Nope. "That's right, all the environments for the start of TGO are ready and built and now the world map can be shared." A world map is a map of the whole of a world not just the north of a world by definition. However although there doesn't seem to be a big uptick in the number of locations the buildings in TGO are a hell of a lot bigger, some big enough to house multiple occupiers, e.g., condominiums and a multistorey apartment block, and the forest could be endless from the point of view of players. My bet is that there will be a lot more to explore and discover than meets the eye in, around and below the properties of North Santiva, e.g., warren of crypts beneath the church, in the forest, and possibly on/in the lake or sea beyond the dock.
The topography does seem to be more generous than ToN as far as I can see.
What worries me is whether the characters will be well developed and interesting (or vacuous fuck dolls for the new MC to poke like ToN); whether the game play will be fun (or as boring as fuck like fishing in ToN); and whether the sex, when it comes, will be hot, enjoyable and tasteful (or include ghastly shit like women drinking each others vaginal discharge or impaling themselves on impossibly massive inanimate objects like ToN). I'm not concerned about the art of the game but the overall quality of the game as a sexy entertainment rather than just pitched to help teenagers cock fondle. If TGO ends up a superior replay of ToN I will be disappointed because ToN ended up disappointing me hugely, after starting brilliantly, because at about the half-way mark it morphed from being an engaging story-driven adult game and to little more than a graphic shimmy from one tweened sex scene to another, scene blurring into similar scene (the usual progress being manual, oral, vaginal, anal and group for ALL of the female characters) with nothing thought provoking or interesting between them. Seeing one MC have unemotional robotic sexual relations with eleven mannequin-like women really isn't eleven times sexier than watching the MC enjoy meaningful, affectionate and passionate relations with one woman, in the right place, at the right time, after an appropriate flirtation, courtship and build-up or at the very least a plausible explanation other than the influence of an aphrodisiac drug, which smacks too much of involuntary or forced sex to me to be comfortable.
For me TGO will succeed or fail based on the quality of its underlying story rather anything to do with its art.
I hope for better from TGO but expect the same, or worse, which would be a crying shame because ToN was a wash for me.
While I actually agree with many of your sentiments, mainly the focus on
Character Development, and Nadia sorta going downhill for the second-half; I think if you play
Lust Epidemic you can get a gauge of what he's capable of. Nadia was an ambitious "growth" and increase in all aspects of what he attempted before (
LE wasn't his first game) so much like many sequels in most media, they go for more. If he looks at what was successful in LE, the intimacy, pace and simple premise (
being stuck in one place is more logical for character interaction than being spread across an island) and apply that to what
Technical Advancements he's made with game 2, I feel like he can strike a better balance between the two.
Although he revealed yet another
DOZEN girls in the harem this time around, which despite having such a large harem inherently makes things less intimate by design (
unless you compensate with 12x the dialogue), if he can remember what made the interactions in LE a bit more meaningful, and recreate that in
TGO I think he can pull off what he attempted in Nadia. To his credit, it was a difficult task to get that much Variety, and find a decent balance of Quality to match that, and he came pretty damn close honestly. So if you see that as an overshoot, now he just has to adjust some, maybe avoid the paint-by-numbers approach of feeling methodical (
Sex Progression pattern, having 3somes or more-somes based on who's left) and truly being plot driven, I think he can appease fans of both major titles, and find that balance of both games, hopefully creating his best one yet.
But ultimately, it's about the
ANIMATIONS, and the entire game-play loop revolves around those (Via KS Pages) as your rewards, quite literally. And I don't see those downgrading anytime soon, so we can at least expect those to be among the best in the Sub-genre, period. Even some of his peers at the top, all they offer is the option of POV which he never dabbled in yet, but technically (
as someone having a BS in Animation) he actually is, probably the Top right now (
sorry Dr.PinkCake and Philly).
