Well I finally beat the game and made sure to go through the other ending variations after unlocking them all as well. I also had it set in my final save where I could get four of the "main" endings based on slight point changes of the last few choices just to see if that changed much.
All in all, I have to commend the dev on the scope of the game and attempts to really flesh out the decisions, choices, and dialogue where possible. I can see what people mean when they talk about some of the minor variations in dialogue depending on things that happen in the story. It's also clearly one of the longer AVNs out there and certainly one of the fewer finished AVNs that was clearly given quite a bit of focus, effort, and love on the part of the dev. Not to mention that it seems like they go out of their way for some very consistent releases every month on their current game and always add new content when they do on their games in general. I took a look at their Patreon too and was shocked at how low the subscriber count is when compared to some of these other game devs out there with thousands of followers that only release an update or two a year max, and sometimes with little to show for it, whereas this dev is doing monthly updates and again apparently with a good amount of content each time. You really can't ask for more. It's clear they're passionate and dedicated.
Now & Then is definitely a game I'll remember and an experience I've enjoyed overall. It's not without its flaws and you could tell this is the dev's first big game they worked on, but it has a lot of heart. No question there.
As I suspected it might be, the points and "Main Lover" determination and distribution were, to me, an unnecessary and overly complicated system to hit right. Mostly because the actual normal good vs main girl endings don't deviate all that much from each other for each girl since from what I could tell, most of the "normal" endings could easily turn into "main" endings with just more time and development with the MC in their epilogue future. It's almost implied that this is actually what will happen for everyone anyway. Not only that, but none of the "main lover" endings themselves preclude one another from happening for all the girls in any major way either. They could all actually coexist with a good 95-100% overlap when you break it down by what happens in each main ending and this is how I'm choosing to view my personal ending headcanon of the N&T universe. It's also the one version that actually makes the most narrative sense for the story to me and culminates in the most satisfying character arc for every love interest. They feel a little incomplete otherwise. Sure there's some minor nuances in the main endings, but nothing that looks like it prevents one another from happening in any significant way.
Plus, based on all the choices you make, you can actually get almost every main scene available with all of them, keep Carol and Naomi tied in hearts and now the way you've interacted with them all in the pre-finale world doesn't actually change in the MC's development with them. All the dialogues and promises with each of them are there. The only main thing the game makes you choose between is the very last decision, which was undoubtedly a Director's Cut addon for certain characters at the time, but even that you can view both of those scenes as something that don't necessarily need to take place that exact night. Why can't they both take place one night apart? It doesn't change anything from the narrative if they do and based on the dialogue for each scene you would absolutely expect them to happen very soon for both characters anyway.
I get why the dev went with this direction though, for replayability, minor ending variation purposes, and game mechanic purposes. A more simplified system to unlock everything as one big true ending probably could have been something like get 20 hearts for Carol and Naomi to get their "true endings" vs getting under 20 hearts and only getting their "normal ending" or something like that with varying heart levels for each girl (15 for Alice and Sydney maybe, 10 for Hana, 5 for Julie, etc.). It's almost like this anyway because as long as you hit certain minimum heart thresholds, you're guaranteed a normal ending for each girl even if you blow them off for any other extra scenes and dialogue, and it doesn't change anything. We're basically halfway there lol. But I understand that a system like that would change the amount of times one might replay it if they were so inclined since they may have less reason to. Granted, I'm grateful for the unlock all and easy saving features because I do not have time to do 5 more run throughs of this right now haha.
Anyway, kudos to the dev and I'll be checking out TID when the harem ending is released and maybe Toxicity even earlier than that since it seems more like N&T in themes/setting. Not enough of these apocalyptic style AVNs that could have harem endings, are complete, and have a good amount of depth to them with a passionate dev behind the wheel! That's for sure.
