Oof... where to start. Its a 6/10 game. Its not a bad game but not necessarily a great game either, just above avarage. It definitely is not a random low effort slop that was farted out, there is some quality to it. Its probably better than 90% of the games.
I really really wanted to like this game more than i actually did, everything looked like my type of game and after finishing it, it definetly is my type of game but it was lacking some things and/or was just not done super well.
The ideas are good, it was something different and fresh-ish. I really enjoyed episode 1 it was a 8/10 game till that point. Game was flowing nicely, i was immersed, everything made sense, nice variety of scenes/scenarios, characters were interesting, story was interesting. The game had a good balance of male and female characters, it did not feel like you are the only male on the planet, world felt alive. LIs looked to have agency, have their own lives, some had bfs and were already in a relationship which for me is super fun to try to win/steal the LI over, its always so cringe to me where all the 10/10 looking LIs have either never been in a relationships and are virgins or have not been in a relationship for 10 years and keeping themselves for the perfect MC. Its boring af and immersion breaking.
But the more the game goes on, the more it started to lack in different areas, there was no real structure at later stages, the scenes just came very suddenly and sometimes at wtf moments out of nowhere. The LI scenes felt like checklists where you have to give LI screentime in the game which did not feel organic at all, more like half-forced and inventing scenes just so theres some LI screentime. The LI relationships that they had with other guys.. well it turns out they were all fake, the guys were either gay and pretending to be in a relationship or just "bad" guys which ofcourse is classic so the player does not feel threatened by other guys in the game, again its boring at least for me. Ofcourse i dont like getting cucked and NTRed and all that other "fun" stuff, i like sensible realistic "NTR" where some of the LIs are in a legit relationship where u have the chance to win her over. Give me some challenge or sense of achievement that im winning over the LI, everything is just too easy and Lis just fall into your lap just because you are the MC.
MC was as avarage as it can get. There were legit some moments like wtf has MC ACTUALLY done to warrant this type of interest from some of the LIs, bro was just a normal guy, nothing special and for some reason they all loved him and wanted him. MC is also allergic to say nice things to LIs. Like brother pls, can you say anything else other than "oh wow you are so hot" or "i love your tits" at every conversation. How about try to say something more affectionate or intimate ESPECIALLY when you are in a relationship with someone. Sure you can say wow you are hot sometimes but its literally the only compliments that MC can give. The only thing MC seems to care about his partner is that "wow your body is so hot" Bro is 0iq.
Sex scenes are just empty emotionless fuck. I cant believe im saying this but the feet stuff was probably more sexy, erotic and had more emotion than the normal sex scenes. The sex scenes just felt like.. well lets get this over with, jobs done, moving on. The feet stuff though.. was really well done.
About pathings. I usually like to play 1-2 solo route saves and also do a manwhore route just to see if there are any consequences, dialogue changes, unique scenes or scenarios, basically find out the rules of the game. As far as i can tell, theres zero rules. Theres no point to actually reject anyone. You just manwhore around with zero consequences or changes in dialogue/world until the choice comes where it locks you to 1 path. After you are locked to single path you have no way to manwhore around which is good but the clusterfuck before that was cringe and fake as fuck. Bro says to everyone that "you are the love of my life" or that "i will never leave you", "i love you" and then moves on to next LI and says the same shit with zero remorse, theres no inner dialogues or conflicts about him banging every LI, theres 0 awknowledgement about that at all, its almost like all your relationships with different LIs are in bubble and isolated where noone knows, noone cares, they all think that you are in a relationship with only them. It just makes the solo path empty and meaningless.
After you make the choice where it locks you to 1 LI path, none of the other Lis who said that they love you or that you love them and are the love of their life, the LIs dont care, they dont show any dissapointment when you dont pick them. Theres actually zero dialogue, scenes or changes in the world, almost like all the past relationships you had with every other LI didnt happen. Its almost like MC WHO? who even is that guy?
There were some wtf story moments. Like for example
There were many more other wtf situations im not gonna name them all.
I liked that it was not all roses and that there were some bold moments that dev had the balls to write. It was sometimes uncomfortable to read but it was necessary for the story and im glad that the dev had the balls to do SOMETHING different where not everything was happy and your classic feelsgood where nothing can go wrong (nothing wrong with those, i just prefer that not everything is roses and that there are some kind of negative moments so that in the end the positive moments are more powerful and meaningful). If everything is happy and positive, feelsgood and where nothing is wrong or can go wrong then it can become stale. Also i just want to clarify, the game has happy endings, there are no negative or dark endings, its just there are some bumps on the road so dont worry about that, i myself dont like negative or dark endings either.
EP1 for sure was the best, i pretty much enjoyed everything about that, didnt have any big flaws. After that it got more clusterfucky and less focused as the time went on. After EP4 where it locks you to 1 path it got back to more focused and pulled the games rating back higher.
Ending(s) i enjoyed too, pretty well done, would have wished for more variation depending on whose ending you got because as far as i can tell the endings are identical or almost identical, even has some same dialogue, only thing that is different is the LI you end up with but yeah at least it was well done and not just "fade to black" and live happily ever after, there were actually some nice moments in the ending and had good depth. Just for clarification, i tried 2 solo endings out of 7, maybe those other 5 are different but the 2 i did were 99% identical.
Some other quick notes.
-Music is great and fitting most of the time.
-lots of feet stuff, dev seems to be a fellow feet enjoyer
-loved the diary, nice recaps and cool seemingly hand drawn pictures.
-Would have loved to see more depth how Flavia got over her drug addiction. Im not asking to see the whole process how she gets clean but maybe show a couple of days after she said shes quiting drugs, show her struggles and how MC supported her through it. Right now its yep.. im quiting drugs.. yep.. all fixed, easy clap.
Thank you for finishing the game. Good first effort for your first game and good luck on your next game. Making games is hard.