Awesome start to part 2. Not sure where ppl are getting 20min of gameplay, they must be blasting though. I speed-read and got easily 2hrs of gametime. 2:30 if you count me getting lost, lol. I think the biggest flaw is not having some sort of quest book to tell me where my next location is to progress.
The maps look wonderful, and we got more sex scenes then a lot of WIP games get after several updates. If you didnt play the demo, you got all the stuff at the beginning which is new, you get 2 shorts with Sugaha, (I really like the phone here, just not able to mtl it), then you get the stuff at the end with his blog. For a single update that's quite a lot. And thats just the XXX stuff. We get tons of story stuff and setup for future stuff. We have a whole status page for Asuna and perks list that will give more info on her state. (personally, I dont give a shit about this stuff, but I know its a pretty popular feature). If all I wanted was a ton of sex scenes Id just go lookup porn videos. It's the story and build up that makes the porn hit so good.
I think the biggest disappointment for people must be coming from us getting a soft reset, Asuna is avoiding Inoda so its like her corruption is back to start here in this update. So we don't really get any progression with her. Add in the other girl not being main girls so they are kinda speed ran, but I actually prefer that for the mom and the non SAO girls. Suguha is already slutified by this point so I dont expect her to be holding back at all either.
We get setup for Liz, Asuna starts makin Inoda breakfast again, and we now have Lifa in FOG and then Alice in the mix.
You also have to take into account the dev didnt work on this non stop for the entire time we waited, he had RL issues. And this is what we still got, in a faster time than some games get any updates. So im very excited to see what's next.
Now I am concerned with this whole meter business. It looks like in the future that might lock me out of routes. And I'm not a fan of that at all. I dont want to have to run multiple saves to get everything, thats why I dont like playing VNs. I want to basically be on rails. Im fine with hard splits, where you do 1 choice and it puts you on a specific NTR type route. But the many choices and ambiguous stuff is such a chore to mess with.
In this update it seems you cant go on the shopping trip with the girls? (did anyone get to choose option 1?) I even backtracked to a previous save to set my anxiety value low so I could try and pick first option and was unable to even at 0. If its like this everytime where Im not really being locked out of stuff then Im fine with it. But having to manage a bar that will make sure I dont find out Asunas cheating on me and a bar to decide if I like watching her get fucked is such a mood killer for me.
Like, if im managing a bar that tells me if Im getting close to knowing, it just ruins the NTR to me. It's not mystery NTR at that point, im actively making sure the character doesn't find out. So nothing is going to really hit for me at that point. If anything is a disappointment, its that set of bars that has a very real potential to fuck up the whole game for me. Yes, I can hide them, but that doesnt remove the underlying mechanic that can lock me out of gameplay or put me onto a path I dont want. "oh shit, I let my cuck meter get to high now kiricuck is beating off to inoda piping his girl, better reload save 17... or was it 15, shit I forgot where im at" (which is kinda how things go for me with VN and why I dont play them, lol)
But excluding my fear of status meters, this update was a solid start to part 2 and im looking forward to the next update. Fujino gets better and better each new update, and it really shows his improvement with this one.