Dark Magic is a really fun corruption visual novel that backs out of that premise pretty early in development to instead focus on sappy stuff. I like and appreciate the cast, and the kinky situations they get into, but it's simply not the premise that the game started off with - and therefore, I think, requires a little more scrutiny than the game's worldbuilding was designed to withstand.
Long story short: somewhere in the game about three or four girls in it stops being about "casting a corruption spell" on women and becomes about befriending them. Progress switches from a sandbox mechanic to something you achieve by talking to the girl in question and romancing them, like a dating sim. The plot motivates tension by more traditional damsel-in-distress means, instead of just the protagonist being caught. You're not supposed to play a bad guy here.
Other games have done this switch up before, where the protagonist catches feelings and changes his ways, but those felt a lot more intentional - probably because they were inspired by Dark Magic, actually. But what we end up with is a harem world premise seemingly build specifically around the idea that we'd be skipping all the romance stuff, delving deep into the romance stuff. We have to learn how society in this weird Amazon land copes with the lack of men, we have to learn what they do in their spare time, what their military looks like, and what kinds of threats they face. I just don't think the answers to those questions are compelling enough to replace the lost spice when the premise switched up. Nor do I think the new characters have the same x-factor when we're just seducing them normally.
Try Dark Magic, for sure, it's got a lot of meat on its bones, and a lot of that meat is really, really good. But be prepared for a romance visual novel instead of one focused strictly on corruption, and be prepared for a lot of like, F-tier ecchi anime worldbuilding.
Long story short: somewhere in the game about three or four girls in it stops being about "casting a corruption spell" on women and becomes about befriending them. Progress switches from a sandbox mechanic to something you achieve by talking to the girl in question and romancing them, like a dating sim. The plot motivates tension by more traditional damsel-in-distress means, instead of just the protagonist being caught. You're not supposed to play a bad guy here.
Other games have done this switch up before, where the protagonist catches feelings and changes his ways, but those felt a lot more intentional - probably because they were inspired by Dark Magic, actually. But what we end up with is a harem world premise seemingly build specifically around the idea that we'd be skipping all the romance stuff, delving deep into the romance stuff. We have to learn how society in this weird Amazon land copes with the lack of men, we have to learn what they do in their spare time, what their military looks like, and what kinds of threats they face. I just don't think the answers to those questions are compelling enough to replace the lost spice when the premise switched up. Nor do I think the new characters have the same x-factor when we're just seducing them normally.
Try Dark Magic, for sure, it's got a lot of meat on its bones, and a lot of that meat is really, really good. But be prepared for a romance visual novel instead of one focused strictly on corruption, and be prepared for a lot of like, F-tier ecchi anime worldbuilding.