This VN broke my cherry, and it was an excellent first choice. The biggest draw was that the characters simply seemed "real" and each and every one felt genuinely familiar to me.
After playing several other VN's, this one remains one of my favorites and I finally feel as if I can clearly point out the differences in what makes a novel good and bad.
Let's start with the MC. Honestly, I'd fuck him. What we see looks good, but that's the easy part. The difficult part is giving him a personality that is genuinely pretty damned cool, and dialogue options that make him out to be intelligent, witty, and a very natural charmer. It's pretty easy to believe that he can charm the pants off anyone. The standout moments are with my personal best girl Katie. While rendered interactions are limited to a degree (because it's a big deal), the dialogue with Katie pairs with the simple renders that only change her subdued facial expressions and deliver an INTENSITY to the verbal interactions that make the MC (and of course, Katie) pretty amazing. Their first date is an intense staring match paired with verbal sparring reminiscent of virtuosos improvising a jam session... plus, we love Francois.
The ladies meanwhile are on the surface the generic stereotypical bunch, but the author seems far more familiar with the reality of the stereotypes rather than the television and film versions of such... There are some standout points here I'd like to bring up.
"The Hacker Girl" is primarily represented by Jenna, but we'll also be mentioning Joline. Jenna is not a Felicit Smoak styled ditzy hottie or some raver / goth chick like most media portrays. Instead, she is simply a recluse with confidence issues and an internet connection. She knows what normal personal interaction is like, she just doesn't have the confidence in herself to engage as such. This makes her a perfect voyeur, but it's balanced with those dreams of actually being able to engage with real people face to face. So, she's not some Polyanna with no understanding of sexuality, but a smart girl with entirely too much understanding ("The internet is 99% porn"). On the other hand, Joline is also self described as a "techie", but she is pretty normal by most standards and driven more by being an entrepeneur (non tech related)... that's right, nerds can actually be normal and think of things other than anime, computers and comic books.
"The Lesbian" is good old Debbie. Rather than some long, involved seduction meant to "convince" the lesbian she likes cock... well, the author seems to have met real live lesbians before. Debbie will fuck the MC at the drop of a hat because (surprise!) sex feels good. This may sound unrealistic, but there are lots of people who are more than willing to have sex with their non-primary desired gender so long as their partner is willing to keep relations totally casual - it's not the sex itself that is objectionable, but having an actual relationship.
"The Ditzy Girl" is Lily (swoon)... For once, she's not a complete idiot. She's no genius, but she knows her own limitations and chooses to encourage the image purely for the sake of allowing people to underestimate her.
"The MILF"... we've got two of them, but let's focus upon Monica. I shot her down in my first playthrough because on a personal level I don't like the drinkers. The very first scene, she's wined up an ready to go in the early morning. Luckily I played through again. If any main supporting character fit a stereotype, it would be her with her memory (and inhibition) loss due to drinking, and her constant reminders of how wrong a sexual relationship would be when she is sober. What made me love her truly is when she finally does open up to the MC and she escapes that two dimensional portrayal with the admission that the drinking is an excuse. She was always aware of exactly what she was doing, and that made her uncomfortable because she was afraid that the MC advances were just a cheap sexual thrill. Yes, she wanted that, but in reality she wanted more. So long as she could blame the drinking though, she could at least get the thrill without the guilt, and she could maintain the genuine friendship even if she desired true love which she did not think the MC would reciprocate.
Another detail that I enjoyed was that in my playthrough(s), the MC never really lies. A few small lies here and there, and he will lie when he is obligated to another character to do so, but nothing blatant. Maybe there are a set of events I have not found yet where he will lie, but my style of playthrough has not hit that yet. This is a very big point to me, and it is pretty funny that the MC can bang every single female and still keep away from lies. It could even be argued that at many points the MC has attempted to be completely open. I can very literally picture a situation where every supporting character he has fucked finds out all at once, and every last one of them is sitting together, drinking wine, and bringing up that he never really lies about what he has done and has made an honest effort to tell everyone what has been going on. I don't think this will last, but it's a fun fantasy to have over a bunch of fictional characters I have grown to love.
All this writing, and I still haven't even touched upon actual story! Well, that's a slow burn, but intriguing. There is tons of slice-of-life story that is satisfactory just by itself, but there is also an arc about his father's machinations that the author may still be writing when the chapters go to triple digits. While I would REALLY love to find out how the main arc resolves, I'm honestly just happy living in this world.
Overall, this is not the best VN I have ever played... There are others with more features, more original models, more active storytelling... but this is the one I always come back to with the huge amount of content and some of the best characters.
