Ren'Py - Love & Sex Second Base [v24.12.0a] [Andrealphus]

I don't know why this game right now is rated under 4 stars because this is objectively a good game. A lot better than the highly rated games here in terms of the amount of content, replayability, and paths. In my opinion this game is a must play. Though it has some weaknesses, like the map is not intuitive at all, some bugs here and there but not very disfunctional bugs, and there is grinding, although its not as tough as other games and surprisingly you can change the difficulty. But yeah, overall this game is GOOD.

This is one of those games that I kinda want to like and that I'm tempted to play again every dozen updates or so only to be disappointed again.

The design philosophy seems to be quantity over quality... of characters. None of these characters actually feel fleshed-out and progressing with them requires grinding.
Now, I'm not a stranger to grinding and I'm not opposed to it on principle but in this game, it is so repetitive (due to how restrictive the game is overall when it comes to player action) that it feels like a chore, maybe even a punishment.

The art design is reasonable (but nothing to write home about), the writing okay (but far from great), the sex scenes somewhat interactive and decent (but maybe not enough of a reward compared to what you have to put up with to get there).

It's not like there isn't some potential there: the idea of being able to choose from a wide array of love interests who you want to pursue is ambitious and cool; but it also seems to be a drain on resources and perhaps a "way out" for the developer to shift their attention when working on any of the other characters isn't going smoothly.

The end result is a game that has more torsos of characters lying about than any splatter film I've ever seen, that is more grindy than fun, and that (while it does manage to pique my interest every now and then) ends up frustrating me whenever I make the (poor?) decision to give it another go.

Perhaps it will be worthwhile in a few years - god knows it's taken some time to get to where it is today - but right now, I cannot really recommend it.

Bug-ridden Gem

This game a bit like Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines.

From concept an awesome game but there are sadly all those bugs.
This sadly here the case too. The storylines of each character are awesome in their own way and really well written while having stunning art too. This makes it even sadder, that some of them are not (really) accessable because something is not correctly working so blocking their progress.

The gameplay itself is those of a sandbox with typical Statgrinder and the game comes with a changeable difficultysetting depending on how much grind do you want. There is even a built in cheat mode which is at the moment definataly needed because either the character creation locked you out of content (one character need for apearing the Luck boon, another story requires that you have Martial Art Skill despite having full stats to avoid Game Over though the Walkthrough only define it as optional) or you found out later you did not things in (unwritten) order so you are stuck and need to start from beginning or way earlier.

The game has a walkthrough too, telling you as I said before which is the next step which is as long awesome, as things are working.

So my opinion is, the game is awesome when it is running but you will hate it and yourself for wasting your life when it is not.
So it is your decicion if start now or wait until it is way more polished.
I can honestly recommend latter because there are from time to time savewipes needed to fix something big.

It's a good game, it's actually a great game but ...
When I started to play it, it really seemed like a typical visual novel ... then I was surprised because it is a perfect combination of a Doki doki that we are used to by the eroges renpy.

He kept playing it and he took scene after scene ... and that was where he slammed the door in my face. Turns out, you can flirt with any girl in the game in a single match, but if you're not careful, they'll obviously catch you for cheating. And that's what pleases me and bothers me.

You see, when you make a dating simulator you must take into account where to draw the lines of your routes to obtain different endings. And I'm not saying that this misses the fact that one of those options is to screw you if you cheat on someone.

But it is that you simply cannot open all the routes as if nothing and never give a warning or warning that obviously something is going to screw you.


It simply is:

Trace the limits of your routes better, so you don't screw someone up.

If I could give star halves believe me I would give you 4.5, but for the moment it will stay at 4

I've been quietly following/playing this game for a while now.

Rating: 8.5/10: Once you get used to all the grinding this is a quality game with a ton of upside.

THE BAD.

1. Grinding to infinity and beyond: I agree with most people voicing their criticism regarding the excesive amount of grinding in the game and I completely understand if it's a dealbreaker for some but for me the rewards this game offer (all the scenes you can get) make it worth it. Once you get used to it, grinding just become a mean to an end.

2. No Replay mode: It'd be nice to be able to replay the scenes you've earned during your game.

THE GOOD.

1. Regular updates: This game is constantly being updated. Also, the devs (and people working with him/them) are active in this thread, I cannot stress enough how important both of these are for a fan.

2. The story tracker: You virtually have a walkthrough inside the game. It helps a great deal if you're a casual player (or if you got lost)

THE REALLY GOOD STUFF.

1. Quality art: everything in this game (locations, backgrounds, characters, scenes) is really well done and looks really good.

2. The characters and their storylines are engaging: Some stories are more enticing than others, depending on your personal preferences, but every storyline in this game is worthy of your time.

3. A whole "mini universe" of girls to choose from: I understand this is a hot topic and that it is "love or hate". I for one, love the fact that you the game gives you the chance of exploring tons of "flavors", so to speak. You like blondes? you like tomboys? you like submissive girls? you like dominant girls? you like girls with tattooes? you like redheads? you like obsessive girls? you like breasts the size of balloons? you like small tits? you like girls who likes it rough? the game has all of those options for you... and more!! You want being "a player" and date many girls at the same time? You want to have harems of slave girls? You want to find a cute girl with a tight butt and marry her and maybe getting her pregnant? You can do that too.

I save my fifth star for when the "Girl MC mode" has more content.

Hats off to the devs; Stellar job!!

Even though I like this game, I have to subtract a star because it is litterally unplayable (unenjoyable) without cheats.
With cheats though it removes 80% of what is annoying about the game.

I just want to sit back and relax playing this. It should not be a choore.

The good part is, that most of the girls have a decent story, and none engrish sex scenes. and most are really hot.But honestly there are just to many, it is getting redic.

I also hate that recently the art has changed. And even if the art isnt worse, it the girls just dont look like tham self in the lewd sceens anymore. It weird having 2 art styles.

This game is a lot better than people give it credit for. On my top 10 for sure and the art quality is original, unlike all the other stuff usually upvoted. Definitely a quality game. If I had to give it any feedback, I'd say that it could use some work on its repetitiveness, but honestly it's a small knock from the quality the developer has rolled out.

The game manages to give an outstanding first impression. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver anything more.

The good
The game's main character, Mike, has reached a turn in the road of his life: His two roommates, Ryan and Samantha, have moved out to start a life together. They've even put up a "roommate wanted" ad for Mike.

Mike is incredibly lucky. No more than a few hours after his old roommates have left, two new roommates arrive. Bree is an exuberant, cheery, blonde geek with bushy hair, who loves colorful clothes. Sasha is a dark-haired rebellious type who enjoys loud music and hard alcohol drinking, but is more than willing not let them impede the life with Mike and Bree.

The object of the game is to help Mike strike up a relationship with either Bree or Sasha, and eventually ask for the hand of one of them in marriage. With careful planning, Mike has a third option too: Entice both, make them tolerant towards a polygamous life. Instead of a girlfriend, have a harem!

There are, of course, obstacles. There is money to made, skills of life to be learned. And there are distractions in the form of other women. These women all dress in the manner of "sex on a stick", but trying to have a relationship with them ultimately won't go anywhere. There is Lexi, the hooker who sells drugs on the side; Alexis, the gold-digger and compulsive cheat; Palla, whose foul mouth does an excellent job of making you not want to look at her pretty face; Cassidy, the spoiled brat; Morgan, the man with female reproductive organs, and Kylie, Alexis's clinically deranged sister with murder in her eyes. This game is an exercise in keeping focus and abstaining from greed. Your policy must be: Throw into the trash bin that which befits the trash bin.

The game's technical aspects do not disappoint. It features tablet-drawn anime-style graphics, appropriate music, and some voice acting.

The bad
Play this game for a while and soon, its first impression wears. Every game needs a good idea with which to start. This game has taken that good idea and gone nowhere with it. The problems of this game are not one or two:

• Too much of a grind: I mentioned that this game puts your focus and abstinence to the test. The problem is that you will fail this test. It is a Kobayashi Maru test. (Hell, there is even an Scottie in this game!) The combined determination of Samantha, Anna, Hanna, Scottie, Aletta, Audrey, Palla, Lexi, Kleio, Kylie, Alexis, Shiori, Lavish, Harmony, Cassidy, Morgan, Emma, Ayesha, Cherie, Reona, Natalie, Victor, Shawn, Jack, Ryan, CEO Dwayne, Danny the thug, Jenna Jefferson, and Mrs Jackson finally prevails. They will derail the game. Mike needs to spend more time in the game, grinding, to undo their damage.
• Denies closure: Denial of closure is a catastrophic failure for every video game. (In case of Mass Effect 3, it caused such an uproar among the fans that they threatened lawsuit and compliant to the Federal Trade Commission.) This game denies closure. The relationship with Bree and Sasha is as unsatisfying as the relationship with every other women. The main story has long been forgotten while developers are spending time adding contents for those distraction characters.
• No explanations: For no obvious reasons, certain buttons do not appear on the UI. On many occasions, actions like kissing, requesting sex, doing pushups, swimming, getting a coffee, petting, or slapping cannot be performed on eligible targets; the game provides no reason as to why not. For example, if you have a Bree or Sasha with 100% Love and 100% Submission, you expect a "Tie up and have sex" button to appear 90% of times, right? And when it is greyed out, you'd expect the game to tell you exactly what's wrong.
• Clandestine UI: Some locations remain totally invisible unless the player travels to their parent location at a specific time. For example, there is no way of knowing there is a sex shop in the game unless you visit the Dark Alley at exactly 10 PM.
• Insane mechanics: Some actions take zero time while others take an incredibly long time. For example, sometimes, having sex does not advance the clock at all, while at other times, it advances the clock by 23 hours.
• Stingy with showing sex: The ultimate reward of this game is a scene being played. Unfortunately, you cannot keep the reward; i.e. there is no gallery with unlockable contents. Saving the game does not guarantee reproducible results either. Coupled with the fact that getting to see these scenes is very difficult in the first place, the overall experience is not good.
• Degrading quality: Brevity is a virtue that this game does not have. It pours walls of text on the screen. But that's not the worse thing. As the game progresses the quality of dialogs drops. They become more annoying and illogical. Typos appear. Context often gets forgotten. An example of a significant quality loss is the moment that Bree and Sasha confront Mike about his double relationship with them. The quality of the text is significantly low.
• Quirky UI: Right-clicking invokes the "Save" dialog box. To invoke the game menu, you must press the ESC button. To hide the UI, you must press ESC twice. While this UI is better than Ren'Py's default UI, it still has room for improvements.

Women just showing up to a house and deciding to just move in without checking anything, rent cost, room size, rules, room mates, litteraly nothing is just so fake that it makes it clear from the start that the game is not going to be a serious one.

The slight lag in the game seems like nothing at the start but gets very annoying later on as do the repetitive conversations.

Mc is yet another spineless white knight whos a bit dumb, the women are barely one dimensional and just go along with whatever MC says.

The "dates" feel like a chore and dont change as the relationship gets higher plus getting the stats up is just grindy as hell(even with the cheats).

On a positive note the interface is nice and the art is well done althrough not nearly enough adult content.

Hard pass from me, too many dom women and not enough adult content makes this a hard game to play for little reward.

I've been following the game for over a year and watched it develop and grow. Top notch graphics, well developed characters, interesting stories and lot's of paths to follow and choices to make.
The Dev team is doing a great job and I look forward to the finished product.

The idea of game system is good, but CG is too bad, and there are only a few characters in it. The content is too little, the text is mostly, and there are many places to improve. But the game is still good. I hope the subsequent updates can be improved

Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete Please Delete

The game is very good, there are many girls and events, I also managed to see that there are seasons since it arrives in autumn, the bad thing is that it currently has enough bugs and obviously more history is missing in some girls, what screwed me was that it did not I got to unblock Ryan before Samantha's marriage so I couldn't do route A well, I'll wait a while for the game to get more progress with the girls, fix some bugs and that there is an updated guide since the one I found was from the version 17

The game is excellent.
1) Very engaging. Played for a few days.
2) Quality content. Especially those descriptions of sex scenes - really gives a boner
3) You can make a progress with all girls simultaneously, no "select who you continue fucking with" situations.

A few minor bugs, but I can live with that.

I think nearly anyone who has played this game has something of a love-hate relationship with it. When I first played it, it was a buggy mess. Those mostly got fixed and I appreciate a dev who isn't afraid to interact with the community. Before I got further, I want to state that up front that I very much WANT to like this game. It has tons of potential. First, the positives

I like the art a lot. Definitely prefer the drawn style to the "taken from Pornhub actual pictures" version of the game. The girls (and there are a lot of them) are all distinctive in looks and personality for the most part. Some of them have lots of character development. The "primary" girls (the old roommate, Samantha, the current roommates Bree and Sasha, the co-worker Audrey, the Boss Aletta) get stories. Now there's an almost comical overload of characters. Just looking at the "old" header vs the new header is absurd. It went from like 6 girls to 20.

If the dev can manage to focus on some of them or even gets around to giving all of them attention, well that would be impressive as hell.

The gameplay, such as it is, it pretty grindy. There doesn't really seem to be a underlying story. Now I like sandbox games but they still have a narrative that hold all the moving parts together. So there isn't much of a story.

I actually like the idea of a Female MC. But there isn't much there as far as I know. I could do without the VA but its a nice touch.

I think this game almost has too much going on. A better focus on the core girls/game would easily make this a 5/5 game

*Updating my review to account for the new content*

I think my earlier review was a bit harsh. I still have a few issues with the "sandbox" VNs, as the grindy nature usually only serves to to obscure the fact that there isn't much content. If you didn't have to spent hours grinding money or stats, you'd realize that there isn't actually much there.

I think that WAS the case for this game. I would like to say that might not be the case when this game is finished. The characters and background art is still good and the writing ranges from solid to excellent. Some dialogues actually impressed me. This game still has a ways to go, to be sure. Particularly for a Bree MC. I dont know how many people actually play as Bree, but now that its been committed to, I'd like to see it actually work for the sake of the game.

This still has 5 star potential. I hope it gets there

This game possesses a rare quality not often found in games on this site; while being lewd and all that. It has a stunning array of personality, and this is one, if not the only game on this site I actively have not wanted to cheat in; nothing feels like a chore, and there's a lot of stuff to do, so even when you grind, you kinda forget the grind, because it's 2-4 minutes of 30 min of amusement.

The characters are all unique and interesting, and the sheer fact that there's voice acting adds even more to it

Overall, this game is excellent, from my point of view.

Characters and art style is great, but holy shit, it is not worth the grind. Even if you enable cheats, you have to wait for random events to happen because a few of the stats needed for certain scenes is capped 4-5 different times per character. Meaning you have to wait for 4-5 events (which happen once a week in-game time if you're lucky) just to get all the scenes that are available.

One of the grinding game in this website.I spent hours to get one cgi.You gotta work for money,and you dont even have time to date any of the girls.Full of bugs aswell.Anyway,

Pro:
-Art and sex scene
Cons:
-Too grindy
-Walkthrough is really necessary
-Waste of energy and time only to get unsatisfying cgi
-Bad game design
-Full of bugs
-You cant get all the sex scene.You need to wait to get a chance.Daily and weekly.

Not recommend

Pros:

- Decent 2D art, but nothing amazing
- Fairly unique character designs
- Consistent updates, but mostly bug fixes

Cons:

- This game is probably the worst grindfest on the whole site. 90% of your time will be spent doing repetitive and mindless tasks that add little value to the game except for making it look like there is actual content
- Extremely buggy (even modders dropped this game recently)
- Story is almost nonexistent
- Sex scenes are basically just one cg each and feel unrewarding after all that grinding

Neutral:

- The game does support cheats, which wouldn't even be neccessary, if the game focused more on character interaction and story, instead of grinding stats.

Overall even with cheats the game is unejoyable to play. The devs should look at some other games that do a far better job at combining erotic content with character interactions and story. Instead so far they've only added more and more characters instead of listening to some of the valid criticism posted here. Kind of a shame, because this game has some potential, if there was some actual gameplay and willingness to improve. If you are looking for a rewarding and interesting erotic game experience, look elsewhere.

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Grindy but a great game. I wish there was a little bit more content apart from that fact every girl is quite interesting to interact. I really wonder who this game such a low score here. Believe me all, the score does not justify the game's quality.