I enjoyed the 1st episode very much, and am looking forward to the future episodes. TD1900 and GIL3D - very well done, thank you!
The graphics are amazing. The devs gave a lot of attention to details (especially where the female characters are concerned), and the end result is beautiful. As for the male characters, they are less refined, but that doesn't bother me personally too much. The music is nice - nothing to write home about, but helps maintain the atmosphere.
The storytelling is done well, which is far from trivial for the genre. I felt a bit railroaded, as the MC's choices may take him on a subplot, but the main plot is invariant (the path choice between Kathleen and Hana after the show notwithstanding), but that's a legitimate choice for the devs, especially in what is (after all) a novel, more so when it's just the first chapter. A few language mistakes, and a few lines attributed to the wrong character, but nothing really serious (devs: if you tell me how to retrieve the texts en masse, I'd happily list corrections).
I used the walkthrough (thank you, randomname42) after going through the game as a checklist of sorts, to see if I missed anything interesting through my choices, and re-played a couple of scenes - so that's one way of using it without breaking the immersion. I look forward to walkthroughs for future chapters as well.
The mechanics of game-play are pretty good, but could use a few tweaks. A few off the top of my head:
- There are too many "..." text lines, IMHO, which don't seem to serve any purpose other than forcing the player to give another click.
- Inactive choices are displayed but cannot be selected (the first example is on May 8, when meeting Kathleen for the first time, if the MC is not a social butterfly), which (to me) breaks a little of the immersion - I wouldn't display them. Of course, when left with a single option, there's no point in a player interaction, and I'd either skip ahead or convert the interaction to an internal monologue.
- Maybe (even probably) it's just me, but a keyboard only option could be nice. I hate the actual clicks of the mouse, and while for the most part hovering over an option with the mouse and hitting "enter" instead of the LMB does the job, you can't go to the menu without the RMB, and you can't save without actually choosing the field for the description of the save file.
- The planned "current stats" menu option sounds like a good idea. What about a "hints" option, that would describe the stats impact of a choice, in brackets, within the actual screen?
A few content issues that I saw mentioned above and felt should be addressed:
- The NTR issue (I've had to look it up to understand what it is)... For me personally, it's a non-issue. I support and practive polyamory IRL, and really don't see why anyone would need such exclusivity in a game or a story. That being said, it's different strokes for different folks, and I doubt there will be too many decisions branched within those scenes, so maybe a setting to skip those scenes for those who want it would do the trick?!
- The femdom/lezdom issue. I actually encountered the game thanks to the female domination tag. When the sexual act is the main issue, then I guess the focus on Fm vs Ff would be significant. I think that in this case the power dynamic is the main issue, and so the significance goes more to the dominant female than to the person she is dominating, both in the second and in the third game, and in some of the other interactions as well.
- The context of the sex club, of prostitution, is a problematic one. Even if it's "high end", it's still (as the devs put it, in one of the options on the Hana path near the end of the chapter) taking advantage of women in desperate situations. So very mono-hetero-normative and patriarchal. I don't really see a way around that (and let's face it, it's part of real life too), but there are some things that can be done to tone down the gender bias a bit, leaving mostly the wealth gap as an issue. Adding male... service providers(?!) to the club, would help, even if the MC doesn't interact with them. Adding gay interactions, even if it's in the background, would help. Adding female club members (Kathleen, as the Madame of the club, doesn't count), would help.
Really, this VN has so much potential, I'm anxious to see how it unfolds.
