Ren'Py - Completed - Lust Academy [S4 v4.10.2a DLCs] [Bear in the Night]

I think this is a complicated one, so I will keep it short:

The game is nice, the models are good, and the story is good too. So you may be asking, what's the issue then?

You notice that the game has 4 seasons, right? And that is completed?

That's the issue; the DEVS didn't "finish" it. You expend all those hours playing, looking for objects, getting points, advancing the girls' stories, etc., just to get to the end and for it to end in "nothing." None of the relationships matter; they just wrapped it up in the worst nothing burger ever, and in my opinion, there are only a few things worse than an objectively bad game, and that's a good long one that ends in nothing after hours in.

In short, STAY AWAY.

If you wanna fap on Hermione and other hot chicks this game is what you need
Don't wanna fiercely criticize this game cause it was one of my first avn and i like magic/fantasy worlds and Harry Potter.
I like season 1 and i would replay it again and again, s2 was not worse maybe even better a little but s3 is where i dropped this game twice or thrice and the last try i almost made it but i don't wanna play it again. It's boring and the same with every character. I see that dev tried to enrich gameplay with tournaments, minotaur battle but the main system of leveling and money farming is boring. They removed fishing for whatever reason but it was the only activity in weekends, removed some spots for books. Maybe it were wishes of their patrons but it became less interesting.
I cant rate season 4 because i couldn't beat s3 so my rating perhaps is not fair.

Visual and graphics

It was cool for that time when they just released s1 but for today it's nothing special. It has cool ui, menu, navigation, also i like locations, they really conveys atmosphere of magic world.

Animation

Yeah there are different poses and all but very simple animation.

Sound

Some sounds for spells, some for environments, some for sex scenes. It just is.

Text, dialogues

It has interesting plot in main quests, side quests with different characters were not bad either and they reveal their background for 2 seasons then it became routine. In season 2 introduction was the "first bell" of verbiage. In s3 i cant beat it in my first playthrough. Same about dialogues. They are simple with a lot of thoughts of main hero with just few pics for entire scene.


Gameplay, replayability

As i said earlier i would replay s1 and s2 but not s3. Maybe cause it's my one of the first avn. But it was simple without many path to replay. You can enjoy all girls without any penalties, win in arena. Then it became more like routine with new girls, new events but same gameplay, same sex scenes, same repetitive battles. For me it didn't work in s3.

Conclusion

Repetitive scheme for every seasons is not always working. You don't need to add more popular characters from different franchises with same boring dialogues and animations, to add new challenges with same one-two spell gameplay to make it more interesting. Many aspects are there as a formality like a sex talk and animations.

A game with a mediocre story, where decisions matter little to nothing, and with flat, excessively numerous, and underdeveloped characters. In short, it's like Grandma House, but worse, because here they force fetishes like lesbianism on you. The only good thing is the developer's work rate.

-I sunk a solid 17 hours into this game before calling it quits. I played full S1 and half of S2. I gave it a fair shot, tried to get invested but ultimately, it fell flat and was boring overall but on a technical/visual, UI level, its top class.

-With 40+ LI's, every romance plays out in its own bubble, like solo relationships that never intersect, scenes are all isolated, meaningless scenes where neither the world nor the characters react to your choices. All of those 40+ LIs think you are in a solo relationship with them. They never quesiton if you are with anyone else even though all the LIs are lusting after u. They never question anything tbh, they just pretend like MC and her are in a relationship and other Lis dont excist, theres zero doubt from the LI side if you are seeing anyone else or not.

-When u finish one of the LI arc/quests and by the end of the arc you are in a close relationship with her, theres sometimes scenarios where in another scene its as if she doesnt know u anymore or where u are not in a close relationship anymore, its like MC WHO?? Again, LI arcs/quests are all isolated/in a bubble, 0 reactivity in the world, its just you unlocking meaningless scenes that are just yes/no questions if u want to see a certain scene or not, ultimately it doesnt matter what choice u do or whose quests you do.

-Another thing, theres 40+ LIs right? Literally none of them apart from 1 that i remember has a BF/husband. Like cmon, u have 40 LIs who all look hot as fuck but they either dont have a BF/husband/any relationship or they are keeping themselves for the "perfect MC". Its cringe as fuck. Its too easy, too predictable, boring. And the ones who are not virgins, they usually say "i havent been with anyone in ages" like surebro, 10/10 looking girl and 40 of them dont have a partner are virgins or havent been with anyone for a while and ofcourse there are no real other male characters in the game who could be a "competition" or just generally a normal good looking dude. The only notable male character who could pose alittle challenge to MC.. drumroll...hes gay and i dont have anything against gay people or trans women, infact Audrey, who is a trans woman, was probably my favourite LI in the game. But the gay person was specifically put as gay so he doesnt pose as a romantic threat/competition for other LIs. Theres zero rivalry, zero tension, every LI wants only this one MC, its designed to make you feel like the ultimate alpha without any real effort. I want to have a challenge, to prove im better than another dude by winning over a LI or stealing LI from another guy who she is in a relationship with. Theres no "winning over" here. Its all about zero competition with zero other competent male characters in a game and every LI just falls into your lap without any effort.

-No drama, spice, or cool moments. Everything is emotionally flat, it evokes zero feelings, theres no highs, no lows, just filler.

-Repeated renders everywhere. Same locations, same renders with different dialogue. It gets visually stale fast which also added to the "boringness" that was my gripe.

-This is not specifically your fault dev, its basically every other AVN out there, im not sure if its technical issue with the engine or its just hard to implement but why is the phone so underused? No DMs, no calls, just awkwardly "bumping into" LIs or walking right up to them like it's 1960s. Like goddamn, just DM or call the NPC : Hey, you busy? I wanna meet. Instead here(and 95% of the AVNs out there) its just bumping into NPC or going physically to that NPCs place hoping that someone is home. You have a phone, this is not a stone age, utilize it.

-Speaking of phone, the lustagram was well done and fun at first but it got stale fast, nothing new was added to phone, just new pictures. Would have loved to see phone systems expanded. Again, i played S1 and S2 and a half, maybe it got improved later on.

-Visually, most of the LIs stand out as unique(i havent seen them in any other game, so big effort from dev to make them unique looking and not just low effort copy paste) and intriguing and interesting which initially drew me in but with the MC juggling 40 at once, it's impossible to take any of it seriously, MC just tells the same shit to everyone how you are important to me, i like u, having romantic relationships with everyone while being in a relationship with 40 LIs. I just cant take any of this seriously which ofcourse makes it that Lis also lose integrity and every dialogue i have with each one of them is emotionless, meaningless, empty, i feel nothing, its just text im reading. Yeaap.. now moving on to LI nr 29, lets go say same thing to her how you are important to me, i like u alot, you are special. Next up we have LI nr 32, same shit, different day. It gets boring fast.

-The game itself is not badly made at all on a technical level, its top top class. Sandbox is not annoying, UI is very well made, super clean, nice to read and navigate, cool menus and different tabs. The main issue i have with this is the 40+ LIs. I just cant take it seriously how MC juggles all these LIs and is in a romantic relationship with all of them, the whole game loses integrity which then negatively impacts every other part of the game. Also 0 world reactivity to your actions.

-If you are into pokemon collection where you collect all the LIs and mindlessly, not taking it too serious, unlocking their scenes that are all in a bubble/isolation with 0 consequences, 0 stakes then it can be a fun game.

-TLDR : its a very well made game technically, very polished and clean, top top class but ultimately boring and didnt make me feel any emotion.

-Dev, i feel like it was a lose/lose situation for you no matter what after deciding to go with this many LIs. If you keep the Lust Academy base as it is, maybe some tweaks here and there but limit the LIs to MAX 10 in your next games, it can fix alot of the problems naturally, the game can be taken more seriously, more meaningful, world interaction is easier to do because u have less characters, im sure the world and NPC interactivity/reactivity was missing in this game because it would just be impossible for you to do with this many NPCs, also mentally easier to follow the game, more tighter, expand the relationships in a more meaningful way etc.

Anyways, congrats on completing a game, its massive undertaking for your first game and the base is very very good, just maybe be alittle bit less ambitious with the LI amount.

It is rare to find a good sandbox game, but anyway I took the chance and decided I'll give it a try with this game when it lets you select the experience, sandbox or VN.
The conclusion regarding the sandbox is that it didn't feel that sandboxy. You don't have to explore because the game provides you a menu with the character icons where you can directly teleport to them.
This saves a ton of time for sure, but also, there is not exploration in the sense of sandbox game.
The only sandboxy aspect here that you can choose what character to interact with at each time.

Right at the start, the game bombards you with different terms from the game world, that you as the player have no idea what they are and have 0 meaning to you.
At first, I suspected the writing is kind of weird, but WOW, I didn't expect how the first H-scene was presented... this was new levels of rushed, from 0 to 100, no buildup, in one dialogue sentence without even knowing as the player who is the character the MC is about to fuck.
While playing this scene, it became clear what writing would follow in the rest of the game.

Though about the renders, models, animations and the camera control that the H-scenes gives you, they are pretty good and smooth, so at least we've got this.

The story just doesn't sit for me, they are talking and talking about stuff, and I just don't care because they never explain any of it and I have no idea what or who they're talking about..
Also, the characters are talking big and dramatic about all that's happening, but they don't act like it. At least for me, there is huge dissonance that makes everything meaningless.

This game has a huge amount of content. Many side stuff, gorgeous characters. Each character has an arc and side story that you can delve in if you are interested.
But even with all of this, it doesn't feel like it is written well enough to be interested to explore this world more - at least for me.

TLDR: Highly overrated game. The only positives are the very hot girls and some anal. Terrible and boring story, extremely poor writing. Kinetic. There's 43 girls, so no depth or proper relationships. Mostly vanilla sex. Nonsensical story flow. Significant language issues. And many many other problems.

Positives:

• Beautiful girls, most of them have excellent bodies.
• Good graphics (although renders are extremely often reused). Decent animations but they're rare.
• Choice between sandbox and VN mode. (I chose VN to avoid grind.)
• Sometimes minor interactivity in sex scenes (e.g. choose to give cunni before sex).
• Sleep creeping possible with some girls.
• Proper deepthroating in a few scenes.
• Anal scenes. And one a2m, from one girl's ass to another girl's mouth. Nice.
• DP in one scene.

Negatives:

• Writing is very low quality. Clichéd, repetitive.
• Blueballing. A huge amount.
• Vanilla, boring sex for almost every scene.
• Sex scenes are short, mostly unsatisfying, highly repetitive.
• 43 girls! That's way too many. So there's no depth, only superficial relationships. And mostly just a couple sex scenes with each girl and it's over.
• LIs are suddenly removed. New ones are introduced, the "old" ones are removed, whether you were seeing her a lot or had just 1 fuck.
• Almost completely kinetic (in VN mode). Choices are basically fuck or no fuck. Other "choices" just lead to same path anyway regardless of what you want. E.g. "Enter portal?" "Yes" means yes, and "no"... also means yes.
• Story flow (in VN mode) feels wrong, unnatural. It's a mess. E.g. agreed to meet a girl tonight but game ignores it, does other things for weeks, before meeting the girl and pretending it's the same day. Or save a girl from getting raped but then don't follow-up for months.
• No matter how many times you reject LIs they keep coming back, MC keeps flirting with them, dating, kissing.
• Renders reused to an extreme extent.
• During one anal sex scene the "girl" suddenly has testicles. That's with LGBT disabled. So the animation shows first she has a pussy, MC fucking her ass, changes perspective and suddenly you see "her" ballsack shaking. Big turn-off.
• Forced femdom (in VN mode).
• One LI basically cucking MC with another LI.
• Poor illusion of choice. E.g. choice to "break free" from vampire or "let her bite" but both end with bite anyway, no change. Or choose anal but it's actually not possible.
• Significant language issues. Wrong words and phrasing, sentence structure, spelling.
• Sex where MC doesn't get to cum.
• Forced lesbianism (despite LGBT disabled).
• A main LIs is a stripper/prostitute. Several side girls do prostitution, succubus that fucks people for energy, etc.
• In season 1, two of the five main girls are annoying, treating MC like shit. Later other girls with terrible, obnoxious personalities. E.g. assaulting MC.
• Monster girls.
• Inconsistency. E.g. girl swears to kill MC, is his nemesis. But next day she's so happy hanging together at the cafe.
• Suddenly have to play as other characters. An LI and the step-father.
• LIs suffering PTSD from sexual abuse. So she becomes an erotic dancer, against MC's wishes. Also, everyone is still fine with her dad who committed the sexual abuse.
• LGBT disabled but you must still flirt with guys, skinny dipping, nude wrestling, etc. And often still offers gay sex no matter how many times you reject them.
• Unskippable cutscenes.
• Unskippable replayable scenes in VN mode.
• None of the main LIs do anal.
• Season 4 has unskippable minigames required for the story.
• Tedious puzzles, trial-and-error.
• Every time the LIs are horrible to MC he is the one who has to apologize and be reasonable.
• Season 4 becomes a pure fuckfest. A ridiculous number of girls. Even less depth, no relationships, and only short sex scenes.

Scenes. Maximized sex except for two monster girls and fat Eva. Dreams don't count.

• Vaginal: 90
  • Leona: 1. Lily: 5. Audrey: 1. Naomi: 3. Selene: 2. Haley: 8. Olivia: 2. Samantha: 7. Adele: 4. Vanessa: 4. Ashley: 4. Gabriella: 4. Jill/Faith: 3. Sadira: 1. Sabrina: 3. Amelie: 1. Evelyn: 1. Irena: 1. Molly: 4. Genevieve: 3. Penny: 1. Victoria: 2. Scarlett: 1. Monica: 1. Reini: 1. Dakota: 3. Cherry: 1. Grace: 2. Theresa: 1. Willow: 1. Seraphina: 1. Martha: 2. Lucy: 1. Kayla: 2. June: 2. Arabella: 1. Svetlana: 1. Alice: 1. Catalina: 1. Ninelle: 1. Amana: 1. Arleen: 1. Melissa: 1.
• Anal: 7
  • Sadira: 1, but suddenly she has testicles. Penny: 1. Monica: 1. Kayla: 1. Catalina: 1. Naomi: 1. Molly: 1.
• DP: 1
  • Molly: 1.

(Version played: v4.10.2a)

Writing:
Awful prose, grammatical errors everywhere and it is clearly written by a non native speaker. No proofreading done what so ever. Only saving grace is a mod for season 1 that rewrites some of the dialogue.

Story:
Awful. There is no continuity what so ever. In one season a character tells you she was sexually assaulted, in the next she says she lied. (The character was forgotten about even though the season started as "her" season) Characters are too quick to forgive each other, they'll do some REALLY awful things and they're just forgiven after a quick sorry and a hug.

Renders:
No creativity, same poses same scenes and on top of it, it's a blurry mess. The seasons keeps getting bigger and the renders don't show for it. Videos also need a 60fps patch because it's all 30fps. I'd argue an upscaling mod would be great.

Gameplay:
Sandbox is recommended but it's just bad and serves no purpose beside choosing what to do first.
It's super laggy (my computer is more than enough to play VNs) and unoptimized, I've played bigger renpy games with way better performance and more going.
Just play the visual novel mode if possible.

+ Good Concept

= Decent Characters but somewhat bland
= Sandbox vs Novel mode
= Vanilla ( mostly )

- Weak Plot
- Weak Gameplay
- Economy is borked in terms of what you can purchase vs your sources of income
- Incest has nothing to do with the MC from what the forums said and I never saw any hints of it anywhere.
- Overall it just feels rushed with a bizarre amount of filler

Sorry I'll have to go with a 3 star. I love the story. I just don't like talkative main characters and I thought the book was about magic and not about some guy who can't control his sexual urgencies. Hopefully season 2 and beyond doesn't have a guy who can't control his sexual urgencies or at least less talking and more action.

Downloaded and played.
Average, with good renders.

I expected more Harry Potter style, but got a weak parody. More in Unavowed style.

magic Duels everywhere, then option to have or not a sex with a female. This is not bad, but I got bored and stopped playing.
I really expected something grand here.

After seeing this marked as completed I thought I'd give it a try but since I couldn't even finish S1 I'm not pretending I played all of it. So for what it's worth, these are my sincere thoughts of what I've seen.

The magical mumbo jumbo is already hard to believe, but even as a parody of Harry Potter this doesn't fly. The writing is boring, I mean the game can be played either in sandbox or novella mode and even the latter is boring as fuck so I shudder at the thought of being limited to a sandbox.

You're presented with the usual collection of cuties and the odd overbearing MILF; also, at the beginning of the game you have the option of enabling some LGBTQ content, you know... the quota. While mostly interested in the MILF content I suppose I could be somehow interested in some futa action but really, it takes far too long for something even remotely interesting to happen and there's not one believable character to find here. To be honest I lost all hope as soon as the school selection happened and I found myself getting a dual blowjob from two of the school founders, supposedly dead yonks ago. Yeah sure, it was in a dream or whatever, but really... that's crap storytelling all right.

Summing up, the models are OK and maybe it gets better later but really, I'll pass on this one.

Love the story sex and everything the characters are amazing . you feel like a sex god of this universe . I am glad we get to have sex with every hottie available. Wish there is an orgy though lol . So many opportunities and open ended stories available for future.

A 8/10 game recommendation to those who want AVN similar to the story of Harry Potter and the wizarding world of magid.

Gameplay : A pretty linear style game where choices don't exactly matter. I would recommend playing through sandbox mode as I think you get more scenes that way. The only choices are for sex scenes with the characters you are romancing or not.


Story : This storyline isn't unheard of, a pretty common story about some orphan who has a great amounts of magic power in him. He goes to a magic academy, meets new friends and enemies. Eventually finding out that he is the chosen one to defeat this overlord from the dark side.

I will say that is kind of boring, there really isn't much suspense at all. Everything feels a bit rushed, and I ended up just skipping through useless side quest dialogue.


Visuals : Good visuals with great lighting, details of the environment + characters, and overall good renders. Good animations throughout the scenes.

Scenes : Scenes are great, with a lot of animations in every single scene. There is music for all scenes, but they are repetitive.

Customer Support : N/A

Overall, a pretty good game that is worth the try, and the story is decent.

I'm giving this game a 3 star rating because there's nothing remarkable to recommend it and nothing to make me puke either.
There's an appreciable story line here but the telling is difficult.
The majority of the NPC women are well modeled, occasionally too amply proportioned in some aspects unless you like the "bimbo" model but there is good variety. Perhaps a bit too much variety. it seems like the developer was trying to pander to specific requests. At the beginning we have Lily (Aoki/Hebi, the dev changed the names and never fixed the dialogue) who is a relatively pretty Asian girl, but then he essentially writes her out of any major part of the story and replaces her with June. It looks like a pander to those who like the younger type (amazing girl though, her breasts go from essentially flat chested when clothed to about a D cup when naked). Naomi is similarly replaced by Kayla. The original characters are relegated to cameo appearances. Hayley is supposed to be the MCs girlfriend or something but that really doesn't mean anything to the entire story. NPCs are casually created all over and left hanging with no relevance. They essentially just serve to lengthen the development time.
The entire magic battles system has an effect on the story once, maybe twice, and doesn't matter the rest of the time.
The dialogue is obviously translated from another language and shows it. No English speaker in any English speaking country talks like that.
The ending really feels rushed and anticlimactic.

nice models, intresting plot also great animations. Felling great thats finally completed. I can recommend this game to everyone. Magick world its finally something different from typical college or incest family ;d

I'm actually amazed at how awful this game is. When I saw the negative reviews, I decided to keep my expectations low, but even then I was still disappointed. In my opinion, the writing is the worst offender. It's just sloppy on all fronts, full of grammar errors and clunky sentences. The dry humor is incredibly obnoxious and the MC is the type of vapid dumbass that really makes the experience a drag.

And as if that wasn't enough, the mindlessly repetitive and unfunny lines constantly get in the way of the sexual content itself. You'll often see characters going on tangents and generally just wasting time before a sex scene, only for the payoff to be nonexistent.

While the renders themselves are fine and sometimes even great to look at, the actual sexual content is severely rationed throughout the game. When sex scenes are few and far between, then the writing should be good enough to make up for it, but as you can probably tell, that's not the case here. And to make matters worse, getting blue-balled isn't just normal in this game; it's part of the experience. Because the writer isn't creative enough to develop the sex scenes naturally, the process of getting in a girl's pants is basically just one long sex scene that gets interrupted multiple times and chopped up into separate scenes. Have fun holding your boner between sex scenes while reading the most braindead dialogue ever written.

The only good thing about this game are the character designs, and even then it's nothing to really write home about. Also, the severe lack of kinks really doesn't do this game any favors. In summary, it's a very boring, slow and unsatisfying porn game made for a "general audience" to buy on Steam, play for a couple of minutes and leave a positive review. Cookie-cutter shovelware. Haley is very cute, but that's about it. Everything else is trash.

As other comments say, the models and animations are very good, I enjoyed the first season, the fights and classes were a good parody

But...

The usual: poor writing and poorly developed characters. Many undervalue the story in these types of games, but considering it's a long game, you end up skipping dialogue at some point.

I give it a 6/10 for a game that, with better-developed characters and a well-written story, could have been a 10/10.

Play it if you have nothing better to do on a boring Sunday at home.

Started out as a great spoof on the magic school genre with good models and animations but it started to get loaded with more characters and unresolved plot lines. The writing got worse and one of the curviest characters that people kept asking to see only has a few scenes and NONE in the end, which dissapointed everyone.

The devs did not listen to the audience or subscribers and so many LIs have no completion to their story. Everything was just left unfinished and unaddressed.

Use the unlocker and don't bother playing.

When I first started playing this I was really enjoying it. But now it just drags on and on and on. The relationships you build are pretty fun at first but then it just.... idk it becomes stagnant. If you're here for the faps just download the gallery unlocker and move on with your day. But if you want repetition in your daily lives then this is the game for you.

Models, renders, and sets are average to above average. But, typical for me, the writing is inexperienced and amateurish.

Aside from the crutch of "inner monologue" being prevalent throughout Season 1 and Season 2 (early S2 is where I am now), the entire way that everything revolving around the "Ashley arc" for S2 is abysmal. Having Samantha AND the MC treating Ashley the same way that Don and Olivia do, just from a different perspective, is just sad, in my opinion. The two people who have DIRECT life experience reasons to be the most supportive to a very desperate and vulnerable Ashley are instead being abusers themselves. Maybe this is a "Lost in Translation" thing and whoever translated the original language is the culprit. Regardless, as stated in other reviews, things go from "average" in S1 to going downhill in S2. Everyone from S1 seems to have gone into high maintenance mode, all having major issues that somehow the MC that doesn't know how to be a supportive brother yet somehow knows how to help (eventually, I assume) everyone else get over their issues.

The longer this goes on, the worse it gets. If it weren't for the gratuitous use of inner monologue, I would swear this was a different scriptwriter than Season 1. Then again, so many of the authors of the scripts for these games are untrained and use tons of inner monologue, so it could easily be another scriptwriter with the same bad habits. Season 2 translation comes across like this.