Ren'Py - Lust Academy [S4 v4.4.1d] [Bear in the Night]

Just finished S1 & got TBH this was indeed a welcome surprise. Honestly I wasn't expecting much cuz i thought it was gonna be another mind control magical Voodoo game but man wasn't expecting a Potter world.
The animations r quite stunning & those gorgeous renders was a joy to feast.
The story was engaging & the memorable cast keeps it afloat. Though I did feel like the lore was a bit too much at times.

Also can't praise the Dev well enough for introducing a pure VN route & a Sandbox route which i genuinely appreciate not many games offers that ,so Kudos Dev!!
(I tend to keep myself away from sandbox)
Overall a really enjoyable game & definitely worth your time

This game has many positives: high quality character models and animations, really detailed & beautiful environments/backgrounds, plentiful scenes, etc., but the number one thing that amazes me about this game (that I wish every sandbox game had) is the event calendar. The thing I absolutely hate the most about 99.9% of sandbox games is having to click through every possible combination of game locations and times-of-day over and over again to find new content. It's frustrating, a waste of everyone's time, and absolutely unnecessary. This game eliminates that problem entirely by having a calendar that not only shows you all available content at every time for that day, but teleports you to the relevant location when you click the event portrait. Brilliant, superb, ingenious, miraculous, there aren't enough superlatives for this simple, but (literally) game-changing mechanic. If you are a developer making a sandbox game, PLEASE, for the love of all that is holy, implement something similar.

Love the graphics. Played season one unfortunately the season two is not available on android i tried to run it on joiplay but it won't work, so my review is only based on season one. The game is ofcourse parody of Harry Potter with some unique character. You play as a guy, who just learner about magic school and invited to attain it just like every typical story. I love how the game give you the option between sandbox and V N. I choose the V N one because not a big fan of playing game in a porn game.

One of my Fave Five. The included kinks, for lack of a better term, are handled well thus far, and optional of the storyline. While I'm not really interested in BDSM the build up with Amelie has certainly peaked my interest. Well done overall.

I am a big fan of this type of games, but for me ANIMATIONS are playing the big role. Unfortunatelly I have some complains about them, however firstly I try to write my prons and cons, and then move to animation aspect of the game..

Prons and cons:
+ story
+ renders
+ sand box and visual novel
+ fast updates

- girls
- animated scenes

For instance, Im sure there are many people who like all female characters in this game, but instead of trying to make scene for every female character we have pointless scenes in striptease club with random non sexy girls. I would have understood if those scenes included anal scene or something we couldnt yet have with others girls, but no. Handjob, massage, next time titfuck and then finally deepthroat? And as I mentioned few days ago, there is no progress in animations, I even can say there is a regression in quality and in ideas.
For instance this scene. Are there better scenes if we take QUALITY and IDEA into the consideration? I dont think so. This is the first and still the best scene in game...Or for example there is only 1 character in entire game with huge boobs (Teacher), but since december 2020 there are no scenes with her, but instead we get scenes with random girls that are not important in plot.
https://attachments.f95zone.to/2020/12/966161_1_061_a5_011.jpg

Gorgeous renders, especially the teachers (I like the milfs). I like the spoof on H@rry P0tter for the story and that there are specific story points with each character and a very convenient hint system. I thought I would hate the combat element, but it's pretty fun and not grindy. I also don't seem to be a fan of sandbox style games on here, but have an open mind and really don't notice that it is because of the nifty calendar. High hopes for this one.

this is an amazing game with a decent amount of content nice visuals, a good story leading up, easy navigation ,cool minigames just so much and its easily one of my favorite games right now great job to the devs and i hope to see many more updates to this game over a long period of time

Just finished Season 1 and...wow. Note: Played in sandbox mode with mods

- The models are gorgeous. All of them.
- The sex scenes were very enjoyable
-The story was engaging; It took a while to get to the actual story, but the character developments were good as well.

If you put my feet to the fire for critical feedback, there were a few places where certain things seemed non-sensical or overly contrived. For example, why was Molly running the cafe in stripper clothes?

Excited to see Season 2 completed!

On many levels, this game deserves 5 stars.
The renders are gorgeous, the models look great and are pretty diverse, not just in hair-do and colour, but also in body types.
The setting is of course well done, being basically an adult version of a certain Magic School, and it has not only a gorgeous, more curvaceous version of Hermione, but also fe. a potions' teacher named Sabrina etc..

It is the only game I know of that not only features a character based on Hermione as a central focus, but also offers significant content for her.
Including actual sex scenes, not just nudity and teasing.
Of course there is a certain fore-runner to most games here, but that was eons ago.

Based on that and based on the dev offering both a VN and a Sandbox mode, based on the regular updates with a good amount of content, this game definitely deserves five stars.
In fact, compared to many, many high-rated games, this one deserves it far more.

Sadly, I have to stick with four, because it loses one point due to two factors.
The English, while adequate most of the time, isn't great, that not only includes spelling and grammar, but also how sentences are build and structured and what the characters actually say.

The other problem is the MC, I find him written very inconsistently.
Sometimes he is a complete and near disgusting little perv, then is a straight-forward good guy, then he is caring and emotional and seems to have real feelings for most of the girls, then he tries to look under skirts and drools over how a girl looks, sometimes he uses language that isn't fitting for the scene at all or almost seems inappropriate.
IDK whether this is a cultural thing, I have seen similar changing character behaviour in quite a few games coming from devs out of Eastern Europe fe. or if Bear-In-The-Night is just not good at finding a consistent voice for his hero, but it can be quite jarring at times.

That's why this game is a four, a good four and well-deserved, but still just a four, not a five.
Though if you read my other reviews, you know I do not tend to give notes in regard to whether I like the idea in general or how much potential a game has, but to the quality and content that is actually there.
So this four means it is a four-star game, which is a good game, not the hope and dream of a good game or the hope that it will improve in the next two years, no.
A good game now at this point with a ton of content and very good-looking girls and milfs.

I'm surprised this game isn't more popular. It's got great-looking renders and character designs (one of the main LIs is just a bustier Emma Watson), good animations, and solid writing. Overall, it's a very polished game. Also gets updated at a surprisingly fast pace compared to other games of similar quality.

Renders are GREAT, pretty much all the time. The Sandbox mode is pretty good if you want to pace yourself with the story and still cover everything. Honestly the mini-games are pretty fun, though I just use an autoclicker for the fishing b/c there's nothing else in Dale that takes time and progresses/does anything. The Spell Practice isnt very clear either, had to search the forum to realize you had to click the spell when the bar is "full" at the arrow. Honestly there's really no way to lose the weekly house points either, I can find about a dozen or more books laying around a week to make up for any lost points.

My biggest gripe is the script though...MC is SO. CRINGE. Like I can't even self-insert because he has the tact of Borat. Every single female character is written pretty damn well, but MC? In one conversation with a girl he just met, he calls her "baby", "sweetie", "babe", a whole bunch of pet names and dear god I feel like a boomer creeping on a young teenage girl. Maybe its bad translation, but the cringiness on top of alot of typos and lack of QA/Proofreading, is making me drop it after a few hours.

Alright, I played through Season 1 and the latest update for Season 2:

• English is still kind of spotty, which really isn't a good look for characters that are supposed to be based in America. Takes me out of the story.
• Doesn't really seem to be any point in playing sandbox because there's not much to really explore or do. You're basically just following along the main story in a disjointed manner.
• Volume levels are still kind of wonky. Season 1's sound effects blew out my ear drums and there was no other way to avoid it other than turn off sound completely because the "sound volume" did nothing. Season 2 was just too quiet and it seems like neither of the volume levels did anything.
• Main character looks terrible, like a slack-jawed idiot. It's not that important but it's just hard to imagine how he could pull anyone looking like that while everyone else looks like they're models.
• Nice looking renders.
• The "Harry Potter" stuff is kind of corny and coupled with the on-and-off awkward "English" just takes me out of the story. Season 2 saw improvements but not enough and at some point I just stopped caring and just clicked through to see the good-looking renders. Feels like machine translation at some point or the dev team's native language is vastly different from English, especially American-English/lexicon for it the country's setting to believable or the story to be all that compelling.
• The potential for all the different mechanics seems great and really immersive but ultimately there isn't much of anything. Season 2 is still in development so I won't touch on that much but the beginning of Season 1 hyped it up to seem like there were going to be wild parties and a lot of interactions between characters. Before I knew it, I had reached the end of the content for Season 1 while still wondering why the hell I have to go into town every weekend just to do nothing or not win the "house competition" and just skip the weekend entirely.
• The environment renders look amazing but again, not much to really do or explore.
• Animations are kind of meh which kind of makes the character renders feel flat even though some of them look really good.

Think I was too harsh so I'm going to edit this. I think it's good overall. There definitely could be improvements in some areas but it's worth a try. Maybe it's just the theme that makes me bored.

Version played S2 v1.3.1D
In visual novel mode

Just a short summery:

Story / settings is pretty decent while not amazing it still has some high points and surprises at times. The VN is also of a decent lenght and at this point does not feel like it stayed past its due.

There are not that many scenes, especially not in Season 2 and while the girls from a technical point of view look pretty decent, they are definitely not the best around.

Personal taste wise I find that they all follow the same body plan, mostly large breasts, thick lips, the usual. But I won't take that in my judgement too much.

Especially the animations are quite poor, I would even go as far as to say, the way they are now they are better left out entirely.

Great art and animations with a nice mix of characters. The sandbox felt very manageable, I was never struggling to know where to go to do what or having to grind out anything to progress. Hopefully S2 can build on the exciting points S1 reached with each character and can avoid restarting any of the relationships.

Great renders, great animations, well-written. Some things are skippable that might annoy players. Overall, very player-friendly. Kinda unique setting for porn VNs.
I am not sure how the "free-roam" mode works, as I've always went for the story-mode.

OK, since my initial review, I made myself go back and at least try to get through the story in its entirety.

SO.... First things first......

If you want any shot at all of enjoying this game at all, play the Sandbox version! The VN version is an absolute train wreck. It leaves out a ton of information you need going forward in the story. It is also full of all kinds of dead areas where timelines don't fit. Clearly you can see that no effort to port the story was taken without chopping it to pieces.

I have always and still continue to hate sandbox games with a passion. They annoy me enough to want to go up and slap someone. The problem with sandbox games is the flow of the story. To be able to follow the story in a linear fashion that progresses correctly, you have to interact with specific characters and situations in a VERY specific manner. If you don't, you miss out on important parts of the story. This problem is amplified by the fact that some developers refuse to help you in any way as to where to go and what to do. You are left to hopelessly prod along.

Example - I made the decision to simply avoid the Audrey character because I could not stand her attitude and when I found out what she was doing to Samantha I hated her even more. I went on and followed every other part of the story but what I failed to see were very important aspects of the relationship between the MC, Audrey and Samantha. By the time I began to get the feeling that things were missing it was too late and I ended up ending chapter 1 of the story with Audrey's progress nowhere near complete. I had two choices. Go all the way back and start over and make absolutely sure that I followed EVERYONE'S story equally or just live with the fact that I may never see the Audrey story develop.

Because I hate Sandbox games so much, I forged on with the story and just hoped for the best. You see? This is the problem with Sandbox type stories. If you miss ANYTHING you screw up the story and don't even get me started on how you invariably end up seeing bits of one character story-line that bleeds over to another, leaving you clueless about what is going on. WHY? Because you didn't keep up with everyone.

SO...... Now that my rant is over, lets get to the story.

So far this has been a game that I "want to enjoy". The renders are good and I like where the story line is going. The inconsistent flow of the game caused by the "sandbox" however, is a "glaring" issue that is just killing the game for me though.

1. If you choose to avoid a particular character or delay the interaction with that character it screws up another characters timeline and interactivity. The story lacks the branch tree to be able to supports the number of characters the story has. You are "Forced" to work with everyone whether you like them or not. If you don't it screws things up. If that is the case, then why have a "sandbox" setup? You would be better off with a semi linear VN style layout.

2. There are elements or quests within the story that that just go nowhere. You complete the quest and then what? I dunno? Story just moves on as if the quest never happened. Throughout the story you see alot of this. Most of it is small and insignificant but if that's the case, why include it in the story? Just get on with things and stop wasting your players time!!

3. The flow of "time" is the worst I have ever seen in any game I have ever played in the Adult game industry. It is simply awful. For example. Why does it take an entire afternoon to get a massage and perhaps fool around for a brief moment? EVERYTHING you do that advances time encompasses and ENTIRE BLOCK OF A DAY!!! This means that you only get 3 events per day that advances time. This also means that it get extremely difficult to keep up all of the interaction of the characters without screwing something up and missing something important. The story needs a 24 hour clock timeline where you can get more done and events do not take a full 1/3 of the day or more!

SO should you download it and play it? Flip a coin. If you love sandbox games and are only looking for the sex scenes, download it. If you want a great story where you can get invested in certain characters and watch the story unfold naturally? Forget it!! It isn't worth the hassle.

I had originally thought about giving the story another star. I mean there is a really cool story here. The way it is told however just kills the flow and the true heart of the story. It is just another click click click story that like so many others, is completely ruined by the sandbox element. It stays at 2 stars and I am being generous.

Lust Academy (season 2 v1.1.1d version) is a pretty nice game but not a perfect one. First off, it's too much of a Potter reference, and I'm not interested in Harry Potter but that's a matter of personal preferences. The story has some interesting ideas in parts while others a very meh, making it a bit irregular. Gameplay it has the base to build on something interesting but hasn't yet exploited it completely, even though the Sandbox version (the one I played) does have a pretty nice set of tools to know what to do and where to follow the story. Sex is not very present, as most stories require some time to develop, but I actually like that it takes its time to at least flesh out a bit the characters, though in the end most of those stories do feel a bit rushed.

Render quality is very high though and there are plenty of animations in many places, which make the whole world come alive. Sound doesn't have much presence in the game though. And I did find a pretty major bug in a quest that prevented me from progressing Leona's story in season 1 meaning that I had to start season 2 without using my own save, which is something that almost made me drop the game.

All in all, it's interesting and we'll see how it develops going forward as it has potential to be a great game but also to end up falling into mediocrity.

Poor writing without depth, shallow female characters, an MC who's only interest is sex and who he can shag! Magic?...he is only concerned about the 'hot babes' he can shag.
There is no magic in this game! The art is beautiful and the animations are fine...but the writing needs to grow up and get itself out of the teenage years!

It is a very beautiful game and the models are great. I was actually having a good time until i hit a point in audrey's story. Spoiler ahead. turns out her and sam are fucking cause audrey is a succubus. I wasn't thrilled about that since i like for love interests to not be involved with anyone else. I tried to keep going but then there is a sex scene with audrey where it was good for the most part but then once she cums she acts like a bitch and due to being a succubus sucked the life out of you so you lose your boner and can't finish. Which she of course makes fun of you for. Not like it is her fault her anything. Selfish cunt. Honestly after that i'm not sure if i'll ever keep going cause between the LI's not being exclusive and that bitch acting like that i don't think i ever want to play this again. 2 stars for the graphics and sex scenes aren't bad but i never really felt anything towards the characters and then that stuff happened so there nothing really pulling me back.

The character models can be rather pretty, the UI is nice, and it is interesting how there is a VN version and a sandbox version. However, the plot is a pretty standard college plot, with the standard bland/obnoxious college characters and standard bland/obnoxious dialogue. The MC seems more driven by the plot than by an actual personality, and the whole thing seems more annoying and dull than anything else.