That was uh.
Anyone else feeling the drop off in quality or is it just me? The story is still fine don't get me wrong... But the animations... The sex scene with the church girl was so robotic feeling. No expression on faces so it just felt like 2 plastic dolls fucking.
Agreed. But I actually
don't think the story is still fine. Here's the thing, if you compare this game against 90% of the dreck on this site, it comes off looking great no matter what, but if you compare it to even its previous chapters, its pretty clear MrDots struggles with endings. Where are the consequences for my actions (pretty sure at least four girls are having a baby in the near future)? Why isn't there a narrowing blade of tension in the final act? Instead we have a boring subplot about the saving the mayorohmygod I'm falling asleep just writing it. Even the greatest of harem enjoyers would prefer plotlines where the REAL choices we made (fucking various women and hiding it) come to a head.
Not everything needs to be direct, some plotlines can be subtle, maybe S is worried she's pregnant but refuses to tell the MC, not wanting him to feel trapped. Maybe Shortcake has some sort of secret revelation that would change the character dynamic and some interest drama could be mined from it, the sort of thing that makes a good story, rather than not addressing it or brushing past it in the epilogue. Maybe some characters actually spill the beans on the MC two timing EVERYONE making his goodbye more bittersweet.
My point is there's a least a dozen plotlines that didn't
go anywhere, but instead we had this mudpuddle deep nonsense about the mayor. We had virtually every character, even women who you fucked their own DAUGHTERS basically thirsting for that Main Character Cock. I think the issue is MrDots wants semi-realism, but its very very very hard to write out the conclusions to the ideas they wanted to adress. It takes enormous talent to bridge the gap between 'character finds out you slept with their daughter and is okay with it' (which is what players
want) and 'mother finds out you fucked her daugher and hates you' which is what happens in real life. You need to set up a few corruptive moments along the way or find a viable path for a character to have both. It's not easy, but its also not impossible. And there's real good story in working that variable. It's kind of like this, a story might need a line about the days weather just to set the scene. A bad writer might say 'it's cloudy', low detail and it doesn't really tell us anything. A good writer might say 'the day was dying before it even began, heavy black clouds won their war against sunshine, bathing the streets around him in shadow and rain', which tells us a lot more. But the best writers might say, why am I writing about these clouds at all? What do they tell the reader about my character? What does this setting reveal about my plot or atmosphere? In short they write
ahead which lets them be efficient and creates opportunities for
some divergences from 'reality'*.
* You can only pull on realism so much before it collapses, basically you establish your own rules and they try and follow them. Its why Indiana Jones can find the holy grail without losing his audience, but the minute aliens show up....