Edit: I have moved my rating from 2 stars to 3 stars for the New Game + feature that has been added. It really does help the player manage one of the core struggles of this game that mentioned in my review. But we still have a long way to go, as there are still plenty of other problems that still need to be dealt with, and a few new ones that I have found in 21.6.0c. But I'll wait until a much later build before considering a full new review.
The review from here on forth is based on versions 21.3.1 and 21.4.0. Remember, some of my criticisms may have been addressed in a newer version of the game.
I think this game suffers severely from mechanical/function/logic related issues, as in, how well/poorly done some many of the game's features are. While I recognize there is great vision behind this game, and it is well made in a lot of respects, I do not think it's as well made as it could be. I get the impression its high rating is related to the fact that there are so few games like it, so it's fresher than some games. But that also means there is very little to really compare it against, which can lead to the stagnation of quality. The next closest game that comes to my mind is Summertime Saga, which has some drastic differences.
This game is basically a "choose your waifu" sandbox dating sim. Each girl has a mostly self-contained storyline for you to follow. Some branch off and connect with others. However, I have come across numerous problems with 'how' this sandbox style has been implemented.
- Several of the story arcs are impossible to figure out without the wiki, which means the game's sense of direction is lacking, even with the in-game hints. It's a porn game. Nobody wants to have work that hard.
- It's also easy to get soft-locked in this game. On more than one occasion, a girl simply will not show at a specific location at a specific time on a specific day, denying the player the ability to unlock the next event for several weeks in a row. Some events are even tied to specific seasons, or locations that are available only in the summer season. If you miss your opportunity, you have to go through a whole in-game year to get back to be able to progress.
- Sometimes events that do trigger can override others, forcing you to miss other important events and even hard-locking you from meeting new characters.
The primary gameplay is grindy AF attribute micromanagement.
You start off with 0 in your three attributes: knowledge, fitness, and charm with a few choice starting bonuses that are laughably small. In order to unlock certain options, characters, and events, you need to raise these scores, some as high like 80, but you'll be raising most these one to two points at time. Unfortunately, many events are timed, so they will auto trigger before you can even get your stats to a specific threshold for a more desirable outcome.
And you cannot simply grind these stats all the time because you are also juggling your energy, hunger, cleanliness, mood, time, and money, AND your waifu's kinkiness and love points. If you want your girl to be kinky enough to do anal or wear a sexy outfit, you have to grind her kink points. Unfortunately, that usually involves mass-buying sex-slave novels. Unless she has specific dialogue options or events that raise her kink, it could take you as much as 25 in-game days and $1,250 just to be able to slap her ass without upsetting her. (What a gold-digger, lol).
The economy is complete shit.
$50 for a manga. $100 dollars for a teddy bear or a box of ten condoms? That $25 burger had better be the best burger on the planet. And unless it's used, I think the only reason the sports car is $20,000 is to give you a chance to actually buy it after a year in-game since you get paid so little - that is also assuming you have not also been spending money on stat increases or your waifus. Dating can get expensive. You're not even earning a living wage at your programming job when the game starts. Somewhere in the realm of $9-10 an hour. You can get raises, but they are so small they don't really matter. You pretty much NEED the workaholic attribute to get enough raises to actually start making enough money to buy the sports car, which you to buy for just one special scene with Kleio. An awfully large paywall for so small a reward.
This game is extremely buggy and some events that should be doable are impossible.
- Some events are simply broken and don't work. One example, Lavish has a secret Sleaze value. In order to get a special option with her, you need to raise it to 10. But you can only raise it to 9 by that point in the game.
- There are several encounters where when choosing to have sex "with a condom" gives you the "without a condom" event and vice versa.
- Errors are common when you're trying to have a conversation with one girl, and another girl who is present tries to start a conversation with you at the same time. Usually you just have to rollback and exit interaction with the current girl, but it sure is annoying (this was from a previous version and has been fixed, but it could come back for all we know, because... ).
- It seems like every other time a new version is released, something else gets broken along the way. After going from v21.3.1 to v21.4.0, my MC can't do the chores, but none of the girls lose love points.
The artwork is inconsistent. Some of the girls look pretty good. Others are unrealistic as hell, like Lexi and Kylie. I liked the old version of Kleio better, too.
Sexual encounters can sometimes never change. The dialogue and narrations for your 10th encounter with a girl can easily be exactly the same as the 1st, depending on the girl or your position choices.
Others are just straight up unfinished. I found if doing a sexual encounter with a pregnant Audrey in missionary, she freaks out if you don't put on a condom as though she was not pregnant.
Navigation is annoying, but it's not the worst I've ever seen.
- I frequently find myself clicking between living room and kitchen trying to find the damn hallway so I can have my character take a shower. Many location icons move around in the line when they don't have to.
- It also seems arbitrarily done that sometimes you can more easily exit or entire a location than the other. For example: while it is convenient you do not have to re-enter the main office to leave your workplace, it's very weird that you can travel straight to the bathroom from the attic, but you cannot go from the bathroom to the attic.
You'll basically find yourself playing this game as follows:
Earn $$$ -> boost stats -> delay events with your waifu -> repeat until you have good stats and lots of money.
In other words, you're going to be blue-balling yourself for 90% of this game. I can sit down and finagle with this game for 3 hours just trying to make money and grind stats because I want to see a specific scene. This is not okay game design.
If you got a pregnancy/impregnation kink like me, you'll be blue-balling yourself even more so, for so-so content. Almost all the girls can get pregnant and have a pregnancy sprite, but...
1) It takes a long-ass time to get laid.
2) She'll probably make you wear a condom until she likes you more, or if you get her drunk.
3) If you do manage to impregnate a girl, she could still abort it on you.
4) If you convince a girl to keep the baby, she goes from flat to third trimester in a matter of days. And they never give birth until you marry them, and then it's game over anyways.
I also get the impression that the dev intends for us to start new games each time we want to try a new route. I don't think very many people are actually going to want to do that. Playing a new game per-girl or per-harem requires having to go through all the same grinding and shenanigans over and over and over. Maybe that interests some people, but I think most people are going to want to set themselves up in a way that they can see as many of the endings they want to see as possible within a single play-through. That means flipping through the wiki and wasting hours making money and grinding stats.
This game could be a lot better, but it would probably take a total overhaul to make that happen. I think many of the problems could have been avoided if the dev had not put in so many different girls to work on simultaneously, and had instead completed each girl one at a time. But this is what we got.
The things I would like to see added/changed/fixed the most, if possible:
- Missing events or seasons should not hard-lock you out of certain characters or routes. All events should be avoidable or accessible for when you choose to initiate them.
- A better organized navigation bar, with each location's image being easily recognizable against the rest.
- Completely redo the MC's wages, the costs of items, and stat increases for both the MC and girls to bring the grind down to a reasonable level.
- Add more variables to sexual encounters, so we're not reading the same shit every time.
- Maybe two additional pregnancy stages: small bump -> medium -> big.
