This is a fantastic game to play, if you can handle the challenges that come with it.
Defending Lydia Collier is a very Traditional Visual Novel. Old-school Japanese visual novels traditionally had dedicated branching storylines, where you could only see all the endings by playing multiple times. And sometimes could only see the "True Ending" by playing multiple times and fulfilling specific choice or action qualifications. For a modern game comparison, think of Nier: Automata. Unfortunately traditional VN's do not, generally, have the difference in story and gamplay that Nier has with repeated play. But, you will get into relations with different LIs, so there are many differences each play. Stephanie is completely different from Vanessa, as is Ellie's path. And we're not just talking about vanilla or "phoned-in" differences.
It is clear that White Phantom Games has put and has to put an incredible amount of work into this game. The choices they've made in the making of this game set it apart from at least 90% of the games on here for the discrete paths alone. This is something you don't see often anymore in VNs because it is SO much work. It takes longer to do updates. Since this is all an Early Access development cycle, eventually, based on player's choices, they may end up "stuck" in their current chosen path because it may be several more updates before their path will get an update. This can piss off a lot of players, as you can see in the discussion threads, Defending Lydia Collier doesn't seem to be suffering TOO much because of it. Reviews are high and mostly positive, discussion thread hasn't had to be split due to comment spam, etc.
If you are like me, however, and don't like multiple Replays and not being able to see everything all at one go, it's tough. KoGa3 has us covered with their Settings/Gallery Unlocker mod. I would recommend this if you are like me. It does lessen the impact of things, so if you end up with a favorite LI(s), I would make a play through focused on them and see that to the eventual end. Seeing things from the Gallery with the build up and context hits differently when you're in the story and, hopefully, invested in it.
There isn't a walkthrough mod anymore, but there is a PDF walkthrough that will be necessary for your own sanity (at least it is for me). Making a WTMod for this game is A LOT more work than most other games because of the complexity involved in the game script and structure. I would love to see it get picked up again, but I'm not holding my breath.
Play till the overhead in the game mechanics and organization frustrates you, and then fill in the holes with the Gallery Mod. Or sample the gallery mod and then use the walkthrough PDF to figure out what story line to focus on and play focused on that and use Gallery to catch what you miss.
Edit: Formatting, bold bled through the rest of the review from the first linked item. And following update.
Update:
I didn't address aesthetics. This is an older game that is still going. So there are familiar models and set pieces. The quality of renders does reflect experience level as time goes on. I probably forgot to cover this above because it doesn't stand out.
Writing. I don't know, a number of recent reviews list this as "bad" or sub-par. Each to their own, I guess. Maybe I just haven't gone deep enough. But I've played Stephanie, Ellie, and Vanessa to the point of either getting a Ren'py error that stops that (I would assume is my fault due to using a WTMod back then), but I know there were/are some errors with the recent updates that don't involve the Mods. I don't know. I'm not floored by the writing, but I don't think it's sub-par. Just maintaining and keeping this script going at the level it is at is incredibly hard. I'm just not seeing bad writing, corny sex dialog, or grammar errors (WPG is from the UK, no Google Translate involved, sometimes "their" is used instead of "there", but it's only a few times) . Certainly nothing to nitpick about. Again, in comparison to a lot of what I've seen this year, this is good. None of the typical tropes are present.
I respect the levels that WPG is going to with this. For example (incoming spoilers),
I can't think of a potentially more divisive mainstream (on F95)game. You'll either love it or hate it for what it is. As I said earlier, I hate games where I can't see everything with one play ( I judiciously use mods), where relationships aren't silo'd (no consequences for cheating, the girls only know about and interact with each other if it makes sense for the story, not the typical harem because those seem impossible to finish satisfyingly), and I feel open world/sandbox is a gimmick/crutch style stolen from MMOs who could only build worlds and quests that way but that allow Single-Player game developers to use them to get some development freedoms, but it always seems to create more work than it saves and bites them in the ass at some point later in the development. I should hate this game. It's not open world, but there IS so much that frustrates me playing it (I don't see the point to the Teams minigame, I look for the answers in the Walkthrough and hurry through it). But I respect the work put in and if I control my exposure to what frustrates me, I do really enjoy the game. But, yeah, I cheat (Gallery Mod, settings, etc)
Defending Lydia Collier is a very Traditional Visual Novel. Old-school Japanese visual novels traditionally had dedicated branching storylines, where you could only see all the endings by playing multiple times. And sometimes could only see the "True Ending" by playing multiple times and fulfilling specific choice or action qualifications. For a modern game comparison, think of Nier: Automata. Unfortunately traditional VN's do not, generally, have the difference in story and gamplay that Nier has with repeated play. But, you will get into relations with different LIs, so there are many differences each play. Stephanie is completely different from Vanessa, as is Ellie's path. And we're not just talking about vanilla or "phoned-in" differences.
It is clear that White Phantom Games has put and has to put an incredible amount of work into this game. The choices they've made in the making of this game set it apart from at least 90% of the games on here for the discrete paths alone. This is something you don't see often anymore in VNs because it is SO much work. It takes longer to do updates. Since this is all an Early Access development cycle, eventually, based on player's choices, they may end up "stuck" in their current chosen path because it may be several more updates before their path will get an update. This can piss off a lot of players, as you can see in the discussion threads, Defending Lydia Collier doesn't seem to be suffering TOO much because of it. Reviews are high and mostly positive, discussion thread hasn't had to be split due to comment spam, etc.
If you are like me, however, and don't like multiple Replays and not being able to see everything all at one go, it's tough. KoGa3 has us covered with their Settings/Gallery Unlocker mod. I would recommend this if you are like me. It does lessen the impact of things, so if you end up with a favorite LI(s), I would make a play through focused on them and see that to the eventual end. Seeing things from the Gallery with the build up and context hits differently when you're in the story and, hopefully, invested in it.
There isn't a walkthrough mod anymore, but there is a PDF walkthrough that will be necessary for your own sanity (at least it is for me). Making a WTMod for this game is A LOT more work than most other games because of the complexity involved in the game script and structure. I would love to see it get picked up again, but I'm not holding my breath.
Play till the overhead in the game mechanics and organization frustrates you, and then fill in the holes with the Gallery Mod. Or sample the gallery mod and then use the walkthrough PDF to figure out what story line to focus on and play focused on that and use Gallery to catch what you miss.
Edit: Formatting, bold bled through the rest of the review from the first linked item. And following update.
Update:
I didn't address aesthetics. This is an older game that is still going. So there are familiar models and set pieces. The quality of renders does reflect experience level as time goes on. I probably forgot to cover this above because it doesn't stand out.
Writing. I don't know, a number of recent reviews list this as "bad" or sub-par. Each to their own, I guess. Maybe I just haven't gone deep enough. But I've played Stephanie, Ellie, and Vanessa to the point of either getting a Ren'py error that stops that (I would assume is my fault due to using a WTMod back then), but I know there were/are some errors with the recent updates that don't involve the Mods. I don't know. I'm not floored by the writing, but I don't think it's sub-par. Just maintaining and keeping this script going at the level it is at is incredibly hard. I'm just not seeing bad writing, corny sex dialog, or grammar errors (WPG is from the UK, no Google Translate involved, sometimes "their" is used instead of "there", but it's only a few times) . Certainly nothing to nitpick about. Again, in comparison to a lot of what I've seen this year, this is good. None of the typical tropes are present.
I respect the levels that WPG is going to with this. For example (incoming spoilers),
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I can't think of a potentially more divisive mainstream (on F95)game. You'll either love it or hate it for what it is. As I said earlier, I hate games where I can't see everything with one play ( I judiciously use mods), where relationships aren't silo'd (no consequences for cheating, the girls only know about and interact with each other if it makes sense for the story, not the typical harem because those seem impossible to finish satisfyingly), and I feel open world/sandbox is a gimmick/crutch style stolen from MMOs who could only build worlds and quests that way but that allow Single-Player game developers to use them to get some development freedoms, but it always seems to create more work than it saves and bites them in the ass at some point later in the development. I should hate this game. It's not open world, but there IS so much that frustrates me playing it (I don't see the point to the Teams minigame, I look for the answers in the Walkthrough and hurry through it). But I respect the work put in and if I control my exposure to what frustrates me, I do really enjoy the game. But, yeah, I cheat (Gallery Mod, settings, etc)