How does it compare to Koikatsu?

[SomeMage]

With Koikatsu being the only Illusion game I played, what should I expect from this one? Personally I'm more interested in "gameplay" than just creating characters. How are their personalities and sandboxing? What about number of H positions? I have to admit Koikatsu quickly got old, so I wonder if I should invest in this one...

[Jehuty]

I played one, and to be honest Koikatsu is better (if you forget the visual style difference).

Lots of grind to build house, sex animations look worse, speaking animations are very primitive (when I saw them first time I thought it's some bug).

Looks like they invested too much into survival and builing aspect and "big" map, so they had to noticeably cut some corners on actual sex related content.

Character editor has some new interesting options (like separate hair strands with length adjusted with slider), and clothing textures are very detailed (you can see separate strands distinctinctly if you zoom in enough).

Also you can play as a boy, or a girl, or a futa out of the box, though you still need uncensors to get proper genitals.

If you prefer spending more time in Studio than in main game - you may like this one though, it has some new options as well (lights blending, allowing characters to walk on user defined paths in scene).


So I would not recommend this one honestly, unless it's on a discount and / or you are Studio enthusiast.

[Laughing kookaburra]

H sessions in this game is really really bad...

[Cyberbeing]

To be quite blunt, they are entirely different games. You will end up comparing apples to oranges.

If you like doing more stuff in the game I think you will like it.

[pt_kamen]

Illusion has two different Styles, probably it has two or more different teams developing games. One is anime looking and the other try to go for a more realistic look. Koikatsu was the anime looking one, in line with other previous titles like Artificial Academy 1 and 2. This one is the more realistic kind, in line with Honey Select and Play Home, with similar editor options and animations.
Usually they publish one anime looking one and then one or two of the more realistic ones. I think the support, add-ons (free and payed, normally more items, clothes and animations) and expansions (with extra personalities, items, cloths, animations and even game mechanics) is linked with the success of the game. Koikatsu had proper expansions (two or three I think) so it’s life time was quite long. This one didn’t (had two special payed DLCs), so it’s still very bare bones on what you can actually do and how you can edit characters, even with mods in mind.
It’s already announced for Steam because the next one, coming up on May has already been announced, and it’s gonna be Honey Select 2, so it’ll be again in this style, but a safer bet on sales anyway.
With this in mind, no, it is not like Koikatsu, there are a lot of differences. In one or two years will probably get another anime style Illusion game and that one will be closer to Koikatsu, probably even a Koikatsu 2 or Artificial Academy 3. Those usually have more game play options. But for straight “game play” (wink wink) Honey Select 2 is the one to look out for. But since it’s a game in a style relies on an editor with a worst UI, and there’s literally nothing else to do other than “game play” it’ll probably not come to Steam? Play Home sure as heck won’t.