Games where that is the case are almost always a massive drag to complete, once you beat the midgame there's no challenge so it's just a braindead chore to get the end of the story.I don't know how this gonna help, but some days ago I hear game difficulty flow are best when they go 1, 3, 2
It means the hardest should be in the middle, and at the very end difficulty dip a little to get that power fantasy going.
The issue in this game isn't difficulty so much as pacing, which falls apart after your first reasonably successful run. First run, you have no stats and might struggle to do much but everything is new and interesting, and the next couple of runs you overcome the challenges and unlock the majority of the content, but every run after that is just menial repitition to maintain your stats while you unlock the remaining (largely mutually exclusive) achievements and scenes.
I think the slow accrual of permanent stats in addition to the current system of retaining some percentage of the previous run's stats would be ideal (and fitting to the premise of the story). But if that is an issue to implement, perhaps stats should simply reset based on a proportion of the highest value reached at the end of any previous run? This would eliminate the need to perform the exact same grind every run just to maintain a baseline for the next run, while unlocking each of the lose virginity to... achievements, etc. Currently, the game effectively punishes you for ending a run early even if you as a player know for a fact that there's nothing new left to unlock that run.I know, it's became a bit too easy for my tastes as well, but people have complained about it being too grindy, so I'm struggling to balance it out.
v0.33 is basically ready and will be posted today. I will probably increase the difficulty and lower the mental retain base for the next version after this one, what you suggested makes sense but might be a bit complicated to implement, so I'll see what I can do, hoping that new content will smooth the grind enough to actually make the difficulty increase a positive change!