Agreed on all counts. Most of the cringy moments in the game do occur relatively early on. For me, one thing that particularly stands out negatively is Zarah's attempting to put an intoxicated Monica (her supposed best friend) in sexual situations with the MC. Gross. That behavior ruined the character of Zarah for me even though I enjoyed her one on one interactions with the MC for the most part. AVNs often seem to have the worst best friends. After playing so many of them, I have a feeling that the next time I read A Separate Peace I'm going to think, "You know, this is a really great friendship comparatively speaking. I mean, it's just a leg!"
I feel like the porniest aspects of more recent chapters mostly relate to the side girl content you think there's too much of.
Thinking about what Éama said before, I still don't think the game practically forces infidelity, but I think you could fairly say it railroads the MC into temptation. It's rare for him to be able to say, "Hey, I'm in a relationship and I don't like where this situation is heading. Bye." Instead, side girls tend to be allowed to shoot their shots and, while they can always get rejected, the MC doesn't always come across as super faithful as the proposition unfolds. One scene of this type that I thought was handled fairly well occurred during the cooking class date with Lily. No chance in my playthrough there, side girl!
Where the Heart Is is clearly written on the
assumption the MC is banging everything that moves. It tracks all sorts of suspicion points, there are lots of asides where the MC cringes when a girl so much as mentions another girl, and even the fact his relationships default to secret is almost entirely down to the expectation he needs to hide them from each other. But we do still control the MC's actions, so cheating is entirely in our hands. Which is very much appreciated.
As far as the side girls go, Mabel was clearly intended as a cheating opportunity to break up the monotony, but she's not very memorable. Like you, I got a kick out of ignoring her during Lily's date - talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight! Porsche was originally meant simply to facilitate Angel's story - she's a plausible distraction for the MC when she's put in danger (which is a bad look for the MC, even with the ability to mostly ignore her). But bringing her back to literally steal the show from Jenna in the next update (and adding Evie) is, IMHO, the dev losing sight of the big picture to focus on his shiny new toy. I have no idea why Captain Heart was added, but at least she had something to do.
I think Lily is the real standout character of WTHI. There have been so many heartwarming and hilarious moments with her. She's not the only secretly brilliant AVN character hiding behind a ditzy exterior, but I feel she's the best of the group. She actually reminds me a bit of someone I knew in school, a cheerleader who constantly downplayed her abilities and intelligence in public but always came across as very bright whenever I talked to her privately about some intellectual matter. My only playthrough so far has been a faithful run with Debbie and Lily, but I'd seriously consider trying a Lily solo path next even though I'm sure a lot of the content would be very similar to what I've already seen.
Debbie is still my second favorite character; I actually preferred her to begin with since I thought her playful and flirtatious personality was a particularly good fit for the mischievous MC. They seemed like people who'd make good partners in crime and could have a lot of fun together, but her long-standing crush on Lily made things a bit complicated. Luckily, WTHI is just porny enough that I figured this wouldn't be any sort of dealbreaker, and I was right. I have a feeling Dragon59 would not have considered the starting dynamics of the throuple to be very healthy since in my playthrough headcanon the MC liked Debbie the most, Debbie liked Lily the most, and Lily liked the MC the most. It'll be interesting to see if those three truly end up all on the same page and blissfully polyamorous together.
What routes stand out in your mind as particularly memorable and worth playing? If I couldn't pick either Lily or Debbie, I'd probably go with Angel next. After that, I'm not sure.
Lily is by far my favorite. As you say, she's a delight. Granted, there's almost no difference between a solo Lily path and the far more common Lily/Debbie combo pack, but personally I'm just not that into Debbie. She's a fine character and she adds a lot to the game (the date with her in the strip club was top notch), but she's really not my type. Plus, given how much I favor Lily, I suspect any attempt at polyamory would eventually end up leaving Debbie unsatisfied.
Next up is Jenna, narrowly edging out Angel. Jenna is a lot of fun and gets a lot of content, though her eagerness to let the MC play around is a little much at times. But the real advantage of her path is the interaction with Jolina. The two are a great double act (and their threeway scene was unusually sexy), but what I'm most interested to see is how things go down in the wake of the revelations in the last episode. Jenna is probably going to be a lot less forgiving of Jo's actions than I am, and I presume the game will have to address that.
Angel is just such a sweetheart, it's a shame she gets so little content (and that the early stuff was often tied up with the original, boring-as-lint version of Wanda). Still, Angel's gorgeous, snarky, has that low-key damsel in distress vibe going, and most interestingly, has the best breakup scene I've seen in the game if she catches the MC making out with Wanda. No fade to black here; good for her!
Last up is Jolina in a distant but respectable fourth place. As I said, she's a great compliment to Jenna, and now has a prominent role in the story as Bella's accomplice. Beyond that, I just liked her story as the blonde 'bimbo' who wanted to prove she could stand on her own two feet but couldn't quite pull it off. I can empathize with that. And it's nice that we can offer her a place to stay without having to sleep with her.
The rest of the cast is more about platonic appeal than proper LI action for me. I have a Katie run just since she's such a prominent character, and I've seen most of the other content courtesy of the 'Start Any Episode' button, but it's more of an intellectual exercise. If I had to pick out some memorable bits, I'd say two things stick out.
First, the 'legally not a threesome' with Jenna and Katie in the gym if you're on both of their paths. Katie, much like Jaye in
Chasing Sunsets, has very little sex appeal to me and I have no real taste for the whole 'sex in plain view' thing, but I still have admire the effort the devs put into making the scenario approach plausibility without violating Patreon's rules. Second, I did like Theresa's sex scene*. It wasn't enough to save the character, but I appreciated the effort to approach the scene from her perspective and give her some depth (that, and giving us the option
*not* to rub Dogboy's face in it). I'll give an honorable mention to Natasha's blackmail subplot in the more recent episodes, too. I didn't like the setup and it (apparently) fizzled out almost instantly, but it was intriguing while it lasted.
* I believe Theresa's scene as well as the total (much needed!) personality transplant they gave Wanda in Episode 19 were largely the work of Acewinz, which makes his departure from the game that much sadder.
