HoMM Fan
Crossposting from the Daughter For Dessert
thread as both are by the same studio and wicked mainly by the same troper, and share this common trait.
Maybe it's just me, but this (and and its sister entry]]) both seem to be stuffed full of questionable examples in an attempt to inflate the wick count as much as possible and make it seem "more deep".
Look at how many unnecessary aversions there are, as well as questionable "subversions" and "deconstructions".
It will take a proper analysis to give a totally fair judgement, but the fact that it's hosted mainly on porn sites is a big eyebrow raiser to me.
"Grandmaster Combat, son!"I didn't play through all of it because holy fuck it takes so much time but here's my basic overview:
The entire game feels like two different but vaguely connected plots running in parallel. The first plot deals with trauma, guilt, and reckoning with the hurt you've caused to others in the past, and largely focuses around developing friendships (and, optionally, casual sexual relationships) with several classmates. There's also a concurrent subplot of you, like, trying to deal with bullying by a tech-savvy classmate and most of its major beats drive the other story plots forward. If the game was just this plot I would rubber stamp it keep and move on with my life, the story is genuinely engaging and while the sex scenes are not the most integrated into plot (it's not, like Alfie level of integrating sex with storytelling) it's still plot heavy enough to be an easy keep.
The second plot pretty quickly diverges off from this and is, like, 90% romantic and sexual shenanigans involving your two female roommates, and I'd probably vote cut on it if it was separated from the rest of the plot. As I got further along it also gave the sense that this was the main endgame plot, and it's the section of the story with unavoidable porn scenes (this is why it's apparently only hosted on porn websites, this subplot would get it taken down off Youtube).
Is it porn? Yes.
Does it have a non-excuse plot? Yes, especially when the plot leaves the apartment and involves your classmates.
Is there pedopandering? Murrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr not really? Okay so, there's a few weird scenes involving, like, sexual hypnosis by the student councilor or the main character (optionally) having sex with the young (probably early-mid 20s but no ages are given for basically anyone) teacher of the summer class he's taking, but the disclaimer on the game states that all characters involved are 18+ and as Willbyr said the models don't really present any pedopandering concerns so while kinda offputting and creepy it isn't technically pedophilic, and the game narrative doesn't really treat it that way either.
My vote is keep.
Edited by 4maskwolf on Aug 30th 2022 at 10:12:56 AM

The flag here for DoubleHomework was sent with the rationale