Harem Villa is a worthy try that have some of the basis to became a hit.
I'm the kind of person that likes to give it a go and try every game that is out there, and the games that are launching in F95 are not the exception.
I gotta admit that the intro is quite amusing with all the fuss over the "sound effects" being represented in plain text. That was original, unexpected and truly funny in the way that was presented.
Currently to date, the game is on version v0.3, but in the very first version of the game there was only presented the Mother, her friend and the daughter with no ero content. None the less it started a story that made some sense and sounded reasonably "real". That caught my attention as I started being on the lookout for the next releases to see how it would develop.
The non-ero CG content itself it is pretty good although it get a bit deteriorated with blurriness in 4K Full-screen displays\resolution or a little "broken"\pixelated in anything lower that 1024x728. My advice is either lock-out those specific resolutions so we won't be able to choose them, or (the ideal) fix the issues...
Although it is still a very much work-in-progress kind of game with many glitches, the quests and the way the story can be progressed is finally addressed in this version and that makes it, believe it, is awesome! One of the glitches that haunted anyone who played any of the previous versions is the fact that when you'd "pick" more than two things to do (ie.: buy lovotion and look for Sandra's phone) the game would enter on a never-ending loop at the time of completion of any task that would lock us away from progressing onwards.
The new usages of the in-game smart-phone was done cleverly but not original. I do have to give it points for making it easy to use as the developers tend to over-simulate a phoneOS complicating it's usage a thousand fold. So, kudos for that!
The ero-CG has good quality but suffers the same problems as the non-ero CG I addressed before. They are of good quality, but in a game like this I guess I was expecting the actual live-render of all the characters making us of all that power that lies within the Unity3D engine. Since it's not, it kind of feels like an overkill for what you can do in the game. A simple use of the SDL library or even GameMaker would allow the same results and gameplay at a much lower developing time, faster learning curve and with the same features and performance with less machine minimal requirements needed that the Unity3D inheritable brings. I'm not convinced of the trade off that was made.
A good example of a game that tries the same somewhat approach but makes use of the Unity3D render engine to fully render and interact with the environment in a successful way (nowadays) is "The Twist" (currently in v0.0.9d). In "The Twist", not only the characters but also the objects and rooms are rendered in real time and they look very good if you have a FullHD and even better for those who have a 4K monitor. It was a good bet and a good build on that and I think it would work splendid in this game too.
I'd give this game a 4 out of 5 in general appraisal, but it still need a lot of work and I'm yet to see a complete game in Unity3D that didn't end up deviating of the initial ideal or cut-short to close-down the project sooner.
In terms of sound... well... there's ambient music and that's it so I'll give it a 3 out of 5 because it works as a filler but not much more than that. Still, I don't feel like I need it since the textual sfx are quite funny as I said before.
The non-ero-CG I give a 4 out of 5 for the good effort to simplify the outcome and good quality overall but it's not able to achieve that great quality of the true 3D render.
The ero-CG I give a 3 out of 5 not only it suffers the same issues as the non-ero-CG but also it lacks diversity as most actions with the NPCs are made through 3-4 pictures per full interaction and some just 2 making the character just stand there with a character have much so say or act and little to represent that losing that feeling of immersiveness. Also, since they are just static pictures, it's common to have a lot of space but get the character cut in some manner. Although many of the pictures have been remade and that issue have been mostly fixed there's still a few that are not and an example of this is in some of the pictures of the first event of Celine you find her arm cutted vertically; or Lexa's third event with a arm and leg cutted and this is not because of the lack of space in the screen no matter what your resolution.
To the UI I give it a 4 out of 5. It's simple, easy to learn and functional. Not the best looking but I like functional better than good looks.
Although I can not say the same for the user experience in interacting with the game. Not only it lack a single button to push and skip the text you are reading over and over again while grinding affection from the NPCs, to help you skip the texts with the keyboard you, constantly, have to make sure the dialog back is clicked on before using the space-bar to fast-forward a line, other wise it would just not work. No error! Just doesn't do anything in those situations. That is something that gets on my nervs and that is why I give it a 2 out of 5 in the interaction.
Summary:
General: 4/5
Sound: 3/5
NonEroCG: 4/5
EroCG: 3/5
UI: 4/5
Interaction: 2/5
