Ren'Py - Love & Sex Second Base [v25.10.0] [Andrealphus]

Reviewed as of 19.7.3

Hate to be unoriginal, but the few flaws squander so much potential of this game.

The Good, mostly

• Diverse cast of well-written girls for you to pursue and bed. Girls have different interests and different predispositions. Some will crush on you from the moment you meet, some will be tough to get.
• Non-linear storylines, including some bad ends (girls can move out of town, forever)
• The art, while not something to write home about, is pretty good. There is a clearly seen progression of artist's skills as well, so things are looking bright. A second pass on some oldest assets would be nice, though.

The Bad

• Extremely repetitive. The game features three difficulty levels, but they don't do much for the most difficult part of the grind, the girls' love and kink levels.
• Not repetitive where it matters most. There is no gallery, and a lot of events are not repeatable in any shape or form. Samantha cowgirl scene? Once per game, only if you make the right choice during that one event. Why the fuck can't I see that position again, during regular date sex? Because fuck me, I guess.
• Broad, but shallow. There's a balance to be had between the number of girls and the amount of content a girl features, and it's not there in my opinion. A lot of girls have 1 or 2 sex scenes, which is a shame. They deserve more, but I can't see that happening if the game adds new girls constantly instead of working on the existing roster.
• Random events. There's nothing wrong with random per se, but not when these events can jump on you out of nowhere, and eat up your day. Missing a date because another girl calls and just does whatever she wants is not a good thing. You need to make it possible to tell her to fuck off, or at least give an opportunity to cancel the date to minimize love points loss.
• Gameplay opacity. Would it kill the game to make it somehow known that you need a certain set of clothes to get into a night club? Would it kill to tell a player that there is a night club at all? And of course, you can miss a crucial event and never know it. Coupled with the previous point it is extremely frustrating. I am not a big fan of guides and walkthroughs but these are pretty much mandatory for this game.

I give it 5/10 right now.

So far, this game keeps me invested. While not usually my taste in porn games, though I am into kink, the randomness of story events comes off a bit of a surprise. My gripe is that it's grind takes a long while especially when it comes into stirring the girls into a direction you like. There's also nothing much to do other than dates, repeated sex scenes and filling up needs. It can be boring and tedious at times. There is a variety of girls each with it's own attitude and preferences so it's fun to try different approaches.

Hopefully more improvements are planned and worked on and ultimately, I really hope this will get completed. I dread if this game is abandoned...

This is a well balanced dating sim. The genre is about resource and time management and balancing earning income, improving yourself and chasing girls.

GIRLS-great variety in looks and personalities which is great. The artwork is quirky but still very nice and artist seems to blend both Western and Asian styles for a fresh feel. Sadly no animations but I understand the priority on fleshing out so many girls stories first.

Mechanics-With 3 choices of difficulty (reflected by rewards for actions) and an inbuilt cheat option triggered permanently from living room you can totally bypass or reduce management difficulty or make it challenging. The tracking is super easy with stat easily monitored on screen for yourself and in phone for girls. There is also a hint in phone each day for each girl if you stuck. Though you do have to find girl and get her number to track first. A nice touch is every girl has free actions that don't cost resources or time to build relationship (though might have a minimum stat requirement like slap ass) so on way home from work is worth dropping by outside locations to do this for free and you never know what you might trigger as bonus.

One big flaw that from forums is getting lots of people. Some events have triggers that are low random chance at specific location at specific time with specific stats(although in main quest you can get a hint from phone this does not help side quests or specific events). This makes walkthrough/girl guide important but there is no current one. Game either needs a ful events and scene tracking system with hints or less complex triggers. For now though you will need the search function in forum a lot.

Gameplay-Is smooth and true sandbox. You can play as you want, a dominating master of harem of slaves or a romantic gentleman pursuing the old crush or one of many new flames. Or maybe you want some closure from your previous flat mates and leave him a little present in her oven before playing around with the sluts and breaking some bitches before settling down with a more dependable partner.

A really great dating sim with a lot of content and more to come. I just hope the complex triggers get addressed sooner rather than later. 4 1/2 out of 5.

This game is almost amazing, the art is good, the writing while generic is decent but the characters are varied and therefore interesting.

This game has two major problems:

1) There is way too much RNG for events, you have no way to know what path you are on or how to trigger events... the in-game hint system works, but is hampered by the RNG meaning that it can take upwards of 2 in-game weeks to trigger some of the events (Sasha) and can only be done at certain times of day or on certain days. Oh and events can pop off randomly and totally screw your plan for the day which can set you back WEEKS of grinding should you miss an event with a girl because you don't have enough energy or something. Which brings me to my second point:

2) This game grinds like a Korean MMO. You have to grind 3 stats on your character, money AND maintain 2 or 3 stats per girl. It's a lot to deal with and combined with some weirdness in overly complex energy system (you can't choose to sleep you have to be tired enough) with 3 different stats to manage you end up missing events (and therefore ruining your playthrough) because you can't get events to replay if you miss the trigger.

This is a game where if half of the mechanics were removed it would be 5 stars and I would back it, but as is it feels damn near impossible to play even though I kind of want to.

Update on last review, the developer has fixed most of the problems with tracking, introduced lots of new features, constantly tried to improve the the way the game looks and plays. The art is great, characters all different and unique with their own back stories and kinks, pregnancy being part of the game is really good as I find most games do not use this kink very well and it is really good in this game. There is a bit of a grind for stats but this was fine for the amount of content.

There are a few events that are dependent on past actions which are always annoying as if you miss them you have to reload back, such as bimbo sasha.

I was intrigued by this project when it had a handful of girls and my mind was racing with the possibilities of what could be added and the depths it could reach.

Several patches later it's clear that the developer aims for a wide puddle. The amount of new girls and now with completely new protagonist means this game will either never be finished or it will never have any meaningful depth.

It's sad, but nothing new among this genre of games. Two stars for the effort.

EDIT 2022:
Well turns out that perseverance does exist in this genre. Still nowhere near perfect, but the puddle starts to resemble a pool by now and there's been even some QoL upgrades. I still wouldn't recommend this to anyone without cheats. And the fluid sexuality mechanic is still beyond stupid. The grind is still terrible and the girls can still trap you with ultimatums ruining your entire save unless you got exact stats for their harem events.

I'd say it's a 3.5 rating game, but I'll round that up because despite all its flaws I have enjoyed it along the years. Could be much better still.

Art is great, gameplay not so much. Seems I'm mostly just reinforcing what others have said before. The grind is real in this game and any payoff is buried behind it. That said I'm not sure I've ever wanted a game to have a well done CG rip before. I love the art style , it's the only reason this gets a 2nd star, but that play is just a grind lacking in fun.

Edit: There's now a mod for it that unlocks most if not all the scenes which really helps. The mod is no longer being kept up to date, the art is so good but the game is so tedious. I'll leave it at 2 stars but that's a stretch, it's a rare case where a CG rip would just be better than starting the game's grind/guessing.

Edit 2: Dropping it to one star... the game is all but unplayable without an independently produced mod that the games dev seems to want to prevent. There is nothing in this game that wouldn't be better by just being an adult comic but the dev seems intent on milking money from patrons and not addressing what are clear issues. It's not just a bad 'game', it's a deliberately bad game.

Absolutely fantastic game. Only problem is that the artwork can be very inconsistent in terms of quality, so I'm hoping that gets fixed. Other than that, keep on making this game, can't wait for what's next.

I hate to give it a poor rating, but the game didn't leave me another choice. I'm pretty sure some things would be different on the male route, but I chose female protagonist.
So, pretty much the only upside I can say is the art. It looks absolutely stunning. The backgrounds, the character design, all of them are great.
The downsides? It's grindy as hell. Keeping the needs of your character on an acceptable level wouldn't be that hard, but honestly, it feels absolutely pointless. Its only purpose is to make the game longer, but it's not challanging, not entertaining, as I said, absolutely pointless.
To add insult to injury, the female route has only two NPCs. Two. And they are awfully difficult to find, especially at the beginning of the game, as you don't know their schedule about when and where they can be found. Some events are nearly impossible to trigger, and the game doesn't even explain why. Then when they ARE triggered, sometimes your options are also limited, once again, without any true explanation (for example, when during the moving in scene, MC refuses to help Sasha, or when after a date, Sasha invites MC over, and she says no, despite every need is being on a good level). The lesbian route ends after one night together, as after that there is no content at all, the game just repeats the same scene over and over again, but other than that, there is no apparent change in the relationship of the girls.
The conversations are limited, somtimes doesn't even make much sense, and the lines are repeated like a hundred times by the time you get anywhere with a character.
You can earn money infuriately slowly, the job positions are limited, even the payrise is a joke, which all just add to the grind.
And last but not least, even in that only one sex scene for the lesbian route, a picture wasn't changed from the male route...
I really don't know if what I said about the quantity (and quality) of the content is true about the whole game, or just the female route, but this way, the female route shouldn't have been released, as isn't more than just wasting the players' time.

Time to pull back the wool, so to speak. This game has great art, a passable story, and little to no quest clarity.

Every girl in the game has events that can occur based upon your interactions with them. Simple, right? Wrong. You're not going to be able to find the events with any reliability, because the dev has committed two of gaming's cardinal sins: Grind and Joy-Sucking.

The game is grindy, requiring you to have a certain assortment of stats in order to access certain scenes, and there's no walkthrough to assist players in getting the scenes they wish to see. Well, actually, there is a walkthrough, but it isn't updated regularly, and it isn't made by the devs. The game is joy-sucking in that it really, really wants to pretend that some of the stuff you do is supposed to be fun, but none of it really is. Keeping your personal stats high enough to be able to see everything, alongside having the money to get items by working, is all so terribly dull that any thoughts of enjoyment by the time you get to a fap-worthy scene have been wiped away by the endless monotony.

The art, again, is fantastic, but, as of now, it's really the only thing this "game" has going for it.

The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs... The version this review is based on is v19.5.1e...

This is one of the most grindy games I have ever played in this genre...

The visuals are 2D hand drawn, and look decent... Reminds you very much of Japanese Hentai style VN/Games, without the characters all looking Asian and child like... The UI is easy to figure out and even includes a tutorial to point everything out... The navigation is ok, but can be a bit tedious as it uses sub-category like locations based on where you currently are... Such as only being able to go to the City from the House Livingroom... Or having to go to the City before going to the Mall, and so on... I was getting a lot of missing file errors when it came to the male character, who owns the home (I had selected the female protagonist)… So a generic looking fill in model was used in it's place...

The script is pretty spot on, as I didn't really run into any spelling/grammar errors during my play through... The plot revolves around either a male or female protagonist (your choice) who ends up moving out of his/her apartment and moving into a house, with some other characters (depending on your sex choice in the beginning)… Now, the entire introduction story was cute and had a few funny moments... I really liked the writing style and was hooked... But after that, the game became a complete grinder, in order to hopefully open up any new content...

And when I mean grinder, I really mean it... You have a bunch of personal stats that have to be maintained through each day... Such as food, cleanliness, energy, and fun... Add to that, you have 3 social stats to be concerned with (that can be effected by activities and clothing)... Then add in the fact that you need money for both rent, as well as purchasing all sorts of items that may be needed... And then there is also the characters lewdness score (at least that is what I guess it is)… And because the game has dozens of locations, and uses a day/week/month/season cycle, where certain characters are only found at certain locations at certain times on certain days, etc... You can see where I'm going with this... Plus you have relationship scores with the different characters, that can go up and down depending on what you select to talk about, and/or attempt to do with them... And in the beginning, it's a guessing game as to what will anger them or make them like you more... You can even get sick, and so on... And you have some other thing to worry about, like doing house chores each week...

You end up wasting more time worrying about your personal daily stats and so on, then you do with getting through the relationship stuff... I spent at least 2+ hours playing, and didn't get anywhere new with the other characters (outside of helping the female tenant move her stuff in)... With the initial ups and downs, and somewhat randomness of finding where they were and when, it is a complete uphill struggle to play this VN/Game... And some content and choices are hidden behind those personal and social stats... You have to figure out what you need and when you need it, and hope for the best... This VN/Game is more like a life simulator then a Dating game and/or Erotic/Adult VN/Game... The repetitive grind is immense... Just too many things to worry about... If I wanted to concern myself with all the normal life day to day activities in a game, I would just go do real life stuff, rather then play it all out in a game... It doesn't add realism, but instead adds tedious, repetitive, and boring game play mechanics... That maybe, one day, will lead to something meaningful for a short period, before it's back to the grind again...

Overall, I liked the visuals that I experienced, and thought the introduction was top notch... The game play mechanics on the other hand are some of the most grindy I've ever seen in an Erotic/Adult VN/Game... I really tried to give it a chance, as the introduction had me hooked... But I just felt like I was wasting my time with all these tiny bits of game play, that had nothing to do with progression at all, just to keep my choices open... And even then, most choices were highly repetitive, when I was able to find and do them... I'm sure, there will be a small set of players who have no qualm with the grindy stuff, but there is grind and then there is super-grind... And I think that will put a lot of players/readers off... The promise was there in the very beginning, but the execution of the game play mechanics are just too much... Too many things to micro-manage for very little gain over a lengthy play period... Best of luck to the developers... But I will most likely not be revisiting this one, and I feel like that is a shame...

I'd say this is pretty average so far. Way more grind than payoff, and without a real clear-cut walkthrough it is very easy to waste your time on paths that have not actually been fleshed out whatsoever. Also a lack of H-scenes in general and a lack of completed storylines. Overall the game has good mechanics and it is definitely playable, but cannot call this a great game just yet. Will update as it progresses

So freaking great ! Great job N7 !

Management, events, quests.. Great graphics, great writing, interesting & profound yet intuitive game system.

I hope more characters & scenes will come ! Definitely one of my favorite games.

My Rating of this Game (v19.3.2 ) is:

Pros:
+ Nice Renders
+ Nice Story
+ Easy Playing
+Game-play very well Explained
+Different Graphics
+Great Speach

Cons:
-None

Conclusion:
What I like about the Game is that it tells you at the beginning a short tutor as how to play the game,wish that other games had this,because sometime I don't know what to hell to do.
Also I like the Graphics, comic style like reading a Comic.
Also the talking in the Game is also Great.
Looking forward into seeing more.
Worth the Download.

An very nice open ended, free roaming dating sim. But not perfect.

I recently discovered this gem. It’s not perfect, but it does its job well. I for one dig the art style a lot. This got me into the game in the first place. The sad thing is there is just too little. The scenes are beautiful but I wanted more. All the girls are very detailed and distinctive (Especially my girl Sasha <3 )

One of the drawbacks is the grind, but this is the nature of this kind of games. It should be noted that off time of writing the female-start is almost unplayable and very much unfinished. Mechanics are just not in place.

If you find this game at least somewhat appealing you should give it a shot. It’s one off my favorite in the genre.

An excellent open ended, free roaming dating sim.

The artwork here is original and high quality, the gameplay is satisfying and rewarding, pick your own path through the game and which relationships to pursue.

There is a wide cast of characters, all with their own personalities, and a range of body types and kinks are represented.

One of the most notable things about this game is the consistency, monthly updates with significant content added, and a very active and engaged creator who listens to and respects his fans.

Highly recommended.

After playing Love and Sex: Second Base for several updates now, I have come to thoroughly enjoy the game.
While still in a developmental phase, naturally with a smattering of bugs, the game has a significant amount of content, allowing players to pursue several different relationships and stories.
The game also caters to a wide variety of people's tastes, with a fair number of different girls with different personalities, as well as a number of different kinks and situations for the main character to find themselves in.
What's more, Andrealphus is an active and interactive developer, quick to fix any serious issues brought to their attention, as well as managing to put a lot of fun content into each of their updates.
I'm looking forward to seeing how this game progresses in its ongoing development

- Good things:
- The concept of a sandbox dating-simulator is not new but it´s good.
- There are several kinks.

- Meh things:
- The art. There are only a few drawings for every characters and are not so good. It looks like a bad copy of shadbase´s works.
- The writing is not really good. Most of the conversations with the girls during the process of seducing them are stupid or lame old jokes.

- Terrible things:
- GRIND. Terribly boring repetitive task. Without cheats, this game is umplayable. This is a date simulator, and all the dates are the same. "Talk about X subject", "Play pool", "have a drink"... Most of the actions don't even have a image, and of course, there are not real conversations or actions with the date. Just clicking the option and receiving a point of some stat.
- Unattractive femenine characters. It´s suppose that every girl has her own personality. Problem is MOST OF THE PERSONALITIES OF THE GIRLS IN THE GAME ARE NOT ATTRACTIVE. The dev seems to think that characters that talk and behave like dykes that despise men (even if at the end fuck with the male character) are attractive; well, probably they are attractive for other dykes. If those are the target that this game is directed to in Patreon, mision acomplished. There are also brats, crazy girls, white trash girls, cugars... All cliché. The only reason to try to date with those girl is... well, they have tits in the drawings. That´s all. They are not good characters at all. In real life, if a girl behaves with something remotely similar to the bad manners of some of the potential dates of this game, she would find herself dating only with a dildo or with lame assholes pretty soon.
- Political correctness BS. The dev even set traps to the player. There is a dialogue with one of the characters about sex in which the female character gives some kind of stupid pseudofeminist cliche speech of "I´m not a slut, I´m sexually liberated woman", and if you chose one of the options the dev provides, the dev says to you that "you should make yourself tested". Amazing. THE DEV INSULTS THE PLAYER IF CHOSES ONE OF THE OPTIONS OF DIALOGUE THAT THE DEV INCLUDES IN THE GAME. I don´t play (better say, pay) a game to be lectured or insulted.

Pros:

1- Artstyle is good.

Meh:

1- Since this is a dating sim, there's no "story" per say, you're a guy who moves in with two girls, and from there on you can do whatever. Very character driven.

Cons:

1- Insane amounts of grind. Most people who want to extract any minimal amount of enjoyment from this game, will want to play with cheats ON, but the player needs caution otherwise it can break some parameters and make some events not trigger.
2- Very buggy, even in a clean run (aka: no cheats).
3- While the artstyle is good, the amount of CGs (including it's variations) is minimal. The proportion of CGs to text ratio is very small as well.
4- UI is not the best, you need to click a lot to do very basic stuff, games from over two decades ago already made systems while did not eliminate the grind, you could at least automate it. Here the player manually needs to do so, which can create a very frustrating experience.

The game is such a tease.

The grind is horrific; I spent three hours playing it in one session, and didn't even get to a single sex scene or even get to see nudity. It takes forever to build a female's "reputation" up, and it is far too easy to lose it (ie you can maybe increase it by +1 or +2, EACH day, and need to get them to 50+ to get anything started).

I like the artwork and some of the gameplay, but I play porn games for porn... and if there is porn in this game, you can't access it legitimately, without cheating. Also, I tried the cheats, and it broke the game and still didn't let me access the sex scenes. Shame.