I'm liking it so far, but I feel like the MC is railroaded pretty heavily into being a simp.
To elaborate, most choices in this game look like this:
Do/say simpy thing - Get love/trust/friendship whatever.
Do/say something else - get nothing or get minus points in the "good" variables
In general, I believe choices are much more effective when structured like this.
Do/say simpy thing - get love/trust/etc.
Do/say pervy/callous/evil/alpha/selfish/etc. things - get corrupt/break/submission/etc. points or results
Jessica cafe scene was done pretty well. You could neg her by playing into her insecurity, or build her up. And you get points to represent that. Most other choices are not actual choices. They either lead to bad ends, or are structured so that one choice is clearly suboptimal. The only reason you might go for the non-simpy answers is for roleplaying (and willingly missing out on content).
Of course, it's unreasonable to expect EVERY choice to have meaningful splits, but this game is leaning too heavily into the railroading choices. It makes it hard to play the MC how you want if you are at the same time conscious of the inner workings of VNs.
edit:
So let's take a look at Alice. Obviously, we gotta help her out or there is no story. It's unreasonable to expect that there is some wildly different route for her. My initial playthrough was a blind run. This random, murderous girl is holding the MC at gunpoint. The way I'm picturing the MC (typical cynical dude), his tolerance for her is already at rock bottom. So I just keep choosing the choices that reflect this attitude. Finally, the game forces you to go save her. MC has this unnatural desire to help her at the risk of his own life, despite the fact that she threatened to kill you (and does so if you get the bad end). At this point, it kinda doesn't make sense for you to keep being distant and cold towards her, because it is starting to go against the natural flow of the narrative. Why is he continuing to help her if he is not interested in her? So now, I might as well go back and pick up the points for her so I don't miss out on content for no reason.
Just as a thought experiment, we could try to think of a way to present a slight variation for a non-simp relationship with her. If you don't have enough trust/love points (or accrue some bad variables) with her by a certain point in the story, the nature of the relationship could become a more transactional affair. Either a promise of money or her offering her body in exchange for his help. You could keep the same events for the most part with some modified dialogues and such. It is certainly an increase in workload to write alternate dialogues and contingencies based on their relationship status, though.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect the dev to go back and change things at this stage, but I just wanted to point out the current state of the game. Or at least how it felt like to me. The game has the disclaimer that choices matter a lot, but truthfully, I don't consider most of these choices to be actual choices. The only real choices are picking the girls to hang out with and the occasional ones that have opposing point gains. The vast majority of choices have a clearly right answer like doing something nice vs not doing something nice. You could argue that finding these right answers is part of the gameplay, but they stop being meaningful choices at that point. It just becomes a point hunting mini game.
To elaborate, most choices in this game look like this:
Do/say simpy thing - Get love/trust/friendship whatever.
Do/say something else - get nothing or get minus points in the "good" variables
In general, I believe choices are much more effective when structured like this.
Do/say simpy thing - get love/trust/etc.
Do/say pervy/callous/evil/alpha/selfish/etc. things - get corrupt/break/submission/etc. points or results
Jessica cafe scene was done pretty well. You could neg her by playing into her insecurity, or build her up. And you get points to represent that. Most other choices are not actual choices. They either lead to bad ends, or are structured so that one choice is clearly suboptimal. The only reason you might go for the non-simpy answers is for roleplaying (and willingly missing out on content).
Of course, it's unreasonable to expect EVERY choice to have meaningful splits, but this game is leaning too heavily into the railroading choices. It makes it hard to play the MC how you want if you are at the same time conscious of the inner workings of VNs.
edit:
So let's take a look at Alice. Obviously, we gotta help her out or there is no story. It's unreasonable to expect that there is some wildly different route for her. My initial playthrough was a blind run. This random, murderous girl is holding the MC at gunpoint. The way I'm picturing the MC (typical cynical dude), his tolerance for her is already at rock bottom. So I just keep choosing the choices that reflect this attitude. Finally, the game forces you to go save her. MC has this unnatural desire to help her at the risk of his own life, despite the fact that she threatened to kill you (and does so if you get the bad end). At this point, it kinda doesn't make sense for you to keep being distant and cold towards her, because it is starting to go against the natural flow of the narrative. Why is he continuing to help her if he is not interested in her? So now, I might as well go back and pick up the points for her so I don't miss out on content for no reason.
Just as a thought experiment, we could try to think of a way to present a slight variation for a non-simp relationship with her. If you don't have enough trust/love points (or accrue some bad variables) with her by a certain point in the story, the nature of the relationship could become a more transactional affair. Either a promise of money or her offering her body in exchange for his help. You could keep the same events for the most part with some modified dialogues and such. It is certainly an increase in workload to write alternate dialogues and contingencies based on their relationship status, though.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect the dev to go back and change things at this stage, but I just wanted to point out the current state of the game. Or at least how it felt like to me. The game has the disclaimer that choices matter a lot, but truthfully, I don't consider most of these choices to be actual choices. The only real choices are picking the girls to hang out with and the occasional ones that have opposing point gains. The vast majority of choices have a clearly right answer like doing something nice vs not doing something nice. You could argue that finding these right answers is part of the gameplay, but they stop being meaningful choices at that point. It just becomes a point hunting mini game.
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