VN - Ren'Py - Hard to Love [v0.23] [Qori Gaming]

Apparently the developer left everything in the hands of the AI, for God's sake, what a grotesque thing this game has become.
Unrealistic skin texture and color (typical of AI)
Totally unrealistic and artificial genitals (most of the time) (typical of AI)
Depending on the position of the characters, some body parts become deformed (typical of AI).
Man, everything became as unrealistic and generic as most things made by AI.
If you had any hope that things would improve, you'd better give up. Unless you like seeing unrealistic and grotesque things.

Once, on another resource, i came across a very apt phrase about the developer "Ocean": "When a cat has nothing to do, he licks balls. When "Ocean" has nothing to do, he remakes the previous parts."

This author clearly suffers from the same. Even in a more advanced stage.
Why fix what is not broken? Instead of calmly continuing to move the story forward, the creator senselessly and mercilessly remakes what was already great before.

If you want to try something, change the style - well, do it in the next project. Or make a special episode timed to something (New Year, Halloween, etc.).
Or, if you have firmly decided that from now on you will do it in a different style - well, continue releasing it like this. (In the game, let the main character get hit on the head so that his vision blurs, his perception of the world changes. Now, look, he lives like this.) The main thing is to continue making NEW content - why the fuck cut and change the old one. Why ruin something that was great. I will never understand this.

While the art is nice as of v0.23 Remake, the use of AI on top of what is presumably Daz renders is super uncanny valley territory with the typical AI shifting-details issue. The renders also evoke a great sense of claustrophobia , with too few wide shots, and an over abundant amount of close ups which is leads to a confusing sense of location and scene. For a beautiful game with beautiful ladies, it is very difficult to be able to take the whole character in when shots routinely are navel to neck only, or extreme close ups of mens eyes.
The character visual designs themselves are pleasant on the eye and thoroughly thought out when they're able to be seen. The personalities and dialog are annoying and scatter brained, and whether intentional or not, does feel genuine for young women. Whether that is actually good or bad is up in the air.
Finally, the dev makes one of the biggest mistakes for adult VN, and that is there is no sex in the first episode, or, made it possible to be missed, with a single dick render and vag shot seen. Episode 2 then begins with extremely close shots of coitus, and you kind of have no idea of who is fucking who without the dialog.
I wish the dev the best in continue to refining their skills, and having not played the original, may the remake accomplish what they set out to do.

I am so sorry having to rate this so low. I love the Dev and I want to support her, but there's some things in this remake that I just can't look past.

- The story is still all over the place.
- Choices are arbitrary without enough of information to have any agency as a player. It's not a choice if I have no idea what the outcome will be.
- The AI models are just awful. They regularly take me out of every scene they are used because they are so apparently AI.

I really wish Yukana all the best. I'll always support other women in this field. It is hard enough for them to succeed. But this game really is hard to love for me.

Hard to Love Remake 0.22 - Rating: 2.5/5

I had a lot of the same thoughts as @hampsure below me. I hadn't played the first iteration of the game and was excited to try this one due to the apparent beauty of the renders and models. Similarly, I also found the story to be all over the place. I don't know why so many of these developers feel the need to make stories get crazier, involve guns, mobs, violence, time travel, or other crazy elements... especially in a VN and not a game. Sometimes simple and relatable is best. I think I would've enjoyed trying to sleep around with the family members and other girls in just a normal household or neighborhood setting. The animations are also slightly lacking.

Hard to Love Remake 0.22 (note that I never played the original, just looked at the images from it)

This game has gorgeous renders/models but has some awful writing and a convoluted story that just isn't enjoyable. The visual storytelling is quite good and usually pretty sexy with the renders keeping things feeling alive. The girls are almost all hot and have somewhat distinct if otherwise shallow personalities. However, both the characters and the events are rarely presented in remotely believable manner. The telling and pacing of the story is as rushed and schizo as the the characters are. No payoffs/moments feel earned (they just happen) and the lewd content is extremely unsatisfying (see section below). The entire story so far feels like an attempt to speedrun what could have been an interesting narrative that the author doesn't know how to handle in order to make progress on the remake. It's hard to get truly invested in LIs (outside of their looks and sexy behaviors) when there are such foundational issues.

The first two episodes felt like a the fever dream of a teenager with ADHD that watches far too many bad young adult romances, soap operas, and procedural crime dramas. The writing was incredibly bad, the characters are all insane, and everything was so rushed and lacking in believablility that it made it hard to get invested in the backstory that's supposed to underpin everything that follows. It's a gigantic problem when the backstory fails to connect to such a large degree and would have been better left even more ambiguous to make the relationships and love seem more believable. Nothing that happens feels earned by the writing and that's something that continues to remain true for most of what follows as well. I nearly quit at this point.

Starting in the third episode the writing style starts to improve and there's some sexy dialogue but the overall story itself remains pretty garbage. Any characters I feel invested in I know I'm only interested in seeing more sexy renders of them in hot situations and not really anything that the story actually made me feel for them. There's an overarching story and theme where the MC seems to be at the center of something larger but the gameplay makes it feel like it's mostly just stuff happening and then makes attempts to make it feel as if there's a larger level of manipulation going. Either way it isn't a great experience to play as the MC.

Most of EP3 and EP4 focus almost solely on content for one LI each and if you're not at all into those girls you're kinda SOL for almost the entire episode. In EP3 you can at least tell her to get lost if you're persistent about it but there's no such option in EP4 (which sucked because I did enjoy EP3 content so choose to let her stay but most of EP4 I wanted nothing to do with and had to just fast forwarding through as much as I could once I found I couldn't get her to just leave). I thought there would be better options given how may LIs there are but how the game mechanics and harem building aspects are going to work in practice aren't yet clear for me.

I've already briefly mentioned it but since sexiness is the one thing the game sometimes has going for it besides the great renders, it's worth reiterating: lewd content is some of the worst I've seen in an avn in quite a while. Instead of animations (that may be added in the future) it currently just shows a small number of renders and awful screen shaking effect to represent movement. There are plenty of games that pull off really hot lewd scenes with zero animations. I'd be fine if animations weren't used - but that requires making better selections of renders and improving narration/dialogue of the scene to compensate. It seems like it's just laziness or rushing to continue remake progress that's getting in the way.

On the topic of the remake's renders vs original version renders: After doing image comparisons of both versions, the use of AI filters on the new renders make certain aspects look worse or too fake/generic while other times they look notably better than the pre-remake renders so I don't have a strong feeling either way about it here (though the filtering does need to be toned down on some of the images). I will say a lot of changes were clearly made besides the AI filtering thus far and I can understand how people would be pissed if they were enjoying the original.

I may revisit this game out of curiosity if it makes substantial progress but I currently can't recommend the remake in it's current state. It does seem to be improving a bit as it progresses (though I personally didn't care for the content of the 4th episode) so not all hope is completely lost... but there's a lot to be done to even make this remotely worth playing despite a number of hot girls and largely attractive renders (and this is already the second attempt).

I tried real hard to appreciate this project. The game clearly has passion behind it, which is evident, yet I cannot endorse its quality.

To clarify my point, let me recount my experience with the game. I noticed this game and decided to give it a go, particularly because it was labeled as a “remake.” Perhaps it was my own-preconceived notions that soured my impression, but I must admit - when I encounter a “remake,” I expect it to be based on an existing, complete product, but perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.

Upon downloading and playing the remake, I was surprised that the content concluded in under two hours. “Okay, maybe I discovered the remake early in its development; surely, the original has more substance,” I thought. To my surprise, I found that the current remake essentially encompasses the entire first season of the original. Here I am, pondering - are my expectations too lofty, or is there genuinely so little to it? It pains me to feel this way. It's apparent a lot of love has been invested in this project, but it goes right by me because as soon as I begin to get immersed, it ends.

I must also highlight a significant aspect - the remake seems to be a soft rewrite of the narrative, rather than an enhancement of visuals or animations. Regarding animations, the original features basic ones, typical of many visual novel games. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, except that the remake has omitted them entirely, which seems like a strange decision. They may not have been amazing, but their replacement with static renders seems counterproductive.

In conclusion, while this game has clear passion and potential behind it, the overall experience feels incomplete and underwhelming. The brevity of the content, combined with the removal of key features like animations, makes it hard to fully enjoy or recommend. I genuinely wanted to appreciate the remake, but it ultimately falls short of providing the depth and polish one would expect. With further development and refinement, it might grow into something more, but for now, it leaves much to be desired.

I've played this game back when it first appeared on this site and I always enjoyed it. The story was intriguing to me and I instantly fall in love with the characters (Amber especially). So what I typically do if a game catches my attention I play a couple updates to see if it's something I would enjoy and wait for about 2-3 updates to fully dive into a game this was one of those instances.

I was kinda caught off guard by the Remake and slightly disappointed but, after waiting a couple updates for the remake I decide today to play the original work and the Remake. In my opinion the Remake is a 1000% better. I list a few reasons why I believe so.

The renders are so beautifully done the major thing for me was how sharp and perfect the backgrounds look a lot of people dislike Ai but i think it looks beautiful if it's done right, the Love Interests are all gorgeously rendered, the story has a better pace as well the added context with this remake really makes it stand out and, as someone who playing erotic games focusing on the story first I'm more emotionally involved with the characters in the Remake over the original.

The characters in my opinion are more lovable if that makes sense and with this Remake I feel more time was put into building more of a foundation with the love interests and not having it feel so rushed.

Now I'm in the minority when I say this not everyone was a fan of the Remake and it's understandable Remakes are hit n miss sometimes. All I ask through is give it a chance I was apprehensive at first and found myself comparing the original to the Remake. Once I stopped comparing and played the Remake at face value I found myself pleasantly surprised by how much I loved it.

Best of wishes to Yukana❤ on this project and all future endeavors can't wait to see what happens next!

I have not tried the remake yet, but the old version is very good so I have high hopes for this game!
Well, it's not all roses, the timeskip is a bit strange with characters feeling slightly out of character, maybe they can smooth that out in the remake..

I would give the remake between 3 and 4 stars if you could do that. Honestly the game feels split into two games. On the one hand are some pretty characters and their scenes that get more sensual over time. The sad part is there are not many animations but the dev shakes the picture instead. I think nothing would be better than that. It's really irritating to watch the picture just shake back and forth. The models deserve better than that.

The other part though is the drama with the previous love interests who both left the MC with little or no explanation. It is kind of depressing. The girl who almost signed up to be a lifetime hooker and then left with no explanation brings more negatives than positives. It feels like misery porn with the questions surrounding where she went. The same goes for his first GF. I almost wish there was an option to just move on and focus on the LIs around him. Constantly dragging up these women just keeps bringing up why they left and where they went. The MC has a bunch of interested women around but the story keeps bringing up these two depressing women.

I don't think there is a good excuse for either of those women so beating the player over the head with them seems pointless.

Anyway I think a 3.5 star rating is fair. The game could benefit from less heavy drama though. The remake is pretty good despite the dramatic story. I thought there was a lot more arguing in the original game so that is a plus.
Some of the model changes definitely improved the characters too. It's worth a play even with the sometimes depressing story.

I never played the original version, so this is a 'remake' review.

I hate this game...it made me cry, it tugged at the heartstrings and I was like a blubbering fool...emotion is such a weakness!!
However, the characters are unique, the dialogue is imaginative and thoughtful...the writing was actually quite philosophical in places...made me think about life and love, and losing everything...

I wasn't expecting much from this creation, however, it delivered a deep, meaningful experience, that I was absolutely invested in...certainly one of the better games I have played on this site.

It's worth mentioning that this is yet another "remake" situation. In the case of Hard to Love, this dev stopped progress entirely, went radio silent, then restarted the whole VN with little warning when people expected actual progress on the existing VN. So be warned. If they did it once, they will do it again.

Lets' talk about Hard To Love BEFORE the "remake" for a second. Before the remake, Hard To Love struggled narratively. The story was meandering and hard to follow as a telltale consequence of a lack of proper storyboarding and outlining. There was a jarring time skip between chapter 1 and chapter 2 where apparently MC had been fucking an LI in the interim the whole time which caused drama, but the drama didn't make a whole lot of sense because it wasn't fucking explained clearly... Let alone the shitty fact that eagerly anticipated sex scene took place offscreen in a porn game...

Secondly, the characters were notably unlikeable and unrelatable. Like every damn one of them. Characters with flaws are one one thing, but these characters were each shit human beings. Thirdly, the dev frequently made significant changes to the code mid-project resulting in saves breaking nearly every update.

All of those were fixable problems though. The saving grace for this VN - and the reason why so many people came back despite the problems - were the renders. The renders were fantastic and the girls were hot. And despite all the problems, the dev seemed to finally be stabilizing and making forward progress...

... Then they went quiet...

Suddenly when a new update was announced, it wasn't the next chapter like everyone was expecting but a starting-from-square-one reboot but with AI filters ruining the one good thing this VN had going for it...

Oh, but what about the other problems the VN had? Well...none of that actually got fixed. It's the same awkward storytelling and the characters are all still unlikeable cunts. But now in addition to all that the AI filters bring a whole slew of other problems such as:

• None of the characters look the same. Some faces change from one render to the next...
• Clothing with complex designs can't be redrawn consistantly by the AI so it looks like a living organism
• The usual AI uncanny valley shit like girls sometimes having 7 fingers on one hand, limbs fused to other limbs, pussies 2 inches up a thigh instead of.. you know.. where it's supposed to be...

Furthermore since the dev adopted this AI trash, they've completely abandoned animations altogether because AI can't be animated. So now instead of learning how to do proper sex animations, this dev has opted to just shake the entire screen to simulate movement during sex scenes. It looks embarassingly bad.

TLDR: The "AI remake" ruined the last good thing this VN had and none of the other problems were fixed. Gone are the gorgeous renders that set it apart from other VNs visually, and now it's an eyesore.

As such, I really can't recommend this dung heap to anyone that doesn't get a hardon from AI body horror and uncanny valley.

The games rework is an absolute masterpiece. This is the best example you can find of a well used AI in a VN. I really hope this becomes the norm because the renders are one of the best on the site. Can't recommend it enough!

If you rate the project, it is neutral, but there is no such assessment in the incentive.Render
and the characters are nice.The plot couldn't be more banal, GG is trying to get a job (like another GG in a similar college game, etc., etc.) in general, it's stuffy. To be fair, the dialogues in the game are not the most banal and not degenerate, the characters and the rendering are pleasant - but as they say , they have seen better .And the whole project can be described in words - I've seen better. Respect to the author that develops the project, but again a couple of buts.If you want an interesting story, you definitely don't come here, if you want a project where every couple of minutes there will be scenes of + 18 - you are also clearly not here (yes, there are cupcake scenes, but they occur every 20-30 minutes, depending on reading the text) And it took me 3 hours to complete 4 episodes. It should be understood that the project is in early access and episodes will be released.Only again, I think episode 5, which is due to be released in July, will be the last, although I may be wrong. If you really don't want to do anything, then you can recommend it at a discount, the rest of the Project Passion, Bare Witness and other top projects 18 + I fully appreciate the project when all the episodes come out, and now it's a pretty average novella + 18 where there are more dialogues at times than scenes +18

The plot is everywhere. The girls are cool, but the sex is very easy and not very well designed for a visual novel/game. Maybe when everything is ready, it will make more sense. and it's a shame that the old soulful and lively game is no longer there

Story premise is good, very disjointed in the flow. Sex .... have to wonder if the person writing ever had sex when the guy comes multiple times in the scene. Please, don't try and hold the reader up to unrealistic expectations. Sex scenes also don't flow with the story, just appear from out of nowhere. All that being said, better than a lot of the trash out there. If they put more story in it than flagrant sex, might be worth while. Right now though, no. Needs some proof reading as well (nothing major). Characters with the MC also change so quickly, that you have no investment in the people.

Hard to Love

The first season was epic. I read it and was a story filled with fun, love, humor, drama and sex with characters that genuinely made the reader care about what happens to them. It was so good
but instead of going forward why remake
recent updated unnessary
like to see moving forward to story line
maybe few side character

What a discombobulated mess. The only thing this game does right is the quality of renders on the models. Everything else is an example of how not to make one of these games.

The Story is just all over the place with all the flashbacks and past accounts that really leave you uninterested and just skipping through tons of dialogue that serves no purpose other than to bore the player. It's ok for some flashback scenes but this game sends you into a flashback for a whole chapter. You might as well be playing a different game and story. The author needs to learn to stay on target and focus more. The real interest is what is happening in the most recent time line and those relationships, not a bunch of randos fro your past.

People talk about animations not being great. What animations? There are none. Those scenes primarily just have the screen shake around a little bit with a static image. That's not an animation. In one scene you didn't even know you put your dick into a girl until later on during the static image when she mentions something about it.

And on that note about sex scenes, they are done very poorly. Often then are just skipped. You get some build up and then get into the sex scene and then the next frame the scene is over and you're in the aftermath. There is one scene where two women ( won't go into details as not to spoil) tell you that you are about to experience something very few people ever get the chance to experience. It gets you really excited for the encounter. The game shows a couple of pictures of it beginning and then the scene ends and it's over. What?!?!?! You don't even get to enjoy the most awesome hyped up thing.

Save yourself some time and take a pass on this one. I don't know how this thing could possibly be a remake. A remake of what? How bad was it before?

I really enjoyed the remake.
Seemed necessary, but I got really involved with the current progress of the game... so unless he speed up, I really can't give a better rating...
Overall, I found interesting how the characters approach with the MC... it's not forced as usually is...
They're pretty, even if he's using AI, it's a good AI, so I'm quite satisfied...

Really loving the remake so far. The art is astounding and the storyline is quite interesting. Would like some animated scenes though, hopefully they are coming soon in a near update. Looking forward to more!