So I think after playing this update a second time, if you take out the art and most of the writing, this might be the worst update ever. At least as far as gameplay decisions were made.
First strike sudden perspective switches. Personally I've always felt that games with multiple MC's were pretty jarring, and I think a good amount of that can be attributed to devs being amateurs, but I also just kind of don't like it. However, here its just terrible. Players always have issues with the quests + quest log as it is. All this has done is exacerbate this issue for no reason. Not only that, but at least for me it fails to add anything, and I mean anything to the game. All I felt during it was a combination of "man this is confusing," and "when can I go back to my boy?" Overall
Second strike is the infamous scene. Now lets talk about why its an issue. Its because this is on a path where we already said no to NTR, and instead of respecting that, they force a half avoidable scene on us for no reason. Its essentially the same as saying you dont want to see gay content, then 5 minutes later your sucking Dannys cock and before he finishes on you the game asks you "hey do you want to stop (Big red text GAY SCENE INCOMING)" after your already halfway through giving the twink head. just terrible design. Not to mention it adds nothing to the game. It doesn't add character depth to Darnell. It just makes him look like more of a rapist. It doesn't add anything to the story, his presence is not suddenly a threat, all it does is make Mary look retarded. Essentially throwing off what has been building since day one. It just doesn't serve any purpose besides FETISH, and instead hurts the narrative thus far. And let me be clear, if this was on the NTR route, it would be zero issue, and I would instead be happy fans of that content finally got what they have been waiting for. But that isn't the case, and its instead forced upon those who already said they dont want to see that. Not cool
Third strike. This one is a lot less of an issue then the others, but I feel that despite being on two MEGA updates with Mary, only being able to fuck her twice is kind of disappointing. Yeah I liked the threesome scene, and the others, but it still feel like we lost focus a bit(which I guess is the overarching theme of this post). Im sure that we will get more of her however so its not a big deal, I mainly just wanted a third strike.
Besides those instances the update was really solid. The writing was great as always, and the art looks even better then before. The threesome at the pool was amazing (despite me half criticizing it in strike three) Its sad that all that was kind of ruined with the above.