I wonder if part of the problem is there are too many branching things. Between the seven main LIs, whether you chose Sports or Music, the side/minor characters/LIs, it's trying to cover too many different things.So take this with grain of salt as I didnt see all the LIs, but currently:
There is huge difference between Alyssa and other LIs. The time, quality of writing, renders. Overall quality of the game itself just skyrockets the moment you go on her path.
- Brooke is afterthought, she has good moments, but overall I just dont believe that MC is actually interested in her outside of getting into her pants. At this point obviously.
- Leslie is cute, romance is slow burn as dev probably intended. But I cant help myself but to think that writing is just piss poor. It reads like teen romance novel, and compared to other writing in the game it just falls on the flat surface to me. Its so godammn out of place that I was wondering if there wasnt a problem in translation or something.
Gonna try other paths and come back. Also I am getting some flashbacks from other vns where dev couldnt keep it in his pants and made like 10 different LIs. I think the game suffers because of this. Cut it down to like 4 of them and its gonna get much better
There's some term for it I've read on the forums here, that I'm completely blanking on, where too many choices/branches gets too unwieldy and makes it very difficult to devote a lot of effort/time to every possible combination.
I almost wonder if this would make TWO fantastic games. And they can overlap time/world/people. Have one focused on Basketball (not a lot of fantastic sports-based VNs) with it's dedicated LIs and minor/side characters. Then once it's done, go back and do the music one, completely separate. Overlapping LIs where it doens't matter if you take sports or music like Leslie, Alyssa, could easily exist in both. Just my two cents.