Coming back to that shitty little hometown feels weird as hell here. The game drops you right in the middle of it with this guy who has that “I studied abroad and now I’m emotionally fucked” vibe, and everyone kind of knows it even when they pretend they don’t. It is not some epic fantasy, it is boring streets, ugly apartments, cheap phone screens, local bar with bad music. And for me that is where the sex actually hits harder. You’re not a hero, you’re just a horny idiot who said the wrong thing to the wrong girl three years ago and now she looks at you like she wants to slap you and ride you at the same time. There is this one scene where you run into an old classmate, she acts cold as ice at first, and then your dialog choice decides if she keeps that distance or if she starts teasing you about “how much you changed.” I picked the more honest, almost pathetic line, and suddenly her legs are a bit closer to my knee, she’s talking softer, playing with her top. Not porn logic, more like that slow, tense shit that happens in someone’s car behind a supermarket. And then, obviously, it goes full porn anyway, because we are all degenerates here.
What I really liked is that the game pretends to be about “rebuilding your life” but what it actually makes you do is weaponize flirting. Every choice feels a tiny bit loaded, like you are writing your own shameful diary. Answer a text too late, joke in a more cruel way than you meant, try to be a “nice guy” and you might end up completely blueballed while some side character clearly wants you and you keep missing it. At some point I stopped trying to be optimal and just thought “what would my depressed, half-broken self say” and suddenly scenes opened up that felt almost too real. Like you’re lying on a bed, still half dressed, with this girl from your past, and she is talking about why she stays in town while her hand keeps drifting lower. The sex itself is raw, not super artistic, and I kind of love and hate that. Bodies press together, clothes bunch up awkwardly, you get that messy grinding before anyone is naked, you can almost smell the cheap perfume and sweat. One route I picked, she kept edging me, almost mocking me with her fingers while asking about my plans for the future. Philosophy major inside my brain was screaming, because the game basically turns desire into this moral exam. Do you push her, do you back off, do you joke, do you beg. And yeah, I begged, and the scene turned absolutely filthy in a way that felt painfully earned, not just handed out like a cheap Pornhub clip.
The city around all this is like a nervous system of lust and fear that never fully shows itself. People talk about trouble, gangs, shit that might explode later, but it stays mostly in the corners while you make choices that are way more intimate than any gunfight. Sometimes you are just at a shitty cafe with some new girl, and the conversation is half about politics, half about whether she will let your hand stay on her thigh. I opened Twitter mid-play once, then came back and picked the wrong line, and she shut down completely, and I sat there annoyed like it was a real person ghosting me. That is when I realized the game got me. It is not “sexy visual novel with branching paths,” it is more like a horny anxiety simulator where every answer might lead to either a slow, aching kiss or a cold “I should go.” And when it does click, when a character finally leans in and the teasing breaks into full-on fucking, it almost feels like you passed some exam in being vulnerable and dirty at the same time. Honestly, the pacing sometimes drags, some conversations feel like they try too hard to be serious, and I kind of wanted one stupid bimbo that just wants cock with zero backstory, but I also know that would break the whole mood. This game is about how you talk yourself into bed, or out of it, and how that says something really uncomfortable about who you are when nobody is watching. Or everyone is watching. Depends how you play.