My 2cents on the update: a mix of good and bad but overall for the 4.5-6 month (depending on how you count) underwhelming.
+ Some nice visuals: shower scene, museum scene and photoshoot being highlights in my opinion (purely based on aesthetics)
+ Some interesting story beats: Gillian, Blonde Alison, Cucking
- Some recycled art (which is okay) and most scenes only slight variations of familiar visuals
- Mostly treading water or rather grueling pace in other story parts (Stan, Seymore; any dominance/corruption for Lena)
- Overall way too safe, no umpf to any part of the game
The bottom line for me is that I doubt there is much reason to get excited about future updates. Not because of creativity or style but for the following reason: Yes there will be hype, Yes EK is still one best VN out there, Yes I will continue to play the game but there are more and more cracks in the foundation. GGGB, for better or worse, just based on title and concept had a clear vision. It was satisfying to play the corruption/fall of Ashley into depravity. The wrap up of that game was clear and interesting, from porn to gangleader to pregnant to happy end to being dead. Most shortcomings of that game can be attributed to it being EK's first game. The production side of that game, also the communication on Patreon was or at least felt exciting as well, now it's a clusterfuck of simping and delays, excuses, apologies, lack of updates due to personal reasons...update, rinse, repeat. Yes this game is more complex, yes there are more lines of code (though I maintain this means very little), but at the end of the day it's a pornographic game.
To me, GGGB is a straight up porn game. What narrative and character exist, are wholly in service to providing raunchy scenes.
With ORS Eva seemed to be trying to "grow up." She spent time developing more complex characters and relationships, and was more focused on providing an adult visual novel than a porno.
This update, more than any other (although in hindsight, this has been coming for some time) has hit the wall that was always going to come from the developer as she tried to cram more and more fetishes into the story.
She has had to branch so hard that maintaining a satisfying narrative and consistent characters, is completely impossible. It has also, clearly, made development time get to a level that is unacceptable. This update is short, and no amount of varying replays is as satisfying as a full experience.
I've always liked Geralt's contributions to this thread, but when they said it took them 2 hours to first run through, I laughed. I imagined a scenario where they fapped for three 20 minute sessions, to individual scenes, because that's the only way I can believe it took 2 hours.
On top of this, even though this episode felt exactly like a GGGB update (a tiny bit of plot and character, and a bunch of scenes), it completely lacked the raunchiness GGGB had at the same stage.
So no one is happy.
That's a turn of phrase, so don't go all "but it was good for me," those of you with the miserable desire to be contrarian.
In my opinion, the developer is trying to do too much, and it is starting to negatively impact the game on every level.