playing the fire level has reminded me why the electric level was the "demo" for a while.
Shout out to billzerker, easily the best NPC in fire demo. The voice actors were clearly of high quality but I didn't care to listen to most of them beyond the main characters.
The only bugs I discovered were related to the NPC's, often it was possible to trigger a dialogue option without having picked it, or they would sometimes say the wrong thing and I only know that from having played through twice.
Overall I think they've turned a game that was about 5 hours long, into a 20+ hour long game which would be cool if it wasn't for the fact that 75% of that is just spent reading/listening as opposed to actually playing the game which really really does not mesh well with both a platformer, or a hentai game imo. And I think the game is worse off with all these databanks, not sure how I feel with the NPC's yet most of my complaints with them are a result of other systems (databank spam + personality system) annoying me.
One major complaint I have is the personality choice system, the way it is currently set up makes for an extremely frustrating playthrough in which it's impossible for the player to know which option will lead to gaining or losing a certain trait. The only way to know will be to look up a walkthrough guide or to play through the game dozens of times exploring each option and writing down what each option does. I do not know how the dev plans for anyone to be capable of going for any of the endings on purpose without consulting a guide especially when considering there are hidden dialogues that only unlock based on doing certain actions beforehand... and thats all well and fine, but it would be greatly appreciated if I could see "I can either increase my kindness, or increase my hatred for the 2 options". Early on in my run I got a cool power up (whip I think) which used violence to change how it worked and I decided I would try to pick the violent options if they ever popped up so I could see how it changed my power up, but it was nearly impossible for me to figure out which options gave or took away violence so I quickly gave up on that.
Like others have mentioned the silver databases are kinda a slog to get through, I tried my hardest to read all of them but it was hard to stop myself from just skipping through them, especially when many are just about random shit barely related to the world building or they are alluding to something in later levels, but bold of you to assume the player will remember anything from the silver databases when there are 30 of them in the first level alone. 2 examples of this might be the one about the nate clones, or the one about the vampire who inhaled nanomachines and no longer needed blood and just decided to wander the world eventually disappearing, I am unsure why these were worth mentioning to the plot. It took me nearly 2 hours to get through my first playthrough and that was with me skipping through dialogue reading rather than listening. I suspect listening to the full voice clips would turn this into a 4 hour playthrough.
I remember entering a room and seeing 2 databases next to eachother and just feeling dread. I dreaded coming across them. Because I want to enjoy the lore and immerse myself in the world, but the way the its set up makes it extremely difficult to because you're just bombarded with lore, names, places none of which mean anything to you and as soon as you learn about something you're just bombarded with unrelated lore that's sometimes not even relevant to the plot or world building. I feel exhausted after having played this, and I didn't even touch my dick once lol.
I've always been a fan of environmental story telling, for example in anthophobia I remember there was a barricaded room with a single normal zombie inside, after killing it you could discover in back of the room a tape? which contained the man's last words while also providing lore to the world, it was fantastic. I contrast that with this where you have a silver databank in a hole telling of a guy who died or a battle that took place and thats it. At very least could add a body or something.
As far as the NPC's are concerned, meh. I did 2 playthroughs one in which I picked top option, other I picked bottom option. Besides some minor changes in dialogue and nebulous personality trait gain/loss there's never a reason to not pick the obvious "this will generate lewd scene" there's some tiny bits of cool extra dialogue but you'll forget about it within 5 minutes because it was nothing ground breaking, or because you'll be bombarded with more lore, NPC's, databanks etc... There's probably some cool hidden secrets, for example in the lava room you can talk to the woman and she'll have unique dialogue for talking to her while you're in the lava and then again when you come back after turning the lava off you'll get +Kindness I think, but was it worth a 2nd playthrough in which I died talking to her and had to walk back? No. Cool, but a waste of time lol. Maybe that'll unlock some secret scene 3 levels later but I really can't see myself playing through this more than twice and that second playthrough will be a slog, playing the fire level has reminded me why the electric level was the "demo" for a while.
Shout out to billzerker, easily the best NPC in fire demo. The voice actors were clearly of high quality but I didn't care to listen to most of them beyond the main characters.
The only bugs I discovered were related to the NPC's, often it was possible to trigger a dialogue option without having picked it, or they would sometimes say the wrong thing and I only know that from having played through twice.
Overall I think they've turned a game that was about 5 hours long, into a 20+ hour long game which would be cool if it wasn't for the fact that 75% of that is just spent reading/listening as opposed to actually playing the game which really really does not mesh well with both a platformer, or a hentai game imo. And I think the game is worse off with all these databanks, not sure how I feel with the NPC's yet most of my complaints with them are a result of other systems (databank spam + personality system) annoying me.
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