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 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).
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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.