Thanks to our local hero, hotguy11, i checked out the new quest too, but only on the shaman and dom routes so far (damn, i'll have to make a third save). So here are my thoughts:
The good:
I really liked how Ylva inadvertently got Sabia into deeper mess on the shaman route and then she continued to be oblivious to the consequences. That was nice.
I also liked the dom scene in the hot springs where Sabia decided to add a bit of challenge to the process. A good combination.
And i laughed at Dul and Brug's ascension to the status of sex god. Seriously, 5-6+ hours, 4 days in a row? And they want more? These guys give sandbox male MCs a run for their money.
The bad:
Am i the only one who thinks that sex is best when it's fun? Dirty, kinky and fun? Call me soft, but my favorite scenes involve a dom Sabia smiling to her partner or sub Sabia red and pouting because she's been called out for enjoying herself a bit too much. In the two routes i tried she is either left dissatisfied or abused. Is this the current meta of fetishes? Did i miss something?
The dialogue occasionally feels like people are just talking past each other. That is certainly a thing in real life, but writers tend to avoid it, because it can be very disorienting to read. And i'm fairly certain that in one conversation between Sabia and the Shaman, the order of the lines have been mixed up (shaman route).
Communication. Just checking the past few pages, i see dozens of posts along the lines of "only this after 9 months?". Well, no, this is only a third of the content and in theory the rest will follow within a few weeks. But those of us who know this only do so because we happened to catch that one post here 10 pages ago. This is a great example of how poor communication from Hreinn can hurt their own interests. And they will still have to deliver on time too.
The ugly:
In my opinion the smaller, modular scenes are a great tool to spice up quests or the "daily life" of our protagonist and Hreinn is certainly trying to do that in this patch. However, just as in 0.12 i feel like dumping all the small scenes in a large chunk kind of clutters the experience. I would prefer it a bit more spread out, and with the energy requirements, that might have been the plan too. This might be an issue with the quest-based releases and maybe it won't be so jarring once all three parts drop.
In short, i like the main scene and the ideas behind this quest, but the execution could have been a lot better in my opinion.
