Ren'Py - Love & Sex Second Base [v24.5.1d] [Andrealphus]

To start with some positives, this is a very serviceable dating sim with a ton of content and choices. There are some rather impressive customization options, not by sheer amount but rather by how their existence are reflected in CGs and text. Overall, I was certainly able to scratch the dating sim itch with this game.

Unfortunately as one's playthrough progresses, the large amount of dialogue bugs and overall lack of route polish for most characters takes a serious toll on the experience. Too many of the repeatable interactions are barebones and fail to reflect progression. There's occasionally even cross character copy paste and not just for newer characters. This can cause one of the worst kinds immersion breaks in a dating sim, making the love interests feel lifeless and boilerplate.

Fortunately these breaks usually don't last long as the characters are pretty varied and generally likeable in the events that have gotten some polish. There's lots of mainstream fetishes associated with each with the only notable caveat being the absence of non-step incest. You also largely have a choice in which fetishes you engage with without losing full access to characters. Most exceptional is the inclusion of a genuinely responsive pregnancy system that actually works for just about every character.

There is however a small amount of NTR theme spillage for those sensitive to it. Some is a product of the aforementioned bugs/polish issues as characters, which leads to characters still talking about sleeping with others. Some relates to the unfortunate way some story arcs are written where you can't stop ongoing abuse until you jump through 100 event hoops.

However this issue is itself more a symptom of a larger writing issue. Being that in many scenes, the protagonist is hardcoded as meek regardless of stats/skills/choices. For example, even Mike's dorky best friend regularly flirts with his partners in front of him and mocks his weak objections to it. Mike's low T handling of Alexis on the no NTR route vs other men's handling on the NTR route is also jarring. Thankfully you're usually not forced to watch CGs. But otherwise with Mike's soft personality, the player is often not given agency to mitigate ongoing bad situations which can even include sexual abuse and extortion. With the game instead expecting the player to just be satisfied with helplessness until very late in the routes (weeks/months later).

I will say that despite this ambitious game's many issues, not all of which I included here, this game is still worth playing if you like choice based dating sims. And certainly if you like non-ending locked pregnancy content. I will be keeping an eye on it for now.

Story is not really good since there isent really one, its pretty much a pure dating sim which granted is pretty nice, theres alot of relationship build-up, romances and such, but the grind is crazy since theres so much to do for each and every LI and money grind is a pain in the ass as well.

But where it really fails is the harem tag, this is just not a harem since girls will leave your ass if you sleep with other people, so why the fuck it ever got harem tag i have no clue, girls dont leave a harem....

I do belive there is some weird idiotic way to kinda make a harem but only if you turn girls into lesbians which im not into at all so that option is just not there for me and even if you did it wouldent supprise me if they still left you when they find out your fucking other girls that arent in the harem.

Next is incest tag? i have no clue why its there since you cant fuck anyone related to MC so thats now two worng tags....i mean why lie about harem and incest whats the point, if its no in game dont put tag on its that easy.

Game isent animated either which dosent help it much either since the sex scenes are just meh, theres a few nicer ones but thats about it.

Its also a put sandbox game and its such a grind and soooo boring which is proberly due to the very very shitty hint system that dosent really tell you anything, like "Bree comes in my office while im working" so you might think great then ill just go to work and something will trigger right? but no, nothing happens i tried to go to work multiple times and she never came to visit MC.
This is a constant thing very shitty hints not saying how or when your supposed to do things and with a shitload of LIs it just becomes work instend of being fun.

Quest also dosent always work, like when putting in a shitload of work into the home harem quest and bree still moves out of the house even with all marks checked for quest it just gets waaaaay to annoying.

Then theres the voice acting which is ok for the two main girls but dident like MCs voice just 0 emotions and boring, but its not really voiced since theres alot of LIs that arent voiced and alot of dialogs even with mains that arent voiced so again a bit of a fail.

The pregnancy stuff is just way to weird, Bree who i got pregnant got a big belly damn fast but MC cant see it apprently? i mean shes fucking big and MC fucks her while shes pregnant and never notice the belly.......
Few days later he finds a pregnancy test in the bathroom and wonder whos it is, if it might be brees? then he confronts her asking about it to find out if she really is pregnant while shes standing they with a huge baby belly.....
So yeah thats a bit messed up to say the least.

Music is just the same tunes over and over and they are below average as well.

Game has some really good point, but also some really bad point.
But to try to go in a slightly different way than the average review, I would just ask: who is this game intended for? what is the vision behind the game? Because, honestly, it is confusing. It has an identity crisis.

Is this some visual novel? Of course no, too much sandbox element, and too many inconsistencies in the way events progress.
Is this a sandbox? Well, I guess, but way too much pointless dialogue that try to describe complicated situation that gets wasted because events are inconsistent.
When I mean inconsistent, I mean that because it is a sandbox, things often happen in order that make little sense - arguably you could argue those are issues to be fixed, but I think it is too hard to completely smooth over.

The protagonist also has too much "thoughts". He has his own thoughts, wishes, desires etc. But that's not good at all from a sandbox free roam point of view. I don't want to be littered with thousands of lines about the MC thinking to himself when it literally does not matter since I'm the one controlling him. This kind of game needs a self-insert, not an mouthy protagonist who tends to overthink doing random things without user input. Because honestly, going home wanting to fck the girl you finally bagged but then your MC suddenly decide to invite a friend to play some video game and you lose the rest of the day? Or I do an event advertised to take X hour, but it ends up taking more hour because another event got forced in and now I missed a timeslot and I need to rollback and try to avoid those event by wasting time elsewhere. Why? Nor do I care about what the MC thinks of this or that girl or this or that thing, I'm going to do what I want regardless.

All the above points lead to very unrealistic relationship. Mike has too much "personality" to be a self-insert, dialogue is too "wordy" but the content itself is very sandbox free roam far with the same amount of stupidity and necessary suspension of disbelief. The result is that most of the dialogue feels absolutely pointless and asinine, often a waste of time. Because if you need to suspend your disbelief for 80% of the dialogue, what is the point of reading all that?
Some scenes are really awkward since they make 0 sense considering other scenes that already happened. Yet, you still go through so much dialogue trying to depict it as a dramatic moment in the relationship of the characters while me, the player, just rolls my eyes at the whole thing.

That's my point about the game having an identity crisis. It tries to be a sandbox and a visual novel at the same time, moderately succeed at both, but kinda fail at both too.

And I didn't even get into the actually annoying parts! (borderline mandatory walkthrough, easy to lock out event, forced annoying events, randomness, annoying schedule, too much grind, etc)

Anyway, it's not that bad, but I think the game would be significantly better if it tries to pick a route (VN or sandbox) and sticked to it in a more thorough manner.

Not recommended if you are looking for some forbidden fun. There is little to none incest content. I don't understand the dev, if you are going for an incest route then go all out, why bother putting incest tag if you can't fuck your mom or any other related characters. There are a lot of female characters but their artstyle is kinda meh, not bad but also not good,. The game tooks at least 2 minutes to load and full of bugs. I honestly didn't like the game because there are a tons of games out there simillar to this but with beautiful models, better artstyle and animations

I don't really know what to say about this game. I have two different feelings. I've tried playing this game like 4 times but I just can't. The animations, models, etc are very good, but come on man, you literally can't play this game without a walkthrough, it's annoying to play that way, you have to read the walkthrough for every decision you make, that's why I gave this game only 2 stars.

Hyper-puzzly, as in: it's one of those games where one may never be able to reveal the whole story, features & the whole set of characters inside the game without reading it's official-and-up-to-date walkthrough webpage.

Extremely touchy, as in: you have to click particular answer and then appear in a particular place at a particular time & day. One wrong click and it's over.

This is a very handful game, with a heavy dose of soap opera storyline... for a fap material.

I've been enjoying this game immensely. The art is amazing, there will be an option to experience it from a male and female protagonist perspective, the storylines are fun, the sex is plentiful. What more could you want?

One small criticism, I wish we could fast forward time. Events that get stuck waiting for other events are an issue.

First of all, it must be said that without a doubt this is a great game, the best without a doubt, many paths, different situations depending on your decisions... Without a doubt 1000/10... The only bad thing is that for Android people who play this magnificent game and do not have a PC, they cannot enjoy the game several versions ago... Since it directly does not let us play several of them..

V.24.4

I like the game, it has something I can't explain which keep me playing. Gut feeling is positive after played abt third of it.

+ overall suitable amount of h-scenes
+ variation of the characters
+ huge amount of characters
+ playable UI
+ acceptable amount of grinding
+ even I haven't find yet there is a gallery for pc-version but I shouldn't cheat
- easiness to miss something important
- it's about crossing the limit to be too massive

The game is great but the amount of content is way too much, and being able to getting locked out of content is not that fun. Also, you barely can play through it without a walkthrough.

Just finish it already and create a new game with all the lessons learned. Move Bree MC to a new game, you could re-use the same models, they're good.

The game is bloated and at times laggy. But, still worth a try

easy 5 stars. anyone review bombing this is made because there is content they don't like in the game or doesn't like reading, as there is no excuse for grind being a problem as you are given all the tools to avoid it if it isn't your thing. I hope the dev keeps up the work and doesn't get discouraged. Crazy to me this is sitting at 3.5.

Personally I would have focused on a smaller number of characters and gotten the content finished with each one before moving to another, but I get inspiration is sporadic and sometimes you need to grab hold of what you have and get it down before it misses you. Some of the best character development on the site. This is the best dating sim ever made.

Compared to visual novels, this game is much closer to a strategy game, with a profound strategic component.
The victory condition of the game is simple: raise the love index of any one or more girls to 100, save enough to buy an expensive engagement ring, propose to her, and the game will end in victory. Purely for this goal, it's extremely easy.
However, if you try to achieve some non-mandatory personal achievements based on your preferences, such as establishing all the harems or preventing all NTR scenes from triggering, you'll find that it's the real challenge, even on the easiest difficulty! You need to carefully design your steps and face failure repeatedly, which is where the game demonstrates its strong strategic nature.
This game offers three levels of difficulty, with each level having a huge gap in difficulty, almost tenfold. If you just want to quickly unlock the game's scene content, you can simply start a new game in NG+ mode or use the easy difficulty and advance the game with the girl you have in mind as the target. But if you have other self-challenges, depending on what your challenge is, this game can provide extremely high difficulty content.
Therefore, based on the depth of the game and the incredibly rich content relative to its size, I give this game a 5 out of 5, despite its countless other flaws.

TL/DR: The game elements, variability/customization of the LI, and the pregnancy content on every (YES EVERY!) LI are what make it good. The hit or miss art, somewhat sloppy NTR vibe gating, and wimpy MC are what keeps it from being great.

+ The degree of customization of the female characters is really unique for a H game and by far the most superior thing about this title. You can decide what rings, tatts, clothes, and even attitudes (on a few of them) that the girls will have in the game and it is reflected pretty robustly throughout your play-through.
+ Second best thing about the title is the VA. It isn't always great- but it is always decent and some of it is pretty hot.
+ The game systems are pretty fun and I generally like how the pathings are gated.
+Having lots of ending options is fun.
+Game play elements have actual character growth fitting a RPG game.

Neutrals:
The whole title is very vanilla. Even the kink pathing such as every character having the flexibility to be submissive or pregnant is pretty cursory. Don't get me wrong- it is incredibly impressive to have ALL these scenes reflect the appropriate changes. Having it be deeper would be almost impossible from a resources / time development standpoint.


Negatives:
- The MC mike is kinda a pussy. He can slightly more impressive if you choose the "hung like a horse" option at the start of the play-through- but he is still significantly weaker/smaller than a suite of various other men put in the plot to allow for NTR sub-plots. A generic reedy af half asian / half white lookin bro who is maybe 5'6" 5'7"?? He has maybe a 3" through 8 " pecker depending on your dick size choice at the early game. He sucks. Bro is a wimp. Wish I could pound all these great women better in the title. Easily the worst thing about the game.
- The sex scenes are a bit too homogenous.
- Incosistent art / some really low quality art in some places.
- Sloppy NTR gating.
- Some of the relationships aren't very naturalistic / believable. (Mainly b/c mike isn't very impressive). This is mitigated out when he is literally a CEO, b/c a lot of women are like moths to flame with money / high-tier jobs, but prepare to suspend your disbelief re: why women are actually interested in him for a long time in the early game.

Edit: I had this game at 4 stars, but it honestly deserves 5, so I changed it. The game mechanics might not be for everyone, but the amount of content, the quality of writing, the many different characters and the years of updates is better than the vast majority of lewd games and shows a great degree of dedication. It's just a high quality game that deserves recognition.

It's EXTREMELY grindy, but there's a lot of depth and variety to the characters, their paths, the events etc. so if you don't mind the grindy mechanics of making money and improving your own and the girls' stats, it's a very entertaining game with a ton of content.

It's also the only dating sim/AVN I've ever experienced with a NG+ feature and it actually works well. It's been updated regularly for years at this point and the updates are still coming, so there seems to be plenty to look forward to beyond what's already there, including new characters being introduced beyond expanding the existing ones.

Use the wiki, though, because a lot of things aren't that intuitive. It's part of the grind, but again, if you can live with that the game has a lot to offer.

I get that its supposed to be semi realistic but come on. The sheer agonizingly slow grind really makes it hard to enjoy it. It takes so long to just get a single scene at times. Not to mention the triggers for some scenes are just so cancencrous to meet to the point where you think the game is broken. And managing your energy, mood, hunger and hygene becomes so much of a chore. They add nothing to the game while taking away from it.

If the game was more fast paced and grind was made less of a chore of just clicking different buttons for over an hour it would be a 4 star. But as it stands now it is barely a 3 star.

Good premise, but awful sandbox ruined it really fast, alongside really soulless affection system that turns story game into numbers game.
If I wanted to watch stats and graphs, I'd turn on Excel, not VN.

a decent sandbox game filled with an insane amount of content and system, the kind of game that really click when you want to immerse into it, that's why it still deserve 4 star imo despite some pretty big shortcomings below:

-The art is just one more step into being called ugly, also very inconsistent in style, at least the cast has somewhat unique personality to back that up

-The grind itself is bearable when you don't have your dick already in your hand, but it will keep players from a second playthrough

- There's still need to be a guide to thoroughly get all the girls, and players can fuck up easily sometime

Overall, if this is your first time playing this, definitely try it for sure, but to try it again? Maybe in 2 or 3 years

This game just isn't for me from the start, so it's hard to be objective. Almost all harem games have a depth problem. The more characters there are, the less they are fleshed out. But the main problem for me was the gameplay part.

I didn't find the story interesting and I think this game is just bloated with excessive stuff and grindy gameplay.
The gameplay is just a chore and the reward doesn't feel worth the effort. The art is inconsistent and boring most of the time.
I had to follow a wiki to avoid the risk of being locked out of content.

I would give this game 3.5 stars, mainly because this game is big and I'm trying to be objective here.

One of my personal favourites. It is a massive game, probably too big a game for Ren'Py to handle. There are dozens of girls with different personalities, a plenty of activities to do. Writing and visuals is alright-to-great. Still, I believe there is a fundamental problem that needs to be adressed. It is the conflict between the story this game tells vs. the gameplay it provides.

The following is some 'too long: didn't read' ramblings which you may find interesting, although the most important points I've already made.

Look. I see two ways of playing. On the one hand, you can go bareback, find a girl that you like, progress her story-line and, well, get married (that is the ending that we have). On the other hand, you have so much content and it is so grindy to go through all the steps again (it is a Ren'Py game!), that this game practically begs you to try it all (or most of all) on the current run. I simply cannot imagine anyone who will play 'Love & Sex', say, three times or more.

How does the game handle the seeming abundance of content? You can make all the characters in the game your lovers (or sex slaves, duh). It is exemplified in 'harem' feature. Some of the girls in the game can go together. You can 'marry' your harem, for instance, which leads to a different ending.

We've come to the root of the problem. As a developer you simply cannot tie all these knots. You can argue that we don't have to be completionists, which is probably true, but open-worldy nature of this game kinda promotes this behavior.

And this is where it all comes tumbling down. The stories are vastly different in terms of how well they're developed. There are girls with unique mechanics, and there are more 'generic' ones. The ties between harems are non-existent. So you practically have a game, which will always have a half-baked feel. You can argue that this is a gamer-problem (you can progress some polished route, finish it in an hour or so and be on your way), but that doesn't really convince me. It is an open-world experience, for fuck's sake. The limitations of making it with Ren'Py, combined with this constant incompleteness, make it difficult to be really invested in the particular story or have a perfect power-trip.

Doest it make the game bad? No. It is great, even if a bit repetitive. The visuals are ok, the writing is nice, occasionally great, the variety is something to behold. It has a certain wow-factor when you see new routes opening during the playthrough.

But you practically see the mountains the developers will never be able to cross. Combined with ugly animation here and sloppy writing there (again, it is difficult to make everything perfect when your game is so big), it makes for a rather so-so wank.

The game delivers visual splendor and adept guidance, yet occasional missed scenes detract from the immersive experience. Nevertheless, its charm endures, leaving players craving a more comprehensive narrative. A captivating odyssey overall.