During my time playing this game, I've felt like dropping this multiple times and I've definitely skipped at least 50% of the text in this game. So, why am I rating this game so high you ask? It's because that some of the scenes that do go hard, are so amazing at times. The ending of Chapter 3 and the contents of Chapter 4 are some of the best writing I've ever experienced.
Some of my complains with the game would be:
1. There really are too many characters in this game and that you can't really ignore them. You need to see the events for multiple characters in order to continue with the main story. (This is where majority of my skipping happened). Even though I'm skipping a bunch of text, I can tell that a lot of these characters feel so alive.
2. Using the third party hints tool is pretty much mandatory to progress in this game.
3. The jump scares and philosophy stuff occurs too much. This is definitely a case of "Less is More" imo. That being said, some of the good horror scenes are really anxiety and thriller inducing.
If there was a version of this game but with mostly important story events and less character development events, I think this game would be so much better.
I played this game a year or two ago and never came back to it, but I stumbled upon it a few days ago and forgot why I left this game in the dust. Well, after starting a new game, I'm beginning to remember exactly what irked me.
As everyone's said, the writing and general "plotlines" are pretty good. But I'm finding it extremely difficult to relate to the MC and his choices. I don't know if the dev wrote him to have Asperger's in mind or what, but there are countless situations where I'm thinking "Why the fuck would you ever say that?" or "Who actually talks like this?"
Additionally, a majority of the general dialogue for all of the characters, not just the MC, feels like a stream of consciousness with no substance to it. It just feels like things are being said just because they can be said.
I hope I'm not the only one thinking this because it seems pedantic, but it's something I picked up on immediately and I can't get over.
Otherwise, the game is certainly better than most in it's category. However, it does fall into the trap many sandbox-y porn VNs fall victim to as well, which is grinding repeated interactions for arbitrary points.
I found out what the horror tag was for.
Despicable sandbox, no choice on MC behavior, etc. I don't like loli at all, but I saw the notes, as well as the horror tag. So I gave it a chance.
The beginning is nice, there's a "horror" vibe that quickly disappears (I haven't finished the game, maybe there's more horror afterwards).
You get the occasional flash of image, but that's about it.
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I'm modify my message to add that from the start everything is unhealthy. The mc is a p*do who bizarrely compliments minors (you can find their ages in the Care packages) and clearly wants to have relations with them. In short, it's just unhealthy and doesn't make you want to continue the game.
In the end, I'd say that's the horror of the game, playing a p*do.
This game is a hamster wheel of emo cynicism, and yet it's hard to look away.
If that sentence feels polarizing, good, so is the game. Whether or not that's on purpose is arguable. I usually try and judge a game more on how well it fulfills the developer's implied intentions rather than how well it satisfies my personal preferences. Thus, I would overall call this a good game, but only because there are enough green flags littered throughout to be worth racing through all the red ones.
+ tons of content
+ skilled writing
+ good designs and details
+ lots of unique and deep characters
- everything else
Gameplay: 1 / 5
It's the worst kind of visual novel, the one with clickity sandbox grinding. You will be repeating a lot of nothing to get anything new. Repeating the average/good sexual content between filler yields no benefit but to keep you sane as you circle this bizzare toilet of an experience. The skip key isn't just a friend with benefits anymore, here it is your bestgirl waifu.
You'd think by playing for a while that it's a sandbox with choices. But it's a fake sandbox where to get any content you have to do all the content. Nothing is actually optional except how long you're willing to put up with the grind to access new scenes.
Is it bad on purpose? Maybe. But that doesn't make it any more fun, and in fact makes it worse than a normal bad game, but we'll get to that in the story section.
Sex: 3.5 / 5
The dev definitely has writing skill. And while they squander most of that skill on stretched out, repetitive, existential dread, it does occasionally bleed into some sexy dialogue and well written sex scenes that are also nicely rendered and have a lot of nice details.
But like the rest of the game, it comes with a catch. The dev clearly understands how these games work as the whole thing is a dark parody of a hentai visual novel, and this absolutely shows in the sex scenes as well. You can't write and execute this kind of stuff without having played a bunch of it yourself. Yet the goal here seems to be to make you feel guilty and shitty about liking this style of game at all. Rather than celebrating the degeneracy, Lessons in Love would rather scold you for it. It only lets you get away with enough getting off to keep you playing.
I would unironically tag this as humiliation fetish porn, but not because the characters in the game sexually humiliate the protagonist (though this does happen as well a bit). It's actually because the dev sexually humiliates the player. Am I into that? No. But somehow there's enough enjoyable stuff around in the 3/4 of current content I've gotten through that the rest didn't feel like a total waste of time as a porn game, but it does slip off the edge it tries to ride often.
Story: ? / ?
What a beautiful mess. It's like slowly and painfully excavating a buried dinosaur and hoping all the bones are there and that they fit.
The theme of the game is guilt. Prepare for a lot of assumptions and a bit of projecting, but the more I think about it and the more I play the more convinced I become. Just know that my major beef with Lessons in Love is not that it failed, because I'm pretty sure all of what I'm reading into is intentional, but that I philosophically hate what that intention is. It is a compliment to say that the effect it had on me was definitely personal and emotional, just not in the way I think it was supposed to be. There's depth, but that depth stems from a shallow premise that I fundamentally disagree with.
Lessons in Love had a chance to be that top tier horror, silly dimension hopping, deep thought experiment game, but it refuses to stay in its lane and prods the 4th wall until it bleeds by being judgmental, not about the actions the insufferable MC takes, but about you in the driver's seat despite having no actual choices in that dark path. The plot's refusal to bend, while artistically consistent, is just so off-putting and unrelatable that I can't say it got beyond interesting to something great, though it comes close on many occasions.
It succeeds in that it wants you to feel shitty and powerless and frustrated. It fails in that it has nothing else to say about those things except that you should feel them. We all become Maya by the end, hopeless that our experience was worth it, and bored by the clichés the game criticizes yet does nothing to fix or adapt.
It just wants to wade in the mud; complaining about all the AVNs while intentionally just being another one.
And maybe all the pointlessness is the point. But that point being made does not make for a worthwhile experience in a porn game. This kind of story just isn't what I imagine anyone being on this site for. I've got enough deep shitty feelings IRL.
If you're into it, all power to you. I see all the pieces that would be worth loving, but the game tells me not to love it, so I don't.
The "rewrite" event specifically disgusted me from the game.
Having to select "Shrine" x time to exit the "broken world loop" is stupid and unnecessarily frustrating.
Plus. the in-game walkthrough is poorly designed
I regret speding so much time on this game
However, i commend the incredible writing work; there is lot of content
This is one of the best examples of where a concept is simply stretched as far as humanly possible. I think in the first 2 years of development, this AVN was worthy of praise for being unique: it was one of the few that was actually a pastiche of a genre, this project with clear talent and effort that took the tropes of the "teacher corrupting students" AVN and gave us a far darker tone, a level of depth and nuance.
But now, in 2024, this game serves as a lesson to prospective developers that can be summed up simply as: the devil's in the details. From the outset, there's a level of polish presented that many other AVNs fail to have. There's an air of mystery, there's conversations that flow naturally, visually this is some of the best for the style. But the longer you go, the more you realise there isn't really any more beyond it. 6 hours in you will have the same air of mystery. The same flow in conversations. This AVN is like walking on a treadmill. Sure you're moving, but you're functionally in the same spot.
It's this strange example of a game that DOES have a good amount of sexual content, but also wants to focus on a slow burn. The slow burn is depressing and bleak to such an intense degree, yet you're meant to want to get your rocks off a couple scenes after. Do most people pop a boner soon after someone cries about missing their likely dead husband?
I don't blame or criticise anyone who likes this game. For all the slow burn, there's plenty of content to get into after the first couple hours. However, the promise of something more, something greater, ultimately feels unfulfilled. It's as if it started as a dark joke about the genre, and then became a dark joke about itself, the Ouroboros of AVNs. There's only so many clock motifs, mental breakdowns, "man I'm such a piece of shit" comments and depressing backstories you can read before you just get tired of the repetition.
Ultimately, this is one of the most tiring AVNs I've tried to read, with philosophy that never goes beyond the juvenile edge lord who read a couple quotes from Nietzsche and watched Clockwork Orange once. There are more enjoyable uses of your time.
I'm torn between a 4 and a 5 star for this game. The reason being, I very much enjoyed playing and there is plenty of content for it only being 0.36...like holy shit it just keeps going. I love getting lost in games. That being said, there are some parts that are just waaay out in left field and it kinda took me out of it and I found myself skimming once or twice. I'm making it a 5 star review because I DO recommend trying it out and I can tell a lot of effort was put into the game, and I will continue to play future updates, but it is very much not going to be everybody's cup of tea.
As for the game itself, this is not a quick fap kind of game. There is plenty of build up, there are a LOT of characters, and each of them feels unique in a way that is very impressive. No other game seems to have so many love interests that actually have content. Not to mention content that is well written.
Because yes, the story is well written. That being said, the actual "story" can be hard to follow at times if you're not paying close attention. BUT, even if you aren't necessarily following the overarching plot, each of the characters has their own story that is rather engaging.
The thing about those stories though, is that this game is exceedingly dark, despite plenty of humorous moments (including a LOT of 4th wall breaks). There is some taboo content, considering that the MC is a teacher at an all girl's high school. Yeah I know that trope is used a lot but in this one it's very much unlike the others. Most of the girls are of...questionable age, but those ages are never explicitly stated. There are also many different potential triggers, including, but not limited to: Sexual assault, physical assault, self harm, suicide, PTSD, eating disorders, grooming, child abuse, death and substance abuse.
The MC is also very much a narcissistic sociopath, but is at least self aware of the fact that he's fucked up for trying to fuck a bunch of high school girls. You can see his development over time, however, and how he slowly starts to care about the girls. That being said, he doesn't ever really stop being a narcissist while still showing sociopathic tendencies. (He cares about the girls, but at the end of the day, he still wants to sleep with them and will do pretty much whatever is necessary to do so.)
I found myself appreciating the fact that the MC stayed true to his character, but also occasionally wishing he wasn't quite as fucked up as he is. But that's just part of the game. It's an extreme roller coaster of emotions that I often found to effect me even outside of the game. It's very heavy and not for the faint of heart. If you struggle with certain mental or physical disorders or have any triggers that I listed above, you might want to consider a different game. But it's a journey unlike any other I've found on this site so far.
TDLR: It's a very good game. It's very long and engaging. But it's not a quick fap, nor is it easy or lighthearted. It still has plenty of humor (including a lot of 4th wall breaks) but lots of dark content and triggers. Proceed at your own risk. But if you do, you're in for a hell of a ride.
Okay so i’ve been playing this game for about three years or so every update and I actually quite enjoyed it. The characters are very good. The dialogue is nice etc. but as more and more events pop out it feels like it’s getting lazier and lazier like the writer doesn’t know what he’s doing or what his plan is with this game, which is okay I didn’t mind it at first the game being very long and such.
I subscribed to Selebus subscribestar and the bonus content you get a brief description about a few characters and it turns out one of them is 15 years old and she has a lot of sex scenes in the game. this really freaked me out because I thought they were all 18+ since they were in dorms and such and it said they were all 18 in the subscribe star. Fiction or not this is basically a pedophilia game it turns out all the students in the game are 14-16 average being 15, Rin talked about being moved up a grade which would make her 14 aswell as chika saying she was held back which would make her 16 aswell as selebus stated in the bonus content of her.
I don’t see the problem in making them all of age, since they are in dorms and don't have parental figures. also the lead character you play as is 31 so basically this game is about grooming your freshmen students. Other then that this novel was written really well and the characters are all amazing, its just disappointing
I have spent over 100 hours playing this game. It's addicting. Amazing writing - Can go from funny, to super sad, to super hot, to just disturbing. All the feels. It is currently the longest VN ever written and is still updated monthly-ish. Highly recommended. Although may want to avoid if you are just looking for porn.
This is the only thing I have ever actually paid for on patreon, subscribestar etc. The game is very well written and has very endearing characters who are all unique and interesting and the main mystery/supernatural plot is addicting.
Do not go into this expecting a quick fap! There are a lot of H-scenes now but they can take a while to get to.
Install the guide mod! as trying to figure out what events will help progress the main events or other character events can be frustrating if you lose track. Its much better than alt-tabbing back and forth to the wiki to find the Daisy chain of events you need to do first.
takes to long to actually have something, the animations is queen bee animation literally 2 frames, no hints whatsoever played 3 h than just gave up and put auto conversation with 0s speed and it took like 15 min to have a "sex scene" and it was not a scene more like a photo cz it had 0 animations, you miss events cz yea no hints overall terrible
Hands down my favorite game on the site.
I've never seen a western-VN that manages to craft such a massive cast of characters (35+) while managing to make all of them feel unique & so extremely endearing.
Yes, the at times very confusing sandbox structure of the game is its biggest flaw but how much heart there is in this game and its characters more than makes up for it.
Too good even. This game is so well-written that it makes everything else look fucking childish and archaic in comparison. There's some drama in this thread over the dev practices and people being against drm and all that. No matter how you feel about that, you cannot deny that the writing is very good. Probably because the dev is an actual writer instead of a horny hack. There's like, one character in this game I don't like out of the 36.
. There's a lot of strikethrough text that is what the mc is thinking or perhaps what a normal person would say but then he says something callous and/or heinous instead because he is a deeply broken man. This leads to a lot of character moments that feel bitter, because you know that they don't deserve to be treated this way. Still, if you push past it long enough to see him changing it feels really rewarding to see the story move.
Rating this 5 stars purely for the quality of writing. Sel has changed a LOT in the past year, and I don't support him financially anymore, for reasons everyone familiar with this game know very well.
With phenomenal writing and a unique premise, Lessons in Love has inspired its own subgenre of VNs, and consistently sits in a top 3 position of my favorite visual novels (typically fluctuating depending on how much of a banger the latest releases of my other favorites have been). This is one of the very few VNs that has affected me strongly emotionally (varying between positive, negative, and conflicted, at various points of the story), which is often considered a benchmark of many great authors/artists.
The game begins with an unlikeable/emotionally stunted/traumatized protagonist, in an amnesia/isekai situation, who takes over a colorful class of female students as their sensei. The narrative has slice-of-life harem trappings, but is often more focused on delving into the (often darker) personal and interpersonal issues of each member of the cast. Denpa horror periodically ensues due to deep lore world fuckery - this can get quite dark and grotesque at times. The fandom loves to theorize upon these sections of the game, and during particularly poignant releases, I find myself pondering how all the pieces fit together all the way until the next release.
For me, Lessons in Love is the only VN which has successfully pulled off having a +30 heroine cast in which I find every single character unique and interesting, to the point that I remain strongly invested in their story through each release - this is a testament to how strong the writing is. By comparison, I find that most harem VNs are ideal with 5-12 heroines, and only particularly strong authors can pull off more while maintaining anywhere close to this level of interest. Most authors who increase their heroine count much beyond this point end up with the cast feeling diluted, to the point where I often forget who some characters are, what their personalities are like, and what situations they've gone through, between releases.
Lessons in Love uses a sandbox-lite format, though this is actually one of its weaker points relative to the games it ended up inspiring, and to other sandboxes in general. It has no built-in hint system, which can lead to a lot of time wasted hunting down events (or if you're like me, viewing the source code), and this is especially the case early on, when you don't know where all the characters hang out, and aren't caught up to the latest release (and therefore don't know the specific characters whose events you need to trigger during a specific release window). It's also moderately grindy, requiring character love and lust thresholds to trigger their events, as well as to see certain story paths (which are generally better fleshed out than the ones where you didn't meet the thresholds).
There are occasional event chains which break out of the sandbox for a while, often having multiple of the aforementioned love/lust threshold checks to determine whether you get certain content. This can be annoying if you didn't realize triggering a scene would start a chain, and you didn't have sufficient love/lust at the time. Some of these include puzzle sections, which are fairly divisive, and I know that some have caused people to drop the game (providing solutions is disallowed on the author's Discord) - ultimately, I feel only one of them has really been particularly hard (and you can check the source code, or look for the solutions leaked on F95Zone, if you're really struggling). The conclusion of these breakouts often does lead to some new content in the sandbox, which can be fun.
The renders are top-notch Koikatsu, and particularly stand out in terms of diverse framing, visual interest, and scene composition, for which very few Koikatsu games even come close to matching. The cast is all cute, clean, and very visually distinctive, and the backrounds are well utilized and varied. H-scenes are serviceable but nothing special, though they do benefit from the generally stellar writing. The story h-scenes are non-animated, while the repeatable ones are animated, though animations are the stiff/repetitive ones built-in to Koikatsu (no high quality custom animations). I would not play this game if all you're looking for is fap material.
The music is all excellent and catchy, and the tracks all fit well within scenes they're played in. I had never heard most of the tracks prior to Lessons in Love, but have heard the tracks since in several other games which were clearly inspired by it.
All in all, I give Lessons in Love my top recommendation. Some of the content and subject matter may be hard to stomach depending on your various tastes and tolerances, but if you aren't ultimately deterred by it, the game is a thought and emotion provoking masterpiece.
The strangest and possibly longest nsfw VN out there. Quite literally dozens of hours of content in this game full of twisted imagery, disturbing themes, cute girls, morally questionable decision making, and cute girl stuff. It's a lot more like a story that includes sex scenes rather than a lewd VN, so don't waste your time if you don't care for plot or character development.
The best VN I have ever played. Gripping story and excellent quality create atmosperic experience. Tons of content Can suck you in for weeks. If you want something good to play: this can be your choise.
Goes above and beyond in world building and in it's characters.
Pretty good scenes and storyline.
Beware of mindfucking.
Not much more that can be said without spoiling the plot and it's the main thing this game has going.
Amazing game! Not perfect though. This is a game that requires the player to actually play/read through the game, if you are honestly just looking to rub a quick one out then this game isn't for you.
Pros:
Story - The plot is great for an H-game at first it's a little confusing with the "supernatural/horror" aspect of the game but as you progress you start get a feel for it and pickup on context clues and piece the story together. Making the appreciation for the characters and the world all the better.
Scenes - Hilarious/Heart-warming/Fucked-up/Horny/Emotional/Disgusted/Awkward/Scared - You can feel all these emotions if you actually wrap yourself around the story/content of what the game offers.
Hints Page/Character Sheets - Pretty easy to understand/read on who you need to progress in order to carry the story along in case the User is stuck on something.
Variety - A ton of characters and events to love in the game. Sure not all of them will be a player's cup of tea from their storyline to their personality, and will probably make you uncomfortable. Adding layer upon layer to keep the player more invested into the story.
Music/OSTs: Pretty fitting for most of the characters/scenes/events really adds to the immersion and world building giving it more value.
Cons:
Repetition - After progressing deep into the game's story you can notice a repetition... (Progress Relationships -> Main Events -> Progress Relationships Main Events and so on) This is with most VNs and honestly it did get convoluted at times in this game with certain requirements and I got annoyed, but with how deep I was already and appreciating the game and wanting to know what happens next it didn't really feel like a chore because it was that enjoyable.
A lot of characters - Double Edged Sword - With an objectively "complex" plot to follow you throw in a cast of characters with their own subplots that still tie their way into the story. While this does add to the game's content and giving the players wanting "more" content it does also strike that some of them feel they are foolproof plot devices just for the hell of it. Still adding to the story but not leaving a major impact.
Neutral:
Dialogue/Monologue - there are scenes/dialogue/monologue of the game that will make the player feel uncomfortable, depressed/sad, and cringe to where it would turn people off from the game. I wouldn't call it "Edgy" per se. If you do not like that then skip/skim through it. This game is not for the faint of heart.
Conclusion: TLDR -
This is a game you will have to play through if you extremely desire to get to the H-scenes. Just play through the game and you'll appreciate everything about the game more and enjoy it. The plot is good, most of the characters are good, and the H-scenes are good.
