kinda #sad but i've completely given up on my candy love new gen,, i've played up to episode 3 and then i just... gave up lol. i'm legit coming back only for the events but feel so uninvested that most of the times i'm not even able to get everything which is super frustrating.
i really wanted to like this game bc beemoov's games have been such a huge part of my life!! and despite my frustrations i always loved those games!!
but having the MC being black only in appearance when i thought i'd be able to relate to her a little more; interactions with the LIs still as ridiculous as in CL and LL (pls someone tell me i was lied to and ysaline didn't actually throw up on jason); having to pay to get full scenes even as VIPs already paying every month (just the fact that you have to pay point blank); personality system which doesn't amount to anything and none of the LIs personalities being truly interesting for /me/,,, was such a disappointment.
i truly didn't expect jason to be so cringe,, it feels like the only use they have for roy is having him half naked most of the time; amanda i would've never gone for bc i just — don't care for a rich white girl; devon's pretty petty and childish at times (same as jason imo to be fair) and thomas i guess is the only one i'm okay with. and it's only bc i feel like they did a 180 on his personality since HSL and the fact that they portray him as seeming autistic (in /my/ opinion!! not derogatory!!!) just make him straightforward enough for me not to be annoyed with him.
idk i guess we could say that it's bc it's supposed to be a game whose targets are ~teens, but considering that it's clear (imo) that their true targets are paying players (consumers) rather than F2P players,, then obv you'd think their targets are at least adults? but it doesn't feel like it considering how ridiculous the plot feels at times and how little depth they put into the characters. to be fair i felt that the same could be said for eldarya a new era, campus life and love life. i know they changed scenarists? (idk the word in english but the ppl that draft the stories/plot + the actual ppl who write the dialogues and branchings) but i just truly realised it while playing the few episodes i've played + the events.
i saw a lot of french ppl thought new gen was better than CL or LL tho so i will give it a shot at some point (+ i've actually spent money on the game lol, so might as well see it through), but i never thought i'd feel so sad and unmotivated to play one of their games after playing since 2011.
anyway this was just a lil rant of my personal feelings and why i haven't been active on here lately, pls don't attack me it only engages me!! and /my/ point of view!! not even talking abt chinomiko here bc as far as i know it's not like she can do much abt all of this besides providing a v basic draft of what should happen in the story (but do tell me if i'm wrong! nicely pls). truly no hate towards her!! i'm legit sad that she didn't continue her game beneath our scars bc it was so interesting and i was super excited to get a game of hers outside of potential directives again :( even if it probably will never be finished if i remember correctly there were two eps out so if you have a lil bit of time on your hands you should check it out!!
edit: just realised beneath oyr scars isn't available on the app store anymore :( but she seems to be working on a potential future new game with a sort of dungeons and dragons theme? so i'm super excited for that!! hope we'll be able to play it!!
you raised some very fair points, and I'd like to share my opinion about them (because just like you, I really hoped that I would be able to like NG, and yet after a little more than I year, I don't really feel like this game lives up to its predecessor and / or to my expectations)
1. black MC
even in UL / LL, I didn't feel like the POC characters (most importantly Priya and Rayan) were developed well. we didn't learn much about their origins or their culture - and we could say that we don't care about these trivias, but what about the appearance? eg. an Arab man is not just a white man with darker skin colour. and yet, Rayan got slapped on some vague shade of brown, and that's it. (the only reason we even say he's Arabic is because of his name, idrk if it ever came up in the game 🤔.) and for a game that relies so much on visuals, it's even more disappointing that the POC characters didn't really have ethnic appearance.
some people even complained that Candy's different skin colours are just different shades, but her appearance is always the same - which is a fair point, but I can also understand that drawing (and coding) so many different version of each sprite, illustration would have been a ton of work, so this is not something that I think is fair to hold against Beemoov.
however, this is when Ysaline comes in, who was advertised from a very early point to be canonly POC. but how does this appear in the game? the only "confirmation" we get is that on the thumbnail of every episode / event, she has some weird shade of brown again. no ethnic features, no mentions of her origins, nothing. we got told that she's POC, but is she Indian, Arab, Brazilian, Mexican? there's literally zero background for her, and this takes away any positive feelings I might have towards Beemov for including a POC MC.
this might be trivial, but I think a really good indicator of BM handling Ysa as a "white girl who just happens to have brown skin for some reason" is the nasalang lips. (for background: when the makeup minipacks were introduced, everyone received the "basic" colour variation of the nasalang pack, which consists of eye, lips and a nose piercing.) this is how the "canon" skin colour looks like with the lips we got vs. the lips in the original lips' colour:
....do you see what I'm talking about? and yes, it's not that big deal, the recolours of this lip are like 10 AP, but I still think this says a lot about how BM doesn't really think of Ysa as a brown girl - so why bother making her one? (I know, for cookies and bonus points for inclusivity.)
2. the characters (mostly the LIs)
(I'd like to make it clear in advance that I've only played the first 4 episodes + the events. I saw many screenshots / videos from later episodes, so I'm not entirely out of the loop, but this part is still more about my impressions rather than my explicit knowledge about the game.)
you said:
"i guess we could say that it's bc it's supposed to be a game whose targets are ~teens, but considering that it's clear (imo) that their true targets are paying players (consumers) rather than F2P players,, then obv you'd think their targets are at least adults? but it doesn't feel like it considering how ridiculous the plot feels at times and how little depth they put into the characters. to be fair i felt that the same could be said for eldarya a new era, campus life and love life."
and you pretty much hit the nail on its head. BM's greatest problem (imho) is that they don't seem confident in who their players are - and I gotta give it to them, it really is hard to figure out the fanbase. their most popular game was HSL, but the survey found that most players want adult characters, but most players don't want adult themes, but then players lack the romance in the game... I think BM tries to please everyone, and that's how we end up with this lukewarm lemonade about a bunch of young adults swinging back and forth between business rivalries and goofing around - but not doing either convincingly. 14 episodes have passed, yet we still don't know anything about the Devenementiel vs Golddreamz rivalry (which I think is probably the most and only interesting thread in the plot). and when it's not about the rivalry, the characters act shallow, childish, even irresponsible at times (hello Devon not checking Amanda's background, or Thomas just walking away from his ruined bike after the accident, not letting anyone know what happened to him).
as I've said before, I've played as many events as episodes, so maybe I'm not correct about this, but I seriously feel like we spend more quality time with the crushes during the events than during the actual episodes.
many complain that Roy is just eye candy - but does he even have the opportunity of being more? does any other character? ever since BM switched to this "AP for dialogue" system, the characters (and the plots) have been lacking depth. we don't get to know them, because Ysa takes health damage for thinking half a sentence, and thus I've spent a daily amount of APs just getting breakfast. of course neither the plot, nor our relationships can progress!
this (along with the survey's results) is also why Ysa doesn't have as many friends as original Candy did, especially in HSL.
3. the 💸💸💸
if you do the math, you will see that someone who signed up at the very beginning (and always collects the daily gifts since that) can be completely up to date - if they don't spend on events and style contests. but this also directly means that anyone who spends APs on anything other than the episodes (which - considering the fact that clothes cost APs now as well, or that you must play every day for the events and get perfect results to finish them - is not impossible at all) will eventually get behind. not to mention players who don't log in every single day, or (god forbid!) started playing later - they are constantly behind on the game. if they want to catch up, they must spend irl money on the game.
but there are plenty of people who don't want to / can't spend money on the game. I can bring myself up as an example: every time I gave money to BM, it was because I really liked a clothing pack or because I wouldn't have been able to finish an event without paying. I didn't regret any of these times, I didn't spend a lot of money all in all - but I have never (and probably never will) buy gems with the intention of progressing with the episodes. why would I? I haven't seen anything in the actual game so far that makes me think my money would be worth it. and although I can' know this for sure, I'm pretty sure there are other players as well who would be able to spend (or spend more), but don't, because the plot didn't grab them. and I can't blame them at all.
NG is advertised as "F2P with bonus content", such as the crushes' sprites as accessories, more clothing / bedroom items, or special scenes - which is fine. BM needs to have income, and it's completely understandable that they offer certain things only to those who open their wallets. but when the main game can only be progressed via paying, it makes you think how much the game is actually intended for F2P players.
4. a little positivity (as a treat) + some personal theories
when LL was going on, it didn't feel like our complaints / wishes were taken into consideration a lot. but that's probably because as the third (and last) season of a series which was already more or less completed by the time it got released, I doubt BM even had the option of changing many things about it. however, I see that now they are opening towards the players. even if not every change is useful, they have clear intention of making the game more enjoyable to play, and I respect that. (also as I've already said, it's impossible to please everyone, so I know they don't have it easy.)
however (and this is the part that's just 100% theorising), I still find it weird that the only game BM has going on is MCL:NG. I talked some more about it here, but TLDR: for a long time, BM had 4 games going on simultaneously - all of which ended sometime before NG started. now, this is their only ongoing game. even if Nine left the company, I find it strange that they have only one active project, and this is why I suspect that they are working on something that they don't want to share yet.
I liked Chino's Beneath our Scars, it's a shame that it's kinda forgotten. now she seems to be working on a pirate / dnd story, which already grabbed me: I have always liked fantasy stories, I think Eldarya had tons of potential as well, so I'm def keeping my eyes on this project (even if it has nothing to do with BM).
but I'm hopeful, and I think that Beemoov will either make NG even more interesting to play and / or come up with a new project
reposting this bc they explained and analysed the situation in such a better way than i did lol!
just to be less biased,, after this rant i decided to play as much as i could without spending too much money — spoiler, i spent way too much money bc it's impossible to catch up otherwise. managed to get up to ep 10 and here's what i will say.
yes, as many said, NG isn't even comparable to how bad CL/UL and LL were; it's a lot more fun to play, (some) characters aren't as annoying. but it still is v much frustrating to play at times for all the issues we evoked, if it wasn't for the fact that i binge-played a bunch of episodes, i would have been so frustrated with the pace of the story coupled with the interactions and again!! that was only possible because i /paid/ and a lot at that!!
just for some positiveness before the negativeness: i did enjoy playing jason's route if i ignored how many times i rolled my eyes. and i still think thomas' route seems the most enjoyable one to play, though devon seems okay as well but my LOM with him is really low so idk. but there are still so many things that just /don't/ make any sense and it's so frustrating to spend so many APs on a ridiculous storyline. spending a whole episode looking for thomas who just ended up being the most irresponsible adult i've ever seen was fucking crazy — and out of character imo!! yes he may seem illogical at times, but having him just leave his bike on the ground after an accident and go on his merry way to buy a new one right away, while saying that he called his insurance that'll cover the costs for the new bike, but just leaving the old one on the ground? that's IMPOSSIBLE!!!! he'd get a fucking fine for that!! pls!!! no one would do that idc how odd and out of touch you want him to appear that's just not something that can happen.
also tried to calculate a bit and if anyone wanted to play from ep 1 until ep 15 in one go, while playing every special scene and making sure u have every illustration (so to have a complete game lol), that alone would cost +350€!! i'm sorry but that's actually ridiculous. yes, the level of customisation we have is something that's rare in most games, but it exists! and in games that are are waaaay more developed character and plot wise! we're most definitely only half-way through the story with only one character imo whose "arc" was sort of concluded (amanda imo, pls tell me if you don't think so). let's say it takes at least 15 more episodes, considering that the chapters consume more and more APs, it would cost WAY over 700€ to play everything, and that's only for one route!!!!
everytime i explain mcl's system to my brother who plays a lot of visual novels but no otome, he's blown out of his mind by how ridiculously expensive it can be. it's not even something that you can defend bc we all know that once they're done with NG, they /will/ stop putting out content (as they've done for MCL and Eldarya), despite the fact that people may spend hundreds of euros on the game over the years.
micro-transactions are a lot sneakier and are encouraged, even if a lot of people will never spend any money on the game, there will always be some that will, and those are the ones allowing beemoov to still exist to this day. the fact that we can find so many defaults in the story plot-wise and character-wise when there /are/ people that are paying to play this game is actually insane. especially when u take into consideration the fact that they're paying for only one route! not even a whole game!
i'm glad they're taking into consideration feedbacks from players in order to better the game, but beemoov perfectly reflects the direction the gaming industry as a whole is taking. it's just really sad to witness that a game that's obviously bringing in money still has so many things to unfortunately complain about — especially when these things could be easily fixed by hiring someone that actually knows what they're doing concerning storytelling and characters development (nine you'll always be missed my shayla).
ps: not saying that this is a direct result of most of the team apparently being cis white men, but,,,,
