Ren'Py - Lust Academy [S4 v4.5.1d] [Bear in the Night]

Played in Visual Novel mode

First you have to know that it’s not a visual novel but a kinetic novel, your choices don’t matter at all. You think you can reject a girl you don’t like? It doesn’t work like this, whether it’s just a kiss or a full sex scene, saying “no” just makes you skip the scene, the girl will act the same way the next day and you can still have sex with her in the future. That’s how Lust Academy works, and that’s a big deal for me.

Fun fact: there is an option for turning ON or OFF the LGBT content. BUT the developer thinks that the LGBT content only applies to a relationship between a male and another male ; female on female scenes are totally ok and not part of the LGBT content, the “L” doesn’t mean “Lesbian” after all…

Let’s talk about the dialogues now, it’s like they were written by a teenager who is a big fan of the Harry Potter saga, they are so childish that they sometimes get cringy. It gets a little better in Season 4 though, but it still shows a lack of social knowledge.

The MC is a yes-man, he does everything the girls ask him to do, like a good doggy. Even worse! Even when treated like a piece of shit (Wendy comes to mind), he will keep seeing the girl again and again because he wants to be friends with everyone, he is a very good boy, momma must be proud of him (ooops she’s dead).

If you’re into the femdom fetish, be aware that the Visual Novel mode skips ALL the scenes with Amelie, the only dominatrix of the game, you can only see them by unlocking the gallery. Not my fetish so I’m glad I’m not forced to see these scenes, but I prefer to warn the players who are into it.

Despite all these flaws, I have to say that the story, the renders and animations are quite good and immersive, but the social aspect, the emotions, and the relationships with the girls are not really on the menu, everything is focused on the life and ascension of a pseudo Harry Potter who occasionally fucks some girls to pass time, pseudo Hermione (Haley) being the favorite of the dev of course.

2.5/5

This is a game that should've stopped after Season 1 or maybe season 2.

Art is phenomenal. Character renders are great and sex scenes are well animated. But that's pretty much all there is.

It's a free roaming VN where you treat every girl nice and they become a girlfriend side chick. The formula hasn't changed for 3 seasons. Dialogue and plot gets really boring after having to repeat the same nice guy cliche.

Recommend Season 1 as the game feels appealing and the Harry Potter influence is still novel. Halfway through season 3 and the writing has definitely done downhill.

I enjoyed Lust Academy! The storyline got me hooked, especially because the characters were so interesting. Dakota definitely a standout – She's gorgeous.

The visuals were also impressive. The character models were beautiful, the environments were well-designed, and the animations were smooth and added to the overall experience.

(Score)
Rendering 10/10
Characters 10/10
Story 10/10
Animation 10/10

(Hope)
I hope MC will be not infertile as in other games. I know pregnancy is a big deal, but this is just a game. I'm not talking about having sex with a pregnant woman.(But I love it haha) The feeling of knowing you've made her pregnant is awesome. After that is the bonus.

Overall, this game is awesome! I'd give it a 10 out of 10. The characters are engaging, the story is interesting, and it's worth a try!

I didn't ahve much expectations towards the story of this game, considering how weak the actual main story of Become a Rockstar is, but I at least expected a MC to be a natural in the flirting game and that the conversations with girls would be meaningful... so far the MC disapoints in both departmets. We got an average game with great renders and nothing else to offer: no story, no good dialogues, no interesting LIs, no MC with a backbone. So far 3/5 is the maximum this game deserves

Nice renders and writing, but the game is quite slow and vanilla. There is not enough content to maintain the illusion of "sandbox", and even the set of event chains that are in the game are mostly linear, making the game more or less nothing more than a time-waster between the rendered CG scenes with no discernible choices or player agency. You might as well tag it with the VN tag.

The Game has a long but good story, good gameplay with decent free roaming and good minigames, as for the CG there is plenty with a lot of different and good looking characters and all is animated in gorgeous renders. My main drawback is the overall annoyance from there being 4 different games you have to download, port saves and play separately.

The Story is corny, and somewhat lighthearted most of the time, but gets dark and emotional often. Overall it does a good job of keeping you focused most of the time with very few segments where I would felt like skipping because the dialogue was taking too long without going nowhere.

The gameplay is nothing too special, there are all sorts of minigames you can engage with, if you played this kind of games before there will be nothing new for you in terms of gameplay, but it is quite well made and well design and gets the job done

The CG are Gorgeous, with well made renders of very attractive characters. There are quite a lot of different characters all with their own different scenes and positions. As for the best part, everything is animated!

Overall great Game, it accomplishes everything it wishes to accomplish and can get you hooked for hours ... till you have to go download the next chapter. I strongly recommend it if you enjoy Ren'Py interractive light novels.

I was originally going to write a long, long review, but instead I'll keep this brief:

This game is a tale of squandered potential.

The whole idea of a horny Harry Potter world is fun, but it's so obviously on-the-nose ripped off from Potter that it seems lazy. Right down to the seeming primary heroine (Haley) who could not look more like a tarted up Hermoine/Emma Watson if she tried. What isn't shamelessly copied out of the Potter stories is often trite, cliched, and siplistic

The writing might be acceptable, but it definitely feels like it was machine translated from another language (Spanish based on some of the production staff names?) into English and left as-is, because especially in the first 2 seasons there is a lot of bad, clumsy writing that sounds nothing like anyone who can write and speak English would create. It can't even keep its character names spelled consistently. Gabriella has her nickname spelled Gabe, Gabi, Gabby, and I think even once "Gabri" throughout her storyline in season 2.

It also suffers from that that everyone tends to say rather bland and stupid things with total seriousness that doesn't match up. It's not clever and funny enough to be a parody, but not developed enough to be a strong dramatic work on its own merit. Your player character MC is also kind of lame, often being patently stupid, cringey in his attempts to flirt or sound smooth, or downright creepy and pervy with how aggressively he comes onto girls (up to and including being able to sneak into their rooms at night so he can pull their underwear off and jerk off on them while they sleep.)

The wealth of characters are also wasted because each time there are tons of characters who are hinted to have potential with the MC but never get explored. Grace has been a supporting character thourhg hte first 2 seasons but there are absolutely no events with her except as a supporting player in other characters' stories. You can pursue the teacher Victoria through 2 games but nothing happens wheras other similar authority figure characters do eventually give in for some fun. It's just inconsistent.

The art is really good in terms of models, but it is CG mannequin characters so it can't avoid the occasional awkward expression or dead-eyed stare.

The sandbox mode is fun conceptually, but too often it lets you explore stories that should link together in a disjointed way, so you end up wrapping up a character's storyline where they undergo development, then encounter them in the main story path where they act like none of that happened. Plus stories seem to start and stop suddenly, meaning that when you finish all the content for a character it feels like there's supposed to be another update to the game to patch that in even though you know there isn't because there are subsequent seasons of new content. And you can't even keep interacting with characters once you've finished their story. A handful of repeatable date scenes or simple conversation options to be chosen when you click on someone would've added a lot of depth and feeling to the interactions. instead when you've completed the story you can see a girl sitting in class but all that happens when you click on her is the MC says "I don't have anything to talk about" or whatever his line is.

And the sex is good, but also annoying because for a game that has a sandbox mode, the only really repeatable sex is the extremely creepy night-time perving on the girls (which really should've been replaced with sneaking into their beds and waking them up to have actual sex once you've reached a high enough relationship level), paying for things that lead to sex in Dale on the weekend, or drunken party sex on Sunday nights if you win the weekly house challenge. So yeah you can go have a threesome with the freckled twin masseuses as much as you want if you pay $120 each time, but you can't jump in the shower with Samantha even though she can always be found there every morning in season 2. Plus the sex is often very vanilla. There's one BDSM character in season 2 and the threesome with the aforementioned massage parlor twins, but if you're hoping to get best friends Lily and Naomi into bed at the same time, or some sisterly bonding with Samantha and Ashley, at least as far as I am in Season 2 that's not on the table. Season 1 also teases a possible anal scene with Lily, but she refuses (and I don't think I missed anything to prevent her from accepting) but with maybe only 1 scene to go with her in my S2 playthrough that's never come up elsewhere and no other girl seems to be interested in anal sex at all even though it's just about hte most mundane kinky thing you can include in a porn game.

EDIT: A few hours later I have found that there are some repeatable scenes that are earned through the completion of some characters' individual routes in Season 2. So far I have found that these exist for Samantha, Ashley, Molly, and Vanessa, but don't for Victoria, Dakota, Sabrina, Gabriella, Audrey, and any of the more minor characters that don't have scenes (I have not yet finished Haley or Lily's stories to know whether or not they have a repeating scene). However you can only repeat that one scene with usually a couple of scene variants. There is no way to go back and re-do scenes from earlier in their story without using the gallery option.

Also one of those repeating final scenes has the first anal scene (ignoring the LGBT character variants/scenes) that I've found. So maybe there's some hope, but I still do feel that there should be a bit more dynamic/repeatable scene options for the characters to increase the value of continuing to play as stories dwindle.

Heck, this isn't even pretending to be a "romance" game because although the MC will constantly talk about his love for each and every girl, the moment anyone tries to define their relationship as more than "we're nice to each other and also fuck" both he and the girl get bashful and pretned they're not ready for that. It seems like a shallow way to keep the harem open for people that are squeamish about breaking a monogamous relationship in one of these games, but instead it just reads like a childish interpretation of relationships where the writers mix the ability to have a strong emotional attachment to someone with remaining distant enough to not feel guilty about having no-strings-attached sex with them and anything else with a pulse.

Through 2 seasons it just feels like they had a good idea and instead of spending time buildign it up and fleshing it out they rushed through every step of the creation process except the art design and figured that it's good enough because they have detailed and reasonably good looking CG lady models compared to their competition. With a bit more polish this could be a fun sandbox VN style game of any kind even without the sex. But as it is the occasionally hot sex only papers over all the other faults it has.

Maybe the last two seasons published to date will improve things. But right now this game teases me with how good it could be at almost every turn while disappointing me with out mediocre it settles for being.

Season 1 was interesting, girls are good looking, animations are fine, the overall backbone of the story is alright too, and I'm not one to mind sandbox type games.

But then came Season 2...

Dropped the game, mostly because of the writing, it's very childish,, like a 10 years power fantasy, characters are inconsistent, the MC is a dumbass and then all of a sudden every girl is at his feet. The sex talk is atrociously funny, til it's not funny anymore when you understand it was supposed to be 'serious' sex talk.

Wanted to like it, cause the visuals are in the upper tiers of AVNs, but the writing needs to be revamped big time.

This is a brilliant game if you don't care about dialog or characters and are only here for good art and sex.

This is a terrible game if you want an interesting story, interesting characters and well written dialog.

This game often feels as if it's being made by someone not very socially skilled or someone who is unaware of basic human behavior.
The main character feels too bland and too much of a pushover often. His dialogues and actions make him look juvenile sometimes. I understand that the point of having him as a character is that he's new to the world of magic but his behavior makes it seem as if he lacks any and all basic survival instincts in basic situations.
The writing often times seems disjointed which makes it awkward and frequently will result in two polar statements being said one after the other.
It can very easily be compared to one of those theatrical plays where everything is being said out loud for the viewer with the difference being that it's done in an AVN where the player is already aware of the setup and ends up making the mc look moronic.
LI's paths don't really do anything apart from showing sex scenes. You might fuck them in one quest and go back to awkward friend/talking stage in the next quest. Even if you reject them, there is no visible difference in their treatment towards you.
Some LIs are just straight up weirdly written as if the dev wants us to treat them as some sort of tsundere with no idea of how to execute it.(Ashley being one case in point).
The only reason this game gets two stars is because atleast the renders are good.
The game constantly tries to make the characters seem human but only ever succeed in making them feel like an asshole or a straight up dumbass.
The scope of this game comes at the cost of it's quality. This is the AVN version of "a mile wide, an inch deep". You'll probably find something here that interests you but it will never be above decent.

This is a tough VN to rate because I WANT to like it much more than I do.

THE GOOD
The models and animations are drop dead gorgeous. Mostly all of them are super attractive and the animations are top notch, providing multiple angles in quite a few scenes. 5/5 art style.

THE BAD
The game has no real bad issues per se...Season 1 starts off well with a fairly interesting introduction into this universe. 3/4 of the way through season 1 after all the characters have been introduced and the mechanics have been explained to us, the Title gets to be... SLOW, BORING, PLODDING and more of a chore to slog through then it is to read.

The writing is just uninteresting.. The story beats in Season 2 should work as the plot sounds good but the writing is just dull. It's not a bad game but it also not a good game it's very very average at best.

I'm still slogging my way through season 3 and I will try season 4 but I really don't feel like it, it feels more like a chore than something I want to do. To be fair to this title though I will try Season 4 and see if it gets any better.

Also all women are treated the exact same way, with respect and love as if each one was on the girlfriend route... I don't look for logic but there are damn near 40 women all on the girlfriend track with the MC, which makes no sense. This may seem logical to the Anti-NTR crowd but it makes little sense, and worse it makes the love interests all boring as hell.

Amazing renders, I liked them very much. The rest? Oh boy, I seriously tried to keep playing this for the sex scenes alone but I just couldn't force myself to do it in the end.
The LI look good, but that's it, all other aspects of their character despite their looks makes them all very unappealing and actually makes me dislike them quite a lot. The relationships dont build very well imo, its kind of boring actually, maybe because you don't care about them outside of looks. The story itself is a mess, there are choices that are not respected/ignored, its just a hassle to play. I am dropping it here.

It was really good at the start,
but with time the story got shit,
The characters and their relationships with mc got bland,
You fuck the whole college but you still act like casual friends with all the girls,
No developing bonds or romance,
Just fuck n forget and act like a robot or an npc the next time you talk to them,
Renders are good and the structure of the story was good but the bland characters that makes you feel nothing about them or the story had me abandon this game.

I've done all the seasons because I always tell myself it's going to get better, which it hasn't.
- The sandbox gets boring over time (yes, you can put it in VN mode, but I don't recommend it).
- you have no choice except to choose whether you want to have a relationship with the person (which makes it closer to a Kinetic novel than anything else)
- the duels are pretty cool, the only time I felt like I was on a game.
- The renders are of good.
As for the story, there's so much text to read with no interaction that after a while I just skipped it. If you like to read without having a lot of choice, you might enjoy this.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

v Season 4 - 4.1.1d

Story 2/5
Writing 2/5
Graphics 5/5
Characters 2/5
Audio 4/5
Gameplay 4/5

Lust Academy is a Harry Potter spoof with a focus on harem and hot waifus, with story and world building coming a distant second.
You play as MC, the least intelligent man alive (possibly some kind of mental retardation is at play), who one day receives a letter from not-Hogwarts about attending magic school. MC lives with two legal guardians that clearly hate him, and berate him every day, yet MC for some reason trusts these two explicitly. Anyhoo, MC goes off to magic college where every woman has triple-Ds, and even though MC suffers from a bad case of cerebral palsy he turns out to be the best at everything (presumably why the women need triple-Ds). Strangely enough, MC has no interest in magic whatsoever, and only goes to magic school for the purpose of banging hot girls. This turns out well, as every woman, including the teachers, have a thing for the mentally challenged, and MC quickly starts drowning in hot puss. There's also a main storyline somewhere in there, but since MC cares equally about the main plot and working his side hustle as a Downsy waiter, it can't be that important.

Story
The story is something. Not particularly good. It is mostly ruined by awful pacing, a recurring problem where the dev doesn't seem to understand how to follow a thread or weigh significance of different events from the perspective of the MC. This is evident from as early as the exam (an event in the beginning of the VN) where MC is told that the exam is critical, the exam is imminent, and the exam is difficult, yet most of the time in this chapter is spent talking to random people about pointless things. The actual exam part of the chapter is the smallest component. Same with missions and tasks - a large amount of the text dedicated to various tasks revolve around pointless shit while the task itself (which MC has been told is central and important) is resolved in a few lines.
The story also suffers from classic anime syndrome - everyone is wearing plot armor, and no matter how much you use the training/practice features in the game to become a stronger wizard, MC will still get beaten by the weakest of wizards when the plot calls for it. The world as a result does not feel real at all, and even internally it is inconsistent. This ties into the MCs severe retardation - the conclusions he makes to advance the plot are truly immersion-breaking and ricidulous. Trusting someone that tried to murder you five seconds ago? Sure, why not. Trusting the woman that is known for being deceptive and doing everything to get ahead? Absolutely, no problem. Trusting a complete stranger with information that would immediately get your sister expelled if revealed? I don't see why not. Trusting your absolute bitch of a sister with information that would get both you and your other sister expelled? Yes sir. Does the player get a choice in these obvious matters? No. Does the player ever get a choice in the decisions that matter? No. All of the important decisions are made without player input, and this is a strange choice from the side of the devs. The house you end up in is decided beforehand. Whether to tell your magical patron about the plans of the guy that tries to murder you is not a choice given the player. I don't think I've ever disliked an MC this much before.
It is also worth noting that the sex scenes are truly uninspired with nothing out of the ordinary happening. For a game about magical possibilities, this is surprising. In fact, the magic part is weirdly toned down in general.

Writing
The writing, the most important part of any VN, is bad. It's frivolous - way too much exposition usually, far too modern (stop using the word literally to mean figuratively, and stop using the word literally where it doesn't mean anything), Google translated, and in several places simply incoherent. The not-Instagram feature is the worst offender (every post sounds like a shallow teenager's version of "insightful"), and the comments left by MC sound less like a real conversation and more like some kind of idiot meme joke. I fully expected to see a comment of "plz show bob and vagene".
The most egregious error, and the one that takes me out of the game every time, is how schizophrenic the MC is. While the girls for some reason have no clue that MC is sleeping around, it also appears that MC has no clue that MC is sleeping around. Every time he meets a new girl, he acts as a virgin. Then he plays the supreme gentleman, throws out some teenage level "insight" about following your dreams or how no one is ever responsible for their terrible actions. He tells the girl that he has fallen for her and that she's special and everything, then he bangs her. Then he goes back to the dorms, jerks off on a sleeping roommates face, pats himself on the back for being such a kind and caring soul, and goes to sleep. Then he meets a new girl and the clown circus continues. He's a schizophrenic combination of supreme gentleman and Buffalo Bill sex offender. It's annoying how he talks about every girl being perfect and beautiful, how much he cares, only to go blammo on some sleeping girls face five seconds later. It would do much for the game if MC's personality was coherent and made the player feel sane. I'd also like it if the MC wasn't such an absolute beta, and would defend himself from the people that acted like bitches (Don, Don's wife, Audrey, black chick, and so on) instead of trying to appease them like a cuck. That choice is unfortunately not available.

Graphics
Graphics are great. No complaints. I'll say the characters all have far too large boobs, and ideally only one or two girls would, but realism in that area is a personal preference. The UI elements look far more professional than average, and work really well.

Characters
Characters range from acceptable to awful. Too many girls are absolute cunts, and the only choice open is to try and understand them and change their opinions rather than destroying them. The one character that I felt had some interesting thoughts behind her, Dakota, doesn't appear until S2. Most characters should be fairly recognizable - the slut (with huge boobs), the sister (with huge boobs), the nerdy virgin (with huge boobs), the tiger mom daughter (with huge boobs), the zesty black girl (with huge boobs), the MILF (with huge boobs), the second MILF (with huge boobs), the tsundere MILF (with huge boobs), and the list goes on. Most of the characters talk too much about pointless shit, which is further emphasized by the MC having several thoughts about the pointless shit adding even more pointless shit to the pile. It's not great, and most of it ends up being very skippable. To add insult to injury, MC quickly starts calling the girls 'baby' which merely comes off as embarassing and juvenile (in a bad way).

Audio
Audio is pretty good, at least to my ears.

Gameplay
This one is pretty decent. The mini games aren't difficult, can be skipped, and at least the duels are kinda fun before they get tedious. There's not much depth to any of it, but it works well enough. I do wish there were more events and outcomes tied to the duels, as this is supposed to be a game about magic battles. The UI is also intuitive and easy to use / access. Well done.

Summary
An average VN, strangely split between excellent UI/renders/animations and deficient writing/English/creativity.

Truly spectacular! I love this game! It is a wonderful balance between lustful lewd scenes and genuinely good story telling. This world of magic and love will keep you coming back for more. I know I keep coming back to see what they add next

I really used to like this game, it clearly has a lot of effort put into it with really beautifully crafted models and, very unusually for these types of games, the menus look pretty much professional-grade, really top notch.

The problem is the game is just way too much of a slow burn. Do you like a particular girl or a particular thread of the story? Too bad, you'll be lucky if it gets revisited once or twice in a full year. And even then when you get content with that one girl that you've been looking forward to it's way too little and is over before you even get to enjoy it.

season 2 lacked in story and options. I began feeling like my choices didn''t matter and maybe it was never meant to be a "multiple ending" kinda game? Still, I wish it gave me the illusion that my choices mattered like in season 1.

I want to start with a review as a whole, then Season 3 specifically.

To begin, I love the game. The story is very good, and each character for the most part feels like they belong and serve a purpose, no 2 characters are too similar and the important ones get their story fleshed out enough that you actually like their personality.

The characters are what really sell this game. The magic is cool, but most of it is not used, or used once then never seen again. You get 4 real spells to work with. One that does damage, one that does damage over time, one that stuns, one that heals. Pretty basic, but it works I suppose. I just hope they do more with spells in the future as the way they are used right now is extremely bare bones and surface level.

As I mentioned, the characters are what really sets the game apart. My favorite is Haley, as I have her Fan Sig, followed closely by Ashley, as well as Lily, Vanessa, and Season 3 arrival June. Although, I am not a fan of the whole bimbo body type, so the characters such as Victoria, Olivia, Season 3 arrival Eva, and Adele, never really stuck with me despite Victoria and Adele being fan favorites it seems.

Overall, the game is very good. It's had time to grow and develop so it really has found something with it's formula. Sandbox mode is awesome, as it allows me to choose the order of things I do. Additionally, I very much enjoy the ability to replay scenes in the shower. I know it seems like a weird thing to point out, put I like being able to see snipets like that. After you're done the whole night peeping thing, which can be completed in maybe 3 or 4 in-game weeks, there isn't much to do during the night hours, so being able to replay a random scene from a chosen character is really nice. I just slap on a random number generator for which character I get and I basically just get a random scene at that point. I don't know, I like it.

To end this off, I'd like to review Season 3 specifically. Season 3 seems to be the weakest in the game so far, but it's still good, don't get me wrong. I think my main issue with it is that there was too much in one season. It takes you all of Season 2 to free the founders of Cordale, then you free like 2.5 schools in one season. On top of that, they added a whole batch of new characters, which I'm glad they want to add characters, but it feels like there may be too many now. Adding new characters means less energy spent on existing characters and their stories. I mean, Audrey came back after being gone in Season 2 and there is barely any content for her. Only a handful of missions. Sam really doesn't have much going on, nor Ashley. Haley gets a bit, but she's the face of the game pretty much. My point is, it feels like there are too many one off scenes and short storylines for a bunch of characters rather than the longer more engaging stories for existing ones, and I'm just not a fan of that. I feel like the game should have spread out the main story over 2 seasons rather than one, this way, they could have focused on fleshing out the characters from the other schools, as well as the side stories, and gotten more in depth with their characters, which has always been a strong point for the game.

To conclude, I like the game a lot, I just felt that Season 3 tries to cram too much in a small timeframe, I think the main story being spread out among 2 seasons, and allowing there to be more side content for new and old characters, would've benefited the game. We are introduced to new characters at the other schools too, but we kinda just pump and dump before actually being able to connect with them in any way. I'm sure they will return, but I think it would have been better to build up those relationships rather than rushing them so quickly. Either way, the game is still great and has something for pretty much anyone, Season 3 may have left me a little disappointed, but it's not bad by any stretch. Still a 4/5 game.

I gave up after 2 hours of pure bullshit. I used to like this game because it’s clear a lot of effort went into it. The models are beautifully crafted, and the menus look surprisingly professional for a game like this.

But the game is way too slow. If you like a specific girl or storyline, tough luck—you’ll be lucky if it gets any attention once or twice a year. And even when it does, it’s so brief you don’t even get to enjoy it.

The story is a mess. New events pop up out of nowhere, adding to the chaos when there’s already too much going on. Meanwhile, some storylines get ignored for over 10 updates. It’s impossible to stay engaged when nothing makes sense and everything is all over the place.

And the bad English? It’s not the worst, but it’s bad enough to constantly annoy me and make the story even harder to get into.

Unless you’re looking for something insanely slow-paced and confusing, stay far away from this game.