Is there a list of characters that will have their own routes/one shots with Bell and which of those will overlap with others?
I've seen the Lena + Samira + Aisha + Hestia one, any other combos? Also which characters are cockblocked by other characters?
Current ones are: Hestia, Eina, Liliruca, and Airmid. There is also some random NSFW, Demeter and Brothel sprinkled in.
Near Future ones are: Artemis, Tiona.
Then, there are the obvious ones from Season 2 (Haruhime, Aisha, and so on).
All of these, except for Airmid (and in future Aisha & Brothel) can be done in Story Mode.
Obviously the dev should make the game he wants to make but I will add my voice to the choir and say it seems like a missed opportunity to not go for a harem game given that the actual original novel/anime is one (although in the classic shounen way, where he is too clueless to realize everyone he meets wants him) and Bell repeatedly dreams about having one.
As you have said, it's a "harem", whose meaning is completely different in that context.
An anime featuring a big cast of women is defined as harem, whether the MC (or the women themselves) are interested in each other.
In this case, most women are interested in Bell and he can potentially be interested in them.
The problem is, not all at once.
While I could see some of those women willing to share Bell, not all of them would want that. Each character has their own personality, and as a fan of the series myself, I want to keep it that way.
Some people might say this is a parody and I should just do it, but the issue is that while I am fine with changing the story to fit whether narrative I need (Artemis as one of the main heroines, for instance), changing a character too much no longer makes them that character.
I am already limited by graphics (Eina in anime looks different, for instance) and by the fact I am only an average fan (therefore I do not know each character perfectly), if I start making them behave differently too, would they still be that character? I do not really think so.
Bell, in canon, is interested only in Ais.
The harem thing comes from his grandpa (Stories of heroes and harems), and Hermes occasionally pushes Bell towards that goal as well.
Anyway, a route/event guide would be greatly appreciated since I do enjoy the game but keeping up multiple playthroughs blind seems tricky and time consuming.
It is pretty straightforward, you can get most of the content by doing the Story Mode a few times and picking different options.
The Gallery will tell you a hint of the CG you are missing... If you did the Story Mode a couple of times and you are missing things like Airmid or Brothel, then that's because that content is locked behind gameplay (Normal Difficulty or up).
If I remember right the "official" walkthrough is part of their $10 tier and nobody has leaked even older versions of that.
That's mostly because if someone asks me "how to find cg x, cg y and cg z" I'll help right away.
However, unlike my previous projects, the Walkthrough is needed less in this one... And in my future project, it'll be needed even less.
Winterfire said about adding more dungeon events like hotsprings later down the line which might be gameplay exclusives too unless he takes sympathy on the VN players.
It is not really about sympathy x).
Some events are tied to gameplay mechanics, so without some heavy rewriting, it becomes quite complicated to separate them.
The Hotspring event is actually one of the secrets I am planning, so it will be harder to find even during normal gameplay.
Of course I realize that too many of those would be frustrating for the players, so I will limit them in number, and I will add some cues (Auditory ones, in the case of Hotsprings). It is also an easter egg of the OVAs.
Thanks a lot. yeah I was just worried that I would be locking myself out of anything too important early on without knowing it. I'll see and hope for the best then.
The choices in this game are fewer, and the scenes you get from locations are not limited by time or other such things.
You cannot really lock yourself out of anything, in the sense that you'll unlock things relative to the choices you make, but not everything the game has to offer (until you make different choices).
