Pros:
* Romance scenes are fantastic - if you played Acting Lessons (Dr Pinkcake's first and previous game to this one, which I highlyPros:
* Romance scenes are fantastic - if you played Acting Lessons (Dr Pinkcake's first and previous game to this one, which I highly recommend), the scenes are significantly higher quality and more detailed than that one so it's clear he's progressing with his renderings.
* Story + emotional connection to the characters is unbelievably well-executed. I mean this is on the level of AAA games like Witcher 3 as far as the relationships the main character is involved with and how well the characters are developed and fleshed out. There are so many characters and the timeline moves relatively slowly so you really feel like you're there and you're managing your avatar's relationships with the women he is pursuing, his teachers, his friends, etc. on a day to day basis. This is easily one of the best games I've ever played from an immersion angle. I was never a fan of visual novel type games, but this is freaking awesome. Other larger studios that are into making these types of adult games should seriously consider approaching Dr Pinkcake just to pay him even as a consultant to help out with the storytelling. I hope at some point he is able to hire a team of devs to help him speed these types of games along as I can't wait for season 2 in this series.
* Building off the last bullet - the level of intimacy with the characters once romance scenes happen is over-the-top fantastic. There is one in particular with Bella that really stuck with me, both when it happened and even afterward. Just very emotional and makes you / your character feel very emotionally attached to them.
* The combat mini-game is absolutely awesome, IMO. It is challenging, but once you level up your player (it has some RPG elements to building your character's fighting ability) in his stats, fighting becomes more and more manageable. It really adds to the story when you can choose to fight people in certain instances when they deserve to get beaten up. UPDATE on this after chatting with the developer about it - he indicated dialogue does change in the game based on how you do in the combat - and it's implied that there will be a larger impact down the road in future episodes for the combat - some of the stuff is scripted to happen a certain way for narrative reasons in Season 1
* Good opportunities to make story-impacting choices during dialogue sequences. I felt like I had good control over things happening in the game for the most part.
* Loved Derek - he can be basically your best buddy in the game. He's like Liam from Acting Lessons - hilarious, but a good friend, too. Really loved his character.
* Music selection by the developer was excellent - you can tell he did a very thorough job selecting the right music for the right scenes and situations as they really fuel your emotional connection to characters. People in general really like music and it sort of "supercharges" our emotions when the right music is played in certain situations, creating / strengthening emotional attachments to people in our lives, and the same happens when we watch movies or play games where the right music is associated with the right character or situation. Excellent job by the developer, there.
Cons:
* No voice-acting, so that translates to a lot of reading subtitles - if there was voice-acting you could pay a lot more attention to the artwork in the scenes instead of reading the subtitles. I would happily pay twice the current cost of this game (~$13 currently) if the developer could add voice-acting / lip syncing animations into the story - how awesome would that be. No problem at all on my end getting my wallet out for those types of enhancements in a well-told story like this - the dev would have to hire a staff for that kind of work, so like I said before, I'd personally be happy to get my wallet out and pay a bunch more money for these games if they started including it.
* I'm not a fan of the "scramble" mini-game - I find it infuriating. Just not my type of game, so I basically started skipping it after trying to get better at it for about an hour and making zero progress.
* The combat mini-game was not used enough in story events / it failed to really have much of an impact in the story. There were a few instances where I got in fights but even though I completely dominated my opponents in every instance, some events were scripted for you to lose and the other didn't really have any noticeable impact on the story with regard to the girls and how they view you as a protector / fighter, etc. Hope for more opportunities for this to matter in season 2 as I really enjoyed the fighting in it.
Game Length: Took me about 17 hours for my first play through.
Final Rating: 9.5/10 - highly recommended at full price.… Expand
