Wrote a review on F95 I'd like to cross-post here since it looks like dev does not have a presence there:
"A game about music, romance, and the covid-19 pandemic as a convenient plot device" does summarize this AVN up pretty well. I was pretty surprised to see five updates and no reviews, and then I played it. I can see why people would have just dropped it. I will be honest... the beginning is a slog, and the use of COVID hits you like a sledgehammer. Contrast that to, say, Now & Then, which played with the traditional zombie genre during the COVID era by evoking themes of isolation and the destruction of old norms.
Get past the first hour, however, and it gets much better. It fits within that Lessons in Love/Sensei Overnight category of Koikatsu harem games organized around weekly schedules, a cast of LIs, and event triggers. Instead of a mentally broken teacher in Japan, you play a prodigy teenage musician brought into an all-girls music conservatory in rural Midwestern US by an eccentric Headmistress to act as a mentor/object of desire to her pupils of great potential. The stakes are... the conservatory is at risk of closing during the COVID era economy, and the last chance at survival is impressing a billionaire investor with a Spring Showcase of all the students.
Over the course of the next few months, the MC attends classes with the star pupils in A-wing, and slowly but surely a few of them warm up to him more than others. The love interests don't fit the same anime archetypes as in aforementioned comparable AVNs, but a few of them are still one-dimensional this early on. But as typical from this "genre", most of the developed LIs have faced hardships in their lives, and much the romance involves the MC relating to them by listening, consoling, and giving his own background. The quality of dialogue writing is excellent, and I would be surprised and impressed if the dev is not a native English speaker.
Unfortunately, the writing fails in two places: the MC, and the plot. The MC is a Gary Stu with no discernable flaws, and the Headmistress spends the entire AVN talking about how wonderful and talented he is. He is humble and recognizes how good he has it, but the lack of flaws ultimately makes him merely a vessel for the reader and not an interesting character to root for. When he speaks of his parents suffering in the early days of COVID, it falls flat. Speaking of COVID, you could completely remove all references to it and make it simply about living isolated in the middle of nowhere at a conservatory and the plot would be unaffected. As someone without musical talents, experiencing life among these young creatives is interesting, and constant reference to COVID feels pointless and does not seem to be relevant to anything moving forward in the plot.
Within the character-driven elements of the plot, the romance is extremely well written, especially in the last two updates. The emotions of the LIs feel genuine and heartfelt, and I found myself rooting for quite a few of them. I was heavily concerned early on that it would become a catch 'em all harem game when a lewd scene popped up with a LI within the first 30 minutes, but the writing for that character since that event has been realistic within this world's logic. These are eccentric girls, with one boy, in the middle of nowhere, encouraged by a (somewhat creepy) eccentric Headmistress, but they are also inexperienced and anxious girls. Their actions reflect this reality, so progress toward lewd scenes is slow but purposeful, and lewd scenes are awkward when they occur, except when involving the more experienced more depraved staff members.
Perhaps an artistic choice, perhaps a limitation of the dev, but some of the models are not very appealing. I suspect part of it is an attempt to make the girls appear less Japanese in the Koikatsu engine, but it has mixed results.
In overall, I played this out of curiosity, but I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed it. Its quality across all releases probably justifies 3 stars, but with the strength of the romance dialogue and the improvements in recent updates, I will give it 4 stars.
Keep in mind my criticism is my opinion and its your story to tell. Rest assured, soundsommelier, this is an AVN I will be following! This will catch its audience in due time and I anticipate this AVN will only get better! I would hazard to say the 0.4 and 0.5 content feels like a different game.
I am most impressed so far with the Kaylyn, Lily and Jayd plots. Lily is an absolute sweetheart, and Kaylyn's intensity is... yikes.