Paradise Lust 2 Preview

In case you missed the teaser, please note Paradise Lust 2 is not safe for work.

Paradise Lust 2, from developer Flexible Media, is the sequel to Paradise Lust. If you’re unfamiliar with that title, it’s a dating sim involving a yacht filled with beautiful women crashing on a deserted island, with the player taking on the role of a bartender who must survive on the island while also flirting his way into each of the women’s hearts. Paradise Lust 2 takes place after the events of that game and on that very same island, only now the survivors have made contact with the rest of the world, turned the island into a resort, and are engaged in a very wide-spanning polyamorous relationship wherein basically every one of the lovely ladies is dating our former bartender, and many of them are also dating each other.

To be frank, I find Paradise Lust 2 rather refreshing. I haven’t gone through all of the first Paradise Lust, but this feels like a fairly natural place for that game’s storyline to go and there’s no attempt to start our hero off from the beginning — aside from the fact that a handful of the characters have zipped off to start another resort and taken a few useful bits of equipment with them, such as a lizard costume that he wears to twerk at the local Big Ass Lizard (I will not elaborate). I quite enjoy a sequel that allows the player to feel like the events they went through in the prior instalment still matter, and I am rather impressed that Paradise Lust 2 manages this while also acting as a fine place to jump in for newcomers. Most of the major characters are introduced quickly, past events are referenced often enough to give newer players the gist without wasting time, and there are plenty of completely new storylines to follow, considering the three new romanceable characters in the current release.

Being a visual novel, much of what’s centre stage in Paradise Lust 2 is the writing, which was another large part of the package that I was impressed by — I tend to find well-developed characters much sexier than random bodies without a personality to go between them. I was a tad worried at first when I saw a great many skin-tight outfits that highlighted the women’s generous assets and the fact that the protagonist’s default name is “Jack Plumber” (I then renamed him to “Jill Electrician” for my own amusement). However, once the characters actually started interacting with each other, my worries vanished. There’s real chemistry between these characters and the dialogue is generally quite amusing! I especially loved one segment where one of the new characters, a guest named Emi by default, discusses her stay on the other resort that the old characters started elsewhere, where every single piece of food they served was made with Spam — called Smeat in-universe — and the guests were forced to mimic a shipwreck upon arrival. Some of the comedy admittedly didn’t land for me and I felt somewhat uncomfortable with a few lines here and there — including two jokes that bordered on being transphobic — but I feel alright with saying that the dialogue is, on the whole, very well written.

The writing also has a lot of heart behind it, with many of the characters, and Jack especially, showing genuine empathy and care for each other. Despite the resort being a sort of paradise, the characters’ lives do absolutely have their bumps, even dealing with overwork, selfish business associates, self-worth issues, and so on. This even extends to the sex scenes themselves, which involve nearly as many heart-warming gestures as they do roleplay and vigorous orgasms.

In addition to the writing, those sex scenes also benefited from some relatively smooth animation work. The character designs are a little on the simple side, but they work rather well in these scenes, undulating and gasping as their bodies visibly respond to all the pleasure they’re feeling. There are only around five such scenes so far, but they are all enticing and exciting. In a few of the early ones, which only involved masturbation, I was a bit confused as to why I was hearing sexy moaning when the woman on my screen hadn’t even started going to town on herself, but beyond that, these scenes do a fantastic job. I am particularly fond of one sequence where Jack gives a returning character, Jenn, a foot rub that turns into eating her out and then some good ol’ fashioned fucking. Partway through, Jenn calls out the name of another character that she’s got a huge crush on. Despite Jenn being super embarrassed over this, Jack very sweetly says that he doesn’t mind and they even wind up incorporating that into their intercourse. All throughout, both characters are on the screen and it truly feels like two people being together, not the player merely miming sex with a fictional character, even if they’re the one choosing how fast or slow the scene plays out and when to cum.

Outside of the sex scenes, the presentation is generally nice to look at or listen to. The soundtrack is full of groovy tropical tunes that are pleasant jams and the art uses a well-drawn cartoon style. I was a little weirded out by how much the idle characters seemed to sway and jiggle around, but that’s easy to get used to after a while. The island, known as Tuvatuva, is quite pretty in that classic tropical island style with shining beaches and green jungles, though I can’t say I’ve been stunned by any of the visuals as of yet.

The gameplay is fairly minimal so far, limited to very minor management elements, conversational choices, and several mini-games. I imagine the management side of the equation will solidify later on in Paradise Lust 2’s development, seeing as managing the resort is the overarching story of the game as of now, but at the moment, it primarily consists of earning a flat $5000 dollars every day and then spending that money on a handful of buildings and equipment that then progress the plot. The choices mostly serve to flavour the conversations and offer different jokes, which are quite fun, and also to allow Jack to flirt with the women around him. There’s a mechanic where the women will either like, dislike, or really like a topic of conversation, but there’s no noticeable difference in relationships from this system.

As for the mini-games, they tend toward the simple. They mostly involve a representation of physical activity, like clicking on a bunch of rocks to demolish them or clicking on the closest items in a box to take them out, but there are a few others. Namely, there’s one where you can swap different pieces of a scrambled image until it forms a full (very naked) picture, and there’s another where you can draw out a map of the island by holding down the mouse and sweeping it over a page. Even if these are simple and require little thought, they are usually decent fun and can be readily skipped if they aren’t.

In addition, I should note that this build of Paradise Lust 2 (version 0.3.1a) has several bugs and missing features that range from the amusing — like how some lines will be given to the wrong characters, making it seem like someone is talking to themselves — to the frustrating — like how I can’t seem to rename the new characters once their introduction has passed, despite there being a button for it. That one falls into frustrating territory because I accidentally added a space to the beginning of one character’s name so now, whenever she comes up, the dialogue just looks weirdly spaced, and I can’t change it back.

However, what’s there in Paradise Lust 2 has a remarkable amount of polish and care put into it and these issues are overall minor points. So far, the title is a fun and erotic romp with a nice little bit of heart alongside it. It’s not quite the gaming fare that I typically engage in, but I do think I’ll be coming back for more as it approaches completion.