A Pretty Storytelling Mess: Hard to Love is, appropriately, hard to love.
Let's make it clear, the game is beautifully rendered, not just in terms of the female models, but the scenes are composed well, with a good eye for framing and blocking. The renderer genuinely has artistic talent. The backgrounds are varied and chosen well, all the women are attractive and visually distinct, and the game is a joy to look at.
Once you get past that, though, the wheels really come off.
To get the most topical issue out of the way, why is this a game set in Japan but everyone's not Japanese? The MC is some dude whose parents are Dan and Elizabeth. His sisters are Amber and Madison. His daughter's Isabella. His love interest in Antonella. His partner is Paz. His sidepiece/girlfriend is Artelle. None of the architecture or background used is Japanese (presumably because the Daz3d assets aren't), so why is the game set there?
The story is told in a series of random flashbacks, but there's too many elements juggled at once and none of them are told to their natural conclusion. Even the flashback sequences involving Antonella repeatedly get interrupted. It's an awful trope even when it's done well, and it's done very mediocrely here. Just tell the damn story you're trying to tell, at least before you introduce another 4 simultaneous flashback scenes that are also left frustratingly unfinished.
The kind of multithreaded breadcrumbing needs to be handled by a literary genius. Unfortunately, the developer is not. Which is no insult. It would take a truly extraordinary storyteller to pull off what they're going for here. Naturally, they fall short of an impossible bar they set for themselves, and the story suffers for it.
None of the characters are even likable. The MC is an indecisive welp of a man who lets everyone walk over him, and then is a total dick who lashes out at everyone on top of it. He's still obsessed with a disappearance of a woman from many years ago, which of course gives him the liberty to abuse drugs and alcohol and take out his obsession by being a general asshole to everyone around him, including people like Paz who clearly do not deserve it. Somehow, instead of people being annoyed with having to put up with this pile of human baggage and garbage like they should, all of them are inappropriately in love with him instead. Makes sense... Thank goodness for toxic masculinity, because this limp-dicked asshat has few other character traits outside of that.
And let's not even get into the issue of telling about his raunchy sexcapades to some school-girl friend of his little sister minutes after they just met. Apparently, the game would have you believe sexual harassment's supposed to be a deep and meaningful relationship.
The members of the family, who ostensibly should be the primary love interests thanks to the incest kink of this game, all generally range from annoying to outright insufferable. The Mom figure randomly oscillates from doormat spouse and mother to dictatorial matriarch exclusively at plot convenience. The two sisters range from mildly annoying aggressive sexpot (Amber) and intensely infuriating shit-stirrer (Madison) who gives you whiplash in the very same scene. The daughter is overprotective and easily jealous, though arguably warranted considering how stupid the MC is. Finally, the father is blatantly an irredeemable bastard whose entire purpose is to act as an antagonist—though again, you understand it because the MC is such a raging blowhard.
Nanami is a mousy uwu big-tittied anime girl caricature who exists as a character without a backbone so she can be manipulated and contorted into whatever awkward position the story needs.
It's not even presumed that there's any build-up in actual feelings, because for whatever bizarre Stockholm Syndrome situation, all of the women in this game are very obviously head over heels for this intensely unlikable MC character, so all of the will-they-or-won't-they is from bullshit carrot dangling on account of the developer.
That's how you get not-even-entertaining moments like Madison showing her boobs, begging MC to touch them, before jumping away acting like he just molested her. Or the Mom character getting on her knees in front of half-naked MC and openly groping at him before suddenly running off in embarrassment. All while the MC uselessly stammers "I-I-I..." thirty-seven times in the span of 4 chapters (how else would you show an MC is internally conflicted, after all?). At some point it stops even being erotic, or carrying any amount of tension, because these scenes shift tones so violently for completely unbelievable reasons, even in the context of unbelievable incest fantasy.
Because the developer doesn't know how to write relationship development, instead of sticking to some inappropriate attraction that blooms over time, they just start all the women out as obsessed and willing. But then they remember they need to milk those Patreon dollars, so they refuse to let these scenes play out to their natural conclusion, instead breadcrumbing and trickling in progressively more risque scenes to keep the reader on the line.
Sadly the breadcrumbing extends all over the storytelling too. Not only are the flashbacks unfinished, people talk like they are all living examples of the worst kind of B movie tropes. Characters will allude to big events, or bring up important information, and then just trail off instead of finishing their thought. The narration does its best to draw out even the most basic of plot hooks, teasing cliffhanging images or alluding to one bigger mystery after another. It's so blatant that it's not suspenseful anymore, just shameless.
And that doesn't even touch on the ridiculousness of "Antonella" as a "quirky" anime Wednesday Addams first love figure the MC is weirdly hung up on for two decades after she disappeared from his life. Like, you'd think that an MC whose mere existence makes all the women in his life, family included, throw themselves at him regardless of consequences would not be the kind of person to develop one-itis so easily. But everything in this game is treated as a vehicle to show off MC's brooding manpain, so that's sadly not a surprise.
Of course the MC can't pursue any women in the game, that would be a betrayal to his one true love! But it doesn't stop a bunch of women from throwing themselves on the MC's dick, or all the times he hires and has his way with whores (because whores aren't people, clearly). Besides, how else can a writer depict their character going through it™ if they can't show him out drinking, doing drugs, and whoring? You can't expect people to write emotions in a visual novel, don't be ridiculous.
There also isn't any real choice in this game. It's either your character is a giant asshole to these women, earning you negative points and shutting down scenes (ostensibly defeating the purpose of even playing the damn game), or you continue to let them have their way with the MC over his token protestations.
Between the intensely unlikable MC and love interests, the all-over-the-shop storytelling, the paint-by-numbers way of depicting human emotions, and the way the game blueballs you on every front (including the flimsy mysteries of the missing girl and corrupt cop storylines unfolding in the background), it's just hard to recommend this game. Which is a real shame, because the effort put into the renders and atmosphere is top notch. I could see the developer being half of a very good developer team, but they really need someone else to handle the storyboarding and writing.
