Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell have they done to the second act??? That has to be some of the worst storytelling i have ever seen. The dialogue is sometimes impossible to follow or just laughably bad and many dialogues/quests seem to happen for no good reason, don't lead anywhere or make you go in circles. And this isn't because of the new, not yet implemented events in the first act, I'm aware of those.
A good example would be the lead-up to the drink mixing challenge with Snape. It basically starts with Marcus thinking that it's unlikely that Snape would just give him the potion he wants, so he has to challenge him somehow. Then he proceeds to meet with Snape and asks him for the potion, but Snape declines as expected, because he suspects that Marcus is up to no good. However he isn't mean or overly negative towards Marcus when he declines. Cool, makes sense so far...
Marcus then asks Minerva for help, but she just tells him that he would have to be a woman to seduce Snape, which Marcus obviously isn't so it won't work. Ok, asking her for help still kind of made sense, but what was the point of this other than wasting time? Literally nothing comes of this dialogue with her.
Now it gets really fucking ridiculous.
He sits down with his picture (Sally) and complains that Snape "hates him" even though Snape basically just said he doesn't trust Marcus with that potion. He then comes to the glorious conclusion that he somehow has to outdo snape. OH NO SHIT SHERLOCK we literally startet this whole thing with Marcus thinking he has to challenge Snape to get that potion...
But hey it gets worse. Marcus then decides to randomly listen to some students conversations, because that might somehow give him an idea on how to challenge Snape. OK could work, but those conversations would have to be about some weakness of Snape right? NOPE
All the available student dialogues are just random unrelated blabber and then he just stumbles onto the recipes for a bunch of drinks and that's it. Thats literally it, he just randomly finds the fucking magazine, that will help him challenge Snape.
It's like they aren't even trying to build a coherent storyline. This was literally a bunch of random events and dialogues that happen for no reason other than to waste time and justify the drink mixing minigame.
But this is just one of many bad changes, they also took the "Passing Exam via Mind Control" 1:1 from the previous story, but now i feels like it happens out of nowhere.
It's basically 1. Marcus: "I have to give the girls lessons to help them pass the exam" 2. Marcus: "Hey I'll help you pass the exam" Girl: "K thx, bye" 3. Girl: -arrives on day of exam- Marcus: -proceeds to insta mind control them-
No buildup, no explanation, nothing. It just has to happen because they copy pasted it from the previous story, where it actually made sense.
In the early stages the dialogue in this game might have been way too long and boring, but at least it kinda made sense. And when they started slimming it down recently it actually became pretty decent. This new version of the second act feels like playing through the ruins of the original story. I think they made a huge mistake by completely rewriting everything and then hamfisting old parts of the story into the new one. The overall dialoge quality also got significantly worse, no idea what happened there, maybe a different writer. I hope they can somehow fix this clusterfuck...
So I understand the point of the steps leading up to the Snape challenge even if I don't like the way that the Sad Crab addressed it. It is all a roundabout way of letting us know that in this variant of the Potterverse:
Snape is gay. When the MC speaks with Minerva about how to convince Snape to help him, she explains that if the MC is seeking her advice as a woman, he is not headed in the right direction. Likewise, one of the students in the hallway also hints at the idea that
Snape is gay. There may be larger plot points that will follow from this that are not fleshed out yet, but in this update, I think that the point of these clues is to point the player to the correct drink to make
Blowjob. After successfully winning the challenge, the MC mocks Snape by telling him that the flavor of the drink should be familiar to him. That is a lot of story and grind to pick the correct recipe unless I am right about this...
I am going out on a limb here, but I think that Sad Crab is trying to weave a literary theme in Act 2 that each individual's motivations are driven almost entirely by their baser desires. For most of the women in the story, this boils down to being sexually satisfied by the MC. For most of the male characters, the desire is for women they cannot be with. Hagrid, Sally (the portrait), Merlin (the portrait), and now perhaps Filch, are looking to the MC to help them sate their lust, even if it is only to provide masturbatory material.
Snape is the exception as he is a male dealing with his homoerotic feelings towards the MC. In any case, these NPCs continue to assist the MC, even against their own best interests, because it is all about sex.
As another commenter posted, if you prefer more H and less exposition and fewer mini-games, this game is not going to be your cup of tea. This game has numerous fun visuals and a bit of actual H action, but both are weighed heavily towards the quality not quantity mindset. Also, the pace of development is pretty glacial.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to writing fiction: begin writing and the ending will come to you vs. plot out the entire story and then put it to paper. Because we do not typically read books in installments, we are not necessarily aware of whether the ending of the story was conceived before the typing began. Most of the developers' business models, however, require them to release in installments. This means that if they belong to the "begin writing and the ending will come" school of thought, players have to live with their re-writes. Also, if a particular character or plot element does not please your paying patrons, the temptation to change the direction of the story midstream may be too great to stay on course, even if it means changing the ending you intended.
None of this should be interpreted as approval for how this project has rolled out. I too have been frustrated (in many senses of the word) by repeated starts, stops, and reversals. I have supported Sad Crab for a time via Patreon and have likewise unsubscribed during times when development was down significantly. Perhaps there is a better model for game development that allows developers to be fairly compensated for their work; I just don't know what it is.
