Ren'Py - Love & Sex Second Base [v25.1.0] [Andrealphus]

Looking at the game as a whole, it is much better than A LOT of the games on this site; however, there are a few things that really holds it back in my opinion that I hope can change in future updates.


Pros:
- There are a lot of fetishes catered to in this game, if youre coming into this game looking for the Mike route with a bunch of attractive characters to interact with, I don't think you'll be disappointed
- There is a real attention paid to the actions the MC takes that can lead you down a bunch of routes. And I want to preface this for later, I do like the choice the game offers...
- For the most part the art is really good, the models look distinct and amazing


Cons:
- As many people have noted, if you want to see anything more than "Do you want to get some hot coffee" - then you'll want to have the wiki open. Which sucks, while I am on board with the number of options, I think that the game does a BAD job in outlining where decisions are made in dialogue or where the story can be progressed. Both of these things can be amended though

- Similar to this^ with the number of harem and individual quests going on at the same time if you are not paying super attention to the quest log you will soft lock yourself out of questlines.

- The art style, while good in most cases, is so inconsistent. The game has been out for a while so I understand that the artist was probably developing in this period of time. The real issue with the art is that a lot of the 'hot coffee' sprites look nothing like models and just look not great.

- One particular gripe that I have is the inclusion of Angela in the Mike MC plot line. Including her, with a sprite and all had me thinking that she would be included as a LI, especially considering Minami being a LI as your "sister", but no, and I felt like that was a little baity

- Lastly, while I like that a Bree MC is something that the dev wanted to pursue, I think that the Mike MC game still is not complete. And on top of that another game is being made. In the words of Ron Swanson "Never half ass two things, whole ass one thing".

This is overall a game that I would still recommend. It's fun but not really going to blow your mind

I give this a two star rating, might bump to a three if I ever come back to the game for the pure effort and variety it gives you. But the game is too grindy and you cant make a decision without looking at the wiki or you get locked out of a character for something small. You have no clue until you notice the character hasn't came back in game and the tag you might have came to see, doesn't matter, because you had no clue you had to do a specific thing for 1 of 100 women to stay...insane, but if I wanted to or felt like looking at the wiki or if it had a walkthrough mod I would recommend because cheats can fix the grind, but nothing can fix the lock out/constant tutorial checking. The art and scenes aren't the best of course just still images, but I think how they write makes up for it and the 2d hand drawn does give it a boost. All in all, good effort, just bad implementation in how much grinding and checking the guide come into play, if you are good with that then go for it its worth a initial try if you are.

For what it is, a dating simulator where you have skills and you are importing at the top of your game.

The game does not give you any specific clue but you have to search the whole map and see what time it is.

The characters are interesting each one with his personality but it reaches a point where you can't go up the corruption and more love.
And the worst thing is that at the end they give you 3 options or 2 to make her your girlfriend or slave or impregnate her.

I would recommend that you just play the game because there is not so much clue what to do next.
And that I played rpg but I already cansw
I'll be back in 0.30
( I hope they bring out a guide of the characters )

I like the game but it has several downsides to get anywhere you really need a guide which can be a pain and the art can really be lacking in some ways besides that the characters are interesting and it's fun

One of the best dating sims I have played. I hope to see more of the same quality in the future. The female main character need a bit more work, but the male is exelent. I have played both to greate enjoyment

Not a sandbox, but assorted bunch of stories.
Something good, something bad. But most of them really unrewarding.
Despite the quality of art the amount of sexual content too small for the such a large game. The other rewards sometimes looks like a mockery. As example, a model route. It`s end at the point where you can resolve her problems by doing a bunch of calls to some agencies. But she can`t.
It’s not even stupid, it’s a level of incapacity. She needs a guardian.
And there's too much of that here. Game has BDSM theme, but most of time it`s just a gift 50 books and make her slave Game offer you a variety of girls, but most of routes processed through the common dating. Also sandbox elements not a interesting part of game, but just a series of blocks to content.
I don`t know what is more here: Laziness, mockery or virgin amateur point of view.

24.12.0 Review.

I really want to enjoy this game. I tried. But there's just
SO. MUCH. GRIND.

But first let me explain something to you just so we are on the same page.

1. The player has 3 stats that determine your ability to progress with the game (Knowledge, Charm and I think the last one was Strength or something along those lines).

2. You have to take care of 4 MC basic needs, if one of them is too low, you are basically paralyzed from doing anything unless you fulfill them.

3. There is also money needed for basically half of the things here, and usually they want like half of your weekly earnings if not much more.

4. All of the girls have 2 if not 3 separate stats and using all of the actions available for certain day will move them for like 1 or 2%.

5. Additionally remember to keep the house clean before the end of the week so it won't reverse your progress with the girls by making them mad.

But it's only now we are getting into the hard part.
Working gives you very little money at the start and even after you grind into first promotion, it's still ain't much.
If you try to work your ass off so you can unlock certain spots/events by buying items or just for gaining your stats for events... Well you can't. After two actions the MC is too low on basic needs to do anything, and before you take care of them all, it will be already too late for working.

If you manage to raise your stats by a decent level, flirting with the girls just now begins to feel like you are making any progress. But yet again, you need to keep your needs in check otherwise you won't do anything. Also it's a good thing to still keep some spare money in the pocket so you can boost girls stats a bit by giving them gifts (if only you manage to choose the one she will actually like). Any action you have can be used once per day, so you will pretty much go all day from girl to girl which will be your routine until you ran out of content.

Just so I won't just criticize one aspect of this game (even if it's the main problem of this title), here are some things I actually liked.

At the beginning you can actually choose to give yourself buff's and debuff's which basically customizes difficulty (even if harder game just means more grinding).

I also really liked that there's at least some voice acting, and it's not AI from what I can tell.

Girls you interact with actually have different personalities defying if they will like or not some actions, presents or topics.

So in conclusion this game would be great and I would actually give it a 5☆ if it only could give up some of it's grinding. Making more money, more effective flirting or higher cap on basic needs - one of these would already make it so much better to play in my opinion.

I will definitely come back to this game in the future to give it a shot once it comes out, but if the grind stay as it is, then definitely not without making myself a millionaire or extraordinary talented first since I see no fun in this much amount grind.

The game is great, there is just so many content inside, and the constant updates, hell yeah, YOU WILL FIND WHAT YOU LIKE IN THIS GAME!
__
It really REALLY needs a better walkthrough mod or option in game

I want to really like this. There is so much choice and so much effort put in and it's fun but there's some design decisions that are genuinely deeply infuriating to deal with on the players end. It feels like a 4 or 5 star game at it's best but it can be so incredibly fucking frustrating to play at it's worse.

The good

- It's got tons of variety. The women range from shy nerd, goth, religious MILF to cuckoldress and incipient murderess.

- The game is just massive.

- That variety is also there for body types. The women run from petite, to normal, to chubby MILF all the way up to amazonian, with black, asian and white women. Which is good to see. Unless I missed them I think the only things missing is a latina, indian and BBW it's got pretty much everything else covered. It's kinda crazy how many women there are in this.

- The reactivity is great. Character appearance can change considerably from hair color, piercings, clothing to pregnancy.

- It has a story guide in game. Very open sandboxes are by their nature a bitch for players to navigate because where to go and when is information overload. This has a in game guide that says do A at B time and has the ability to see the variables and triggers for it.

- There's a lot of domination content. That can even lead to slave collar routes where the woman is completely submissive, devoted and happily exclusive to MC even if he's fucking others. It's great.

- As far as I can see EVERY woman can be made pregnant and it's reflected in scenes once she is. Which is awesome.

- Shiori's MegaTts <<this is all.

- There's numerous harems and endings.

- It has some characters such as a trailer trash prostitute, a cheating and habitual lying ex, a yandere etc that in most porn games would be one note, a joke or a villain. Here there is at least one moment for each where they're humanized but importantly are NOT radically altered just because MC rolls up. They are still who they are (until collared) but they're trying to stop you been hurt by someone, they had something horrific happen in the past or they want to change etc. It's a small thing but it makes them more nuanced and human as characters.

Neutral

- The MC's dick size. The MC is a blank slate. One of the few ways you get to directly define him outside stats is penis size. It's normal by default but you can give him a big one or a small one. The game reacts to that choice in art and scenes which is great. While mostly a positive there's not enough imo. It's one of the few ways you can define the MC so I wish the game made a lot more mention about the MC been hung or shrimp dicked during scenes and convos. If he's blowing out backs or pushing rope emphasize that shit a lot.

- Female MC. Very barebones atm (the game does warn you). Doesn't even have bespoke female MC traits like bubble butt, gag reflex begone, kegels of steel, windsock below etc just oral, pussy and anal which is a bit underwhelming if it stays that way. If the female MC gets fleshed out content like the male one this would be a huge boon for the game.

The bad

- The biggest annoyance for me is you really have to play with a walkthrough. Choose the wrong decision once and you're locked out. To give an example one character spilled a drink on an instrument another character left in the middle of the floor. I sided with the one who tripped presuming it'd lead to a scene. Nope. It locked me out of been able to max their kink points instead. There is NO way for me to know that, I in fact didn't realize even after that was what I had done. I only realized when I went onto the wiki. I shouldn't need an external wiki to avoid locking my self out of content with a single choice. If a choice has irreversible consequences tell the player.

- The second biggest problem that really drags the game down is the grind. It takes far too much time. This is aggravated by the size of the game and the fact characters lose love, kink etc. Worse this can effect things triggering if an event triggers at two love and it falls to one, well you have to go find that character increase it, then go back to where the event triggers. It's just too much. I resorted to cheating in the end. The grind definitely needs an overhaul to be far less tiring and oppressive.

- It's not very kinky during actual scenes. Toys and domination are really the main ones. There's some feet and a pegging scene but the game doesn't really lean into them kinks; more one offs and they're confined to a single character. There's also a handful of NTR scenes but again the game doesn't lean into it outside one character. It's not a huge negative but with so many characters and such a focus on variety I was a bit surprised by how many scenes are just position choices or vanilla fucking.

- While the women are very different personalities that often doesn't translate to the sex scenes. Which often have a sameness to them. It's again not a big negative but it isn't playing to the games strengths either.

- While dominant playthroughs are amply rewarded the same isn't true for submissive MCs. I think Sasha is the only character that actually really bothers dominating the MC much (feet, pegging and one off NTR scene). Considering kink points can turn into domination points it feels the game is missing the opposite of the slave collar routes where the woman assert control and do whatever they want. It's especially noticable for characters like Sasha and Alexis where they'd have a submissive guy quickly under their thumb (or feet I guess).

A potentially great game but a couple of major issues really drag it down. If the grind was lessened and choices that lock content off was more clearly communicated it'd be a 4 or 5 star game for me. But it's frustrating grinding while having to ALSO rely on a wiki.

It's a shame because so much work has clearly gone into the game.

Pros:
-Many girls
-"Polished" art
Cons:
-All girls are the same, they throw themselves at you after you do one nice thing for them. None of them have "good" stories or buildup.
-There is no overarching plot, but that would be fine if the girls had good stories.
-The sex scenes are bland and you have to spam them to get the girl's "stats" up so you can move onto the next event.
-The grind is plain boring. There is no minigame or anything in the grind. It's just go to the office work your ass off and skip to next day until you have money to advance your other stats. It would be better if it at least had difficult minigames where you advance faster if you play better and you have an option for low reward but no minigame.
-Personal opinion but all girls are boring and their sex scenes don't do anything. The scenes are not written well and they don't have sounds. If the dev managed to get some voicelines at least invest in moans in sex scenes first.

Overall: stat grind simulator with mid sex scenes (with no buildup) sprinkled in between.

a 5-star game with only 3.5 stars?.... come on....

this game is preeeettttyyy big, i mean BIG BIG. with over a dozen of characters and the option as to play as a man or woman (depending on choice, the story differs).
The Artwork is fantastic. The Story is great. Some choices lock you ouf of some characters, some choices gets you killed and some choices gets you a 3-some, 4-some oder more...
it even has appropriate endings for each characters - even tho the game is getting updated almost every week and new contend is coming with the updates (how do they do this?!).

for every F95 lover, this game is a must. even so for newcomers - it sets the standart pretty high.

[v24.8.0b]

I have a lot of respect for this game and it's ambitions. It is a true sandbox by every means of the word, has good characters, art, and has different routes you can take with every girl. There are is also a wide spectrum of personalities here, with mostly decent writing to boot.

The core issue is that the game doesn't respect your time in the least. It expects you play the game all over again in new game+, which is already a bad sign. Characters relationships are arbitrarily locked behind scenes that you have to see beforehand, which need to be encountered on a certain day, at a certain time. This kills any momentum the game ever has going for it. Add to this a decay rate for girls love for you, and dates taking up the rest of your day, which leads to many, many scheduling issues, and you have a game that feels more tedious and micro-manage-y than the likes of actual management games like Rimworld and Total War.

TL;DR: A really fantastic, high quality game that doesn't respect your time, and expects you to spend dozens of hours 'failing' your first playthrough for new game+.

A solid game, waiting for the day Seeker become the grandfather of all citizen in the game.

To be frank, Never play the game without cheat On. Honestly because i'm scared triggering the Big D When Bree chose to barge into the office.

While the gamefied of relationship dynamic that Mike has is foreign to dullard like me, it's really weird how any characteristic the bachelorette had become a one note little pitch once the collar is on, i mean while it has fetish, there is no kink that push it.

In my opinion one of the best games created on Renpy!
Just to figure out and understand how to get on this path, or on another, took a lot of time, and I'll tell you - it's good, the first game that took almost 100 hours, and I have not yet seen all the NTR paths that are in the game.

Many will criticize for the grind in sanbox, but it is made quite interesting, probably one of the best grinds, it basically does not get boring, and if you understand the gameplay, you can get used to it very quickly.

Quite an interesting plot, each girl, and there are a lot of them here, differs in its character, its poses and even many of them are voiced.
Wake me up at night and show me the hairstyle of any of the girls, or name her character - I'll explain everything in detail).

Nice picture mixed in with the old one, need to update 25% of them, make them fresher. Ideally, of course, for each pose 2-3 pictures, but it's probably too much work.

I would certainly like to add a little more mechanics, so that there were more places where you can spend money, upgrading the apartment, or buying your own, some business, crime, porn industry maybe, in general, if so understand the game can become endless).

Definitely recommend to play, waiting for new updates!
My recommendations for playthrough:
- Allocate at least 50 hours to this game
- While playing this game, do not play other games
- Do not be afraid, in the beginning it may seem a lot of things, where to click, what to do, just play, and for one evening in everything will understand.

Nah im just confused person. The game good even though i only play public version and yeah the plot is good. Actually its very good for dating sim with a choice but soft lock relationship is kinda something. I know that hard to make any system or making game and make trigger event, nevermind. I just want to support you and want to give my review whatever. Ngl if i have buck free in my pulse im going to patreon.

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.