Review for v0.3 Beta
The reason for the poor rating is because the sandbox gameplay is not well implemented.
At the very beginning of the game there is hardly anything to do. You'll find yourself skipping more than anything and frustratingly the only way to skip time is in your home. So if you're not sure what events are available, you'll find yourself going to your home, skipping time, pushing the button to "leave your room", opening the map, then checking to see if you can do anything at the park. Then going to your home, skipping time... etc. It's a terrible gameplay loop, that is only tolerable because there are very few places to check for events.
If you do play this game, don't bother doing this. Just check the park on the first day to unlock evelyn, then assume that there are no events outside of school unless the hints in the relationship menu tell you there are events. Just skip to the next day otherwise.
After all the charcters unlock you only have to rely on the relationship menu hints to progress and things get less annoying. Except, you still have to grind out the same events multiple times (sometimes 3, sometimes 7, sometimes 10) before you can see any updates in a route.
Edit: I forgot to mention that some events only take place on certain days of the week, which is an added frustration when you're just trying to move the plot along.
In a game with more content that didn't lock you out of finishing some content until you finish the content of another girl, this wouldn't be so bad. But because there's generally not a lot to do at one time, you have no choice but to wear out your control key grinding out an event one day at a time for one or (if you're lucky) 2 girls and then going home to sleep.
The sex scenes are fine, but nothing to write home about. The animations could definitely be worse. They don't quite look natural, but they weren't disturbing or incredibly awkward. Just... not great. I didn't mind them.
What little story there is here isn't very well written. I don't think the dev is a native english speaker. It's readable, but at times it feels very immature due to awkward word choices.
As far as the actual content of the story and characters... they're not terribly deep. The only interesting one is the principle. The rest of them didn't really leave much of an impression on me. And even the principle was only interesting because of her backstory and her relationship to what previously happened at the school.
Overall, this title needs work. The script could use an editor to help with some of the awkward dialogue choices. The writing isnt' terrible engrish, but it's enough to be occasionally distracting. There should also be a way to skip time from the map, instead of forcing us to skip time at home. And as is there's really no reason to make this game a sandbox when things mostly happen in sequential order anyways, with a few exceptions.
I don't think this game is beyond saving. But as is it's not great. Maybe when more content is available it won't feel as bad to play, since the experience did improve the more time I put into it.
The reason for the poor rating is because the sandbox gameplay is not well implemented.
At the very beginning of the game there is hardly anything to do. You'll find yourself skipping more than anything and frustratingly the only way to skip time is in your home. So if you're not sure what events are available, you'll find yourself going to your home, skipping time, pushing the button to "leave your room", opening the map, then checking to see if you can do anything at the park. Then going to your home, skipping time... etc. It's a terrible gameplay loop, that is only tolerable because there are very few places to check for events.
If you do play this game, don't bother doing this. Just check the park on the first day to unlock evelyn, then assume that there are no events outside of school unless the hints in the relationship menu tell you there are events. Just skip to the next day otherwise.
After all the charcters unlock you only have to rely on the relationship menu hints to progress and things get less annoying. Except, you still have to grind out the same events multiple times (sometimes 3, sometimes 7, sometimes 10) before you can see any updates in a route.
Edit: I forgot to mention that some events only take place on certain days of the week, which is an added frustration when you're just trying to move the plot along.
In a game with more content that didn't lock you out of finishing some content until you finish the content of another girl, this wouldn't be so bad. But because there's generally not a lot to do at one time, you have no choice but to wear out your control key grinding out an event one day at a time for one or (if you're lucky) 2 girls and then going home to sleep.
The sex scenes are fine, but nothing to write home about. The animations could definitely be worse. They don't quite look natural, but they weren't disturbing or incredibly awkward. Just... not great. I didn't mind them.
What little story there is here isn't very well written. I don't think the dev is a native english speaker. It's readable, but at times it feels very immature due to awkward word choices.
As far as the actual content of the story and characters... they're not terribly deep. The only interesting one is the principle. The rest of them didn't really leave much of an impression on me. And even the principle was only interesting because of her backstory and her relationship to what previously happened at the school.
Overall, this title needs work. The script could use an editor to help with some of the awkward dialogue choices. The writing isnt' terrible engrish, but it's enough to be occasionally distracting. There should also be a way to skip time from the map, instead of forcing us to skip time at home. And as is there's really no reason to make this game a sandbox when things mostly happen in sequential order anyways, with a few exceptions.
I don't think this game is beyond saving. But as is it's not great. Maybe when more content is available it won't feel as bad to play, since the experience did improve the more time I put into it.