Rating: (four eggplants out of five, lost one because the shop minigame is actual hell)

The romance progression in this thing is weirdly slow then suddenly very fast, like someone forgot to animate the middle frames. You're Mike, stuck at grandma's for summer, which sounds like the setup for a boring vacation but turns into something else entirely. The store mechanic is where I got hung up for way too long, restocking shelves and watching numbers go up while I'm trying to figure out which dialogue option makes the cute neighbor girl take her top off. There's this one scene where you're helping grandma's old friend organize her attic and the tension builds so gradually I didn't notice I was holding my breath until the CG popped up and I actually jumped a little. The art style is that specific kind of hentai where everyone looks slightly too young but the game says they're all legal so whatever, I'm not the morality police.

The quest system is basically just "talk to person, do thing, get scene" but sometimes the thing you need to do is locked behind shop upgrades and I spent twenty minutes trying to figure out why I couldn't progress with the redhead only to realize I needed to buy a specific shelf item first. Who designs this? The relationship tracking is nonexistent, you just kind of stumble into scenes and hope you're on the right path. Grandma's character model looks unsettlingly detailed compared to everyone else, like the artist had a favorite and it wasn't the girls you're supposed to be pursuing.

The friends tag is doing a lot of heavy lifting here because half these "friends" are clearly waiting for you to make a move and the other half are just there to sell you things. There's a moment with the childhood friend character where she's helping you stock inventory and her hand brushes yours and the game treats it like a major event but then nothing happens for three more in-game days. The pacing is all over the place. I wish the shop wasn't so central because honestly I just want to skip to the parts where people take their clothes off, but the game makes you earn it through capitalism. The CG scenes themselves are worth the grind though, especially the one with the librarian type who visits the store every Tuesday. You know the one.