this is such a strange game...
the art is amazing, the dialogue is fine, even the UI (though janky af sometimes) works.
still, I am missing a sense of coherency of the world, its hard to explain.
this could be sooooo much better if it did not feel like a slideshow of admittedly beautiful pictures....
This.
I haven't played the new update, but the game is more like slurry of great ideas, than a painting full of beautiful figures. I'll give an example in film. The OG trilogy in Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back has many great scenes in it, but what builds it into a great film and trilogy is that each scene works in the movie (is engaging or entertaining), works to build the plot or characters of Empire Strikes Back, and builds the lore and plot of the entire trilogy. It's a lot harder to accomplish than you think.
This game is more like Rise of Skywalker. There are so many beautiful hand drawn characters and scenes. There are such great concepts and interesting well written moments. But each one doesn't build the story. Is this a corruption game? Is it a dramatic thriller with erotic elements? The duel protagonist concept DOES NOT WORK. It doesn't work in this game. It doesn't work in Our Red String either. People will play female characters. People LOVED Good Girl, Gone Bad (Eva Kiss's first game with a female only POV). What they don't love is switching back and forth in control of two people within the narrative, especially when those two people are the love interest of ...the other character you're playing as. It's confusing at best and boring at worst. Players will forgive confusing, they will not forgive boring. This isn't to say you should cut the wife's content. But I think a much better way to develop the game is to play both characters until the wife gets kidnapped, then you must CHOOSE one person to play as with the game following a prechosen route for the other one. Or better still, a semi randomized path for the other one, so you can actually FEEL what its like to be on the other side of those decisions.
Now that I'm writing about this, it sounds so fucking cool, I'm actually going to go further and say this game NEEDS this. It would be intense as hell. It would give us perspective and make the whole thing more personal, which this game NEEDS. Just doing this would probably pull the narrative tight enough to fix the game without anything else.
Also, much more pregnancy, much much sooner, but that's just my personal fetish that I'm feeding.
