RPGM - Completed - Amelia Blanchette Falls Over and Over Again [v1.22] [AVANTGARDE]

This is pretty good. Honestly, this is almost excellent, but there's some minor nitpicks to be done all around that lower the score a bit.

The story in this is surprisingly engaging for the overall theme, but the NTR is done in a way that is - as usual! - fucking stupid. Photograph blackmail and that type of stupid shit, which lowers the quality. But other than that, the story is surprisingly not that bad! The wizard/demon/church theme is done nicely, there's some good side-characters, and overall it's definitely readable and not just a "skip because I'm bored of the dialogue" game for me.

The art is great, the soundtrack is passable and not memorable - the opening however was a surprise and is as high quality as you'd expect in an actually good Visual Novel, which is surprising in a RPMG hentai game.

The issue, as is the usual with these RPGM type games that do most of the other beats right, is the gameplay.

For combat: It's the standard turn-based battles, and it's not BAD, but it's also... not good. It isn't easy to the point of just writing it off, but it isn't engaging enough that you actually need to think any further than type advantages and mindlessly using healing items - in other words, it's lengthy, but not nearly engaging enough to make it worth the time you're going to sink into it. It's a shame, because it's clear that they tried to make combat something appealing - noticeable in the "elite monsters" they've got going on that you can hunt and kill for better loot and other things - but it sadly fell short of actual quality turn-based RPG battles.

For exploring: It appears to me the developers missed their mark on this one. This game makes it seem as if you're going to get into a nice timeloop sandbox, where you're able to pick and choose who corrupts Amelia, what's going to happen, where you're going to investigate, these types of things. Unfortunately, it's clear that AVANTGARDE didn't want to fall too far away from the formula that has netted them success in other titles (such as the Fox Girls one or the Princess one) and as such they divided the game into Chapters. What this actually means is that, despite the timeloop which you can trigger at any point you want, and despite the time passing that you can also make pass whenever you want, exploration is very, very rarely rewarded. The game expects you to search for things in a certain way, and conclude them that way, so that then and only then the game will change chapter and will allow you to corrupt Amelia through other means and with other people. This makes what originally felt like a very free game in terms of exploration and choice of what you want to see turn out to be, in fact, an extremely linear game with an exceedingly large map that is put to very bad use. It's a shame, really; a bit more freedom and putting all of the corruption "routes" on the same map would make for a much, much better experience, almost in a VN-route type of way, and would actually reward exploration. Instead, you're met with a wasteland of empty rooms and repetitive NPC dialogue where you just follow the exclamation marks until the next chapter.

All in all, this is good, but it's not GREAT, mostly because the timeloop and exploration aspect are extremely badly done. Also, in case you're here JUST for the art, then the time spent walking to HCG ratio is surprisingly skewed, so a full save might serve you better.

AVANTGARDE appears to miss the mark so often in RPGM games that I'm half expecting them to just start doing VNs at some point in the future, and I believe that this game would rock a solid 5/5 if it were a VN instead of the walking simulator it became.

Not worth your time, the game throws bibles of text to you with information that isn't really relevant most of the time, it feels like it doesn't want to focus on the most important thing on NTR and Corruption games... the NTR AND THE CORRUPTION.
They prefer to focus on the magic and unreasonable motivations of the antagonists, on each rewind (the mc meets a god that gives him the ability to rewind 7 days) the girl gets fucked and corrupted from 0-100 in less than 2 scenes. And most of the 'NTR' scenes the MC is directly in front of her watching... there's 0 mystery.
Also there are other 3 girls that are corrupted from the start... they have some scenes, if thats your thing go for it.

The scenes are extremely random, there's one that happens in like 25% of the game where you stand on a yellow tile and the MC gets excited for some kind of aphrodisiac, Amelia decides that the best thing to do is masturbate him, because of course that would be the first option anyone would do on that situation. There's another one where the teacher says 'today we're going to have sex' and the whole class is like 'oh, okay' and have sex with Amelia in front of everyone because of sex magic.

But hey... the art is 10/10 so you can watch the unlocked gallery, you wont miss anything, there's 0 roaming scenes neither interesting conversations.

As always, I came in anticipation of the greatest NTR in history and got... another Japanese game with a cuckold protagonist.

The first 20 minutes of the prologue create a deceiving impression of an open world, revealing the characteristics of the protagonists and antagonists of this game and even impressing us with a decently made introductory video.

However, within the first hour, the game makes it clear that you're confined to rails, and you have to follow them. You can veer off somewhere else, of course, but you'll only encounter emptiness everywhere.

So, what do we have in the end:

Plot:
Just another story about a hero who relives the same week again and again in an attempt to solve the mystery of the academy. This plot simply exists, and it can't be classified as a positive or negative aspect.

Gameplay:
Absolutely dull and corridor-like, with no chance to skip NTR-scenes. They tried to make a thought-out combat system, but first, the game engine wouldn't allow it, and second, it's simply unnecessary here. Its purpose is to merely stretch your time. Apart from combat, the game's activity involves wandering around a large academy and collecting videotapes of your childhood friend being fucked by everyone.

Art:
Perhaps the only positive point of this game. The artwork is vividly and beautifully drawn, and it definitely stands out among games of a similar category.

Number of scenes:
Surprisingly, there are plenty of scenes in this game. This can also be considered a positive, and I'll add third star precisely for their variety.

So, as a conclusion, download this game right away with the gallery unlocked. Because it certainly isn't worth the time you'd spend on it.

Very good CG and somewhat average (if not bellow) gameplay. 4 hours playtime. I advise you skip the gameplay and just get a full save.

While CGs are nice the gameplay is fairly uninspired and even annoying. Game is very kinetic, so much so that it feels like map events (there isn't many) are an afterthought. Map is fairly big and there is no clear indicators where you should go to see ero stuff, also sometimes NPCs have *heart* icon above them and sometimes they don't (this means you have to interact with everything, just in case). Even worse most rooms are usually empty (no event), but the only way for you to be sure is to check them and it gets annoying fairly quickly.
Combat is inoffensive and doesn't really require grinding. Mostly combat is here to make the game longer.

NTR is ok at best. Obviously, different strokes for different folks, but for me NTR here lacks the emotional punch.