Hiya. Been more than a while, so its nice to see this is still going.
Since there doesn't appear to have been too many updates since I left, I'll go ahead and add some more viewpoints to the surveys.
So background. My experience comes from games that last till about the 30s before I start a new character. By and large, most of my characters left Power at 16 and at least tried to focus Cunning a little bit. I picked Hard for all of the NPC's first specialization choices, so I may tend to have more traits than some. Every character always took Shameless. I abused the Daytime system and reloaded the game whenever I didn't get at least 1 attribute point from Daytime activities, so I may be above the bar Attribute points-wise as well. Further, I typically ran straight for every single cache that appeared, and used the excess money to buy even more Attribute points. I pretty much never used the Porn or Exercise options unless I wanted Yui.
So which Character felt the most powerful? Going off of my games, Kat wasn't very hard. She was very easy to Face-sit her Willpower into oblivion and anything she did could usually be Reversal'd. There were times Pheromones did some ridiculous things, but she was not usually who I was afraid of. Angel was usually not terrible as any female character can Breast Smother her to stop her Tempts, anyone who didn't care about her...um...Silvertongue? Expert Tonguework? Whichever Daytime activity she gave, if you didn't get the Trait from her, she didn't get it either, which left her open to Face-sitting which also stops Tempts. The Dark Talismans with Force Dismiss that were always lying around basically sealed the deal. Mara was Face-sit fodder, Shame is an incredible debuff. These general tactics were usually good enough that even if I messed up w/e real strategy I had, I could just fall back on these.
But for me, Reyka was by far the scariest NPC, mostly because of her random Charms and Enthralls for days. I don't think I ever developed a way to play around it. You could Face-sit...but you don't want to Face-sit Reyka at later levels. You can Breast Smother, but not everyone has breasts, and getting into an appropriate position was sometimes a problem. It sometimes felt like it mostly came down to "take Quick Recovery and Skeptical on every character and hope you don't just randomly lose." Most of the other characters don't seem to get near as much power from double specialization as Rekya does throughout the mid-game.
Airi was also sometimes difficult as well, but her difficulty felt fair and fun. I weirdly don't remember much about her difficulty besides that. Cassie and Jewel were never memorable. Past the early game, they never felt threatening, but they didn't feel as weak as Mara.
Its worth noting that I think Face-sit is a bit too powerful though. It's stacking Shame can carry any build through the early and mid game, and the way it tears through Willpower is really, really strong. All that and it does good temptation damage too.
Which Attribute type? Nymphomania by far. It regens her Willpower on orgasm I think, and that's about all I know about it. xD
Strongest Addiction was Rekya, but that's probably at least partially because random Charms and Enthralls could put you in situations that you couldn't really avoid it. That and that you couldn't actually get it cured either. I actually sometimes sought out Angel's addiction, was actually helpful. I suspect Jewel's might be too sometimes.
On updating characters, I like Rosea the best, but that's mostly just because I like the sound of her skills more than anything. If that were aside, Maya seems the most interesting as a character.
Mechanics that need the most work: Addictions! Oh god addictions, for all the reasons already known. Following that, Attribute stuff and Status Effects seem the most important.
On Sacrifice and Determination: The skills have always felt fair to me, but I think they work on flat amounts so my experience of only playing to really early late game experience may not be helping here.
On skills having less effect in particular states: I've always felt it was kinda weird that Dark Tendrils 'trips' people who are already in various prone positions, but I feel like that's not the kind of thing you're really asking for.
