Ren'Py - Lust Academy [S4 v4.6.1d] [Bear in the Night]

The good...

The setting, story, characters (except MC), LiS and their story arc and development, to some degree the animations.

The Bad...

Not particularly bad but while some of LiS and their story feels genuine and deep enough, some others are pretty much rushed and that's because the quantity. Other than that some extreme posing seem to be breaking rig skinning and thus it doesn't really look appealing when it most matter. Early chapters of the game heavily suffer from similar issue with facial expressions.

And the UGLY!...

The MC model is such an abomination that could've been a suit for a dumb villian npc character instead. From his facial expression to non existent likness, I find that he's the core element of turn off in this game. And the constant appearance of MC on the screen doesn't help it at all. I had to cut down one star just for the choice of MC model. Otherwise it's a fun game as long as you don't mind the look of MC.

This review was posted on S4 v4.6.1d

I've forgotten when I first played it, at first I chose to give it up because I was sick of the sandbox mode, then after updating it with the visual novel mode, I've been the first to play it every time it's been updated, with a steady frequency of updates that surpasses 99% of porn game developers, and without realizing it, from Season 1 to Season 4, I still find the story to be very interesting!

Highest Score: 5
Story: 4
Animation: 5
Rendering: 5
Characters: 4
Updates: 5

All together, I would give this game a perfect review!

Lots of content and things to keep you busy while the stories unfold. Simple to navigate the game's interface and of course high quality renders to help immerse yourself in a game wildly different from most other things you find on f95.

I just played this game for the first time (as of the S4 v4.6.1d version), I know I was getting into a game with mixed reviews and I expected to play something interesting/memorable.
My thoughts in short: Pretty to look at, bland, forgettable and a colossal waste of time. Let me explain:

★ ★ ★ Presentation ★ ★ ★
At first glance the game looks well put together but it suffers from a couple of terrible choices that bring it down, firstly the game is separated in two parts: you can choose to play it as a straight visual novel or a free roam sandbox I fell into the trap of playing as a sandbox but this was a terrible mistake (ill elaborate further down) as a result of this choice a lot of the game ends up being disjointed in how it presents itself and the user suffers as a consequence the second problem is that this VN is both hollow and shallow so all the presentation does is look as meaningless veneer

★Gameplay ★
You have two options: a kinetic novel with no choices or a free roam sandbox VN that is a complete waste of time, I tried the sandbox first then switched to the visual novel style halfway. Both are bad for different reasons but the VN style comes on top since you can ctrl skip and be done with it.
The main problem with the sandbox is that it doesn't have any systems whatsoever it LOOKS like it does but it doesn't have any, you just hunt down events for the girls you like and advance the main story until you are ready to jump to the next chapter, the VN on the other hand has no thought put into it, lack of choices aside it feels like the game was designed as a sandbox first so all the events and reading that you do feel disjointed and our point of view jumps around without logic or explanation

★ ★ ★Sound ★ ★ ★
For the most part the music is forgettable but it does its job, I do take issue with the sound effects, a lot of them are lower quality and some of the grunts and gestures by the girls feel out of character and mechanical. It's a mixed bag overall I didn't hate it

★ ★Visuals ★ ★
On a technical level most renders look good, there are some hiccups with some of the animations looking choppy and a few of the poses looking weird but it's workable for the most part, however I have a couple of grievances:
Art style is anachronistic and all over the place, setting takes place in a magic school but everyone wears clothes like they are on an office building while being surrounded by medieval/fantasy assets, you have a potions "teacher" dressed like a secretary and If you have done any chemistry/labwork you would know how terrible of an idea being dressed like that is, just to clarify I don't mind modern clothing in this type of setting just that no effort was put in to sell the fact that we are attending an ancient magic school.
My other problem is with the models, save for a few exceptions almost all of them look like they are wearing implants, this gives a "plastic" feeling to everything that also translates into the porn scenes unfortunately

★Writing ★
My main criticism is that the dev didn't put the effort to justify how characters feel or act, It reads fine for the most part, some typos, odd phrasings here and there but It's terrible in the most boring way possible, our MC is your typical: sex pest, "nice" guy, entailed, doormat, casanova, mary sue chosen one with a dark troubled past, dumbo looking cunt. All the girls and boys love him and if they don't they are a bad guy or they will like him eventually, he always gets what he wants and knows what to do at any given point. It gets tiresome quickly, the MC is absolutely pathetic and uncharismatic, flirting sounds out of touch and no girl would realistically let him get away with any of that, dude throws empty platitudes all the time and girls look at him like he is the most insightful guy ever lmao what.
The girls have nothing going for them either since all the things they do revolve around the MC in some way and they don't have a character outside of that, there's no build up with any of them they just go from strangers to being in love with the MC with nothing happening between that.
And as for the main story it doesn't really matter as it goes nowhere, it's a sequence of loosely related events that only serve to fellate the main character

★Porn ★
This game is very vanilla, I have nothing against vanilla sex, some of my favorite games are purely vanilla. Lust Academy dev has in his hands a fantasy setting where anything is possible: Invisible sex in the middle of the classroom, lust curses, shapeshifting sex, accidental love potions, shrinking/enlarging, bimbofication potions/spells, sleeping curse that can only be cured with sex, ghost blowjobs in the bathroom, mind control, lactation as a side effect of a class mishap, etc I could go on and on with these, the porn writes itself but dev decided that 95% of the scenes are going to be inoffensive vaginal sex in the bedroom, a forest, or the shower lmao WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? Pardon the food analogy but it's like going to a buffet and only getting white rice and lukewarm water for yourself and the whole family. Don't get me wrong it is still fappable but once you see one scene you've seen most of them since it's almost always vaginal sex on top of a bed, there's no variety except sometimes you would see some brief dick nibbling or a partial titjob but never a full bj/hj/tj on their own. It's just vaginal sex after vaginal sex with some brief snippets of the mc molesting his roommates while they sleep. There are a couple of scenes that take advantage of the fantasy setting but it's not enough.
You can do a lot of fun vanilla things with the magic shown in the HP movies, but the dev is either not smart/creative enough for such things or he just wanted to fuck Emma Watson and everything else is just fluff in his eyes.

Final Thoughts
I really tried to give this game a fair shot in its entirety, I really did. if you like the renders and don't read that much in these type of games I think you will enjoy what it has to offer. If you are more cultured you will come out of it frustrated at best since a lot of this VN does feel like a missed opportunity.
At the end of the day it did nothing for me, for so long I avoided this game because of the Emma Watson expy, I thought it was lazy and unimaginative now I know better for next time.

To new comers, I hope this get through you.
- This game have 2 gameplay : 1 is SANBOX and other is VN. But they have the same contents of the story and scene.
- Choices in game is simple. And there is only 2 choices of interest : Yes for interest, decline for not interest. No wrong answers.
- Sandbox :
+ Mid grinding - only about 10 of different items and resources - If you grind for hours then you are rich until the game die.
+ Quest and progress : Very simple and there is no time pressure. Everything is instructed in character tab. Nothing complex - no spaghetti - no confusion.
+ Point and click won't be an issue in 99% of the game.
- The story maybe mediocre, but it's absolutely not a bad one.
- The game is mainly for Sandbox so VN mode would be fast.
- You can't miss any scenes in 1 play unless you want to ( except there are some scenes in Ep 1 ). And they won't effect your relationship either.
- All models are beauty.
The only reason you see the game have 3.5/5 rating is because there are all kind of people in here.

Where do I even begin.

The positive is that there's for sure going to be at least one girl who you like. The renders are, at worst, decent, and you for sure will end up liking at least one.

The negative is that you have to play the game to get the scenes.

The story starts off somewhat interestingly, but it falls off really fast. The issue is that there's both an overarching story, and each character also has its own storyline/character story... which are disjointed, boring, and frankly, dull. And I'm not saying that "Some of them are boring", I'm not saying "Some of them are dull", I'm saying ALL of them are boring. There has not been a single point of this VN where I am reading some of the character storylines and I think to myself "woah! I really want to find out what happens next!". There is not a single point reading this VN where I think to myself "this plotline seems really interesting!". There's not a single point reading this VN where I think to myself "Boy I sure am glad I spent 30 minutes clicking shit to move around the map, the payoff of this storyline was great!".

Reading this is like thinking you're going to a ferris wheel - find some highs, some lows, some nice views - and entering one of those spinning teacup rides where you just spin in place and nothing fucking happens.

And that's not even starting to complain about the Hermione copy that this game has, by the way. I mean, I get it, you're clearly HP-inspired, but having so many original characters and then slapping the most blatant ripoff of an extremely recognizable character does you no help. If you wanted to parody it to that extreme just use the characters and focus on that. Budget Hermy here is doing this game no favors, trust me.

Weak dialogue, weak sound, weak storylines, and heck, if I'm to be honest, weak scenes too, there's very little in here to ever recommend to someone. Which fucking sucks, because I actually did like some of the renders in here. But there isn't a render on earth that is worth four seasons of THIS.

The visuals are stunning, and there's a lot of content to explore, but the story becomes tedious due to unnecessary and irrelevant text. At times, the text feels like AI-generated filler, detracting from the experience.

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 zero sense. This may seem logical to the Anti-NTR crowd but 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.