TLDR - This game is long winded for no other reason than to be long winded. The models and poses are copy and pasted around shamelessly. The writing in SOME CASES can be decent. By that I mean a like CW show or something, so not good but watchable. But before you even "expand upon your harem" the interactions and sex scenes become mundane and routine. Is that what you want out of a sex game? 'Cause I don't. And the story should have had an open end after Martin died.
I'm writing a follow up review for v0.21, to see if my opinion has changed at all. Partly to see if there's improvements, partly to expand on my critiques, and honestly, partly because nothing good has been released lately. Mostly my thoughts haven't changed. I'm still getting through the first part at the current moment and boy am I glad my opening statement in my previous review was that this is boring. And not only is it boring it's long as hell. Which is usually a good thing but the banter never improves or evolves. Ever. And it would benefit greatly to just be changed to a kinetic novel, especially given the target audience. And I want to make something clear, I LIKE this type of game. Or at least the idea of this genre. So I have to be critical about it, otherwise al the reviews and ideas will end up "Herp derp. Naked cute girls. I love it. Herp Derp."
The story - I guess we'll call it that - starts with a 45 minute exposition dump. You play as MC, a sad twenty-something whose life has gone to shit. You lost your job, depressed, your girlfriend cheated on you, and your dad is a drunken asshole. When you were 4, your mother left you with your father and hasn't talked to you since. Down on your luck, you contact your mother for the first time and she jumps at the chance to have you in her life again. Along with her new family. I'm not even gonna do my usual spiel about the NOTMother and NOTHalf-sisters, as the writing in this thing is 100% solely based on the fact you are blood related to most of the heroines. I CAN NOT imagine reading whatever half-baked relationships they tried to use to avoid the censors. And it will still not be a fetish for me. Anyway. You show up to the house and are greeted by Sandra, your oldest half-sister. She's overjoyed to meet you and shows you around the house, er mansion more likely, and you meet Lucy, the youngest sister. Lucy, for no other reason than to add a fetish to the list, was born with cat ears, tail, and eyes. She's abrasive because obviously she was bullied for having birth defects.
So after the tour, Sandra immediately falls in love with you. No real reason other than you were nice to her. The only reason she never dated anyone else is only described as "they only wanted THAT." So in my mind, every guy just walks up to her and says "Hey baby, want sum fuk?" And get used to the "immediately falls in love with you" because that happens with all but two of the women in the story so far. Still not done with everything at this point, but the scope creep with all the women added to this tale is immense. Anywho, Sandra loves you, and for no reason, you love her too. They never do a good job of illustrating why you feel the things you do, it's just expected that you feel what MC feels. It's very irritating. And it's even pushed further when you pretty much cheat on Sandra right away. Multiple times.
All of the pretext about MC's feelings about his mother and her new family and home is anger and hatred. He even tells Sandra during the tour, "Seeing all this stuff, living so well. I can't help but feel angry." Or something, I'm paraphrasing because I'm HOURS past that part, but that's the gist. He even goes so far to tell her he was considering suicide. More than likely just for the bad writing to evoke some emotion out of you, the reader. And later when you finally do meet the mother, Becca, literally all of the negative emotions go away. It doesn't make sense AT ALL, especially with how long this story is. A GOOD story would have explored MC getting over the anger, but this one has 2 choices after meeting. Be nice, or be standoffish. And after the first two nights MC is never mad again regarding Becca. Not that he successfully shows real emotions until later, when you meet Elaine, the grandmother. But we'll get to that.
Moving ahead, a night or two later, you talk to Becca and she sits you down to tell you the real reason she left. Your dad got in trouble about assaulting someone, and he threatened to kill you and her if she didn't leave. So she left. After the story everyone has one of their millions of crying fits, and you all hug and make up. Shortly after, honestly it might be before but it doesn't matter really, you meet your aunt Mary and cousin Maddy. More love at first sight for the most part with them. Mary is apprehensive but sexually forward with you, and Sandra essentially helps Maddy fall for you too. You don't really talk to Becca much at all, but like the third time you do, she kisses you, and wants to pursue that. Which makes less sense later, seeing as you barely see her outside of her coming home late repeatedly.
Lucy takes the longest to warm up to you. Her being bullied means she hates people. But most of the time you spend with her is just rehashing the same information over and over and over. "People made fun of me and I'm sad." so you constantly reassure her with "But you're perfect the way you are." That is repeated ad nauseum even up to the point I'm at currently. Until you essentially break her bully's heart, then you make bad cat jokes at her the rest of the time. And she calls you a pelican, which I still will never understand. She just says "look it up." But I don't care enough to do that. (Using what little context I'm given, I assume MC is supposed to have a big nose. But who knows...)
The other two "major" females in the game are Alice and Fiona. All I'm really going to say about Alice is she really doesn't need to exist. At all. She adds nothing to the narrative other than another dumb sob story. And even though she's "19" she has a prepubescent loli body, just to add something for a group of people that are actually criminals. She's just another Lucy, hell, even their names are similar. The only thing I can think of, is that you and her had the same father so she "knows what it felt like." But she didn't. He had nothing to do with her growing up, so it's pointless.
Fiona is the only character given any depth, but it's still a sob story with the same plot twist of Batman v Superman. Her sister had the same name as your mom, so she feels attached to her. And even then, this game is pieced together poorly, so you can't focus on any character. Seriously, as soon as you do one small thing with ANYONE, the scene ends, you sit on the couch and watch one of the three worst shows, and you get a text to go see someone else. I get that it's now a dumb running joke, but all the jokes in the writing are bad. They even ackowledge it. More than once. That alone urks me to no end.
The overall moral of this story ends up being "All men but me are terrible." And any time one of the girls even mentions the possibility of another human male, the MC practically has a hissy fit. Then They all have to calm him down and stroke his ego some more, "Oh no, you're the only man for me, and I've never had one before you." That's just not how people work. If you're so beta you can't have a girl mention another guy in front of you, you have some issues to work out. On top of that, the girls mentioning their period, MC is like "Ew don't tell me." When in reality, a man should dive in and not be afraid of a little iron in thier diet. MC literally has like 12 girls fawning over him and still can't handle that other guys can exist. And the only time a problem actually exists is when Elaine shows up and makes everyone deal with their emotions. The whole exchange lasts too long, and isn't an actual problem.
So ALL THAT is a fraction of the "story" beats I want to press on. The pancakes, TV, "Super Ginger Cuddle Time," Morning talks, and showers are repeated almost every night and day. EVERY. DAY. And you get nothing out of them. The CGs have minimal changes and all the dialogue in the scenes is either MC thinking about or talking to Lucy about what happened that day. So you have a recap every night as if you didn't have to read what just happened. Why? Recaps are for episodic content, which this is but isn't, and children. I could understand if a LOT happens but it never does, and there should be NO children anywhere near this thing. And the sex scenes are all the same. My god. You get a 10 minute terms and services reading regarding consent beforehand. Then you get one or two animation loops under the worst sex talk I've ever read. And it ends with the same image of every love interest in a dead fish planking position, a dumb smile on their face with semen dripping out. Then it's "Too good.... Need to rest..." and MC just leaves and goes to talk to someone else.
Here are the positives I have to say about this: It is one of the few stories that actually have the love interests confront each other regarding the fact they're sleeping with the same person. I will say it's not good, but at least they do it. And before her character fell apart, Fiona is a decently written person. Outside of the more money than god thing, I actually liked her.
=============================
TLDR; Literally choose the first option ever single time. That's the walkthrough. This is written a little better than most and somehow the dev isn't bored of the copy and paste function after so long so I gave it a 2 for Dev's commitment.
