hario1225

Member
Mar 3, 2021
358
649
The moment you start thinking about "proper game design," "immersion," etc you've already lost because you're on the completely wrong track. It is blindingly obvious that the purpose of the puzzles is not to provide a fun and engaging experience. They reflect that fact that the further one goes into Lessons in Love, the more the world rejects the player (this goes for both the literal player and Sensei). It becomes increasingly hard to progress, increasingly unfun, increasingly grindy - it would be reductive to state there is only one ludonarrative purpose for this, but that is the design. The artistic purpose. It is an experience the developer is attempting to convey through mechanic. It is axiomatic to say that "video games should be fun," "puzzles should test innovative thinking," etc, which is to say that they are not fundamental truths - they are platitudes liable to become thought-terminating cliches. Looking at systems clearly designed to reject the player and make their life difficult then complaining about how they aren't fun enough is so foolish I balk that one so invested in the story and theory-crafting would be so blind to this point. Let us examine once again Moby Dick.



In chapter 32 there is a lengthy chapter devoted to the physiology of whales. This is a highly dull chapter to read and a well-known roadblock for prospective readers of the work (yet I must explain it in detail here because it is dubious whether any poster in this thread has ready even such a fundamental cornerstone a literature such as Moby Dick). However, in this context of literature removed from "a porn game that should be fun and get my pee pee hard," we see immediately how foolish it would be to critique it from a lens as those critiquing SENSEI QUEST and other resets are. Can you imagine going to Melville and saying, good sir, it is all well and good that you wish your novel to be a testimony to every aspect of whales from the physical aspects of their being to the mythological image they come to represent, but this chapter was quite dull! Could you not make it a bit more fun and exciting? In fact, quite a few of your chapters could be shaved down, let's have more action scenes and whale hunting, you would really get more readers that way! It is rather obnoxious that you should even think to force me to read some boring chapter on whales when I can in fact simply flip the pages! Do you not know I will just flip the pages? You are not listening to me sir, I am telling you to make your novel more fun for me!

It really is just that simple: think, for one moment, the purpose. Now, it is entirely fair if you look at Lessons in Love rejecting the player and making it increasingly hard/unpleasant to make progress as a foolish thing. Some people think whales are dumb. However, this is not what is happening. The angle of attack is so completely off base it's like one is seeing reality on an entirely different level. Like one's mind is so boxed in by platitudes that any time something isn't fun and satisfying their every urge for what they want it to be that the entire world starts to seem wrong. How can one profess themselves to be a deep thinker, a lover of thought and figuring things out, so proud of each theory and confirmed idea, if such basic mental walls blind them so deeply? Such that they look upon a rock and see a mountain, or they look upon a mountain and see a rock? You really think for one fucking second the puzzles are meant to be fun tests of knowledge? You really think they contain anything but spite and hostility? You really think this is supposed to be a good time? You really think that 'all media must be fun' is a God-like axiom that subsumes all other purposes one may have? What? WHAT???????????? The populace is rendered infants before the most basic and blunt artistic purpose which itself is literally stated directly over and over. Shocking! Nothing really is beautiful!
yeah I'm not reading all that
 
Jun 20, 2023
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Ah, nostalgia, my very first comment was to refute + confirm some information about Ami. Maya as well do that again. There were a lot of hints that Ami knew, not only about Maya tho, about the fact there are others too. Sel is a fantastic writer, but even he is restricted by the fact that he is not a professional writer. Some of these "hints" are far too obvious to miss, some on purpose, others not so much. She knew in case of Maya or at the very least heavily suspected her, to such level that it may as well have been a confirmed suspicion. It is not retcon, no idea about "gets sent back" shit probably new update stuff, but Ami knowing about Maya is not a retcon, it was there from the beginning. Edit: In early updates her reaction to possibility of Sensei betraying her were more on the line of "deep down I always knew, but never wanted to admit it" kind of stuff or "I always knew, but never wanted to accept it" stuff, but it was never "I never knew".
 
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Bingoogus

Engaged Member
Sep 5, 2021
3,604
9,531
I am horrified and disgusted in myself for needing to ask...
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If you add the URM file (my signature) to the /game folder in the LiL folder you can easily use it to see the variants to scenes yourself, a little tag pops up when there's a flag or variable check. Takes 2 seconds to install and use. As to answering your question, it's a somewhat sadder scene, but it doesn't punch you in the gut, just cuts different, her take on how things went down and what comes next is simply not as touching as the other version.
 

Angiboat

Member
Jun 22, 2020
261
351
I am horrified and disgusted in myself for needing to ask...
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If you decided to leave, she says she's in love with you and wants to get married with you immediately even though she finds marriage stupid and that she's finally being seen as a human and doesn't know how to react, you get +50 affection when the event ends if I remember.
If you decided to stay and fuck her I just vaguely remember that she says she's expecting lots of cuddles in the future if you keep this up, it was generally in a sadder tone and she basically tells herself that's the way Sensei shows how he loves people while he says he doesn't know if it's love or not, and her love is *set* to 100 or so.
 

DeanNoriko

Member
Aug 20, 2022
185
1,057
So I just finished my playthrough last night and now got around to read up on all the feedback and theory crafting.
As per usual, our lore masters Moonflare, aramaug and bargle didn't disappoint, some very nice theories and thought experiments, wonderful!

However, before I start with my general feedback post, I wanted to touch on one subject that I was personally surprised to find a heated discussion for:
The reset puzzle.

Now, please bear with me, because I will actually take a bit of an opposed stance on this from the general consensus in this thread.
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Also, on another note, did someone find out if you are able to save Kenji?
I obviously clicked through all mobs right at the beginning, but figured there would be some alternative dialogue if you waited to face him when you have more spells and equipment later on. Just obviously couldn't bother to reload as it was clear it would not be crucial to getting through the puzzle.
 

fdsasdf_p

Well-Known Member
Apr 24, 2021
1,013
4,001
Sekai in the past and Sekai now seem like completely different people personality wise.
This is the update that has me thinking, either:
1) perhaps the ghost Sekai that haunts Akira isn't a "natural product" of a dead person's spirit, but a curse that Akira subconsciously placed on himself,
2) or simply the voices in her head and/or the life she was in haven't gotten to her yet.

Option 1 has been discussed quite a lot, but mostly in the direction of simply deciding whether the free floating Sekai is real or only exists in Akira's head; since we can find more than one scene where Sekai could directly or indirectly interact with other characters, we presumed ghost Sekai is "real to everyone".

However, after revealing the human side of Sekai in this update, I can't help wondering about additional questions like "Why does a woman who supposedly only cared about Akira then Ami and probably nothing else when she was alive, become this evil sex nymph that we see today after her death?" Could it be that the ghost Sekai isn't a 100% representation of her original self, but a twisted conjured entity with her darkest traits emphasized and amplified?

Essentially, this is the application of some rather common ideas in media when it comes to interacting with dead spouses' spirits. Either their imagery is infested in a horrifying manner by alive spouses' negative emotions like resentment and guilt toward the dead ones, or you simply cannot summon a 100% representation of a dead one's original self anyway; you'd always summon something that feels like her but not her.

Combining other information in this update, namely "how to become a god", "everything you can imagine is real" by Pareidolia and the eerie end of this happy event (Sekai's funeral photo as soon as she said "I don't think I'd be able to [leave you] if I tried"), it feels like the ghost Sekai is literally a curse Akira placed on her that results in a terrifyingly twisted dead girlfriend spirit who not only haunts Akira but also is capable of free roaming and pestering others.

Option 2 on the other hand is a lot more straightforward; her descending into madness at that point was far from completion.
 

barglenarglezous

Engaged Member
Sep 5, 2020
2,775
5,838
Sekai in the past and Sekai now seem like completely different people personality wise.
Flashback Sekai was a whole person. Flawed, has a dark side, but also full of hopes and dreams and the capacity to love.

There are two Sekais in the "current" timeline. The Sekai posessing Kaori, and the ghost of Sekai.

This town has two halves.
The world of Lessons in Love is the town of Kumon-Mi.
Sekai translates to world.
Sekai has two halves.

All the good in Sekai now lives in Kaori's donated heart.
All the bad in Sekai has taken the form of her ghost.

That's my reading so far, at least.
 

DeanNoriko

Member
Aug 20, 2022
185
1,057
So, on to my general recap of this update. Or more so, things I found interesting and were not talked about yet (or enough).

Starting with one thing that really warmed my heart and gave me confidence that maybe not following the green path might actually be viable in some form. At least that's my copium for now, because this scene was just too beautiful:
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Chika is even more delulu and bat-shit insane than I thought after the last update. This is bound to become interesting. Or is it?
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Now on to a few points that I would like to ask the help of the lore master squad (LMS) for.
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Also on a side note: The party scenes where Good Kid was playing made me realize once more that those songs clash with having to read text and being able to process them properly, it's just too distracting. Even though that particular song wasn't that bad.
In fact, I actually really liked the 8bit version in Sensei Quest. Call me a filthy millennial, but it was a bop.
So in conclusion, I like their music. It just doesn't always fit unfortunately.
 
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Angiboat

Member
Jun 22, 2020
261
351
Also on a side note: The party scenes where Good Kid was playing made me realize once more that those songs clash with having to read text and being able to process them properly, it's just too distracting. Even though that particular song wasn't that bad.
In fact, I actually really liked the 8bit version in Sensei Quest. Call me a filthy millennial, but it was a bop.
So in conclusion, I like their music. It just doesn't always fit unfortunately.
Every time he puts on Good Kids I'm just reminded of how he fumbled the bag so hard with these, all he had to do was take the Pox song and just have it be instrumental instead of the version with lyrics and it could've made for some great scenes if he used it right.
 
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