Review after playing Chapter 23
During the earlier chapter, I wouldn't have rated this game 3, maybe not even 2 stars. The later chapters, however, almost seem like they're by a different dev entirely. Those by themselves, I'd rate almost 4 stars.
A big criticism about this game in general, is the lack of meaningful choices. While the game does have choices, the follow-up and follow-through for them is missing. Looking at the code, the game has almost 100 choices, and 15 if-statements. This implies that most choices only have very short-term effects.
Sometimes, choices are flat-out ignored. The MC will admit to Megan that they kissed, even if the player chose not to kiss her while she was drunk.
Worse, there's even a fake choice, where you get a game-over and return to the main screen, if you pick the wrong answer about an activity.
In the early game, many of the erotic/intimate encounters are forced, luckily this is done away with quickly. At least for side-characters. It's possible to decline or postpone intimate scenes with the main 3 women, but most of their scenes are unavoidable.
There's one specific intimate scene in the later game that's unavoidable, where the MC gets drugged and sexually assaulted by a side character. Up to that point, it was possible to avoid any penetrative sex, in case you wanted your first time to be with a specific Love Interest.
There's a ton of criticism to have about the first half of the current game. The writing is sloppy, repetitive and amateurish. "ha ha", "he he", "hi hi", and all of their variations are overused, and written instead of shown. The MC himself is written as a blank slate, without personality. And the player doesn't get enough choices or options to fill in this personality. If the player chooses not to spy on someone, the MC will rationalize this as not wanting to get caught, instead of it being morally wrong.
Later, much of this improves. Gone are the written laughs, instead we get dialog that flows better, is easy to follow and pleasant to read... For the most part. MC still has a weird fixation on combining the weirdest words to call his penis, or to yell out when climaxing. He'll even go so far as to tell Nina that calling it a penis is weird, and that he prefers "meat tube" or "tube steak" instead (among others).
In the latest few chapters, it almost seems as if MC is growing a personality. I say almost because he's still looking for excuses, and lies to the other women about what he's doing with each of them.
One of my biggest pet-peeves with this game is how the main story is handled. The game keeps information from the player that the MC is privy to. He'll read documents and come to a conclusion, he'll confront someone, then forgives them and declares his eternal love... All while keeping the player in the dark about their exact involvement. I can only guess that the writer didn't manage to come up with a convincing plot here. But seeing how important this character is to the game, I think the writer made a mistake here by keeping players in the dark. This strategy could (and has, in my case) backfire, making the character unlikeable, and making players resentful towards the game or dev about having this character still forced on them.
Animations... There isn't much to be said about these. Most animations are short loops, though most intimate scenes have at least two of these. While the quality improves over the course of the game, they're still not on par. Animations in the early game have a low frame rate and are grainy, in the later game, the dev switched to WebP, which improved that aspect of their quality considerably.
However, movement remains robotic, there's clipping, and bodies remain fairly rigid and slide against each other instead of moving naturally.
Seeing how the dev has improved, makes me curious about future chapters. I'll keep playing, but I hope the dev takes some time to remaster the earlier chapters. I can imagine many people are put off when starting the game, and aren't willing to play until chapter 16-20 where things start to get good.
