Ren'Py - Love & Sex Second Base [v24.4.0a] [Andrealphus]

Rating as of v23.7.0c: 4/5 stars

Prefaces: I am not a sandbox, management-style enthusiast. So, this game might not be for me.

Like many, this has been a frustrating game to play in two regards:

1) Gameplay mechanics

• Location navigation could be greatly improved with shortcuts to high traffic locations ('My Bedroom', 'Bathroom', 'Kitchen' in house, etc.). I would KILL for a customizable hotbar for fast travel to these common locations.
• Time navigation could also be improved drastically by adding an ability to advance time by day of the week and hour. It is baffling to me that we can only wait one hour at a time.
• As many have said, there are many dialogue options that lead to unexpected consequences. Warnings (or at least some indication of the outcome after the fact) would be appreciated.
• Items effects are not described. How am I supposed to know what to purchase without needing to refer to the wiki? Should be in-game!
• The tutorial should provide additional guidance on in-game features. For example, I played for hours before realizing I could call people on the phone.
• It would be greatly appreciated if the 'Easy' mode provided even more bonuses for earned money and loosened some of the 'goldilocks' stat restrictions for certain events.
• It would also be greatly appreciated if I could flip a switch to prevent girls from asking MC on dates. I understand it's necessary for unique scenes, but not random, repeated dates! And some girls have penalties for saying No too often? Nah dawg. Turn this shit off at least in Easy mode.

2) Quality of love interests
For a game titled "Love & Sex", I was disappointed that there was an almost exclusive tilt toward "sex slave" in harem relationships. Romantic harems without dom/sub elements are virtually nowhere to be found. (I have not tried single girl playthroughs yet because god damn would that be a lot of work for little reward!)

I would have preferred that girls could have different personality shifts depending on kink points. For example, high kink points in a harem could introduce fetish elements specific to the harem, medium kink points could open group sex elements but without other fetishes, low kink points could be polyamory without group sex. This would remove kink points as a harem pre-requisite while still maintaining a functional stat.

Other issues I had were unfortunate fetish elements on girls without option to remove or not introduce them. For example, Anna's "anal whore" tattoo is a real deal killer for me on an otherwise great character. Wish that could be added in a tattoo event like Kleio for those that like those things but it doesn't add to her story IMO.

While I can appreciate a large cast, it really comes at the expense of depth here. While the game is still in development, it would have been more enjoyable to have more scenes with fewer girls/harems so that updates could provide independent paths as new characters are introduced. For example, for the Band Harem, I would have liked to have had triple the number of unique sex scenes with the girls and would gladly give up the Office Harem, whose characters are mostly unlikable to me.

Lastly, I was a bit disappointed that the 'Hung' attribute did not visually change anything about MC's endowment. I realize this could drastically increase the amount of art, but 'Hung' vs 'Small dick' versions would have been value adding for me personally. MC's default size is ok, but bigger is better ...

With all that said, it's a well-made game. Not perfect, and possibly not even aimed at a player like me, but enjoyable despite its flaws.

I have put off writing this review for sometime because if I wrote out everything that I had to say about this game it would end up being extremely long so I shall try to keep it short.

This was one of the first adult games that I ever played way back in late 2018 and it has come a LONG way since then. From expanding content for already availible girls to adding entirely new ones. For most games that have been in development for this long I would usually say that the dev has given up and is just using the game as a cash cow. I don't feel like that is the case with L&S, it is simply a huge game with a LOT of content. I was a Patron for many many months and I honestly cannot remember a time where the team failed to deliver an update on time.

However as with most games that try to appeal to a wide audience and variety of fetishes it might not be for you. Depending on your personal tastes there might be entire characters stories that do't appeal to you, and that's okay. Quick note on the NTR contained in the game. It is all avoidable and is mostly tied to a single character. I usually dislike NTR and was put off following this characters (Alexis) story simply because of that, but once I finally did I was kind of stunned about why she was doing what she was. I don't want to spoil it but yea. Also even on her route it is all optional you can tell her to stop fucking around (litterally) or you'll leave her ass (again) and thats when the reveal happens. I would encourage you not to be put off by it and experience her story for yourself, it's pretty special.

In my opinion this is the quinessential sandbox game. You really do have the freedom to do whatever you want. Interact with who you want and ignore those that you don't like. If you so choose you could just grind away at work in game and ignore all (most) of the girls.

On the topic of the girls there are a LOT of them. From your bitchy coworker to the tough but kind wrestler to the psychotic college girl that will stalk and kill you (for real thats not even a joke she will fuckin kill you or whoever you are dating if you piss her off), and they all have their own unique routes. Usually 2 per girl. And if that wasn't enough there are several different harems in the game that you can form with different types of girls. Some will be girls that share similarites some will be girls that couldn't be more different. It really is quite unique, I can't think of another game where you have the freedom to do that and its always fun to see how they intereact with each other.

The art keeps getting better and better, old art that was lacking by current standards is being brought up to par with the rest. Old events that didn't feel as nice as newer ones are being redone to again be on par.

My BIGGEST gripe and complaint with the game is how events are triggered and handled. The game is simply a nightmare to play without constantly checking the wiki. You will find yourself stumbling into scenes that you might not want to find just because you are lacking 1 point in a stat or something similar. Even after playing the game for all these years I find myself tabbing back and forth from the game to wiki to make sure I don't accidentally lock myself out of a girls route that I am intrested in. It really is quite frustrating. There IS an ingame hint system but it is not nearly as accurate as it needs to be for the way the game handles the scenes.

Also in all my time playing the game I have rarely encountered any crashing or bugs. I know when it comes to this mileage may vary and some experience more than others. What I can say is that when I do encounter a bug of some sort and report it the team is very good at finding and fixing them. Not something that can be said about some.

All in all I really do like the game and always find myself coming back to it every couple of updates to check out what what is new and what has improved and will continue to do so.

Short Version: A good-looking game that tragically squandered its pleasing aesthetics by failing to hold my interest. While I haven't finished all of the available content yet, I have completed enough to know that the game isn't really for me in spite of the fact that I wish it was. There are just too many problems holding it back from the potential it has, primarily the classic pitfalls of sandbox games; namely, too much work for too little pay off, repetitive content/scenes, and too many annoying factors to manage.

Score: 2.5/5, gave 2 stars due to ultimately bouncing off of it

In-depth review:

Disclaimer: This is all my own tastes and preferences, so naturally they won't necessarily align with yours. I've included a list of some of my kinks/preferences so you can know how much our tastes align (in no particular order):



Final word: An artistically good-looking game (from characters to backgrounds to even the UI) held back by mid-tier characters/sex and ultimately tanked by obnoxious grinding/management systems. I won't say don't play it (maybe the grind won't bother you) but I will say consider carefully your feelings on grind-heavy sandbox games before you do.

Character designs are excellent. But the development is poor. There is too much grind and the reward is pretty low. This makes this game frustrating rather than enjoyable. You just can't keep track of so many variables,

One of the best quality sandbox games I've ever played.

Tons of content in terms of different girls to choose from, and you can choose all of them btw, and so much voice acting as well.

The art is really well done! They keep adding new content to the game with incredible art, as well.

For those of you who worry about NTR, the NTR is all avoidable. I wish there were more, though.

The wiki is really helpful and will tell you about all the various harems that you can get. I recommend using that if you're worried about accidentally triggering any NTR, or you just want to get everything, which you really should.

Its really fun, check this out. There is tons and tons of content so enjoy!

Hmm, this one is tough to review.

On one hand, the game itself is excellent. Very nice graphics, really good characters with great personalities. The game also had a number of fetishes, so there’s something for everyone. There’s only one major problem: the gameplay.

This game is unfathomably unforgiving for a dating sim. Here are just a few scenarios:

• To get Minami to unlock her submission cap, the event is a very innocuous disagreement between Minami and Sasha. This very minor event decides whether Minami can be collared or not. This very minor, out-of-nowhere, not-even-in-the-in-game-guide event can single-handedly ruin Minami’s slave path. And nope, it’s not repeatable. If you screw up (by siding with Minami on this, again, very minor disagreement), bam. You’re locked.
• Emma. Screw Emma. I don’t have to elaborate on this, but TLDR: you have to do her first before Samantha (an early game LI) otherwise prepare to get locked out of her path. Oh and did I mention that finding Emma requires luck (as in the actual stat that you can’t see), that can only be obtained by picking a specific perk during character creation, or finding a clover (ah, yes, new players will definitely go to the park at a specific time just for a chance of finding a clover), or receiving Lavish’s lucky panties (which requires you to advance Lavish’s story quite a bit and then wait until her birthday)? Her route is also full of bullshit bad ends. Seriously, screw Emma. It would be fine if she’s an end game LI that only experienced players should tackle, like Kylie, but no, she’s de facto an early game LI, if only because her path will get screwed up if you do it later.
• Some story events require activities or skills only available in a certain season (Summer, mostly). This can easily mean having to wait 60-90 in game days to advance a particular path.

I genuinely like this game. In terms of being a sandbox/dating sim/free roam game, I think it's up there with the very best. But when a dating sim requires me to open 5 tabs of its wiki just so that I don’t get screwed by some random bullshit, I think the gameplay requires some evaluation.

This is a very well writens game and also quite comprehensive in terms of the inclusion of kinks. At first I thought it just a harem game with a little bit of ntr for that extra kick and likely to be a underwhelming in this part. But as a ntr/cuckoldry lover, while I enjoy the vanila harem content of this game, I really want to say that I find the ntr kink is quite on point and well depicted in this game, not only you have one character that is solely created to cuck the mc who is gorgeous and have rather interesting backstory, but it also provides some spicy choices in some other love interests like Bree or Lexi. Apparently this game is still not finished, to point out what it still lack from the perspective of a cuckoldry enjoyer: 1. more focused sharing or swinging path for the major love interests of mc, for example I would love to see what relationship our lovely Breed... sorry Bree and the balck boss can developed in the future, and to see mc get more opportunities to share her again, even get addicted at it; 2. there is no actual submissive mc route that exist in the game yet, Sasha or Alexa are very cute, but they also not dominant to the bone, if developers can put in some real femdom shits combine with the ntr, man, it will be nut, for example, I would love to see Sasha do some sph with mc that has the small dick trait, maybe compares him to Scott, then her ex become the bull in their relationship, I mean since she already told mc she likes her ex physically but not romantically, it just sounds like the way to go; 3. Has to be something to do with the pregnancy, I mean I managed to let Dwayne breed Bree that one time in the office, and have small dick mc wear a condom or pull out all the time, it would be absolutly nuts if Bree give birth to a mix-baby ect.

I've played a lot of this game and believe it's definitely up there in terms of quality erotic games. There are a wide variety of characters and scenarios you find yourself in. I also love all the possibilities for group shenanigans. However...

The gameplay is, frankly, awful. It feels simultaneously like there's an overwhelming amount of stuff to do but also that you're just waiting around for events to happen.

Beyond that, progressing the narratives of each character is impossible without a guide, and even with one there are so many hidden traps and pitfalls you can fall into with each character that no matter how many times I've tried starting again from the beginning I've been unable to successfully progress through each characters storyline.

Still, I can't help but recommend it. I'm hopeful that there will be more games with this level of quality sex scenes, but with gameplay that has been streamlined.

Replayed this game many times for many years and its a very enjoyable experience but as hard as i try to follow every step properly I hardly manage to not get locked out from the content I am aiming and loosing a lot of time this way !
Pros: Lots of content, intresting sandbox mechanixs like talking to girls grinding their points griding mc skills and stats!
Cons: for some players the grind might be to much not for me tho...
Massive con is being locked out of content very easily without even knowing about it until you grinded girl events and stats for 5 hours or more after which you find out you cant add one of them to home harem ETC which made me rage quit this game many times before D:

Love and Sex: Second Base.

God do I have an interesting love/hate relationship with this game.

Its the first visual novel type game I ever played, and man did I sink many many hours into this. I love it because the writing is good, the (very rarely awakward) voice acting that really adds om to the flavor, and the great assortment of beautifully drawn girls that this game offers.

Going in blind this game is wild. Unexpected bad things will happen. The natural and best way to go baout this game is to first play it blindly. Then you go and look up where you went wrong. Why did this happen? Why did that end badly? Then for the next times around you will be prepared to face anything.

Now the "hate" part of my relationship. Its really just I WANT MORE!! MORE!! MOREEEE!! Every time there is an update I go right back in to find all the new things, all the new interactions, wether they are 4+ character fuckfests or just simple encounters in the street. It is THAT good.

KEEP IN MIND THE GIRL PROTAGONIST DOESN'T HAVE MUCH CONTENT YET

One of the best I've played and easily in my top 5. There are loads of unique girls that satisfy different kinks or preferences. Nothing too out there like scat or bestiality of course but there are fitness buffs, gamer girls, a devout Christian you can corrupt, an adopted younger sister, and many more. However, there are two things holding it back from a 5 star review for me.

First, the art style for some girls can be inconsistent depending on the scene. While there's a lot of great art to be found, especially from the newer stuff, some girls who normally look great may have a sex scene where they look poorly drawn, have weird proportions or simply look like a different person. I'm sure this is due to artstyle changes over the course of the games development and the sheer amount of girls you can fuck, but it can be jarring at times.

Secondly, it's way too easy to be locked out of certain girls, harems, or events. Maybe this is more of a me problem since I'd rather date every girl in a porn game instead of doing multiple new game+ runs just to see this girl who doesn't appear if I go too far with another, nor do I like being locked out of work because I fucked two girls too close to eachother and now I have to wait a week or so with barely any money or else a scene will play where one of them leaves the game. But even if I did, there are some girls or scenes that are way too easy to accidentally miss out on because I progressed something that I thought was unrelated to them.

IMO, the best way to play this game in its current form, given the second problem, is to play the game blind once, avoiding this girl named Kylie until late game when she's easier to manage, make a new save every couple of days in case you fuck up and need to avoid a breakup scene, and only marry someone when you're ready to start over in NG+. At this point I'd look on the wiki for the girls you missed out on and either focus on them or try and make every girl dateable at the same time. Emma is by far the easiest to fuck up so read the wiki thoroughly if you want her.

Been playing this for years, really love it, and really hate it. To be clear this is one of the absolute best games. But only three stars due to it being one of the most frustrating games to ever play.

Graphics - superb, tonnes...I mean a million miles of content.
Story - superb, its engaging and keeps your interest chasing different girls and figuring things out.
Sex scenes - tonnes of content, well done, excellent art, lots of different content for everyone.

A few milfs (not enough for me) hot chicks everywhere to a little plump, to thin, to big tits, little tits, rocker girls, office girls, hot Milf, Rich girls, Hookers...tonnes of content, perhaps too much.

So the three star rating - You have to use the guide and it is indepth, hard to figure out and honesly I have no idea how anyone does it without using cheats. Many of the triggers are not easy to figure out, and you can easily lose girls or get locked out of content because you didn't do one thing in order or missed a trigger...causing you to pull your hair out. Game play is very long, and by the time you figure out you missed something...might as well start over and you just want to turn the game off and go to bed.

Days and days of content. Easily a 5 star game and the best game on the site of this genre if the dev did one thing. A WARNING SYSTEM. Warning of lock out situations, potential game changing situations, that allows you to go and have a look and fix things if you want. So many playthroughs with the guide open and I still have yet to be able to make a clean playthrough for a couple key ladies.

As it is now, amazing game, days of content, but very frustrating and you spend more time reading the guide to understand the incredible calculations you have to make to progress a girl. (while not realizing that you are missing another one you also wanted because FUCKING Angela shows up before I finished the siscon events...sigh. Maybe I shouldn't have been focusing on Morgan so she didn't disappear as well.

Amazing work, and very dedicated DEV. Please just a warning system...please.

Okay, that was a long game by my current standards... A few hours immersed in the game, and I have to say that the game has a lot of content and is interesting, with nice characters.

Point by point, let me explain...

1. M/F protag - This game is a harem game, designed to be played with a male protag. When you try to play as Bree, you realize that.
Bree MC is totally overlooked, with a small fraction of the male MC's content. I wouldn't want to do a fem protag to end up like that, really.
But the male MC is decent, I found him interesting and you can see a decently built personality despite him making some silly comments...

2. Lots of cuties for romance - I think the game's diversity is amazing. I like the list of possible romances, and if you want a harem/dating sim, this one is high on the list. (Except for point 3...)

3. Terrible design - ''The girls need to be in a specific location at a specific time for a specific activity at a specific time of year, while you're juggling a bunch of minor stats and a massively slow passage of time...''
Does that sound bad? Yes, that sucks. The game has a lot of content, lots of interesting girls to romance, and a decent art style but this is overshadowed by a horrible design.
To get the romances you need to take care of the micromanagement of the MC's statistics, a slow passage of time and requirements for HIGHLY restrictive events.
You can't play this without constantly looking at the wiki, also checking every step of the other storylines because at any moment a route can be blocked or it can be diverted to a path you don't want.
Infinite hours to advance in a slow and tiring way...
In game design, if you spend a lot of energy and time to receive little, that's a bad design.

4. Cute but inconsistent art - This game must have 3 or 4 art styles from what I've noticed. Which breaks the immersion a lot... Seriously.

I thought I'd add an addendum on the pregnancy system, but I haven't seen any of that yet. And from what I've seen in comments and other reviews, this is not very immersive and is not the focus of the game... I'll just stick to the points mentioned above.

Conclusion - I thought about giving it 2 or 3 stars... But I decided to give it 3 because I see the game has a lot of content and the dev seems to really work hard.
Hard work and regular content is something I consider A LOT, especially given that most devs are abysmally slow despite being paid large sums of money.
This game is good, but this is obscured by an abysmal design that prevents you from enjoying the actual content of the game.

Love & Sex killed me through exhaustion...

I had seen this game recommended once and again but never felt the urge to play it.
For some reason now was the moment.
Graphically I can say is one of my favourite games on this site, lots of types to choose from and visually appealing. Makes you focus on specific girls(in my case)
But the things I really liked end here.
The game mechanics are playable, not bad or amazing, but it becomes easy to understand what you have to do. But the specific events to advance with the girls, most of them even with the hints in-game is hard to know what exactly to do without searching elsewhere. I am also not a big fan of day specific events, when those events are at a specific hour, like one where you have to caught one of the girls in the arcade, but she is only there for a short time in that day. And other events, even following the hints and guides here and there you have to try multiple times for it to really work

I understand you have to get effects for your actions but the pace of some girls is so much slower than others that if you want to pursue the spicy content with the majority you once and again fall into events that restrain you from a specific area or makes the girl leave. The problem is most of time you are at a point where you have to find a really early save to keep on. I understand some might like this mechanic, but for me is not my cup of tea.

Then the grindfest. apart from all the things you have to do for the events to occur, you also have to manage fun, energy, grooming and hunger, increasing the grind even more. I would not complain if the sim part of the character's live didn't interfere so much in the gameplay, because adding to all that you also have to grind your skills up at least in the beginning.

This note is up for change in the future, I don't dislike the game as I kept returning even if it frustrates me a bit, but mainly remembering all the grind I have to do again refrains part of the interest.

for all these reasons For now my rating is a 3. A solid game but that could be even better than it is, mainly if part of the grind was taken away. The cheats make the grind easier, because playing without them is a nightmare for how long it takes to advance.

so while the actual gameplay is very good and the art is outstanding this game is grindy as hell and i mean GRINDY... now normaly i dont have a problem with this .. but in this game i was angry as hell why ?? ... well if your grinding in a game the payoff better be good right ?? ... well whats the payoff in this you ask .. a super hot animation of the girls been smashed by the mc ... erm nope you get a static screenshot and them thats it .... seriously this guy seems to hve lost that whole pay off concept and i will in no way shape or form recomend a game that makes you grind this much for the laziest most half assed pay off i have ever seen in a snadbox game ..

v23.3.0a-WeeklyUpdate2

+the art looks great
-the art looks a little sus. There are some art style conflicts (see bree and her dad side by side), various inconsistancies (MC, girls, and MC's dick all suffer from inconsistent art), and Minami (little sister) has a fucked up hand which is making me suspect this is AI art with manually fixed hands and they just didn't notice Minami's hand.
-not animated
-not enough art for each individual girl.

+game has pregnancy
-for some reason I have been unable to get it to trigger. Even with wiki open and the Hung option which wiki says makes it super likely

-Lots of girls have missable NTR. Not optional, not avoidablee, missable.
-Instead of the player choosing, whether you get NTR or not depends on timing and stats (girl affection, your charm, etc).
-Easy to accidentally miss it when you want it
-Easy to accidentally see it if you do not want it
-Nobody is happy. NTR fans hate it, NTR haters hate it. This should be an explicit choice.

+massive amount of content overall
+each waifu has a different voice actress
-extremely grindy
+there are cheats. which very recently were made available in public version too
-cheats only alleviates some of the grind
-some content is locked to "seasons". An in game year is 124 days. Each "Season" lasts 31 in game days. And various girls can get stuck waiting until the right season to fix.
-each day has 24 time slots. this is way too many when the in game guide does not give you exact times.
-your grind is constantly interrupted by stat caps. to slightly raise those you need to trigger special events like "be in building X room Y on saturday at 18:00"

-extreme wiki dependence to the point of being unplayable without it
-I am constantly referring to the wiki which is ruining my enjoyment of the game
-lots of traps that permanently end relationship. Usually by girl leaving forever. but there is an instance of a waifu murdering another one which is surprisingly hard to avoid without wiki. Or make relationship permanently go in a direction you do not want. (get NTR, miss NTR, miss out on dominance content, etc).
-traps are not always choice based. sometimes they are "must grind girl A love and stat B before day 7 of the game". Or "must get girl A to point X before getting girl B to point Y"
-I find myself unable to play without at least 10 wiki pages open
-Even with 10 wiki pages open, I sometimes make game ruining mistakes. Because you actually need way more wiki pages open at once. But there are only so much wiki flipping one can stomach.

-in game guide is mostly useless. sometimes actively harmful as it tells you to do bad things
-dev explicitly states you are supposed to fail to get perfect result on first playthrough and should do replays to get it right.
-I guess this is the dark souls of sandbox dating porn game.
-replays take already grindy game and dial it up to 11
-I ran across multiple bugs. Worst one was when Minami (sister) completely bugged out on my game due to a sequence break (it jumped from step 3 to step 10 of her main quest and I wasn't sufficiently focused on her wiki (having been looking at another 10 girls instead)... so now I would have to backtrack hours to fix her... anyways, her story is stuck due to stat caps blocking all other scenes with her, which are needed to raise the stat caps).

I spent almost 3 days of nonstop playing on this game... the result of which was unlocking sex with bree, sasha, and minami... getting bree and sasha into home harem. And having minami completely break 30% through her content.
I spent so much time on it. But the longer I play the more frustrating and less fun it gets.
Could and should have been a 5 star game but it is bogged down by some bad design choices

this game is so excellenting, i was love this gameplay, so if u want play 1 of the game can be the best play this game @@! i was hope the developer can do onother game like this again. thank !

Such a boring grindfest. Hours and hours to barely get a couple of scenes that are not even that good. The nagivation is so overcomplicated, way to many clicks needed to get around. Not worth the time.

Great game. especially if youre new coming into it. Theres a lot of content to go through and a lot of story lines and diff girls which for the most part feel fleshed out. On the negative side there seems to often be bugs where part of a run will stop working. Having to edit a save file so that you can continue down a path can be annoying when it happens. That being said still playing the game

This game is so much fun. Likeable characters, good art, a lot of fun things to do with every character and location (both sexy and not), and meaningful choices with consequences. There are some bugs - for example, if Bree leaves the house because you cheated on her, she will reappear in some scripted scenes - likely because the author was a bit too ambitious with how non-linear they wanted the game to be. But of all the dating sims on the site, this is the one I've put the most hours into.