(Spoilers) Questions about the Amos route

[「CM」Aironfaar]

...and a wall of text to give context to the questions at the bottom of this post, ha. Bear with me. (No pun intended.)

Yesterday, a friend of mine pointed this game out to me as an example of games coming to Steam he thinks of as cringe-worthy. He's just not fond of visual novels, while I'm pretty open to those but never played any. A bit of research while dodging spoilers led me to finally try the genre with this game.

Since it's comparably "in your face" whom the dateable men are, I decided to look at the cast and go for the, to me, visually most pleasing character first in my first approach before just playing around with the options and stuff like achievement hunting. I followed a spoiler-free guide while enjoying the dialogue to unlock the route of Amos and, starting there, went without any guide at all, hoping for a "feel good" kind of playthrough.

So far, it definitely was such a playthrough for the most part. I knew the route seemed "too perfect", and I knew there would be some kind of "big reveal" challenging that relationship, but when it came to it, the reveal still caught me flat-footed due to its nature. I saved before the response and had to stop playing for now.

Up to that part, I even was able to, at least mostly, relate. I'd even be fine with the reveal if there was one more nuance of response available. I don't want to just "break up" that route, but I don't really feel cool with either of "that's cool, I'm in", "whatever floats your boat, won't judge" and "so gross, I need to be insulting". I'd like to go for something along the lines of "I need time to think and talk with you about it more" - something that isn't accepting right off the bat, but open-minded and appreciative enough to not be a ♥♥♥♥ or break up immediately. That's along the lines how I'd react in Mark's position, and while I know it's just a game, simply settling for whatever, for something that doesn't feel "right" to me in a matter of this magnitude, takes away a significant chunk of that "feel good" part.

Thing is, Amos gives off that old-school romantic vibe, which usually includes monogamy, which in turn was part of why I could relate to the route. It created vastly different expectations. In turn, I was taken aback by his "I didn't have the balls to be up-front about this, but if it's going to happen, this is going to be an open relationship because of a not-about-the-sex-but-still-sex wrestling fetish" reveal coming more or less out of the blue.

I completely get that from a writer's point of view, it's quite the plot twist and is most probably meant to cause this kind of reaction, among others. It just frontally collides with my hopes for a "feel good" first playthrough full throttle, so to speak, due to the lack of that one dialog option. So, to finally get to my questions:

Does this route have any possible outcomes outside of "open relationship" and "breakup"?
Is there any possible development, even if not outright monogamous or the like, that might restore the "feel good" vibe for my first playthrough?
If the answer to the second question is "possibly", how do I need to respond to Amos' reveal?

Thanks for reading, I'm looking forward to your answers.

[obscurasoft]

Yes, there are four different endings, in fact. One romantic (and that is monogamous), one sexual, one surreal, and one bad ending. The Amos route is built a bit differently in that it has fewer dead ends and tracks your choices and ultimately pushes you to one of those endings depending on how you've played.

[「CM」Aironfaar]

That's wonderful news. I did get the chance to play just a tiny little bit further, which I used to re-read the dialogue leading to the decision I stopped at. After the initial "shock", it read quite a bit less drastic than it did at first, and the second response option felt alright too. (Which basically means that I put the "I need time to think" response I would have chosen if it was available into effect on a meta level, lol.) While I didn't get much further yet, I figured that there may be a path on that route that lead to what I've been hoping for.

Thank you kindly, both for the detailed response and for creating this game! So far, I've loved it and I'm looking forward to both finishing the current playthrough and just playing around afterwards, seeing how things unfold with the other characters. The reasons I chose Coming Out on Top as my first ever visual novel are that the characters' personalities, the humor, the subject (I had no issues at all with coming out and am not very particular to coming out stories, but this one has a really nice vibe to it) and, to some extent, admittedly the beard and body hair settings made the fact that only one of the (main) cast is visually appealing to me without compromise comparably irrelevant.
That late night decision to buy it was a good one, the game's absolutely worth the money. :)

[tarrkus]

I'd like to chime in and say I bought this game purely for the Amos playthough, he's the only guy that's truly my type, and I was not disappointed.

The game gets a little too real with this part, everyone has certain things or quirks about them that will make you second guess the relationship. It's going to happen, we're all different.

I was very pleased with the entire "good" route for Amos, so much that I went back and finished the other 3 very quickly.

[Frostbyte]

The Amos' route was the most unpleasant for me to play. This is something I wouldn't talk about, I would only call things off and think of him as an arsehole for leading me into thinking he was into those old-school monogamous romances while he was into that kind of stuff.

I totally understand the point of your post, though. I'm just sharing my experience. His route is one I'm definitely not replaying.

[urBestAngel]

Originally posted by Frostbyte:

The Amos' route was the most unpleasant for me to play. This is something I wouldn't talk about, I would only call things off and think of him as an arsehole for leading me into thinking he was into those old-school monogamous romances while he was into that kind of stuff.

I totally understand the point of your post, though. I'm just sharing my experience. His route is one I'm definitely not replaying.

I know this old and I don't want to bump the post but I couldn't agree more.

The Amos route was just really disappointing.

I already made an entire post about it lol.

Like, he expects me to be with/date him while he has that kind of hobby, even potentially involving his ex again?! Christ almighty, absolutely not!

[chairman meow]

Originally posted by GunChaoS:

Originally posted by Frostbyte:

The Amos' route was the most unpleasant for me to play. This is something I wouldn't talk about, I would only call things off and think of him as an arsehole for leading me into thinking he was into those old-school monogamous romances while he was into that kind of stuff.

I totally understand the point of your post, though. I'm just sharing my experience. His route is one I'm definitely not replaying.

I know this old and I don't want to bump the post but I couldn't agree more.

The Amos route was just really disappointing.

I already made an entire post about it lol.

Like, he expects me to be with/date him while he has that kind of hobby, even potentially involving his ex again?! Christ almighty, absolutely not!

Dating is messy. For people with kinks, doubly so. It's been a long time since I did an Amos route, but I remember feeling pity that he had to hide that part of himself. While I wouldn't do an open relationship irl, it was fun to enact out in a game that didn't require all the hard work that open relationships take. I've also done way too many VNs where the route was pretty much smooth sailing. Some twists here and there keep me interested.