(Review of v3.4)
OK, there's a lot to like here but also some things amiss or worrysome. Let's start with the good stuff:
1. Sex scenes start being fairly standard but get hotter over time as the story progresses and
finally you can treat Molly as she deserves, for instance. More on her later.
2. There are a variety of fleshed out LIs but instead of spiralling out of control they are kept a very short number of girls, so things remain believable and the experience enjoyable. This way we are spared the dilemma of "choosing" who we love the most and having to turn down the others, or feeling like the usual cheater who never has enough and basically can't be ever satisfied. Again, this makes the story more coherent and fulfilling.
There are other minor good points but let me now point out what I'd call the weak if not downright infuriating bits:
1. The whole goddess shebang feels more like an excuse to artificially stretch the gameplay (or doing things differently just for the heck of it) rather than something that makes the game any better than going for the standard corruption/love paths. I mean, I *love* Selene's dreamy backside in that see-thru dress as much as the next horny dog here but seriously, by the time her Pandy/Pandeya or whats-her-name sidekick reacts in such a horny and down-to Earth way watching you and Selene going at it, it's really hard to keep the heavenly drama afloat anymore. I mean, if they were instead some secret agents or far relatives directing or assisting you behind the scenes a phone call or taxi trip away I think the situation would be far more plausible and less pretentious. I'm well aware that no sane developer would change this this late in the game and the premise is a sort of mandatory requirement for the way the MC is inserted into the story but I think it's well worth pointing out anyway. I'd suggest to at least tone down the sexual innuendo with Pand* to keep this part moderately credible for the sake of inmersion.
1.1 Feel free to take this as a matter of personal taste but the whole mind control thing kills authenticity in a relationship -- past a certain point there's no telling whether someone feels genuine love for you or you're taking unfair advantage of someone, akin to drugging them.
As the story progresses this pivotal aspect of the game clearly becomes more and more a serious threat to your relationship with at least Molly and an ever tightening rope around the neck of the whole plot; at a certain point in the story she makes it patently clear that she genuinely does NOT want to get intimate with the MC and would rather see things go back to the way they were before you actually became a part of her life, yet (at least for now) you aren't given a clear path to win her heart by your own merits and develop a "proper" and healthy relationship. As a result, things for now aren't looking exactly rosy in this front and you're stuck keeping the farce going until the more than likely fatal (or at the very least less than satisfying) outcome eventually downs on you and ruins the game completely. I'll be glad to be proved wrong.
2. It cannot be that you keep receiving so much love and support from Molly and once and again you merely accept her "service" and then you run to your bed to recap about your day like a selfish bastard. FFS this is pure torture to her character and not a hole but a whole
f'ing chasm in the script. By the time you
finally get to treat her as she rightfully deserves I'd expect to be able to keep banging her all night long and give her the time of her life to make it up for WEEKS of pent-up frustration forcing the poor thing to help herself with a piece of rubber. And BTW how comes that at mid game the relationship with her becomes mom & son (and a couple of daughters) out of the blue? I mean, I did play the vanilla game and AFAIK by default she's just the landlady with a few tenants but zero relatives living with her?!
3. I admit *I AM a sucker for MILFs*, but still the
situation with Rin and Lin becomes tiresome at times no matter how juicy and easy on the eyes Rin is at a time where
the whole interest of the drama is focused on putting an end to Annie's suffering by taking her away from the clutches of her abusing father. Sure, by the time you recruit her for your short harem things pick up the pace again, but why in the name of $DEITY are you kept out of the loop having to wait for days to message her when it is blatantly obvious that something has happened to her in the first place!?
In summary, for me this is a very story-driven novella that obviously has been under development for a long time, has a few interesting characters to offer (for me, again Annie and especially Molly steal the show hands down like Sean Bean does in S1 of GoT) and deserves my respect for an exemplary character development that reminds me of some classic Hollywood pictures. However, it is also based on a less than perfect script and a few concerning design decisions that in my eyes make it far from perfect and essentially play with fire in regards to where future updates may take the plot. I'll be more than happy to see this becoming the Casablanca of AVNs despite the bad omens I see on the horizon.
I'm rating this 4 stars mostly for the amount of content and the work done on animations and other feats, otherwise 3-stars would sound about fair in my book if only for neglecting my dear Molly for so long
