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

i cant even think about the amout of hours ive sunk in to this game. def a good dating sim. Ive done many play through to get all the story lines and it seems to be getting frequent updates. it is a tad buggy for something but theyre never game stopping type of bugs.

crazy grindfest, and strange decision to not allow right click to access option/load game etc, art is unique and the only thing going for the game, cheat is absolutely necessary to play the game which is never a good thing, i like the art so hope eventually gameplay improves but this game has been around for so long, the grind has only gotten worse

Quantity over quality. I loved the game at first, a solid concept and I thoroughly enjoyed it when it just had a few girls and a few things to do. But then new stuff kept being added and it was just bloat after bloat after bloat.

Picking it up again and trying to get through is just a chore, a massive chore and while the renders and LIs were at first worth it, it's now bloated with ones that aren't, so the reward doesn't feel worth the effort.

These people are right; it's a grind. This is a dating sim, not a romance VN, not a nukige, not anything like that. To me, complaining about the grind- a valid complaint- is like complaining about too much reading in your plotge.

If you're looking for a OELVN dating sim, this is a great one. It's a little feature bloated, and once it's "finished" could really use some reconsideration of events, but eh. It's fun enough, and back when dating sims (not VNs) were big, this would have been a kamige so you know. Credit where it's due.

You will probably want to play with a walkthrough open.
Just like the Dating Sims of yore.

Lots of content and harem options, to my personal taste the art it's pretty inconsistent, some CG's have good quality some others are outdated or just bad.
The writing is ok, most of the girls are basic and plain only few of them have interesting branches. For the "gameplay" what can I say... it's the average grind and click endless cycle.

This game is horrible.

It really doesn't respect you as a player at all. First of all, even with the cheats on, everything is an enormous time sink. You'll be clicking screen after screen for everything.

And after that time sink? Doing this or that can lock you out of certain girls or routes that are so esoteric and hidden you need to follow a wiki guide for it. No wait, you need to follow a wiki guide for MOST of the game.

The CGs aren't half bad. The scenes are kinda flat. Even if they were good though, it's all locked behind a bunch of time wasting. So, not worth it.

I kinda has a mixed felling toward this game. This game is pretty long and still in development; currently has a lot of good content, but it doesn't mean it's overall an amazing game. The CGs are mixed, some are good and some are bad, and the plot some are average and some are high quality. Although the game does has some hint, but overall, it still needs the player to look up for a guideline, or otherwise you will be end up in situation you doesn't want to get.

Although looks like a normal dating sim game, but you can play in some kinky ways by building Dom/sub relationships with your harem and use different sex toys on them. For example, give them a slave collar, taking them for a walk like a dog. etc.

Sometimes the game can also become buggy due to version updates, some events will reappear again.

Really enjoyable game play, not boring the player because, there are enough map size and graphic / drawings. Story / events are the punch line for this game.. Events are the best and keeps you busy to truck..

I have tried this game periodically, and each time I hold out hope that the game will have improved at its foundation.
This game does not allow you to easily load, and requires you to quit and reload the game to do so.
Another problem is the fact that you can lose access to a lot of women if you mess up how you play. For instance, if you have sex with Shiori before progressing far enough with Aletta, you will be fired, lose access to the office, and hence, lose access to downstream characters.
I find this lousy, although it might not bother others who are more aware of how crappy this game mechanic is. (The problem is that if you are unable to revert to before you had sex with Shiori, you have to restart and lose hours of gameplay.)
Anyways, the game could have and should have been better because I am sure I am not the first to complain about these or other issues that I haven't come across or can't remember.

- First sex scene in a game is MC being cuckolded. Well done, devs. My roommate was fucked in my house and I had just 2 options: watch them or close the door.

- Content is locked behind a lock icon on a character progress bar with no explanation. Seems like I was doing everything right, increasing girl's love points and then I get a black lock icon in her progress bar. No explanations from UI or hints, just "Fuck you!" from a game. At first I hought that I need to ask her on a date, but she refused "I dont see you that way".

- To progress with Bree I need to play with her on Z-box, that she will gift on my second birthday (on the first one I've got a sweater). Thats whole ingame year to wait for event! There is no other way to get that freakin Z-box.

- Events are bugged. Wanted to play arcade games with Bree in the mall and it didnt start. I see her in there, its saturday, I can talk to her but nothing more. I've gone in and out of the building a few times, save\loaded, lost LP and gained back (by slapping her ass and then comlimenting). And only then the event started. At this SAME location, SAME stats, SAME time.

- Pregnancy. This is a problem. I dont need pregnant women in a porn game. But the only way to avoid it is to buy condoms. And earning money here is hard, really. While sex scene may happen at random, when I dont have them in inventory.

3 stars for art and writing. Imagine others as locked behind some broken event with no hints.

The key points of this game are: Shitloads of solid content; awful amount of grinding and waiting (even with cheats) to progress through it all; far-too-often objectives are obtuse/indescript/require hardstudying the wiki; kinda buggy sometimes

It feels like a serious victim of development bloat.

The game is far from well made.
I am talking purely game play. Most game features either bug out. Even without cheats! Content is locked out without warning or any sign of that going to happen. The guide or the book in game that shows the events etc. Has to be made a lot better at displaying what the player needs to do if they want this or that.

If I want To control the company I need to take this route if I want to control the company or take another route where you get kicked and you are free to do other things. But you are locked out of the office sex.

We need in-depth branching knowledge. Or even better to be able to lock specific paths. I start talking with Some one if there are multiple routes that I might take so the game locks me on that specific route.

As far as animations go! The new animations are well made. And even the older ones are decent.

Considering that the uploader of the game is not the creator but I think just a patron subscriber. I can expect mutch of what I say to be improved upon. Even so my rating will change accordingly.

one of the best erotics games i have ever played, give it a try please and if you can, buy it in steam, that author deserves money, it has a lot of content and the grafics are really great as you can see, i just love the dom sub mechanic

It's a very nice game with tons of content and tons of kinks. I like how the dev releases some content frequently. Each character has its own storyline and choice does matter. Dev did a good job.
Overall it's 5 stars for me.

it's... good. Tons of content and characters that don't feel like memes.

The complexity and sheer amount of things you have to keep track of to do a perfect playthrough of this game is staggering. The girls are split into groups of 4-5 that you can form a harem with. Each girl has a schedule and a path, you can't go down just one path in case it blocks your way down a different one. Once you're in a certain stage of the path, you can't sleep with more than one girl from any given group in the same 7 day period, because if you do, the girl you cheated on will leave forever.

Sleeping with a chick isn't always intentional either, you'll get into random events with one chick that trigger the cheating mechanic and screw you over. You basically have to keep half a dozen saves, each made at least half an hour of game time apart, because there's so many ways a playthrough can die. The bear... the stupid bear... don't go to the park at night. I really did not expect this game to have horror/gore.

You have to schedule dates, keep them, keep up hygiene, food and exercise, there's events that happen only at a certain date and you need to know exactly what to do in order to continue a girl's storyline (the wedding one is diabolical imo). Really, really not easy to do anything without the massive wiki.

I'm glad they fixed the slowdown bug (or was it just my massive expensive computer upgrades?) and I loved most of my first playthrough, but I can't bring myself to do it all over again, because I made 2 mistakes in a game with 5 million traps, while I was following the wiki as best I could. Just 4-5 girls is an entire game's worth of complexity, this is... unbelievable. I feel like this should've been a few games developed in a series instead.

I love 2D digital graphics, that's the reason I have turned my attention to this game in 2019. And sometime before the middle of 2021, I enjoyed revisiting it periodically as new versions were released. But then the inevitable happened - as new characters were introduced and story branches branched out, I just started getting confused by the numerous girls that appeared in the game, as well as the story progression that kept getting more and more complicated. By September 2022, I realized that I was completely confused by this legion of girls, especially the need to keep track of each heroine's points.
In my opinion, the developers missed the moment when they should have stopped and finished the project. I haven't touched this game for over a year, but judging by the discussion, there was nothing good to look forward to.
"And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action". - W. S.

The game is overall a well-made life-dating sim game.

Pros:
The good visuals of the game attracted me to the game.
The writing is very nice. It was very well descriptive and detailed that I didn't feel the lack of animation in the sex scenes.
The girls are quite diverse, both physically and personality-wise.

Cons:
The game is very grindy, we have to experience many dialogues and repetitive date events to earn a certain love point from the girls.

Pregnancy content is too short for my liking, if we don't get married when the love interest gives birth, the love score drops significantly and when we get married, the game ends immediately. It would be nice to continue afterwards.

A game that makes you grind stats and items and "relationship scores" with characters. Until few characters go "WHAT?! YOU SLEPT WITH SOMEONE ELSE?!" And characters leave. And you lose job. No warning. No discussions.

No character is clear in what they want in relationships. No character wants to discuss. The game is rigid, tiresome and stupid. Over all disappointing.

Gamplay: 4/5 the movement system is so pretty unique afaik so it has a slight learning curve, but once you get it your only limited by the transition speed and engine limitations. The NG+ in the game is well done, however, it does force you to go through hours of content over and over that even with skip is unbearable.

I used a cheat tool about 3 hours in since some plot lines can take in game months, real time hours to slog through the first time if you are reading the dialogue. Highly recommend doing one blind playthrough to learn the game and after that use the Time Freeze Mod + wiki to make it more bearable.


Story: 6/5, No special powers, dark undertones, no grammatical errors that I saw. Includes NTR for those into that, all avoidable in the patch I played with liberal wiki usage. With such a huge roster of characters each one remains feeling unique in their own way. Highly recommend avoiding skip usage since the dialogue is also voiced usually, making each character feel even more unique.


Art: 3/5, when the art is good, it's really good. When it's bad, it's goes from mediocre to straight up terrible. Excluding the grind, this is the biggest flaw so far, a lack of consistency that will have you forgetting which character is which. Some scene opportunities were also missed, but I can't fault the developer for this.

Overall: A great game being bumped down to good by inconsistent art, a lackluster time skip function (corrected by mods) and an ungodly amount of wiki usage to the point I was playing wiki simulator more than the game itself.

TIPS:

• The game is extremely well paced once you get a decent stat build up, if like me you hate overly excessive grind to reach the well paced parts, Time Freeze Mod, makes everything much easier and includes a UI Cheat.
• Use and abuse the wiki to ensure you are on the path you want and that you get the best starting skills.
• Don't Cassidy Route/Office Route last, it is one of the longest routes and if done last you will have nothing to do for a long while.
• The hypnotize skill is not in the wiki and only has a few mentions in forum search, it's super useful to develop certain characters Dom/Sub/Gender stats quickly. Maybe NG+ exclusive but I located it in the bookstore on my first NG+ loop.

Version: 23.7.0c

This game is awesome for someone like me, since I enjoy grindy games, if that grind is done right. Taking care of needs, boosting stats, learning skills and of course boosting relationships with girls. To make perfect playthrough you will need to open wiki so you don’t mess up any events, which can lock you out with some girls forever. On the other hand there is NG+ which is great for those, who like to play without spoilers and want to learn from their mistakes. Also huge applaud to the devs, who are feeding content consistently for I don’t even know how long, I was patron for a whole year like 2-3 years ago and was never let down, seems like they keep on giving.

+ All girls are unique physically and mentally-wise and are very believable, which you don’t see in many games of this type. There are 21 romancable girls atm and you can form many harems between them under right conditions. There is ton of content btw, which can entertain you for many hours! All the NTR is avoidable luckily.

+ Writing is mostly very solid, each girl has her own story and makes you care about them or some of them at very least. Progression through their stories feel natural and kept me involved.

- This game clearly tries to make you to immerse yourself in it’s world, which is great, there are many issues which will take you out from that immersion tho. For example your secretary asks you if she can go home to take care of her sick son, you agree yet she stays in office and keeps on going like nothing happened. Some girl can storm off in rage from you, yet you can interact with her immediately like nothing happened and many other examples, which I won’t be covering here. They should make it that she dissapears for a day from a game or not to include those conversations at all, feels like blatant oversight here.

- What takes you out from immersion the most is art. This was problem even before and was one of the main reasons I stopped following this game, it got unfortunately worse over time. This game has some freakin beautiful art, all the backgrounds, main sprites of girls and those tiny shibi or how it’s called are all awesome. But other art (mostly sex scenes) ranges from pretty good to mediocre to absolutely atrocious. There are at least 7+ artist maybe even 10+ in this game, that inconsistency is the worst I’ve seen in any game and for someone like me, who is sucker for consistent art, it is a huge let down. I’d rather have one mediocre art style then this mess. The worst part about it is that the newest art (or art which I didn’t see in earlier stages) is so terrible on many levels and I’m not talking about subjectively disliking that type of art, what I’m talking about are disfigured heads and faces of girls it looks absolutely horrendous to that degree, that I had to redo many of them in photoshop just to keep playing this game. One would think that game will improve art in time, doesn’t apply here tho. What is the most confusing for me is that there aren’t even that many scenes drawn and one or two artist could handle them with no problem imo.