I think this update would be fine when played alongside the previous and subsequent updates. But 2 months on either side of it probably bias people more towards taking issue with the bridging/filler/whatever you want to call it content, that you probably would not really notice in a full playthrough. There was a reasonable amount of heavy stuff in the previous update that probably needed a bit of space before diving back in to whatever's coming next. Thus the boring first half of the dorm wars. But then again there is the grinding Imani lust that spaces it out which is kind of a nuisance.
That's its biggest problem. Before the fanfest rearrangement, it was going to be an update sandwiched in between two updates and this month long break would have happened after 0.50 which we'd have enjoyed right now. I really want to see 0.50, and then the couple of updates after it if I can find where the events that used to be in its changelog got moved to because I think there will be some relevant insights.
My whole Noriko lust events in 0.50 prediction is mostly fueled by the old changelogs. There were 3 Niki events and 2 Noriko events in the old 0.49, and 2 noriko events in old 0.50 and 2 animations. Combine that with the coming confrontation that Niki believes Ami about Akira sleeping around with the girls in 0.46, tested with Sana and Molly's invite events in 0.47, and the fact the joke that Noriko never gets sex is getting old, and I think it's prime time that Noriko starts having lust grinding.
The method I came up with started mostly as a thought experiment that Moonflare suggested, that seemed to line up with the changelogs after a while. (After the confrontation, Niki asks if Noriko has had any yet, and when Akira says no, Niki makes it happen)
And now that we've had 0.49, the almost joke I made about Maya lust grinding in 0.50 seems very plausible, like more ingame evidence for it than Noriko. Add in how poetic it'd be for the two girls who would normally seem impossible to start getting lust grinding to get it at the same time, even keeping their rivalry going. And this time Noriko has the advantage with invite over lust grinding, instead of Maya probably getting a dorm scene instead and 2 lust per go, it just seems right.
If Maya happens, I hope they clear the shrine jumpscare. Either say she doesn't hang out there anymore, or if she does just let him hang out with her too.
But for all of those dreams, 0.49 had its redeeming guts ripped out. Even the Io, Rin and Imani events that seemingly replaced it look like they were always going to be added in the end, just being reassigned from generic main events to character events.
I do wonder if the mechanical structure of this chapter will get reworked at some point in the future. It has been a bit all over the place with bugs and other such things. And I feel like there are things you could stumble over in a normal playthrough that end-up breaking your progression. But maybe they have already been patched, I have not replayed so would not really know.
Something much more lighthearted yay. There's been a bunch of bugs that have been seemlessly fixed with Sel's autopatch method. 0.46 had the Tsukasa grooming flags misapplied, and fixed with 0.47. Though people who didn't groom her but played the update on time have to remember that Tsukasa didn't witness the sex, nor did they witness the apartment event afterward with Chinami and Chika.
Fun fact, that's how you get Sana's number in your phone. View her photo, and then witness the main menu where the patch checks if you've seen that photo, then silently give you Sana's number.
Lot of people didn't grind up Imani lust after I told them to a about a month earlier. That's something to remember.
I dunno, I feel like there's a difference between cracking half-hearted jokes about it and confronting the reality of the situation.
Especially when the reality of the situation involves your daughter semi-publicly forcing you to actually watch her fuck the man you love as she tries to emotionally coerce you into an incestuous throuple whilst incidentally outing your best friend as being a sexual predator herself.
I don't see the blackout excuse coming into play here either - Sensei might not have known about the possibility of Sara and Haruka showing up but the fact that the setup exists at all would obviously imply that the sex was pre-planned.
I think it's specifically Sana wanting it that's killing Sara right now. I think Sara had resigned herself to Akira fucking Sana in the event where they were preparing to give Yuki an intervention, she wanted him to protect her. But what Sara wasn't ready for is Sana to lie to her, telling her she loved her in the process, and find out Sana was using sex to manipulate Sara, then find out even that manipulation was a lie and she's trying something even more extreme, that Sana's a little sex freak, and that she's already having threesomes / orgies, the kind of shit that will leave her in the dust covered in cum like Sara was.
And to feed into what Akira's been feeling for a few updates now, he's not going to be held to fault by either of them. Maybe Sana will blame him for the suicide attempt and will get shut down in the same way Haruka got shut down when the gravity of cheating got to her.
