TLDR: A good game, through and through. It's the best at nothing, does some things quite well, messes up in some others. It is complete, runs well on phones, has quite a lot of content, has a fully functional scene player. Worth playing if the premise interests you. Adoptive daughter-father incest is not optional, mostly everything else is.
The Review
The game has a lot more content than I expected it to (there's 25 chapters + an epilogue). On one hand, that is because the story delves into more details about its world and has far more relationship development than you might expect, on the other hand, that is also because a lot of things are mentioned multiple times with different words throughout the story or because the game is quickly trying to connect the branching paths back into a single line so its easier to manage, so it needs you to see something that is mostly irrelevant to the path you chose, just so it can mention that later and you're aware it happened.
It is also because the game has a lot of downtime between major story moments. This was often a positive to me, since it allows relationships to develop more organically, allows us to see what the day-to-day in the apocalypse looks like, and allows tension to build up. It also gives you quite a lot of time to get h-scenes, although I wouldn't say that is this game's strongest suit. However, the downtime was overdone at points, it slowed down the pace a bit too much, and it was during these slow periods that we often had the most rehashes of information, which means that it was essentially padding to play through.
There are issues with choice pathing in this game. "Now & Then" is quite kinetic, you are choosing flavour more than substance most of the time, and that's okay, but when you are given an actual choice, that should be respected. There are moments where you reveal info to a character only for both you and them to react like its the first time you're telling them that same piece of info later (doesn't happen often, but it takes you out of your immersion when it does), and there is one major relationship (Naomi) that the game offers you to say "no" to, only for the narrator, that romantic interest, people around you, and even your own protagonist to all behave as if something is eventually going to happen/has been happening even though you said you weren't interested and never went back on your word (the game does address that this is happening, but it feels poorly integrated into the story, its done in a way that it feels more like addressing it was an afterthough, more than feeling like your choices made a real path you should pick).
The characters are quite nice here. The long length of the game and the large amount of downtime gives the narrative a lot of time to show and explore character dynamics and growth. Even characters I was uninterested in for the most part grew on me eventually, be it in a sexual or non-sexual way. I also really liked that the game does give you quite a bit of closure, exploring relationships all the way to their conclusions.
As I mentioned before, h-scenes are not the main thing this game has got going for it, in my opinion. The voice over is repetitive, and for some characters it was deplorable enough that I had to turn the sounds down to 0 (unfortunately, moaning is on the "Sounds" slider, not "Voices", so I think I might have lost some other sound details as a result of that). There's nothing wrong with the scenes, but I feel they're both a bit too predictable and have too little setup, somehow. Yeah, spontaneous sex can be hot too, but not if it's the only kind you get, you know? Dialogue during these scenes is also quite repetitive.
This game struggles a bit in terms of its identity in regards to realism. A lot of the game is rather believable, not being overly dramatic or dark like a lot of zombie apocalypse media is, but there are sequences that just feel at odds with this more grounded setting. The most egregious cases surround your protagonist and his capabilities, you are still a rather traditional porn game protagonist and that doesn't really vibe with realism. It is, still, however, far more interesting of a post-apocalypse premise to me than something like The Walking Dead, though, even if its not consistent within its own style.
Conclusion
It might feel a bit weird for me to give the game 4 stars with all the criticism and the small amount of praise I gave it, but it truly is an above-average experience in my opinion, its just that it does many things well enough to improve the experience but not well enough to merit specific praise. The failings it has also were not big or frequent enough to ruin the overall experience, especially given how long it is. This is worth playing, just don't expect something that will change your life.
