Time played: 40 hours
I'm going to have to second the previous reviewer that said it's a shame that we have to leave mediocre reviews for a game by the same developer that brought us one of the best games.
Superpowered is grindy but that can be grindy is ways that at least are amusing.
This is insanely grindy. I think evolution likely would do laps around just how slow this is.
1.) Money is almost nearly impossible to get. I suppose that makes sense in a house where only the oldest sister seems to have a job.
2.) The system of adapting the views of the other people in the house is a cool idea.
3.) Moving characters from one archetype to another is a cool idea.
4.) Having to introduce non-preferred topics to the women by bringing it with something they do like... is a cool idea.
5.) Putting them all together and getting (without money) 2 points of gain out of 50 in one stat out of 22 (or there abouts ) OR 6 points with money... is ridiculously slow.
6.) Grinding 600 points for yourself on each of those 22 skills to get very marginal boosts. (And some of them are actively negative to level up.. such as unhealthy.)
7.) Changes in play pattern (new events, options, etc...) are way, way, way too slow. If you played SuperPowered without cheats, it's one of the slowest titles out there and most grindy. Take that and slow it down by a factor of at least 10.
8.) Too... damn... many..... clicks. To load up one set of 3 conversation items requires .. Go to your room, click the inventory button... click the 3 things onto the bar... by clicking source and then destination (it won't autofill) then close, then travel to where you are to have the conversation.
9.) To have to buy something from the store to put on the bar will require at least 6 more clicks each... and additional if it went into the wardrobe.
10.) Sometimes space bar continues and sometimes it doesn't.
11.) There are too many useless pauses at the end of dialogues or prompts which require extra clicks to dismiss.
In short, this was 3 promising games that got slammed into one title with all of the grind of each. Add a poor UI and its really a race to if you'll get the next unlock or develop serious carpal tunnel first.
It is clear to me that developer does not and could not have played his games (even with inside knowledge) from the beginning. He has to be using cheats and setting arbitrarily high values on everything.
Even WITH cheats the game is grindy. Give yourself and every girl max values for everything and you'll still be in click hell. Example: change a girl's archetype... Step 1: Get 50-70 favor with them Step 2: Find THREE places where they'll talk with you with that option. (It's not everywhere they'll talk to you.) Step 3 and 4.) Assign secondary interests which match the intended archetype 5.) Set the Archetype. 6.) WAIT UNTIL NEXT DAY This developer has not met a time gate he hasn't embraced here short of limiting the number of interactions you can have based on the real clock.
In short, this game had promise but has fallen victim to the developers inclination to torture his players by creating nearly insurmountable grinds in front of them. If you take Dark Souls, remove most of the fun and replace it with a hell of a lot more grind... that's this in a nutshell.
If you're going to try it... try it straight for a bit but then go ahead and edit the save game. Even with everything maxed, this is still the grindiest and least rewarding title on this site.
If by chance the developer reads this:
1.) Women should gain attributes at least 10x faster than this.
2.) Players skills shouldn't be 100, 200, 300 for each tier. (And you start with Tier 0). They should be more like 50/100/150 or similar.
3.) Remove as much clicking as possible. Confirmation prompts after I said no to taking an action? Really? If I wanted to redo it I could just click it again.
4.) Pick a damn side. Why are there critical controls all across the screen., Try seeing how many times you have to move the mouse across the entire display to do something.
5.) Why is save and load buried under 2 menus? The escape menu is already wasted space.
6.) Showing her gains on the right, my gains on the left and my costs in the middle is nearly impossible to read. Just make a single scroll. It's not like you're spitting them out all that fast.
7.) Display delays should be user settable. Waiting 1 second on every pulse is a literal time waster. And thats saying a lot in a game that thinks time and wrist/elbow cartilage are infinite resources.
So, all of this is going to beg the serious question... if its this bad... why did you spend so much time on it? Answer: Because superpowered was grindy so, I expected some slog. Since this game doesn't document its core mechanics, you can't even see that the mountain is impossibly high. But SuperPowered had something going for it that this doesn't... I kept getting interesting scenes. This does not. For my 40 plus hours and cheating every skill and money... I got photos of mom's back and a voyeur look at my older sister in the shower.
Seriously folks... until this improves GREATLY... I'd recommend a hard pass. It's got potential but I'm not optimistic the developer is really going to acknowledge that the flaws in the game are personal play style choices they are forcing onto the player. The problem isn't the game.. its the choices they are making when they release the game.
That being said... I'll check back in a few months. If the developer starts making reasonable objectives and rewarding gameplay... I'll be happy to revise this.
Until then.. go do ... anything ...else. I'm doing you a favor.
There is grind, but justified in my opinion. Maybe with a little more events in between transitions it gets easier to endure.