I really like Lessons in Love, a lot. It is one of the best written games here, with a story that keeps you guessing, and is truly unique among games here. Selebus has raised the quality of game development to a very high level with this game. It is not simply a lewd game with a pointless and cliched story, it is something totally one of a kind and special, which is why there are so many devoted fans, myself included.
However, am I the only one that is starting to find that the gameplay needed to get to each new scene is rather repetitive? Every time there in an update, I need to:
1) Click on each of the 32 main and side character's pictures and write down how many incomplete events are for each character this update.
2) For each character that has incomplete events, I have to click "Go Somewhere" and either go to their hangout, or their room on the dorm, usually both
3) or click "Call Someone" and try to call them, usually they don't pick up of give the same canned response
4) or "Invite over" and see if you can invite them over
5) Try again it all again either Saturday, Sunday, or both since some events only happen on the weekends.
6) Half the time none of this will work to trigger their next event, so I have to go look at the wiki online and try to figure out how to get the events I can't figure out how to get for each character, one after another, until I finally see all the available events.
To me, it seems quite repetitive. I love the events themselves. For example, the latest contest storyline was amazing, the best yet. But why does the normal gameplay have to be the same, day after day? Selebus indicates that there are many, many, more updates, which is wonderful. The longer the better. But, is the only way to play this game to click "Go Somewhere" and repetitively click through all the options, hundreds and thousands of times, over and over again, to see the next scenes?
I am not a game developer, but surely there is a better way.
Selebus, can you consider streamlining the repetitive tasks needed for each scene so it is not so repetitive. Why does the player need to go to every girl's hangout, and every girl's room, and see the same placeholder scene over and over and over again in order to try to find what trigger gets to the next scene?
What if we could just get a little button or icon somewhere on the screen when you are at the right moment for a scene? For example, let's say that in the story you want a scene with Futaba on Saturday night. Whenever Saturday night occurs, just have an icon on the screen with a little Futaba image or text, so we could just click on it? You can have a different icon for each scene that is ready, based on the current events.
Maybe there is an even better way to do it than my suggestion, but while I absolutely love the content of the story, I don't love having to click on each girl's dorm door or visit the maid cafe hundreds of times, over an over again, just to see the same canned placeholder scene, which while certainly cute, does get repetitive the 100th time i've seen it.
To me it least, it seems like there must be a better way to do this.
Please don't take this as a knock on Lessons in Love, which I think is truly one of the greatest games here. In 10 years, I will still be thinking about it after 99.5% of the other games I have played are long forgotten.
I just think that the day to day search for the next scene for each character could be improved with some tweaking of the interface. Keeping it in the game is best, so the user isn't taken out of the game experience. I would dislike a separate menu, for example, where you just clicked to jump to the next scene, wherever you were in the game. This would take the immersion away from the player. But some kind of in game guidance for the player, maybe even an non-clickable icon just to know what characters have scenes available at that game time (Wednesday Afternoon, for example), and the player could still visit their hangout or dorm room to try to trigger it, but it would be more guided than the current approach, where I am often lost as to what I need to do to proceed, and end up having to perform a lot of tasks over and over to try to figure it out.