I've said many times before, i can't draw anything to save my life and i also never studied art any more than necessary for regular schooling. So there will be people a lot more knowledgeable than me on this matter, but i couldn't help but notice that even tho human art has a history dating back tens of thousands of years and it kept evolving with us through space, time and cultures, there is still a distinct lack of organic art styles that depict anything from 100% top down.
Now, as an amateur i propose the idea, that this phenomenon can be explained by the simple fact that it looks quite ridiculous to an average person.
Of course, some things, especially in porn, can look great from a top-down view: women on all fours, a BJ from a POV angle, etc. but for those to work, the subject of the picture needs to be big enough for details to show.
I'm consistently less critical about the simplified art style than the average of this forum, but looking at those pictures, i honestly had to check two or three times to be able to tell when Sabia was standing or kneeling. In a few cases i had to double check to see which way she was facing, because i couldn't tell her ass and tits from one another.
But I'll admit, that this new perspective gives them a lot of options for scenes. From a top-down view, it's easy to arrange simplified art to represent characters and with a bit of limited movement or some small sprites of clothing removed a lot of different scenes can be arranged. Now, if only we could view those scenes from a better angle after they are started... You know guys, like an RPGM game where the default mini characters move around and when a scene starts a really talented artist draws something sexy and cool to make the action look better...
Are they seriously spending 4-5 months to create the feeling of an RPGM game without the added quality art?
While we are at this, topic, 5 months after the release of the last patch they are just finishing up the "main quest" and more to a quest that is a bad end and can only be viewed if the player intentionally messed things up? A sexy bad end can be good and there were already a few in the game and the last time they did it with Kira, everyone here said that it was sexy, but they wish it was not tied to a game over.
So again, the main story quest will have sketch art only, the second third of the trio will be tied to a bad end that most people skipped over already, they are breaking their own record of "most words in a quest" for a 4th time in a row and 5 months of development went to imitating the worst part of the RPGM games in Renpy.
Oh, before i forget, this main quest is once again a build up for something interesting to happen in the future. For the 5th time in a row.
Seriously, Hreinn: you are working too hard. Just get Nomo to draw something simple and hot in his full quality style with just the basic variations, nothing extra. Limit Monsinne to 2-4000 words at most and for the first time in 3 years, don't invent a one-off new mechanic to stretch NDS's abilities and free time to it's limits. Push this out in 30-40 days and prepare your soaps and towels because you will shower in more praise than you have seen since 0.4.
I'm getting a headache just typing this all down.