Ren'Py - Lessons in Love [v0.44.0] [Selebus]

I'd like to say something like "Praise be 5/5" in this review, but that would defeat the purpose of writing one in the first place, so I'll refrain. To begin with, I find the quality of the game, the events, the characters, the art, etc. brutal. and it's ironic because despite the fact that the game already has a lot of content, I still have the same doubts as when it started, I feel stuck and for some strange reason I don't dislike it, only the sensations that this game provokes in me makes me feel satisfied. The characters mostly base their personality on classic anime stereotypes, which however are put in interesting situations that make you want to know more about them, as for the mc he is something special, frankly at first I hated him, really, that man I should visit a psychologist, his constant monologues about any random stupidity and his way of seeing life are disconcerting at first, I literally couldn't feel further from the character, of course, with time I got used to it and today I could say that it's He is the most interesting character. Now, as much as I would like to say that everything is perfect, what a pity it gives me, no, it is not, and on that we go with the next point and it is the gameplay, if it is a sandbox, one of the annoying ones I have to say , I had to load my game many times because certain events that I had to do at the indicated times or with certain statistics escaped me, otherwise I could not see them again at that save point, It is also worth mentioning that every time you reach a certain amount of events with a character, these are blocked since you have to do all the events of the other characters to be able to advance, I had to have the guide in hand many times, but leaving Apart from these disadvantages, I consider that its history , art and characters are enough for 5 stars: Since the end of the game is not even close, I recommend using cheats to increase stats and/or change certain events at your convenience, this doesn't mess up your save file at the moment.

I really don't know about this one. First off I don't understand why this has a VN tag at all. In the end this is a KN with more steps.

The game is designed as a sandbox but the only thing it's used for is grinding points with the girls until you have enough to se the next completely railroaded event for them. I call them girls and not LI's because they aren't even close to that in this game. A fact the MC annoyingly reminds himself and by extension the player about. It's just click, click, click reading the exact same lines of dialogue or the same lewd scene until you see the next actual event with no player input.

I read that 0.24 was supposed to add QOL improvements but I see no difference from the last time I played it over a year ago. There is a loose guide that is supposed to help the player I guess but it's about as useless as not having one at all. The free roam for lack of a better word is still awful as it's ever been, not that it maters in the end because again it's only used for grinding points and nothing else.

The writing is fine and all but much of it feels hollow to because of the God awful mc and his stereotypical mopey emo inner monologue he constantly recites to himself. Every single time you as the player feel like you are making a connection the the girls and actually progressing the MC rants away again and says "Oh well I don't care about anything or anyone anyway. Dirp Dirp.". It's so repetitive and tiring that I'm constantly thinking "Yeah, I get it. Your a shmuck, just shut the fuck up already.". 0.24 also supposedly remade old scenes and added more in but the changes if seen so far have been odd. Animations removed for reworked scene containing still images instead. And I'm almost positive there have even been player choices removed in favor of just more scripted linear responses, because that wasn't already an issue I guess.

It also seems like I'm not smart enough to understand the deepness of this game. Every time there is another tangent about some existential existence for the hundredth time I'm just thinking "Am I playing an H-game or am I back in my first year phycology class?" To me it seems like someone is trying to build a world and theory around something they don't fully understand. Maybe I'm just misinterpreting it and not following the direction the dev is trying to go with it. Some of that content comes from Happy events that just seem like cheap B movie horror scenes to me. Some of which were remade to be incredibly long, like very long. After they happen everything just jolts back to normal with the MC not remembering or not caring about anything supernatural that just happened. But that's the point, I think? Also some of the triggers and events for those events are pretty ridiculous. It's been brought up before so I think most people already know about that but there are still people who praise poor decision so what do I know. The one thing I don't see how people can defend is the absolute necessity for audio ques. For one of them you "need" to hear something and if you don't you are stuck there forever unless you look it up online. That's just a middle finger to the hearing impaired players who may want to try this out. It all comes back to... poor dev choices we'll say.

TLDR: If your here to watch random scenes with school girls and don't care about anything else then you will likely have a good time. If you are looking for an actual "game" that lets you do anything at all on your own then then like myself you will be disappointed.

Game version 0.24.0

The game is just one bland grind for scenes.
The overall quality is not even worth the time you spend into that.

I tried this game at version 0.1 and I tried it again at version 0.24 - it is still the same, lame gamestyle, where you have to farm/ grind different places on different times of the day to trigger events with the girls.

Sometimes, one of the quests introduce you more to the main plot, while others just befriend you more with the girl you are with.

I couldn't really find the overall goal of this game, though. Nail all the girls? Sure. But beyond that? Nothing. It's more like these trainer games (which I hate the most), where you grind endlessly for mediocre and short lewd animations.

Pass.

This game is still my all-time favorite VN. The amount of love and passion put into this game shines so bright to me. You get hooked on every single character and their stories. I have been playing games for over 30 years and I have re-played this one (on purpose) more than 10 times easy. 10/10 Story, 10/10 Character Design, 10/10 HOPE.
PRAISE BE!!

The good: There are some cute characters and some H scenes are well done textually. I like that deflowerings are bloody and painful for once.

The bad: Everything else.

• Renders are underwhelming, especially regarding variety and camera position in H scenes.
• Frequent 4th wall breaks that are not funny and only break immersion.
• Brainless psychobabble that's supposed to be creepy I guess? The worst part is, that the dev (and the fanboys) seem to think this is actually deep, thoughtful stuff. Fitting the current age of infantilism I guess.
• Endless grind for the sake of grind. I started my adult VN journey with Big Brother. BB was a lot more rewarding than this.
• Locking paths deep into the game for things you did at the start, without giving you any clue.
• Can't advance with characters you like without advancing others as well.

This is a hard review to do.

Right off the bat though, I'm going to say I did not enjoy any of the sexual content. If you do, this is not a criticism against you.

This is clearly a game that parodies harem games and does commentary on them while also being a Harem game. For better or for worse, it's extremely uncomfortable because the MC is a skeevy dude.

The game feels like a KN most of the time. As a result, the criticsms of harem games (and really, adult games in general) are railroaded. It's not completely cynical by any means, but it can be very in your face about it.

Yet, the girls are actually pretty cool and fun to learn about. They all have their issues you help them out with, and god damn... did I not want to have sex with any of them. They're kids, and you are clearly an adult. That's the shtick.

In between all that is a pretty cool horror element that adds another layer on top of everything. Just to ensure a extra bit of uncomfortable feelings.

The option to not engage in sexual activities would benefit this game, IMO. Given how some scenes are quite explicit and erotic, it's almost hypocritical. Not quite there because it's aware of this. Explore alternative routes would give people the chance to experience/explore the other side of that criticism with some empathy.

I wouldn't bother saying any of this, if the game didn't take the suffering moments so seriously. The progression of character stories lead to serious suffering. The forced sexual encounters can affect other characters in seriously negative ways. The consequences of the MC's actions are very real, but the choice of actions are not.

Moving on, the god damn sandbox is tedious however. It's a lot of clicking with a bland UI, and lots and lots of waiting. I don't know if that's part of the joke, but it definitely makes this game feel SUPER long. Especially when some events are completely filler. This game is also pretty huge, so the beginning is extraordinarily obnoxious given how much content there is.

If these issues were ironed out, I'd give this game a 4/5 just because the writing is quite good, even if I don't think it's going about it the right way.

Overall, this isn't a game for everyone. I can't knock anyone for liking it. It's certainly one of kind.

very interesting game, the game has the depth for a visual novel that suits my own preferences, the jump scares are fun, has a lot of interactions with different characters, the music themes is very catchy and enjoyable... not a fan of puzzles but it piques my interest and solving it is grindy but fun....

Be warned. This game is HUGE. theres well over 1,000,000 words in it, and it is constantly being updated. There is a wiki that you pretty much have to use after chapter 2 starts as you have to go through each update one by one, but you will have no idea the order that the updates released in, and subsequently, which character you need to work on. but that aside, this story will leave you with your jaw on the floor in shock, restless in bed unable to go to sleep because of the events that have happened in this game. It is a story unlike any other I have played. What makes LIL work so well is not just its overarching story that has MatPat level of theory crafting behind it, but also the most incredible character interactions I've read in a VN. The MC is the main character, but he's not the only character to the girls. They all interact with each other as well to make this seem not like a world that revolves around the player, but a world that the player takes part of. I can not sing this game enough praise for its unique story. Once the early game reworks are done, its going to be incredible. that's all I can say.

PS, gamepass>patreon.

I absolutely hate this game. Somewhere in all of this mind-numbing clicking there is a decent game struggling to get out. It's trapped by the most ridiculous sandbox I've ever seen.

There is a "progress" menu in the game, but it seems meaningless. I reach a point at which at least ten girls are supposed to have an event. I try to interact with those girls, and nothing happens. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do to progress the game.

547 game days in and I've had sex with one girl. I've deleted it.

So I have been a long-time fan of this project and I found this game through this website. The story is really great however the story is like 85% useless filler that when removed would not change anything at all in the story.

Anything weird happening/supernatural is sometimes not explained at all or that subject wasn't even touched. For example


The game has lots of subtexts which is not my liking but it's still not that hard to understand the subtext however this story follows pretty much this cycle example.
Lots of filler = A
Something interested happened = B
That interesting thing is either explained by subtext or not at all or it just happened = C

A, A ,B ,A ,A, C, A, B2, C2
this cycle is not 100% accurate but this is pretty much the majority of the game.

The sex scenes are extremely laggy. I don't know what else to say about this but I have a laptop and for my experience sex scenes are like 3-5 fps according to renpy's own system.

The backtrack button is turned off. This kinda sucks because there are puzzles in this game wichs answers are shown but because I forgot to take a picture and memorize them it was impossible to complete the puzzle because I couldn't go back because the backtrack button was removed.

Overall interesting story but with really bad execution and sex scenes are unwatchable because they are running like 3-5fps I do have a laptop so maybe that's the issue.

Worth the support. This game gave me a reason to play and not just to fap. Instead of generic teleport into new world/body so everything is dandy it take a competly different turn. I haven't seen a horror tag that has deserved it but this one does. There are all most no flaws in this game. The only flaw that i could think of is that it can get really confusing at time even with a help of wiki.

I haven't written a review before but feel compelled to do so for this VN Game. The writing is great, the characters are dynamic and complex, there's a good flow to the story and it is balanced well with H-scenes and such. It handles certain matters (like rape) at a different level that actually made me feel confused and a little fucked up instead of blindly rolling with a generic fetishism.

The tags fit and more importantly the content does so properly. All except Horror as I'm not sure it qualifies in that regard - maybe creepy at times. It incorporates the things like l*li, incest, rape, etc "tastefully" if you will and I don't need to tweak or custom patch certain things so that it fits the narrative I'm looking for.

Story: 10/10
Evolving and I'm engrossed in it. I get upset when I reach the end of an update.

CG/Art: 9.5/10
They're great, animations are good and appropriately placed in the game. There are some CG or animations where it cuts off right above the "good bits" which really is my only "complaint" and it's not really a complaint.

Gameplay: 8.5/10
It is, functionally, a standard sandbox dating sim and consequently can be hampered by having to grind. Even the grinding is alright to me but the issue is winding up in a dead-end (or not knowing when the update/arc ends). It was a bigger concern when I first started reading.

I forgot there are some puzzles and intricate/subtle details about this that will surprise you. The story is complex, so I'm bumping gameplay up .5 pts.

Soundtrack: 8.5/10
There are a few tracks that you'll find in other Ren'Py games but for the most part, the music is very good. After having played more and more Ren'Py games, it has become clear to me that LiL tracks are tiers above others.

Overall: 9.9/10
***Edit: (I'm a patron /whatever) After the most recent update, all I can say is I'm brain-fried, and feeling forlorn that there will be an extended hiatus on new content while the Dev does some updates/improvements. I like it so much that I'm pissed off how much I like it. Fack

I don't really write reviews unless I think it's worth doing and I certainly don't try and delve into the community but I have done so with LiL. During the drought between updates, I haven't found another VN that can tide me over well enough. So - yeah.

Great game, a whole heap of characters and an interesting story. All in all very solid , at times the writing can be a bit over the top and cringey though, and it is almost unplayable without the walkthrough mod.

Review of v0.22.0

Lessons in Love is the most mixed game I have ever played on this site, I kept downloading and canceling it for some time, while playing I thought at the same time: “Wow this is well written” and “Why am I playing this?”.
Starting off is a sandbox game, and it fails at that, after some days you’ll be clicking like a maniac and wonder why events don’t happen, that’s why you also need a walkthrough to help you, normally I don’t use them but this game made me wander from text to text with no exact clue.
The developer even makes fun of this mechanic in game, with 4th wall jokes, but still, it could have been resolved much better the “gameplay“ situation.
Still if the grind can be justified with great content I am happy, but here we arrive at the elephant in the room: The story and character.
The story starts incredibly strong, the mc got reincarnated in a mysterious and different version of the world, in a teacher who already had a life and people who knew.
The game sets off this eering feeling of mystery and psychological thriller with some light jokes and great writing, you can not expect this to fail…
Sadly it kinda disappoints you.
The best scenes are either the early ones or the ones you don’t expect, then the game becomes a mixed bag of quality, the mystery is left in the background lurking, and the MC finds his objective to make his harem of schoolgirls.
The MC has the mind of a predator and a manipulative individual and yet this is rarely used to make his character grows or explain themes, instead the psychological horror is replaced with some “DDLQ” horror stuff that becomes repetitive and laughable quickly.
Of course there are some scenes that are really good, but these are thrown off into a sea waiting.
Also the characters are a mixed bag, most of them are models with some traits put in together and some others are really good, and here comes another problem to progress with some of your favorites (Or the best written characters in game) you need to grind with some others!
And these others are as deep as a puddle, bland or annoying, a waste of reading.
Hoorray, railroad mechanic, and even if I despise this there are some games that turned the railroad mechanic into something fun, but this is not one of them.
To progress with some girls you do the most despicable and disgusting things, it really makes you close the game.
Also there are choices here and there, sometimes, it’s mostly a kinetic grindy sandbox.
I could say more, but other reviews down here caught problems much better, so I don’t want to be repetitive.
Overall it could have been great but it is flawed game with great and terrible aspects, that I am unsure to recommend or not, if it’s your thing good, but I was dissatisfied for half of the time

This is more of a visual novel that also contains sex scenes but both the story telling AND sex scenes are good
The game is very long, and there is a lot to read, i "completed" version 0.21.0 part 2 in day 577 but i for one didn't feel like there's much grinding, especially when using the Progress Mod which will point you in the right directions.
In the very beginning it can be a bit long winded and you kind of have to spread your attention to everyone but once you get further ahead, the game becomes gradually more liniar and grinding stats pretty much stops being a chore (of course it involves a lot of skipping repeating scenes but you actually spend very little time for it)

It also contains ridiculously funny scenes which made me audibly laugh, some jumpscares (i didn't find them bad and i hate jumpscares, maybe i just play at really low volume?), some very emotional scenes and even horror scenes. For me this game did the trick and kept me hooked, i found the storytelling ridiculously good and very well put together.

The characters all have different personalities, despite there being so many of them and some having very similar names to others, you get to know each and every one of them. It's a big overwhelming in the beginning but it all makes sense shortly after.

tl;dr
I give it 5/5, great story, good sex and great reading experience, don't play if you just want to bust a quick nut because there can be quite leghty "breaks" between sex scenes but they're generally really good when they come up

I'd been avoiding this one for a while, but finally decided to give it a try.

I was better off passing it up.
This game has nothing going for it.

Admittedly, I'm on "day 8" or so when I'm ditching it. Very early. But the fact is? It's got too many characters, with too little meaningful interactions. A boring MC who, for reasons that elude me, decides he's been iseki'd into being a teacher, so that means that he... can abandon all morality and jsut have fun?
I don't get it. He has no reason to assume it isn't amnesia. He doesn't remember who or what he supposedly was before he woke up. He isn't looking for any answers, or clues as to how this world works, an basically declares that he is abandoning morality because he doesn't need it. And this all happens in such a hand-wavey way that we're just sitting here confused trying to figure out what is actually going on.

Every event (thus far) has been linear. No choices that seem to carry any weight. Visit girls for scenes that generally lack any dialog to gain a point with her, because after X amount of points, things will open up. Rinse and repeat for all girls, especially as we're openly told we need to get points with certain girls to advance other girl's story.

So, we have a kinetic novel with an MC who has no personality beyond "horny," girls who have the personality of "trope," in a world with magically no other men, where the story isn't going to branch, choices mean nothing, you pursue everyone instead of just the characters you like, and presumably things will get more interesting later.

There is nothing unique and compelling about the game. I can come across girls whose personality is "rebel," "bookworm," "horny rich girl" and "self conscious and chubby despite having the same build as every other girl" in a dozen other games, that all either have choices, or at least a more immediately captivating story.

And, let's face it. Sandboxes usually suck anyhow. When you remove everything else they can offer and relegate them to simply "what girl do you see and gain 1 point with this time slot" you are underutilizing the gameplay potential of a format that is generally hated anyhow.

I'm sorry. The english is fine. The girls are fine. the UI is fine. But the experience is soulless and boring. And if it's just that I'm only 8 days in and I should give it time?
Nah. Maybe the dev should put more into those first few days to grab our attention more.

I haven't played very much of this game (about 5 or so hours) so take my review with a grain of salt; I couldn't get through any more of it.

First off, the 4th wall breaks are purely obnoxious, I feel like its "story telling 101" to never break the 4th wall if you wanna be taken seriously. You can't expect to impact your audience in any significant way if every 2 or 3 scenes you're gonna break their immersion to remind them that this is a game and nothing matters and act like it's "comedic relief" or something psychological. Makes it tough to give a shit about the story you're tryna tell and makes it SUPER tough to take your phycological horror and philosophical themes seriously. At some point it no longer felt like I was interacting with these characters and began feeling as though the dev was just reading me a story, waiting for me to jack off at my discretion. I'm not sure why anyone would think to adapt a popular theme from Deadpool into a game with darker/serious themes. This game failed me in qualifying as art because I felt nothing in the hours I spent on this I'm sorry.

My second gripe features the only reason I care enough to leave a review; the story following the protagonist doesn't take nearly as intricate/meaningful a direction as it could. I mean, the premise is by no means revolutionary, but interesting enough, its another isekai but the dev could've done so much more with this.
The protag overtakes someone's life, is robbed of his memories of his original life, has no knowledge of the life he's overtaken nor what happened to the person who's body he's now in possession of. He's been thrusted into another life, another world, another person, face to face with someone who deeply cares for the man the protag has unintentionally overwritten, mid sentence. That's some shit that would fuck your world up.
The premise had huge potential to become a genuinely thought provoking piece on the value of life and existence and his struggles with his identity, guilt and paranoia, especially around that girl who sees through him. The dev is aiming mainly at psychological aspects of horror, yet doesn't monopolize on these obvious sources of internal struggle and mental degeneration. Instead the game feels like a cheap cop out as the protag is just horny like 24/7, I'm assuming so it would be easier to slide in the sex scenes. I wish I could be so fucking unbothered lmao. I might've thought this game was deep and well written, had I found it back when I was still 15 or 16.

Jokes aside, experiencing this game from the MC's pov feels like a sim for a smooth-brained, shallow scumbag, except I can't really place myself in the protag's shoes cause I'm unable to immerse and my actions/decisions hardly matter at all cause a lot of the bullshit that unfolds is scripted. Its like witnessing a predator at work and I have a hard time believing that's intentional. I'm disappointed, but as an aspiring game dev, I learned a bit about what not to do from playing this. I'd say the dev is lucky so much of the AVN community is comprised of coomers who don't care if shit makes any sense.

All in all, congrats to the dev on making a game, everyone wants to be a critic, putting something like this together takes time and effort, regardless of whether or not I'm a fan I respect that. People will eat this shit up anyways.

simply a masterpiece, the best and the unique
It's a perfect combination of cosmic horror, porn, character building and dark humor. Eventhough the game has VERY LITTLE porn, trust me u'll mostly dont like it that much when the porn happens.
In short, I just hate this game soooooo much i love it.
praise be

So, this was actually kind of hard to review.

On the one hand, I stopped playing because I stopped enjoying it.

On the other, I did so for kind of an odd reason: The writing was too good.

That probably doesn't make much sense but here it is.
Like it says on the box, this is basically a harem game around a teacher and his students.
There's actually a lot of similarities between this and Harem Hotel. Another Harem game that became a lot more than that thanks to the writing.
The difference is, in HH, I felt like I (the main character) was generally a positive influence in the girls' lives.

Lessons in Love made me feel the exact opposite. I felt like a piece of shit, even though it mostly wasn't my fault (more on this soon).
Its actually a pretty disturbing game. Not because of the strange creepypasta scenes. Those are laughable.
Rather its disturbing because its frighteningly accurate to the way real life predators prey on young women. And that made me feel all kinds of icky.

It would be different if there was some level of choice in the game. Sadly, there isn't. You do get some choices every once in a while, but the times I tried to be forthright or honest, the game slapped me on the wrist and made me pick the worse option (very meta, funny, ha ha, why are you railroading me so hard?).

The scenes that finally made me stop playing involved Rin. Spoilers:
You're forced to "level up" each girl's "Affection" (or at least the Main Girls) in order to continue the story. Meaning the game forces you to do some horrible things to these girls' hearts in order to progress.


Ultimately, It just made me a little sick.

Good writing, perhaps wasted on a hentai game I ended up hating because of what I had to do to keep playing.

Ok, so starting off, I don't review too often, generally because someone has already said something I completely agree with (fuck off... I'm lazy, ok? ;P ), or reviewing the game was worth about as much as the game itself. I also can't stand anime or sandboxes, so why the 5-star rating you ask?

Because it's goddamn hilarious, that's why. And yeah, it takes some work to get to the h-scenes. but with the spot-on comedy, it makes you want more, damn the sexy hs students.

Well honestly, if there wasn't any sex (with some very attractive lol*s, I might add), I probably wouldn't be playing. I would expect some/most of this kind of humor from a Netflix/HBO special.

Yeah, some of the chicks hate the MC, but fuck it. Their characters have some depth to them. There are some girls who have been wanting to jump your bones from before the start, and then there are some that need some warming up, AND then, there are the ones that would buy tickets and popcorn to see you thrown feet first into an industrial-sized meat grinder. I love it!

As I said above, I can't stand anime (again, fuck off... I was raised on Looney Tunes), but Selebus has a way of making the story more interesting than the visuals. If only I had this kind of talent...

TL;DR:
I came out of curiosity (lol...for reals), stayed for the story and incredibly excellent writing. Comedy is insanely funny (two words: giant banana. Not a dick reference either, lol), and always spot on, and the grind is worth it for the h-scenes IMO.

Give it a try! I mean come on! I'm right 50%, 100% of the time... JK, it's a really good game, so give it a try. If I had the money, I'd be telling Selebus to take it already.