Yesterday I played through CH1 from the beginning in a single sitting. I could have moved my saves over, but given the comments by the dev and the modder about code changes throughout the update, I felt that even if the save played fine for the modest amount of new content the potential for problems in subsequent updates was too great.
I did not skip text. Despite the fact that I read very quickly I spent, with brief interruptions for head breaks and food, ten hours to play the entire game, call it 9 or so hours of actual playing time.
I have a few observations.
Discounting dream sequences, masturbatory fantasies, and fairy scenes the first instance of sex between the MC and a female character was four hours into the game. Four hours. That's a glacial pace.
I may be miscounting, but in the nine hours of play, once again discounting dreams and masturbatory imaginings, there are six instances of sexual contact between the MC and a female character. Sex with Beth, sex with the judge's daughter, BJ with Beth, BJ with Becca, sex with Lilly, and sex with Becca. I have missed a scene with Abby based on the chess game.
I must say that, even knowing their content in advance, the scenes where the MC makes love to Lily and Becca are well done and remain emotionally moving. Especially when he discovers Becca was a virgin.
I've certainly made my impatience with Frank's whiny unending inner monologues clear in my prior comments. I don't know if there were script changes or I'm just desensitized, but that aspect of the character was less annoying in this play through. Perhaps not waiting months to be repeatedly subjected to the same monolog, was the difference. So still annoying, but, at least in my case, to a notably lesser degree.
The female characters definitely look different, and while I found all of them pleasing before, I think the new versions are an improvement.
All of us are consuming a game that's in development. Only the dev(s) can know the benefit of devoting an entire update to cleaning up the imagery, code, writing, etc. The goal is to eventually ship a polished finished VN. While I certainly would have preferred that they wait and continue to produce new content, Clever Name Games, has released quality updates on a regular schedule for many prior releases. They've been transparent on their schedules and progress and warned all of us that this update was to improve the VN's quality with minimal new content. It's evident that a lot of effort went into this rework, and I, for one, respect that effort.
Having played through this reworked version of Single Again, I have to say that, despite my various criticisms, this is a great VN. Far better than the vast majority of those found here. So thanks for you hard work and commitment. I look forward to your next update.