I wouldn't worry too much. I think you are making great progress with every update. I also think you can be proud of catering to players with many different tastes. While Nifty was a bit too brutal with their criticism for my tastes I think they do make some good points. However don't let their personal criticism direct your narrative while its good to have feedback from people here you as the creator needs the freedom to create the story in accordance to your passion. Otherwise both fans and the creator will miss out if you lose your passion. You can't please everyone unfortunately.
Also its much better to have a completed story than an overly ambitious one that never finishes. 2 million words proves this story will be on a huge scale. Since you feel a lack of satisfaction with how the Caleb and Ephraim story turned out another suggestion could be to either back bench them for now before a complete rewrite or to scrap them altogether as characters. Your story is already on a massive scale so don't feel bad if you need to scale down the cast to a more managable size.
I will give my top 3 romance options so far as I think everyone can find something to their tastes so you are doing fantastic with your variety so far.
1st: Lady Carolyn (Only if she stays pure lesbian without getting other men involved only because FxF villain love interests are super rare). I think if she is a puppet master of the story to change the current paradigm of gender roles within this world it could lead to a fantastic narrative. This character has insane potential currently. I could be completely wrong about the direction you decide to take the character.
However from a narrative point of view I love how you changed a certain punishment scene based on whether you punished the maid or not. It was extremely manipulative and done from 2 completely different angles showing just how skilled she is in social circles. I also love her world view. Although her growth as a character seems limited compared to other romance interests due to her ambitious nature and strong will power.
2nd: Samayra Again a lot of potential as Sarah's mirror into the past if she grows alongside Sarah on her fated path. Then she will be a superior romance to Varga.
3rd:Varga (Love the man only not rated higher due to the fact I feel it cripples Sarah's growth in comparrison to other paths.) A very safe option overall but that is never a bad thing but his romance path in my personal opinion lacks the ambition of the 2 above it. Still fantastic though could end up my favorite by the end depending on how things play out with the 2 above.
Sigmund and Sakar are interesting and I won't rank Hassar or Marion until I see more of what they have to offer. So far now based off my current speculation those are my top 3. I mostly agree with Nifty about Kate but I don't think she ruins the warrior route as she is a very flawed character who is obviously going to have a lot of future growth. Still currently Kate is a little rough and currently not that likable compared to others.
Keep up the great work and I look forward to the future of this VN.
Firstly, I want to thank you for your post, I’m really glad to see your response to my thoughts and you’ve brought up a lot of things that I agree with. I wholeheartedly agree that the creator needs to create the story in accordance with their passion so that the experience would not be compromised. Even though I do hope though that the creator can find a middle ground for both parties to enjoy the game, I would prefer for the author to continue to be passionate about making the game they want rather than pleasing everyone.
On the topic of my feedback, I also agree with your feedback about my review being too negative.
Compared to this current one, the initial reviews that I made of the warrior route before its latest update were way more positive, but in retrospect, I see it reflected my idealized rose-tinted perspective of the game and it overlooked the game’s flaws and didn’t really give any substantial feedback to the creator. It was only after my disappointment in the development of the Warrior route that I was inspired to take a more analytical and thorough review of this game and try to provide more constructive feedback for the story in other routes and the narrative as a whole.
The experience has been a lot of fun for me. I managed to have interesting conversations with other people because of this, in doing so I got to have an enlightening experience hearing from those conversations. I’m grateful for this experience cause I got to learn more about writing while making these reviews and learned to enjoy a more critical perspective of media.
Yet for the longest time, I was putting off talking about the Warrior route’s latest update due to my negative feelings towards it. My criticisms have been stewing for months since the update to the warrior route and me replaying a story that disappointed me multiple times over the past months to get the details of the review just right really didn’t help with my mindset while writing this review. As much as I toned down my negative thoughts on it, I regret that I couldn’t manage to make my review to be more positive and constructive with it mostly being a list of things I’m not happy with. Yet, I still felt the need to post it because I feel like I needed to give myself some closure by getting my thoughts on it off my chest and moving on.
I’m going to try to make future reviews more constructive and in a format that’s more fun for me to write so hopefully this won’t be a problem in the future.
Finally, on the topic of the game’s writing, I actually agree with you about benching Caleb and Ephraim before a complete rewrite would be an appropriate way to do things but I do think that just scrapping them all together would be kind of a waste.
I fully agree that writing a single complete story would me more manageable than writing an ambitious one that never finishes. Though my idea for a rewrite would have been making thing less “exclusive”. Instead of all routes having multiple competing and exclusive characters with exclusive branches centered around Sarah and a single love interest, my idea would be a route with a single complete story where Sarah can be intimate with multiple characters who can interact with and develop one another. So not like a harem where everything is centered around Sarah, but where the other characters can develop relationships with one another, platonic or otherwise if the characters and story would allow it, like how possible it is with Caleb and Ephraim. I just think more character interactions and sex scenes when possible would be really cool.
In the Princess route for example. For Marion who isn’t that interesting on his own and would likely have a loveless marriage with Sarah in his own path, I can see his path being appealing if Sarah is allowed and even encouraged by him to have lovers there for her own sake especially if they’re useful. After all, royalty taking lovers isn’t a strange thing and I doubt he’d mind when their marriage is strictly political. I can imagine him mending his relationship with Varga and growing to have some appreciation for him in this story when they are no longer put in a position where they have to compete and Marion himself doesn’t have anything to lose with the marriage giving him a measure of security. I can also see him appreciating Carolyn and Lily in the same manner for their own unique qualities.
For the Civil War route, I imagine Varga and Carolyn both contribute to the princess route for a more complete story instead of being exclusive. They can both be Sarah’s love interest, but they themselves stay platonic friends with each other. I imagine them initially bonding over Carolyn helping him with managing the economy of his holding as a political show of good faith to him and Sarah when he is appointed as a new member of the council, with him later coming to respect Carolyn's competence and her earned rise to power, especially when compared to Marion who coasted on his family name. I can see them bonding over their differing yet equally pragmatic approaches to governing the kingdom. I can imagine an interesting story where they develop mutual respect and understanding while being foils to one another as the Regent's Left and Right hand. (I might need to finish Carolyn’s route to see if this is possible though)
In the same Civil War path, I can see both Varga and Lily getting along really well, with them both having a lot in common in their loyalty to Sarah and having similar values. These two are the only ones in the Princess route that I can imagine them forming a true three-way relationship with Sarah, with them being the Regent’s Two Swords.
I have similar ideas for the other routes like Warrior and the Mage route but I'll get to that some other time.
