You get back from this long Work and Travel thing, brain still half in hostel mode, and your old hometown suddenly feels kind of small and kind of dangerous at the same time. That is pretty much the vibe of Lovephobia. It looks like a chill slice of life visual novel on the surface, with coffee dates, small streets, familiar rooms, people you kinda remember from school. But there is this constant feeling that relationships here are like a spider web: pull one thread, three others shake, and sometimes you really wish you didn’t click that one choice. The game throws you right into it with a side character scene that is basically “hey, welcome home, here is some NTR you can’t dodge.” Not hardcore, but it sets this slightly sick taste in your mouth where you know: “ok, this world is not safe for my dick or my heart.” After that, it calms down and pretends to be wholesome again, which is somehow worse and I like it for that.

I played like the most pacifist coward possible. Every time I felt jealousy or drama in the air, I ran the other direction. No confrontation, no “alpha male” bullshit, just trying to keep girls happy and avoid seeing them fucked by someone else. The funny part is, the game actually lets you do that most of the time if you read the mood. You see a choice that smells like “follow her to see what she’s doing” and I’m like, nope, I’ll stay home and watch some fake Netflix or whatever. And yeah, it works: whole nasty side stories just never happen if you don’t poke them. It feels weirdly realistic. In real life, if you go snooping through messages or stalking her night out, you’re going to see something that hurts. Here, same logic, just with more semen. The “love route” for the main girl is legit sweet and kind of soft, which almost clashes with the early forced scene. Sex with her doesn’t feel like porn setup, more like two people who slowly got used to each other’s bodies. Sometimes a bit too vanilla for a game that throws around cheating, but then suddenly she says something a bit filthy, and it hits way harder.

What I really enjoyed is how tiny actions change the temperature of the room. You answer a text too late, her sprite looks a little colder next meeting. You choose to hang with some other girl one afternoon, and suddenly the main girl’s next scene is shorter, like she is pulling back. It almost feels like the game is petty. Porn games usually reward you fast, like “you clicked the right flirt line, here’s a blowjob.” Here, you can flirt and still get cockblocked by previous laziness. That’s both hot and annoying. And yeah, sometimes it drags. There is one evening scene on a bench that goes on forever, with small talk about boring stuff, and I was there just waiting for a kiss, or at least a hand on thigh, anything, and the game is like “let’s talk about work again.” Still, when the sex finally happens, the build-up makes even a basic riding scene feel like a huge moment. You can feel the weight of “if I fucked this up earlier, she probably would be riding some gym bro instead now.” That fear of NTR in the background makes every tender moment extra sharp. It’s not a hardcore fetish game, not really soft either. Kind of like coming back home and realizing everyone grew up and got horny while you were gone, and now you’re just trying not to lose the people that still matter to you.