I see that a lot of the discussion regarding the lack of a walkthrough seems to be focused on this system of having a time limit to complete tasks and people having trouble figuring out how to do the tasks. I'm not even there yet, I just completed the first meeting with the managers. I want to point out that that is not the only reason for a walkthrough here, by a long shot.
My issue is with the earlier parts of the game, especially the conversation with Mia at the club. There's at least a half dozen different ways for that conversation to go down. I can't figure out if the dialog choices are designed to encourage Mia to cheat on the MC so we can watch or to make Mia okay with the MC cheating by suggesting she might enjoy watching. Am I setting up NTR? Am I angling for a future threesome? Am I just doing what's necessary to avoid losing my girlfriend while building a harem? It's all very suggestive but cryptic at the same time. (EDIT: I want to point out I'm not complaning. It's actually very well written and intriguing. My point is simply that if you wanted more control over where things are going, this style of writing really doesn't suit that goal.)
So, the full set of hud icons finally comes up only after this meeting with the managers, and I can now see how many NTR points I have and what my affection rating is with all the characters. But it's a bit late for that, now. Could I have had higher affection ratings by now? Could I have more NTR points, or none? I have no idea, and as it is now, the only way for me to figure it out would be to repeatedly take one of SEVERAL paths through the game's conversations and then play all the way through to when the hud shows up, check the various point values, and then go back and take another path, over and over, taking notes in a separate document on what choices I've tried and which I haven't yet and what the outcomes were. And all that I can really check is the number of points I've earned. I have no idea what other effects those choices might have. This is the kind of stuff I might do for full-scale RPG from the 80's or 90's. You don't generally plan for drawing your own dungeon maps when you play sex games. (EDIT: again, I mean this more as an observation and not a complaint.)
While I am duly impressed by the game's complexity, it's the idea that there may be a long wait in-between making decisions and finding out the result of those decisions that creates the need for a walkthrough. If I was someone that hated NTR, but I was trying to encourage Mia to let me sleep around or have threesomes, and I don't find out until several updates later that my choices have backfired, so I have start over, still not knowing the right choices to make, I can see how that would be frustrating for people. As it is, I would like to keep at least two or three different paths going to see all the content, but I can't even figure out which choices are best for each route, so I could potentially end up with more than one half-assed save path that has to be started over.
And then there's the other side. The dev could have made the points viewable earlier and even put up warnings about where things are going, but what about the people who don't have objections to specific content and want to be surprised by how the story unfolds? All those warnings and so on basically act as spoilers and kind of ruin the anticipation for some people. Which is what makes a walkthrough so great. It's totally optional and completely separate.
I'm actually not here to beg for a walkthrough, I'm just saying I think it's a bit unfair to tell people who want one that they don't need it (although, obviously, it IS fair to tell them they should have used the search box to find out there isn't one). Of all the AVN's I've played, this one definitely deserves a walkthrough far more than some of the ones that do have a walkthrough.
)
