Right, so I played through E24 last night and not enough words to convey my disappointment.
When you invest in a game for 5 years, the least you want is a satisfying ending. Here are my points, in no particular order.
1. The whole mystery about the person who sent the email was dragged too long. On top of that the explanation of the inheritance was too convoluted and fuzzy. Basically, it looks like it was a setup for MC to fulfill certain conditions to get certain set of ladies/girls. Why not go in that direction character wise? Why bring in this round-about twisted way of inheritance to assign to a group of girls? Frankly it didn't make sense this way but could have been more intriguing had it been the LI's interaction dictate the groups.
2. The whole confession from Bella was confusing as ever, and I read the text version. I couldn't bear myself to read through minimal facial transitions loads of text. Even the summary was too long for my liking. Frustrated both by the confession and the timing of it, I kicked out both Bella and Jo.
3. At the end I pursued Monica and Elaine (MILFs, duh!) and the scenes leave you wanting more. Why let both these ladies talk about multiple rounds than show it to the player? To be honest, the writing was an USP of this game but frankly, the authors didn't know where to hold it off. Quite a few recent games balance this perfectly. The animations were bland as usual and added nothing to the immersion, as they were repetitive symmetric actions. What engages is asymmetric animations from different perspectives. But since animations was an afterthought, they could have skipped it.
4. Which brings me to the next point - adding animations and music was to be relevant with the trend but there's no music on key events. So what's the point of having a catchy track for the intro slide if the rest of the gameplay has none? May be I am missing something here.
5. Lastly, the inclusion of so many side quest girls. Including Natasha, a girl on whom you had revenge is the end all of stories, why revive any interactions with her, hot or otherwise? Ditto with Wanda, Angel etc. I know there are lots of fans but that took away from the main story in all honesty, which was bearing on just 1 mystery to begin with. To take 23 episodes to resolve 1 mystery makes me think of adding subplots as it went along. This does leave anyone bloated while playing a game like this and after a hiatus.
The revival of models and lighting etc. is fine but what I and many others would have cared for, is scintillating situations like in previous episodes, possibility of getting caught by other ladies/girls when you're busy with one instead of stupid jealousy attribute and concise decision points. I have 24 pages worth of saves and that too I was deliberately reckless for those side quest girls.
The reason for this long rant falls in line with the verbiage of text that came with this game and direct proportionality with my affinity towards the characters. I understand both Cheeky, Ace and Cell went through a lot these past year and they're decent folks who appreciate sincere feedback. Hopefully they take this in the right spirit and make their next adventure even memorable. Because, that's Where the Heart is!
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