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

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.

My Rating: 7/10

Story: ★★★★☆
Dialogue: ★★★☆☆
How well it plays: ★★★★★
Art Style: ★★★☆☆
Sex Scenes: ★★★✩✩
Girl Options: ★★★★★
Replayablity: ★★★✩✩

- The story is pretty simple to understand, you are living the life of a guy that happens to have an immense luck when it comes to the ladies.

- The dialogue really needs some polishing for sure, certain things are said and done, and then you are greeted with different dialogues that make no sense, or belong to a different selection of choices to be made.

- You have a large variety of women to chose from, you can either choose to bang them all, or hand pick your favorites. The developer doesn't force you to have them all, you can have one or ten girlfriends at the same time, the choice is entirely yours.

- Each character has his/her own personality, some personalities between the girls seem the same if you really put your mind into it, but I appreciate the effort.

- The art style for the girls when you talk to them is very good, unfortunately...I can't say the same when it comes to the sex scenes, the girls go from being all nice and almost "realistic" to being very cartoony and messy, whomever drew the sex scene images did a poor job, broke my immersion many times.

Overall what do I think? The game is alright, it's definetelly worth a try, and you might find some girls to be...very appealing to your likes.

Won't go too much into detail as Talilover (the review right before this) echoed a lot of my sentiments with regards to the diverse girl options, the story and disconnects, and the absolute need for a walkthrough. I'll diverge a bit in saying that I'm not usually a fan of sandboxes but the included cheats menu made it mostly bearable with skipping the grind for so many different types of stats, though it can highlight the story/character behaviour disconnects even more. The quest log is a handy quick reference tool but the wiki is a must for some scenarios which require more detail or when progress gets stalled, especially if playing in multiple sessions where it's likely that I'll forget some details.

One feature I love and want to highlight and why this game goes back to 4 stars for me is the ability to remove piercings from the characters once you get close to them. As someone who's not a fan of piercings or tattoos I appreciated it for an option to continue with the otherwise attractive LIs. I only wish it was just available as a customisation option from the get-go rather than me having to skip through early scenes, or at the very least also to remove the tattoos.

Quick version before I rant about a few things: This is a game where I enjoy playing and gooing to in equal measures, I'm a sucker for sandbox type games ig and this is probably the best sandbox experience on this site.

As far as Art goes there's a WIDE variety of characters to bang and a wide variety of ways to bang em, there are noticable bumps and dips in quality due to how long this game has been in development (you'll notice that scenes with Sasha and Bree don't always compete with scenes with girls like Audrey as an example). That being said ALL art is still enjoyable and these older scenes are being revamped.

Any tags, like cheating or netorare, can be avoided if you want and you typically have plenty of warning before you get thrown into stuff. That being said if you want to experience the most this game has to offer you're gonna have to lean pretty heavy into maledom stuff. Not really a problem for me but it can get a little tiring turning every girl into a slave to achieve harems, on top of the fact that it's a bit of a grind to do it. Now if on the other hand you were excited about the female protagonist tag I'd stay clear as that part of the game has long been left to rot, and honestly I'm surprised they haven't removed it entirely (I don't think anyone would actually care at this point)

Speaking of grind you should know it actually doesn't take that much effort to get in the pants of most girls, with some serious outliners in this regard. What really gets annoying tho is trying to grind out their submission stat via gifts and slapping their ass a bunch (once you reach a threshold). It gets better as you go, dates can achieve a lot of heart points and the more submissive they become the more actions you can do to gain submission points, but it's always going to start a bit slow and you'll bump into roadblocks in the form of "do x at y during Z time". Putting aside the grind with the fairer sex you'll also have to grind out 3 stats, manage 4 status meters, hunt down certain skills (sometimes to avoid death, straight up) and get that sweet sweet bread from your job if you want to experience everything this game has to offer (you'll need a lot of money btw). Again, this isn't a problem for me because I enjoy the sandbox experience and I don't feel like this game is ever blue balling you, but it's worth noting because sometimes there is a bit of a time crunch because you have to grind out some bar in a certain amount of time

I also want to talk about the writing of this game, which I usually enjoy, but sometimes it feels like there's a serious disconnect between the characters and the sandbox experience. There's a yandere character in this game, someone who is obsessed with you and quite plainly tells you how she flicked her bean to you fucking her sister, but she'll act disgusted if you invite her for a booty call or slap her ass because all girls are coded to do so until you reach a certain submission level. See what I mean? The gameplay is trying to have a very standardized way of handling girls while also having a wide variety of personalities that can't sensibly fit this mold and it's weird when this disconnect pops up. You also have certain events that will happen that just do not make sense in the grand scheme of things. Example: One event has Bree sucking you off under the table at her place of work, the next event had her acting embarrassed and bashful because I implied I liked her...huh? I later fucked Sasha in her room after the Halloween party and then a few days later they confront me about sleeping with both of them...damn bitch, hate a playa if you gotta, but you just figured this out? You'll just regularly get the impression that there isn't really a coherent and linear story but rather a checklist of events with no sense of connectivity or real meaning. I digress tho, this is a porn game after all

Now the thing that's knocking off a full star (because I can excuse everything prior in someway) is holy fucking hell do not play this game without peeking at a walkthrough. The game will attempt to tell you what you should do with a little quest log thingy but the problem is it just doesn't tell you everything you need to know. You will lock out certain routes because this guide just decided to withhold information from you and sometimes not even realize it. Other times you'll do everything the guide told you to do...but still fail because there was just a little tidbit of info it didn't feel like sharing teehee. Example: The home harem mission tells you "make sure they are agreeable to sex with women" and a few other things...what it doesn't tell you is you need 75 affection and 25 submission from Bree and Sasha as well. In my current run I've already lost access to the Cassidy story because I "forgot" to install a camera in my office on top of grinding out the investigation bar, and I only realized this at a point where I'm sure as hell not loading the save for her. This isn't a game where you just figure this stuff out with subtle hints, you need the guide if you don't want to fuck up shit which I just don't think should ever be the case for a game.

Still an overall great experience that has been receiving plenty of love over the years and worth a look imo

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: