I'm really torn on the rating. Awhile back I would have given this four stars no questions asked. Now I really want to give it three stars, but that's going too far. I don't know, I'll figure it out after I write the rest of this.
So why a four originally? Well, because it was really good, except for the sex scenes. It's probably the best attempt at what I can only call sweet tragedy that I've seen on this site. The MC's backstory did a good job of being just detailed enough to seem realistic while being generic enough that we didn't have to spend three hours reading endless backstory. The relationships were sweet, and seemed to really mean something.
The main issue was the sex scenes. They were just enough to be somewhat tolerable. That might have been okay in a worse game, but here they were notably dragging the game down. The sex is all very much wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am style, which doesn't fit the rest of the game at all. Foreplay? What's that? Sex is just a few pumps in missionary or doggy, right? What more could you want? Occasionally there is at least some decent dialogue, but that's about it. A particularly extravagant scene might include a few pumps in missionary and then doggy too! It's all very exciting.
Sarcasm aside, that really was the major failing of the game. Which is pretty unfortunate for a porn game, but... yeah. Still, the rest really was good.
But. But but but. You know how I said the tragic pasts and their discussions and whatnot about them was really well done? Well, apparently the writer got stuck. They haven't stopped righting those same scenes. It's just constant "we're together now so we can move on!" except nobody has done a damn bit of moving. They're just having the same discussions over, and over, and over. It really removes any sense of these relationships being meaningful when they're apparently just stuck where they started. Sure they all say they're getting better, but nobody ever actually does anything except talk about how bad it was and how it's better now and then every now and then there are a couple humps thrown in before the next girl gets to talk about how bad things were and how things are better now. But this time it probably won't end with two humps before the next girl gets her turn.
Instead, the entirety of any kind of variety in this game gets pushed to an ever-increasing number of girls. It's a ridiculous number at this point, and it's shown no signs of stopping. And yet this too follows the same old story - they have a problem and MC is there to help and support them and then they all fall in love and blah blah blah.
To make matters just a little bit worse, the matter of exactly how he's going to help all these women needs to addressed. While I applaud the dev for yet again recognizing a thing that doesn't need to be done in any amount of detail, the solution they went for is basically "one of the girls is OP." So every time a new girl rolls in, MC goes to this one other girl, tells her, and then boom problem fixed. This admirably doesn't bog the story down, but it also relegates MC to basically being a middle man. He gets all this credit for helping these girls, but all he ever did was make a single phone call. It's hard to take any of the resulting emotional investment seriously considering that.
So. Yeah. This game could have been amazing. Cut things down to a small handful of main girls and keep the focus tight. Use that time and effort to instead figure out how to write touching scenes that aren't just variations on the same conversation. And add some damn foreplay.
And it is worth noting that the concepts for many or even most of these characters is actually pretty good. There just isn't enough time for them all in a single game. It's just too scattered to try to deal with so many girls, and then you have all the interactions (or should have... this game kind of avoids it) between the girls that would be really good too. Instead, you could probably have the main cast for two more games.
Anyway. It's far too late to really address these issues without just creating a new game, unfortunately.
So, we come to the rating. I really want to give it a three. Things have slipped to the point that I think it's deserved. I think the only reason I don't quite want to actually do it is because of how much I liked this game at the start. But it was a four before... so how can it be a four still after it's gone from one of my top three anticipated games to something I'm worried isn't worth the time to even play? So, three it is. Sorry game, but... you deserve it.
