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Thanks for the reply! This is a pretty well thought-out response, which I appreciate, because I was a bit harsh in my review. You have clearly put a lot of effort into this project, which I respect. Admittedly, I have only played through a few hours of content, so I guess I haven't really gotten to any of the newer anti-slavery content you describe.

Regarding the pee scene, I believe it was one of the park scenes from exploring the town. Not technically unavoidable in that you don't have to trigger it, but there's no indication beforehand that it's going to involve urination.

As far as the slavery content: my concern is that early on, the PC's apparent indifference doesn't come across as a result of a natural consequence of living in a world where slavery is common or permitted (which would make complete sense if he had grown up in the country), but as a weird non-reaction to something that should be foreign and probably disturbing to him. You'd be the lore expert, not me, but I believe it's mentioned that slavery isn't practiced where he came from. And given that it's pretty early in the story that the PC is able to encounter the consequences of slavery and anti-elvish racism in this new setting he finds himself in. You compare the setting to colonial America. It was often foreigners, like English or French visitors or immigrants after the practice of slavery had been abolished in their homelands, or northerners who were not immersed in the slave culture, who would go to the American South and become horrified and radicalized against slavery. Anyway, insofar as you have added more content where the PC becomes anti-slavery, I'm glad to hear about it, but I really do think that there should be more ability to express such an opinion early on.

This is a bit disconnected, but I'd like to offer you a bit of praise for something I liked: early on, when Lin asked what she should call me, I just typed in the name I had given my character, and she specifically acknowledged that I was asking her to just call me by my name and not "Master" or something. This was good for immersion, and I'm glad you specifically implemented a check for if the player uses the name given to the PC.

Anyway, regarding the scene with Vanessa criticizing the PC, I think that by the point in the story at which it occurs (or at least by the point at which I encountered it), the PC has not yet earned his anti-slavery bona fides and thus does not deserve for the scene to be resolved in his favor with Vanessa being told off. The most I could say for him at that point was that he's been nice to Lin, has not forced her to do anything she doesn't want to, and has not made her wear a collar. You say doesn't treat Lin like a slave; I think whether that's true depends on whether he's paying her for her labor, and I don't think that's explicitly addressed in the game at that point. My point here is that this creates a bizarre thematic tension: the game keeps showing us that slavery is bad, but in this moment the PC, who up to this point has not really done anything to indicate feelings on the matter beyond perhaps mild disapproval, seems to be held up as a good person not just despite owning a slave, but actually good in his capacity as a slaveowner. If his response to Vanessa was to express that he, too, is anti-slavery, that he only owns a slave due to circumstance, and that he treats Lin as a free individual to the fullest possible extent, this would be thematically coherent, but this can't really happen, because by this point he hasn't really been shown to have these convictions or to take action on them. On the other hand, if the situation were to resolve with Vanessa's words actually affecting him and making him think twice about his place in this society, this would also be thematically coherent and would probably be a pretty powerful moment. As it stands, though, the scene gives off the impression that Vanessa is wrong to criticize PC because, although slavery is bad in general, PC is a nice slaver, as though the real problem with institutionalized ownership of people is that most people don't do it kindly enough.

Like I said above, though, I'm glad to hear that the PC is able to take a more explicit anti-slavery stance later on in the story. Knowing this, I will likely continue playing so that I can see some of this content. I was getting a bit frustrated with PC's apparent apathy.

I left this as a rating, but I will also leave it as a comment here because I'm not sure where/if you can see the reviews people leave for games on itch.

I cannot believe I made an account specifically to review a porn game, but here we are. Here's the long and short of it: Harem Hotel is a visual novel, it has lots sexy girls you can fuck, the sex is animated and looks pretty good, and if that's all you care about then you'll probably like it. Okay, now to the more critical part of this review. I'll try to keep this brief because, well, it's a review of a porn game.

First, let me mention the size of this thing. Frankly, it takes up way too much space on my hard drive, thanks to all those renders and animations and such. If I were the dev, I'd focus on reducing the disk space it requires before working on adding any new content. As far as content goes, the main appeal here, the sexual content, is pretty good. There are a variety of hot girls who appeal to different interests and fetishes and whatever. I must say, though, I hate looking at the player character. His hair makes him look like an aging Italian gangster. Also, while the game mostly lets you opt out of fetishes you're not interested in (including, in quite a rare occurrence for this genre of game, anal sex), there's at least one instance where public urination (which, given how many times it shows up in this game, I suspect is the dev's personal fetish) is shown with no warning and no way of opting out beforehand.

While the game delivers a lot of sexy situations, the writing is pretty subpar (although for a porn game it's probably better than average). The story--you inherit your grandfather's hotel (which is functionally more like an apartment building) and move to the country it's in to take over the business--isn't anything special, and nothing about the way any of the characters (let alone the POV character) interact with the story and the world makes anything feel interesting or gripping. There are a few moments that shine among the otherwise mostly one-note and tropey character arcs, but these are few and far between. The player character has the personality of a cardboard box. It's a shame the writing isn't better, because the dev clearly put some effort into the worldbuilding. What I don't understand is why someone would go to the trouble of creating a world like this, and then making the story so unoriginal and pretty much incidental to the key facts of the world it's set in. Here's where I get into my main criticism of the writing: this game's treatment of slavery. First, I want to clarify that this has nothing to do with political correctness or whatever. It's fine to put slavery in your porn game, and I don't think anyone is going to play this game and suddenly decide that they're in favor of slavery. No, my issue is that from a story and game design perspective, this game fails at delivering the player a coherent experience when it comes to the way they interact with the setting and with the presence of slavery in that setting. The lore of this setting (which is actually pretty interesting) is that it takes place on a continent that is the homeland of the elves, but which was brutally colonized by humans, and in which elves are an oppressed slave underclass. The game repeatedly makes a point of showing us the cruelty and inhumanity of this society, and several characters openly criticize the racist ideology that the humans use to justify their continued subjugation of elves. We see elves being mistreated, being called animals (even though they're clearly just as intelligent as humans), being left hungry on the street. We see humans with some elven ancestry being discriminated against. The player character, though, can at best be described as indifferent. 

It's worth noting here that this is not one of those games where the player takes the role of an explicitly awful person. The player character is no saint, and he has zero personality whatsoever, but I get the sense that he's meant to be a reasonably nice guy who genuinely cares for the people around him, at least a little (for example, in one scene, after volunteering with a priestess to hand out food to the poor and seeing her turn away some hungry people, he goes back afterwards to give food to the people who had been turned away). Add the fact that he's an immigrant from a country without slavery, and I think it's unreasonable that the player isn't really given the option to be firmly anti-slavery. I don't think the game should force the player into this role (again,  this is a porn game, and if you want a slave harem, then go for it), but I also think it's completely immersion-breaking that this character from a non-slaveholding society who moves to a slaveholding society, observes it injustices, and is immediately bequeathed a slave, seems totally unconcerned and is not put off at all. 

In one scene, a character (rightly) criticizes the player character for owning a slave, and she's told off for being judgmental by the slave (Lin) and the player character! This is completely ridiculous and totally incongruous with the general way in which the game portrays slavery as a deeply cruel and unjust institution, and with the way that Lin herself has experienced a traumatic life due to being an enslaved elf! It doesn't matter how nice of a slavemaster the player character is; he is still a willing participant in the institution of slavery. And hey, fine, if you want to have your player character be a willing slaveholder, then go for it, but at least have the courage to portray him as a bad guy and not as this mythical enlightened, benevolent slaver. Seriously, for pete's sake, if you're gonna make the injustices of society a centerpiece of a story, the protagonist should have the ability to actively oppose them (and, conversely, to really lean into the oppressor role). Instead, our absolute empty shell of a player character experiences some mild culture shock and shrugs. I just do not understand how you can go to all the trouble of worldbuilding and then fall so flat when it comes to actually telling a story within the setting.