Full discloser, your not gonna run into the following issues on a casual run. Corrupt Karryn to your hearts content and do the minigames only when you want to see something specific or new, not for the stats or money. But I, massive M that I am, have decided to due a 'virgin' run on Warden difficulty. And it brings the numerous flaws in the 'game' portion of this porn to focus.
I've played this one for a longggg time, it's been an experience seeing it grow and the team should feel proud to have made something this quality, good voice acting to. The combat is simple, but it invites experimentation and can be quite difficult on the higher settings; prison management is a balancing act between short term necessity and long term gain and the passives are a nice system that help flesh out the 'corruption' side of this game. There's nothing I don't like about this game.... but there's to much of it.
The higher difficulties can be a challenging prospect... in the early game; by end game, a good build can outpace the enemies even at the highest difficulty. Making riots and bosses a chore. Why? Because stats raise with minigames, and if your smart then your doing the minigames... for hours upon hours.
Every floor has at least one job, each job can take 5-15 minutes to complete and if your grinding for money or stats then you'll due all of them everyday except for the days you challenge the new floor. Which takes 2-3 days to complete, when you generally have 10-20+ days to clear each floor. See the issue? At the rate I'm going I'll have sunk a good 50+ hours into this one run!
The minigames aren't particularly engaging, especially if your Karryn isn't a slut (yet -.-). Your stats and skills don't effect them in any meaningful way and the tedium only increases with time for most jobs. The ability to grind them for money and stats also kills most of the tension with edicts, as you can compensate for lacking funds or a higher difficulty without having to weigh opportunity cost. I don't even hate the minigames, they can be a bit fun and Karryn is sexy; but they detract from every other element that I like in these types of games.
My advice to the devs, remove the stat boosts from minigames and speed them up... by ALOT (the bar minigame is my go to sleep aid nowadays). Decrease the money you can get from minigames them without selling your body by a fair margin while removing edict points entirely. Decrease the time you have to conquer each floor while decreasing riot chance, but substantially increasing riot difficulty . The game now provides a challenge for 'pure' Karryn players who have to manage short term and long term needs. Do you focus on personal power or economic gains, is the money from an edict worth the increased chance or danger of riots, safety/opportunity. The game now holds a real challenge for 'pure' Karryn players who will need to struggle to afford the price of purity. Meanwhile 'corrupt' Karryn players are no longer forced to spend days doing nothing but sleeping so they have enough Edict points to actually use the money Karryn has... appropriated and can spend their time 'reforming' these scum („ಡωಡ„) .
It says a lot about the quality of the rest of the game that the minigames don't stop me from playing at all. As porn, this easily gets a 9/10, very sexy (if very grindy); as a game, I would struggle to give it a 5/10, the tedium kills any and all pacing and urgency.
If your looking for a good challenge run, then I recommend a sex only run. Limit yourself to only sexual techniques and try to complete it before a certain slut level. That way you get both sex and gameplay, shocking I know.
PS: For a virgin run, don't upgrade the bar selection until your satisfied with it's reputation. Tips are the main source of minigame income and pale ale is weak as shit, so you can spam drink all night without issue @^▽^@ .