I've waited for a long time to try out this game but jumped in after the latest update (0.13), I've only seen good reviews and recommendations so my expectations were high to be honest.
I've played many AVNs, maybe too many, so I have certain expectations nowadays when trying out new games.
I didn't really enjoy the game, but powered through it for the sake of completing it once.
The visuals are quite dated, granted it gets better later on(and some reworked early scenes), but still wouldn't call it great by today's standards.
The animations are bad, no way around it, I've probably missed a lot since I've only played it once, but the ones I saw were quite bad and didn't change my opinion after unlocked the gallery and checked all the scenes, so if you want to play the game for the lewd content I'd advise against it.
I personally don't really care about animations, I'm fine without them, to be honest I rather play an AVN with no animations than have bad animations, but sadly this one has the latter* (edit: said former before the edit) so the lewd scenes are quite a letdown.
The story didn't really grab my attention, basically it's full of drama and drama baiting. Yes, the game is called 'Intertwined' but please, it's just too much drama and too much realism in some aspects of the game, some people enjoy it (probably a lot and I'm in the minority), but for me it's just too much and it gets quite frustrating after a while.
There is far too many LIs and far too many branches and because of this the dev time is going to be (if not already) astronomical and the story will only move forward very slowly. Granted I've only played it once, but it wasn't really a long playthrough and this game is more than 4 years old. Sure there are more routes, but I'm not replaying games, so it doesn't matter for me.
Just a few more things I didn't like:
- at the beginning of the game Emily (the mom) is somewhat sexualized (MC looks her up and down, spies on her changing, MC can kiss her, etc...) but she is not an LI, later on the MC can set her up with another guy (or a woman if not with the guy?) and they'll eventually fuck which is skippable but it still happens if the player chooses so (this is the only game I've played where such a scene is shown in the game and (admittedly) I've played a lot of AVNs), not sure what's the purpose of this scene at all
- some of the LIs doesn't even have any lewd scenes in this 4.5 years old game but Emily (the mom) gets one before them, which is baffling to me, I think it only exists to anger her hardcore fans..
- lots of the LIs only purpose is to create drama and to bait the player into 'hah, gotcha' moments since later on it'll cause drama with other LIs and closes their path even though no one is exclusive yet (???), so it's better only touch an LI if she's the only one in your whole playthrough, otherwise prepare for breakups/drama
- Erynn's story is quite infuriating as a childhood friend trope, she loved(?) the MC but somehow she gets baited into blackmail with a guy and the blackmailer likes to constantly remind the MC that he is only getting sloppy seconds after him, so I've lost all interest in her as an LI
- lot's of wasted dev time, this is my personal opinion but after reading some of the comments after finishing my playthrough it looks like I've missed a lot of optional LIs whose purpose is nothing else but to create drama for no other reason than to prolong the story. Additionally I don't care about Emily's (the mom) love life, she is not an LI, I don't want to hear or see about it, why is it necessary to have the mom look for a partner AND to show her fuck someone, still baffled by that...
All in all if you like drama and you don't care about the lewd aspect of an AVN this game could still be enjoyable for you, I personally don't care about highschool drama or to guess who is the father/mother of the 11th newly introduced LI, it gets tiring after a while. But sure as hell everything is intertwined, there is no doubt about that.