Somehow, this game got worse.
The Assistant, Season 2, is the continuation of Season 1, by the same dev, and there is only one thing that has improved over the first game. Everything else got worse. I'll explain why below.
All visual elements remained unchanged from the first game, except for the animations during sex scenes, which saw a notable improvement. There are still clunky and stiff animations, but they are far less prevalent than in the first entry. That being said, I found two instances of an exception caused by an undefined variable, a variable by the way that doesn't need to be defined at all, because it's a variable which value is a constant, in this case, Piper's name. I've played several games made using Ren'Py, and I'm very familiar with the engine, because I've been using it to develop my own game, and this is the first time I've encountered a Ren'Py game that throws me an exception.
As for the gameplay, there are some important things worth discussing. For example, there is a scene when the main character grabs a bad guy from behind, and you are presented with a choice between releasing him, leaving him unconscious, or keeping your grip on him, killing him. If you choose to kill him, instead of giving you lots of bad guy points, as it should, the devs felt the need to invent an entirely new metric called "evil", when the existing good/bad metric already serves that purpose. Besides, both choices should give bad guy points, less if you decide to spare him, and more if you decide to kill him, because you chose to assault him, when you have the choice not to and call the police instead. An example of this metric correctly executed is when you have a choice between helping Noa or not. If you choose not to, the game gives you 5 bad guy points, as it should. So, it's not the mechanic that's bad, is its inconsistent implementation.
As for the writing, it somehow got worse. The interactions between the main character and the different female characters of the game operate under porn logic. This means that the interactions don't serve to have a look at the character's motivations, desires, fears, goals, flaws, etc, so they could be used as soil for potent character development, but they serve to facilitate the sex scenes. Characters don't have any agency, because their wills seem to break as easily as the narrative of this game. As for the "romance", almost no romantic relationship feels earned whatosoever, because it's so easy to get female characters to have sex with the main character. Not even the dating sim elements of this game work the way they should. There are also very strange plot decisions, failed attempts at creating tension, nonsensical character decisions, and there is this compulsion of the writers to avoid handling any negative outcomes, just because they wouldn't have a narrative to tell if things proceeded according to the internal logic of the story. Remember when I mentioned the guy you have a choice to kill? Well, the main character doesn't suffer any kind of legal liabilty, just on the grounds that the victim was a bad guy, despite the fact that he absolutely should face legal consequences for that specific action. The morality of this game is also very strange, because, for some reason, cheating is seen as good when women do it, and bad when men do it, when cheating is bad, regardless of who does it, and the game portrays it as bad, but, for some reason, polyamorous relationships aren't seen as bad, or at the very least, frowned upon, which would help create tension in organic way.
In short, if you already bought Season 1, don't buy this game if you care about quality. If you haven't, you can always save money. This isn't worth the time of any self-respecting visual novel reader, unless you want to buy porn in game format. If that's the case, then, go ahead, but don't expect a good story from this. As for me, I don't recommend this game because the writing, the most vital part of a highly narrative genre like visual novels, is subpar, and it only serves the fanservice, not the story. I've said repeatedly that good storytelling and fanservice are not mutually exclusive, but, if one has to be sacrificed in the name of of the other, then it's not a story worth telling, and therefore, isn't a game worth buying.
