Overall, an excellent game with so much content. The game is absolutely worth hours of time spent getting to all the good stuff.
The video clips and images are varied and interesting, and even if your character encounters the same situation multiple times, there are different videos and images that will load, making the grind far more bearable.
Now, for some criticism.
The game is grindy grindy grindy. As an example, to get through all of the Photoshoot content, you need to spend 150 in-game days to get it done. And, that is just one of 4 main jobs.
Also, the start of the game can be a little tricky, and good stuff does not really start happening until you are 50 days or so into it. If you don't read the game thread and all the hints, and be careful with your money, you can spend a lot of time on that early game only to end up with a soso ending, and the need to start over, and do that 40-50 day grind again. This happened during my first play through, and it killed the game for me (came back a month later after reading the thread, with a better plan).
If I had dev-deity powers, I think the following would make sense:
1) Turn the current first 40-50 days into an intro, to introduce you to the city, the characters, the jobs, the game mechanics, etc. When starting over, allow people to skip that, and just pick up at a good logical starting point where things can be pretty interesting right from the start.
2) Balance the post-prostitution money a little better. Once your character can whore herself out, money stops mattering. Example - in my current play-through, I finished the photoshoot, and have about 35k euros. My character would be able to not work for 2 years and still make bills - it makes the money pointless.
If me, I would make finding tricks much much harder, and more taxing energy-wise. Money, I think, should always be an issue that requires the character to make tough choices.
3) Amp up the negative effects of reputation. With 100 Rep, people should be, eh, taking plenty of liberties with your character's body. However, I may be missing something - my luck has been consistently high until I lowered it later in the game, but still bad events were extremely rare. Maybe I need another play-through where I minimize luck and self defense to see more of this.
4) Storylines should progress faster. The Photoshoot story should not take 38 game weeks to complete (4 shoots per week x 38 weeks is what's needed to get the 150 points required to finish the photoshoot story). I'm 10 weeks into the maid story, and it's just starting to get good. Anyway, the grinding needs some balance tweaks in my opinion.
Overall, great game, and the grind is worth it, but save yourself some angst and read the game thread before starting, and good luck finding all there is to find in the game - there's a ton of buried treasure to find.
The video clips and images are varied and interesting, and even if your character encounters the same situation multiple times, there are different videos and images that will load, making the grind far more bearable.
Now, for some criticism.
The game is grindy grindy grindy. As an example, to get through all of the Photoshoot content, you need to spend 150 in-game days to get it done. And, that is just one of 4 main jobs.
Also, the start of the game can be a little tricky, and good stuff does not really start happening until you are 50 days or so into it. If you don't read the game thread and all the hints, and be careful with your money, you can spend a lot of time on that early game only to end up with a soso ending, and the need to start over, and do that 40-50 day grind again. This happened during my first play through, and it killed the game for me (came back a month later after reading the thread, with a better plan).
If I had dev-deity powers, I think the following would make sense:
1) Turn the current first 40-50 days into an intro, to introduce you to the city, the characters, the jobs, the game mechanics, etc. When starting over, allow people to skip that, and just pick up at a good logical starting point where things can be pretty interesting right from the start.
2) Balance the post-prostitution money a little better. Once your character can whore herself out, money stops mattering. Example - in my current play-through, I finished the photoshoot, and have about 35k euros. My character would be able to not work for 2 years and still make bills - it makes the money pointless.
If me, I would make finding tricks much much harder, and more taxing energy-wise. Money, I think, should always be an issue that requires the character to make tough choices.
3) Amp up the negative effects of reputation. With 100 Rep, people should be, eh, taking plenty of liberties with your character's body. However, I may be missing something - my luck has been consistently high until I lowered it later in the game, but still bad events were extremely rare. Maybe I need another play-through where I minimize luck and self defense to see more of this.
4) Storylines should progress faster. The Photoshoot story should not take 38 game weeks to complete (4 shoots per week x 38 weeks is what's needed to get the 150 points required to finish the photoshoot story). I'm 10 weeks into the maid story, and it's just starting to get good. Anyway, the grinding needs some balance tweaks in my opinion.
Overall, great game, and the grind is worth it, but save yourself some angst and read the game thread before starting, and good luck finding all there is to find in the game - there's a ton of buried treasure to find.
