Ren'Py - Lessons in Love [v0.45.0] [Selebus]

Rating this game is hard as hell: on one hand we have the good things: the game is huge, with tons of different characters and shockingly this is actually... Very well written ? I often find myself quite entertained by the back and forth between the characters, sometimes because they are hilarious and sometimes because they are traumatic. And on the other hand we have the bad things: this game has some of the worst game design choices i have ever seen. First, you basically NEED to play the game with a mod that gives you the hints for the events, sometimes you need to choose to do a specific thing on a specific day with a specific characters, there are dozens of options creating hundreds of variables, and sometimes only one of those will result in an event. "Ok, so i've downloaded the hint mode, now it's all good, right ?" Nope. The so called "happy events". Ok, listen, they were fine at first, they really were, they made the plot interesting and made you wonder what the hell was going on, but after a while, they get annoying, they are always the same gibberish and sometimes they force you to complete unreasonable stuff, or else you are stuck there: sometimes you have to input a code that was shown once an hour ago and if you didn't write it down for some reason you need to go check f95 for the answer, sometimes you need to answer a dozen of specific, open ended questions, and i have no idea how anyone would ever be able to figure it out on their own. The final thing is that sometimes your choices don't matter at all, sometimes you are forced to choose between the game making you feel miserable for what you chose or missing who knows how many porn scenes in a porn game, like "oh, so you chose this girl as the winner because you will get an H scene ? Let me show you the other girl crying in the bathroom because she worked so hard for a contest that she deserved to win, but you cheated to get the H scene". It's just... Annoying

I wanted to like this game, but the narration seems to want to shoot itself in the head by being so obnoxiously pretentious the whole way through.

Despite how annoyingly judgmental the narration insists on being, you really don't get to actually make many meaningful or fun choices on your own. It's borderline railroading, and I see that despite that some people enjoy the story for what it is, but I think the game should have just been a novel instead of making a lewd game. Because, as a lewd game, this game kind of sucks.

To me, it just feels like the game was influenced by watching a few too many episodes of monogatari.

Some of the characters are cute, almost in spite of the writing itself, but it gets ruined by the overall intent of the game being misaligned from what you would want from a game like this. The MC is also a total twat, and the narration itself insisting on trying to be "deep" instead of letting you have fun and make choices in your interactions with the characters. This is way more of a VN than it is a "sandbox".

To put it another way, a lot of these characters would be really enjoyable if they were in a different game, that wasn't trying to spite the player the entire time. I don't want to give examples because that would dip into spoiler territory.

There's a point in the game where it's heavily implied that you're now free to make your own choices and play the game, but then you're further rail-roaded for a good while longer before you're actually able to make "choices" because the game just can't help itself but be pretentious and controlling.

The character designs are decent, the writing itself could have been good (for a porn game) if the writer could get over himself, but the final product is kind of a stinker because it fails to accomplish anything it sets out to be. I'm not spooked, I'm not horny, I'm not blown away by a "deep and complex" narrative about any of these characters. I'm just kind of annoyed, disappointed, like my time has been wasted by someone who thinks more nonsensical bullshit = better.

There's also sort of an accessibility issue. The game says that audio is necessary for progression, but this game is almost entirely text-based with pictures of anime girls. It feels like the audio thing is only there to, again, be kind of pretentious. It's an issue for anyone who either cannot use audio for the game or cannot hear the audio due to a disability or something. The suggested solution for this by the dev was just to look up spoilers, which I don't think is a solution at all.


Story - 2.5/5: It tries too hard and comes off as pretentious and honestly entirely misplaced.

Character Renders - 3.5/5: They're made with Koikatsu (which I like), but there's not enough busty characters (which I dislike). The MC looks pretty bad though, which is a shame.

Playability - 2/5: It tries to be a sandbox dating sim, but it's too rail roading and you're just selection locations from a list and that's just not an enjoyable way to play a game. It almost should have just been a VN. Would have been a little higher, but there's a purposefully added accessibility issue just for pretentiousness.

Grammar - 4.5: The content of the writing is pretentious and annoying, but the quality of the writing isn't bad. Maybe the dev should try and write an original story on a site like FictionPress or RoyalRoad, as that might be a better place for it than a pornographic video game.

Amount of Content - 3: There's a lot of word salad in this game, but not a lot of meat in terms of what people are actually playing these games for. I'd rate it lower, but the sheer amount of words is kind of impressive for something that claims to not be a VN.

One of the most exciting and interesting h-games I've ever played. The game is not very strong technically, but in other aspects it is incredible:

1. Complex multi-layered plot and very rich lore
2. Amazing world-building - laws of the world, contradictions and paradoxes
3. Very memorable characters with lively personalities
4. Complex psychological and moral topics
5. Black humour and fun jokes.
6. Custom and unusual H-scenes

I supported this one for about a couple years back in the Patreon days. It was good then and going at a decent pace. Then it seemed to just stop going anywhere. The story got stale, the characters got stale, and the whole thing got boring. I played an update before, must've been about a year back, that I thought would get things back on track (involving an important character's obsession), but it ended up being resolved really cleanly. I was expecting (and hoping) for it to descend to a climax from there but it didn't- it was business as usual.

If there's a good game here, it stopped being that around two million words ago. I'm consistently shocked by the amount of people who have competing readings and theories about this text- it certainly lends itself to that, but how has this kept anyone's rapt attention this long? The writing is essentially a stream-of-consciousness rant at this point. It's cool that people are still enjoying it- it's just completely lost all of its magic for me, which is a shame because this was one of my favorites in the early days.

Story 2/5
Couldent get into the story its just a mess and boring, could be related to hating MC and hes crinigy and weird thinking and talking, hes just not for me, some story aspects just dident make sense to me either, like MC almost rapes a girl on the roof top and goes "sorry thats was not supposed to happen" "it was an accident"...girls should have called the cops on hes ass just like she talked about but nah nothing happens ofc, since MC can do no worngs.

But what really kills it for me is that its just another kinetic novel hidden behind a sandbox tag, which arent even a sandbox but just a clicking sim, the only reason i can see for this being made like this instend of a normal VN is due to not wanting to put the kinetic tag on, all you do in the "sandbox" is click a textbox like "bar" "dorms" "dojo" and on to go there and thats it, cant really call that a sandbox can ya....

Other then that you just follow a linear questline for each girl where you gain a point with them which is pointless since there is no relationship system, you cant lose points, you cant skip girls, you cant progress with one girl since questlines are tied together, its pretty much the definition of kineitc/linear gameplay and theres no freedom other then what order you do some things in but still forced do do everything so thats really not much freedom.

Theres a shitload of text which is does warn you about, but when you then finaly get to a sex scene it might just be a single image showing MCs dick in pusssy next image MC cums in pussy and sex scene done....in others that are animations you dont see anything no dick no pussy no penetration and as for virgin scenes theres no deflowering no blood no pain....theres just nothing thats done right in this game.

Girls 2/5
Just to many childlike girls with flat chests for my taste, i love lolis but to a limit and this goes a bit past that line, other then that they look ok face wise.

Animations 1/5
They are rare, bad cam views, alot of scenes arent animated, feels like softcore porn most times.

Sandbox and choices 0/5
Its just kinetic/linear and not the type i like and sandbox is not a sandbox just clicking sim.

Let me say that I really can't bring myself to sit through all of the story - I just don't have the patience. I appreciate the depth of the story and the effort the dev has put in, but getting deep into a porn game's lore and writing down hexadecimals just isn't for me. That being said - if you're paying attention at all, you'll know it has a gripping plot whether or not you actually pay full attention. The characters are memorable and lovable, and you really do start to care about them over time which I can't really say about most games.

It could really do with an official walkthrough mod because of how easy it is to miss just about all the stuff you need to progress during the "resets", and that's most of the reason I think it deserves 4 and not 5 stars. Still, quality-wise it's a cut above just about everything else.

It started strong, mysterious, creepy... it makes you want to know what's going on while questioning several topics from VNs in general and real life.

In my opinion, if the game was only 10% long of what it is, it would be a safe recommendation, but it's horribly long and has a lot of filler, incessant ranting that leads to absolutely nothing and doesn't mean anything most of the time, the progress is minimal and by the point the game is at (0.43) the tension and mystery have long since been lost.

Also the game mechanics are terrible, at first it might have seemed like it was on purpose to make fun of the genre, but after 300 hours of play it seems more like a punishment, what before seemed like criticism now seems like just ineptitude on the part of the developer.
The music does have some incredibly good moments, but it's mostly generic garbage.

Making an honest review of the game, it is mediocre at best in most aspects, I think I give it a 3/5 more because of the affection I have for it after investing so many hours than because it really deserves it.

this game is pretty good so far im sure it will likely get better but i cant give it a higher rating than 4 mainly because of the general weirdness of the story i get its a horror and phycological title but at the same point why mix that directly in to the hentai sense it is not very fun but this a side the animations are amazingly well done and the story intriguing and compelling i just don't think it fits with being a hentai game i could see it being a standalone game but mixing the hentai aspect with the horror aspect just does not work for me but if the dev made the story a separate game with a more story driven plot and the hentai parts of it a spin off with out the horror i would for sure check it out over all a great title just a little weird like if doki doki literature club was a hentai game

it is a game. and it is long. like, really long. there's some good writing. and sometimes you have to wade through pages of turgid nonsense. and bullshit absurdist reset gate events that would force me to stop playing if i couldn't look up steps online. it reminds me of a great fantasyish book i read, i then admired the author and went on to read more later books of his. but these later books weren't great in the same way, it felt like after spending years on one great book the author just sat down and got stoned every day and churned out enough pages for a new book every six months that had a couple good ideas and a lot of stoned psychobabble. so it goes.

its like katawa shoujo but for mental instability and ptsd. every characters has beautiful personalities even with all the issues and all of the fuckups they did. good comedy and great storyline, capable making you laugh and feels bad for the character. all the characters is crazy but all bangable (including sensei) totally worth the hot/crazy scale.

I was making a review while playing the game that was almost at 5k words raw, but in the end it doesn't even matter, — linkin park.

I can summarize easily with one phrase. "Convoluted writing doesn't equal to good writing"


Yeah, some use of it can make a big impact, but forcing it everywhere, and badly at that, ends up just being boring. And speaking of boring, repetitive ass gameplay loop of farming random points repeating the same text 10 times till you unlock the next scene, skip simulator.

If you want to lose some time, it is good tho. 2.5

Only playing the first 60 minutes of the game, my blunt personal impressions:

- an unrelateable MC who is very creepy and unlikeable from the start. a p*do r*pist. how to write any constructive review abt this?
- all the girls are 15-16yo minors (confirmed explicitly in the 'Care Packages'),
- the first few nsfw scenes just feel wrong. skincrawling uncomfortable, unhealthy dynamics. the antimatter of arousal
- edgy, shallow "deep" writing that is hard to tolerate because of how overly verbose and self indulgent it is. it's presented in a text box that is too small, using a light sans serif font which is hard to read. its not a comfortable reading experience for the eyes.

Conclusion: a big NO from me. not ever. no thanks. this isnt "weird"

I have played much games, but not as one being as attractive as this one, it has good animations and an amazing story, mixing goos comedy with a good horror, that makes you forget you are playing a porn game, its story is quite long on a good way, catching you and making you search on the wiki what to do next, it has good animations and good repitable scenes, this game is not for the people who are looking for a game with lots of porn scenes, as you have to proceed on the story to gain this scenes, this game is for people who appreciates a good narrative with some spice on it.

[I wouldn't call anything here a "spoiler" because I'm not going to talk about the story, because the story is very much secondary to the style in which it is told, but I am going to talk a little about the fluctuations in quality and my experience with the game, and if you want to really experience this for yourself, which you should, you probably shouldn't read this or anything else and just know that I think it's really, really good. Just be aware that much of the content therein can be really disturbing, so maybe read around a LITTLE for trigger warnings if there are certain themes that you aren't comfortable with]

LiL is really hard to talk about, especially if you're trying to describe it to someone scrolling through reviews deciding whether or not to play it. I was introduced to Lessons in Love a few years ago while I was scrolling through new indy VNs, just looking for something weird or creative. LiL caught my eye in particular because in the comments of the download section, someone had commented a request for an animation of "X character in Y position wearing Z outfit", as one often sees on these types of things. Selebus himself responded to the comment with a simple "not that kind of game". That stuck with me for some reason and piqued my interest for a VN which seemed to really aspire to more than just a neverending conveyor belt of pornography serving as the front for an eternal Patreon account (no shame in that, for the record ; this world takes all kinds).

Going into LiL with zero expectations is what made it possible for me to push through it, because, if you read reviews, you'll see a lot of people saying things like "best VN of all time" and "most beautiful writing I've ever seen from this medium" and, honestly, while I agree with BOTH of those sentiments, the first chapter (which is VERY long, basically the length of a normal VN all on its own) doesn't completely reflect that. The first chapter is good, don't get me wrong! I'd even say it's QUITE good, better than your average EVN, certainly. But the reality is, is that when people praise this game and give it 5/5, they're (at least in my case) talking about everything after about the halfway point of chapter 2 (i.e., a daunting 75 or so hours in), once basically all the exposition is done and the game can really start moving its pieces around in ways it can't take back.

The style changes gradually until it's almost unrecognizable. What begins as a very interesting slice of life with some very nice writing and very well written characters and very welcome poetic interludes becomes a virtuosic philosophico-poetic manifesto told through quasi-mythological, Lynchian dream sequences and delusions. Even if you HATE this game, you have to admit (assuming you get up to about chapter 3) it is without a doubt one of the most ambitious VNs of all time. Whether it lives up to that ambition, in my opinon, depends on how much you like reading through LOTS of poetry. Personally, I love poetry, and I think the poetry (especially after chapter 2) is genuinely exceptional. Your mileage may vary.

It's one of the best things I've ever read. Should you read it? Well, besides the poetry thing, that depends on your stomach for some rather dark themes and very disturbing, often violent imagery. Normally, I'm not one for a story that gets this dark, it's not usually my thing, but honestly LiL is so well told that I can't pull myself away from it even though almost every time I sit down to read it I either cry my eyes out or have a fit of anxiety and have to close the game.

It's good. Great even. What do you say about something that very clearly aspires to be literature, poetry? "Oh, Delillio's White Noise? 8/10, good story, good ideas, weird pacing". It's a VN that, at least once it hits its stride mid-chapter 2, takes itself very seriously as a real work of art and very much deserves the title.

I mean, this game is good, the psychological random flashes really adds to the game. Really worth your time if your looking for something out of only-sex cliché.
Only bad thing is you skip too much you will be likely be soft locked until you find your way out, but there is so many guides and mods you won't loose your head like the protagonist...
Ayane is def 1000/10 and i need more Yumi, too little Yumi tbh.

It has good moments but also sooo much bad ones. It feels like the author has scribbled down every single line of thoughts they had while making this. It also is trying to be edgy like a 14yold or Jaden smith, thinking that writing weird stuff is deep.
I gave it a proper chance but every bad sentence takes away from the game as much as every good one adds to it and this one has walls of bad ones. Writing stuff is not hard, knowing what to cut from that is and this author don't even try to cut anything.

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.