Illusion has been in a slow death-spiral for some time now. Good coders aint cheap either, even more so if its for erotic games. Usually you can get away with hireing junior devs and interns, on the promise of "Valuable work experience!" and "Many networking opportunities!", but putting Illusion on your LinkedIn, or writing "Coded most of the train movements in RapeLay" on your Google application is a bit awkward. The ones that has a passion for coding smut games will usually team up with small teams, for more creative influence. But creating a commercial erotic indie game was way harder back in Illusions golden days too, making it a more attractive choice for smut-loving coders.
Yeah I think the lack of good 3D programmer and coder is one of the biggest reason their game is stagnant in the last few years. They're rehashing character style and animation over and over, very different from their past games. In the past Illusion is the only hentai games producer who doesn't afraid of trying new things and innovating, while still pushing the visual fidelity higher and higher each game releases. From the stalker series, RPG, VR, shooting even a freaking fighting game. From a literal fairy-sized fucking, ghost hunting to a full-fledged life & school life simulation. If there is anything that Illusion lacked, creativity and innovation is not one of it, at least until a few years ago when everything became stagnant.
I feel like there's an exodus of old coder and the substitutes can't reach what the old team can. Take for example AI shoujo, this game is supposedly the successor of Jinkou shoujo, yet I feel the older games have more freedom and better "AI" than the AI shoujo. It's more exciting to play and with more memorable moments like playing in the beach or just sat in the dock in the afternoon, watching sunset together. There's sunset watching scene in AI shoujo but it's pale in comparison to Jinkou shoujo.
And then there's Real Play, Play Club and Play Home that's supposedly the spiritual successor of Bikou series and Rapelay, which completely botched the one thing that makes them exciting which is the stalking process. I can still vividly remember how exciting it is to actually stalk your target. You have to be quick-witted to search for hiding spot to hide from people's and your target gaze and plan your next move carefully because of the time constraint.
The only thing that sets apart the "old" Illusion team and the "new" Illusion team is only in the visual fidelity area. The old team game's visual peaked at Rapelay (which at the time is very stunning for a hentai game) and when the new team taken over from Premium Play onward, the graphics fidelity seems to be the END ALL target for all Illusion games. Newer Illusion games visual are leap and bound better than the old games it's not even a comparison, but they lacked good gameplay on most. The only notable exception is the Jinkou Gakuen series with its, dare I say, near perfect character behavior simulation that left me hooked for hundreds of hour, trying every combination and enjoying the intricated interaction. Too bad I don't really like the anime aesthetic of this game and I always hope maybe Illusion will launch a game with great simulation at its heart but with more realistic visual style (ala Honey Select onward). Then the AI shoujo happened, I'm hyped at first thinking this is the modern Jinkou shoujo remakes, but then the game shipped and I'm beyond disappointed.
It's really disheartening that Illusion seems like to prioritize visual fidelity above all else in the recent years. Is it really hard to look for a great coder that can program a good behavior simulation? They have Jinkou Gakuen and Koikatsu team that have great coder, how the F they can't get them to work on the realistic visual type games?
Their latest game, Room Girl trying to go back to its roots as in a real time character interaction and simulation games. Too bad they make it very limited in scope which is highlighting their incompetency to turn the the games into full-fledge free-roam real-time sims ala Koikatsu and Jinkou Gakuen. I'm pretty sure that if they can do that Room Girl will be a big hit and maybe even save the company from closure. The visual are stunning for today standard. Man, I'm not ashamed to admit that I have fapped to my own creation. The girls is just GORGEOUS! But then yeah it's a missed opportunity. I knew that the game sales are good because they launch the Paradise DLC. But it's all too late.
I don't think there will be another "Illusion"-type game company. The cost to produce game is just soaring in the recent years, not to mention the difficulty to hired really good coder to work for a hentai game company, and also on top of that to create a solid team that can produce a quality game in a timely manner (2 games a year for old games, 1 games a year for newer games, consistently, for years). We can be critical to Illusion but we have to admit that there's no one else out there that can do what Illusion can in their 30 years life. I hope there's a successor, but right now, it's only darkness...