let me just start off by saying that this game is the fucking goonernomicon, and if you gave it to a repressed victorian they would probably not live to see 40. it's deranged in exactly the way i enjoy out of smut online, so i'm grateful it exists. if the game had less bugs and quest softlocks then i could tolerate grinding new profiles back to the routes i want a bit, but i gotta mention something that i haven't seen around much: 

getting into your car takes for-fucking-ever. 

there is an upgrade that lets you go to your room from anywhere, which is appreciated, since it gets rid of at least one sequence of lengthy inputs per 5-10 car trips a day. overall this problem was way worse before the map optimization. but it doesn't address the even bigger time sink of:

• leaving your room
• potentially hitting a repeatable cutscene and having to skip through it
• going to the garage
• getting into your car
• clicking on drive
• waiting for the map to animate
• clicking an area
• clicking a destination

this sequence of inputs MUST be performed in order to get to any location in the game outside your house, which is where most of the game takes place. every time. and on top that you've got loading and animating times. god forbid if you have to select a different destination and have to click around. and as much as i enjoy all the juice put into the animations and everything, they do add a lot of seconds to my sessions in a way that isn't very engaging, so it'd be great if they could be shortened, optimized, skippable, or all of the above. that's probably a lot of overhead as i understand it, so it's nbd, but the navigation and car is really difficult to deal with!

then consider that most areas have their own version of this problem. like take the forest. 

1. go into the forest
2. go to the temple entrance
3. go to the temple
4. go to the shrine.

now if you want to get back into your car, you have to do all of that in reverse order just to drive somewhere else. 

and probably one of the worst examples is with ken and his mom in their story arc. in order to get into ken's mom's bedroom, you have to potentially walk in on him and his mom, skip through their dialogue, go into the room, and then skip through their dialogue again once you leave.

this is also annoying for me as someone who has optimized using the keyboard inputs, because some areas hard-lock you if you hit the keyboard input too quickly. so i have to carefully wait for the button to be safe to press. but i can't even plant my hand on my keyboard. i eventually have to use my mouse to navigate for driving and speaking to NPCs, and well, let's just say this game isn't as fun to play when i have to do it with both my hands occupied by my computer. so i have to annoyingly switch between the more streamlined keyboard inputs and my mouse inputs, which feel less precise and responsive due to the performance hiccups. it would be nice if the travel map and the NPC speech bubble also had the number shortcuts, or even letter shortcuts, so i could operate the main game loop with just one mode of input.

furthermore, the way you navigate into areas is not consistent. usually, the 1 position on the far left has you going back where you came from, which is a good design choice. but for instance in plainview, you show up outside the farm, press 2 to go deeper, and then 1 is the barn, and 2 is the "go back" option. (the other navigation options are also strangely ambiguous; like it's hard to remember that "enter" takes you into the house with clay and not the barn, which is the most relevant place in plainview) 

all in all, i really enjoy the gameplay loop of this game, but it would be vastly improved i think with more QoL. perhaps:

• clicking car while in your room directly puts you on the driving map or at least in your car
• keyboard input shortcuts for more than just dialogue and navigation; ideally, game never requires more than one hand (fr tho)
• make sure 1 always maps to "go back" and the rest of the navigation is organized by relevancy
• possibly cut out or be able to bypass middleman areas like outside gabriel and haniya's mansion until they are actually relevant; this area doesn't exist for chloe, for instance, so it just feels like bloat without events. if the area must be there, at least have the navigation options for inside the building listed to avoid another hub.
• some kind of phone notification if you receive an email; it's extremely easy to forget checking your emails because new emails aren't notified or highlighted in any way
• maybe a toggle for weather effects; sometimes they just ruin the vibe of a shot, but also, sometimes scenes are bugged where the weather appears indoors where it shouldn't
• i have completely solved the dnd game so much that i can autopilot it; i'd love a mercy option at least, if my numbers are so high that the game assumes i have won

anyway, those are my two cents with my dozens of hours played. hope the feedback is appreciated!

Yes, it’s true; the replayability is annoying because the progress is rather slow, and as you say, having to take so many steps to get from one place to another makes it less enjoyable, especially if you replay it.

Personally, I have an injector that allows me to modify the game’s clock and make it run three or as many times faster as I want; so I’ve found the replayability entertaining and decent. But if I wanted to do that without the speed hack, I’m sure I’d be constantly clicking on the screen, even with fast-forward dialogue enabled.

I really like the game, but I definitely feel that the replayability is tedious. I agree with you, and I hope you take the feedback into account, without any hate or anything like that.