RPGM - Completed - Anthesis [Shimobashira Workshop]

debated whether i should give this a 4 or 5 star rating and i ended up with 5 stars. i only give 5 stars to games i have 0 complaints about. i'll explain later

this game is freaking awesome. it is absolutely up there with some of the best corruption-based carnival sandbox RPGs i have ever played. basically, you are a schoolgirl named Natsu who stumbled upon a devil that was sealed inside of a bottle. the devil tells her that if she doesnt help him break the seal and escape the bottle in no more than 20 days he will put a curse on her. in order to do that, you need to turn her into a gigaslut because the holy seal can only be broken by collecting the immoral lust of the men around her. you play as her for all 20 days and on each day you get to decide what she does moving forward

here's what i liked:
- Natsu is adorable/cute/hot whatever you want to describe a good feminine protagonist. the way she shows emotions, the way she behaves, the way she acts in the scenarios all of it shows that character in her and i think its great
- the corruption is awesome for several reasons. for starters, YOU get to choose the pacing of the corruption. you think its going too fast? dont buy the max lewd upgrade until later. you don't care and want to speedrun her slut transformation? put ALL of your resources into upgrading her max lewd limit. you gain lewdness by just engaging in the sexual events across the game world, and the game actively encourages you to think about how you can improve it given the money you have, the energy you have and the upgrades that you have, and whether those resource would be better spent elsewhere because you also need to pay attention to your infamy and discovery number
- everything about the porn scenes themselves are kino. i like the artstyle of them, i like the scenarios they are presented in, and there's many scene chains with on average 3 scenes per chain. all of them are unique too, ranging from prostituting to pleasing your classmates to working at a bar-brothel hybrid to whatever else. to unlock each scene in a scene chain you need higher lewdness
- the story's premise is sound, as can be i guess. the fact that they thought up a story about a devil in a bottle in the first place is kinda wild and i commend the creativity because having him in your room helping you where it counts and talking to you in a stern manner while you slave away doing your lewd work for him is really an odd but cool story premise
- in most corruption games corruption is seen as a bad thing and should be avoided at all costs. this is not the case for Anthesis literally the whole point is to corrupt her so that she is able to break the seal and save herself from getting cursed which is great because that means the corruption is incentivised rather than deincentivised
- some post ending content nothing special just a few scenes here and there and your reward for beating the game is also being able to unlock the whole gallery
- no lame RPGM combat, just the way i like it :^)

here's where i would put a things i disliked section but like i said i have nothing i dislike about the game. i was debating putting it at 4 stars because originally i did have one minor problem, which was that at some point it felt a tiny bit repetitive. i found myself in a loop of doing the same thing at one point in my playthrough but what i realised is that this was 1. short lived 2. avoidable 3. not guaranteed for all people. it was basically the point at which i was finding solutions to the infamy, discovery and energy stats where all 3 stats involved needing a lot of money so i was doing the convenience store events followed by the brothel-bar hybrid events (because they gave the most money) on loop until i managed to solve them permanently with money i accumulated. what i should have done is buy the prostitution upgrades and the more money upgrades sooner so it would have felt less repetitive and would have ended quicker meaning it only really felt that way because of my poor decisions

thus, i have no words other than to give this game a try! it truly is awesome and you will love it (..if you like the corruption-based sandbox carnival rpg genre)

It's a pretty standard game. It's not difficult to finish, but it's boring. In a way, you can complete it on the first day, just keep entering the same maps and being grabbed by perverts... will it take a long time? Yes, it will, but it can be done... The story of the demon and the pact is nothing innovative, but it works for the plot. The important thing about this game is the various scenes that you can find.

Please check the spoiler directly below this to understand the review.
AMOUNT OF EXPERIENCE: I've achieved one of the game's endings & looked at all scenes in the gallery.

STORY:

Spoiler: yap+spoilers for the plot

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I really like the story of the game. There is a lot of choice on what routes to do and complete and it was honestly enjoyable seeing the plot develop from start to finish. I honestly don't find anything too inherently wrong with the story throughout the game, and even all of the extreme endings with context completely make sense. All of the endings also have closure which is definitely something great to have. There is good pacing throughout the story, it doesn't feel like one moment she has a dirty thought and the next moment she's getting railed by three guys in a closed off space. Maybe sometimes it just felt that Natsu went stupid mode or it was too obvious that she was being clearly forced into these situations even though someone with her personality and knowledge would know better than to willingly let herself get into these situations. Other than that, there is genuinely nothing inherently flawed within the story so I'll give it a high 0.7 stars.
ORIGINALITY: The originality of the story is nearly the same in comparison. JK being corrupted has been done to death but I will admit that there is still some potential within this trope and it is a very broad trope at that. Though the story seems unique enough for me not to lump it with those types of games. I think this game deserves a relatively high rating because it's extremely rare to not only find a game where the MC doesn't corrupt herself, but she is forced into the corruption. It's even rarer to find that some sort of religion is involved, which is only amplified by the fact that this is in a modern world. 0.2 stars.

DIFFICULTY: The gameplay in terms of difficulty, albeit being really boring, is actually not that hard. Depending on what route you attempt to go through, it'll either be easy going or pretty medium in toughness. Even if you lose or go too far into a route you'll still get an ending, though it could be one that you don't desire. What I would wish for though is for is a bit more time and energy in-game to harvest more dpt and magic power to be able to unlock more H-scenes instead of having to rely on cheats/freeplay mode so that you can even get to playing these H-scenes. Overall, the difficulty isn't too hard but for the type of engagement this game offers it definitely should be easier. 0.15 stars.
ENGAGEMENT: The engagement of this game is very basic yet horrific in execution. All I need to prove this fact is two words: Time limit. Time limits in H-games have to be one of the most despised in western forums from what I see, and for good reason. Having to crunch and neglect aspects of the game just to be able to achieve the ending you want is so tiring and boring. It doesn't help that time limits in this game are used the way that they're used. You have a twenty day time limit and ten energy daily (though it can be expanded by eating, bathing and unlocking certain flowers) to work for money, do H-scenes, grind lewdness/dpt and magic power. You won't be able to use these to their fullest extent in playthroughs of this game, especially in some routes. This game is also a scene collector. Time limits mixed with scene collectors always go bad, and it's not hard to see why, especially if there's no freeplay. It essentially forces you to grind your ass off for scenes to get lewdness and stats for the ending that you desire. In my opinion H-games with time limits only go with puzzle H-games. And it should be like an actual timer instead of a limiter on how much you can do a day. Like we get it, in the real world a gal isn't gonna spend her whole day being tirelessly molested, fucked and commented on and still be fine with staying outside, but c'mon, this is a H-game for fucks sake! Who cares about the real world when we're pretty much playing a fap sim! Stopping the rant about limits, I want to talk about the scene collector gameplay. It's a scene collector. Nothing too special. To elaborate, you run around and do H-scenes for dpt, lewdness and certain stats that let you do even more H-scenes for even more dpt, lewdness and boosts in certain stats. Dpt lets you inch closer to your goal in a separate world, and in that separate world you obtain magic power. Magic power lets you manipulate Natsu's which leads to blooming flowers. And before I continue, I want to comment on the name of the game. The game is called Anthesis, which means that a flower is has fully bloomed and is fully sexually developed and ready to reproduce. I think the association with the flowers in-game and in the title is cool. Going back to the game, flowers let you unlock scenes, sources of income, more lewdness and dpt harvested to help beat the game. That also means you get lewder faster though, which makes it harder to get certain endings. In my opinion this system is intriguing, because you can either play carelessly and not bloom any flowers, which will make playing the game harder and grindier, with a short range of endings or you can bloom flowers which help you finish the game, get a wider range of endings and get them faster but with more risk for others. It's a weird system because it's like a shortcut for the grind, but for a game like this a skip for grinding is very appreciated. All in all, this game is honestly pretty disappointing with the engagement. There are definitely way better ways this game could have been pulled off. If you don't like time limits, download a save close to beating the game so you can get the ending you want and skip the grind to play with no time limit after beating the game. Be warned, there will still be an energy system limiting what you can do in a day. 0 stars. It's probably best if you download a save as mentioned before.
OVERWORLD: Unlike the engagement, I half-enjoyed the overworld. It's mediocre in size but from what I see all NPCs have their own little speech instead of being like "Hey how are you doing?" and just moving on. Other than that there's nothing unique about the overworld. The overworld in this game would be basic in a classic HRPG, but for a scene collector like this game it's very non-descriptive and not really intriguing. There's rain, daytime and nighttime which affect the NPCs and Natsu's clothing, leading to potentially more events and convos. If you think, the overworld very closely relies on NPCs and certain aspects of the gameplay to extend downtime so that it doesn't feel like you're just getting to one scene to another. Every location has some important mechanical use to play the game or to unlock H-scenes. None of it is designed to be something fun to discover while outside of scenes and engagement. The closest thing I would consider to an easter egg would be after you complete the game, you can unlock the gallery. But that's something typically expected and too miniscule to consider bumping the rating. Because of the type of game this is and the content it offers in the overworld, I wouldn't say it's too far-fetched to be 0.05 stars. It's just too baseline to actually enjoy.
LENGTH: Now it's getting better. The overall length of this game is great! Depending on your route, time spent exploring, and how much you desire to unlock, you could be playing at a minimum of 3-5 hours for one route, but it can go way higher if you're trying to 100% the game. From slutty to innocent, a route in this game has an optimal amount of H-scenes. This means respective to content it's the perfect amount of time to be playing this game for, no matter the grindiness (because we don't talk about that here). I honestly believe that this category deserves a 0.25 star rating.
PERFORMANCE: I don't have much to comment on for the performance. I couldn't find any bugs which is nice. The size of the game is very low compared to similar and most other RPGM games. Lastly the game runs nicely with good fps and minimal loading times. 0.25 stars.

ART QUALITY: The art of this game is above average. If you're an enthusiast of other Shimobashira Workshop games you'll notice that the art quality isn't as refined compared to all the games that came after it. I noticed that lots of scenes look kinda plasticy or don't have the best lighting, which makes it look like a barbie doll photoshoot with the flash accidentally turned on. The game doesn't look too flat or like a blender model, it's pretty closely in the middle. I don't really have much else to say except that nearly all problems in this game regarding the art quality was heavily revised and fixed in later projects by Shimobashira Workshop. 0.45 stars.
SCENE QUALITY: Scene quality wise, it's not hard to notice that this game is heavily tailored towards quantity over quality. There are no animations, a small amount of individual images within each scene, also images are re-used in a lot of scenes or even different ones with the only difference being dialogue and sometimes backgrounds which seems to be a pretty common trait in all Shimobashira Workshop games. Last thing I should mention is that some sound effects are triggered by dialogue, instead of being played in a loop over and over as it should. Notable examples would be plap plaps when the MC is getting ran through. Overall I think it should be 0.1 stars for the scene quality.
VARIETY: The game seems to be "normal" when it comes to the range of kinks. By normal I mean abnormal, because you have to be abnormal to enjoy any form of hentai, which is every single social reject on this website, including me. There are lots of forms of sex, including multi penetration, con & non-con, and internal view in some scenes. Now there's a big leap in amount of scenes. In the middle tier is exhibition (non-con) and sexual harassment. Up last is tentacles and aphrodisiacs. There really isn't a large variety of scenes in this game, and it doesn't attempt to branch into anything less popular. In fact, the least popular you'll get is non-con exhibition, which is still very well looked into. This lack of anything that unique isn't a good thing, because there's not anything kinky or niche to offer. It's mainly tailored towards everyone instead of a specific group. Most tags are properly represented except for tentacles, since there's only one scene with them. Overall, there's pretty good representation and everyone can enjoy it, but there's no niche for a specific group to enjoy, which I don't think is much of a good thing. 0.3 stars.

DIALOGUE: There is some nifty, funny and witty dialogue, but usually it's more like "I'm a normal girl, of course being sexually harassed is normal. I'm not perverted. I'm not perverted." This time though, instead of being some stupid trope it makes sense, as delving into Natsu's mind you can see that she's actually more perverse than she lets on. Probably one of the best explanations on why she doesn't resist as much as she should, mostly because it's some unexplained mystery in the first place, because devs hate explanations apparently. As for the amount of dialogue, I feel like the game doesn't skimp out too much but also doesn't try to just talk for the sake of talking, monologues are pretty minimal and is mostly just narration, which is good imo. 0.25 stars. Perfect balance of dialogue, monologue, information and messing around.
TRANSLATION: The game has good translation. Nothing else to say. 0.25 stars.
VOICE ACTING: No voice acting. 0 stars. ; (

PRO: Nice art and decent sex scenes, especially in quantity, not that much in quality (no animations). There's a gallery room in the end.

CON: It's a very grindy and repetitive gameplay. Basically a walk simulator game experience.

Rate: 5/10

Bunch of low-quality static PNG images, that's it... That's your reward for grinding and playing this game.

It's not worth it at all... there are much better games out there than this RPGM shovelware. Every sex scene is heavily reused in some other scene, and most are still images with a ton of text which leaves all of it to imagination.

Even the girl's expressions don't change at all, the artist was terrible at his job. Might be one of the worst games I've played on this forum.

Anthesis [Shimobashira Workshop]
The game is ok, but the scenes are static images that didn't satisfy me at all.
There are other games with static images, but thanks to the dialogues or voices or even other static images to change the scene, they didn't get boring like this game did.

The time limit is almost always bad, and in this game it's a flaw, it forces you to have to use cheats or a walkthrough or even study everything carefully and maybe miss scenes.
I'm someone who often uses cheats to speed things up, but it's my choice, it shouldn't become an obligation, a game should be able to entertain even without cheats.
The rest is like classic games of the genre, you work, you go around looking for events and so on.
I honestly don't recommend the game.

Decent Game, Has a lot of H-scenes and good-slow corruption, my only issue with this game is "No full nudity" in either H-scenes or just in the character screen, plus the entire Infamy thing and having to constanly monitor it, was a real pain.
My recommendation would be, use a save game editor to max out the unnecessary stuff and get your fap, quick & easy.

As a corruption game I have to say this is one of the better of the best i have played

Game Play
The game play is simple enough, just wander, and find and do stuff,

How laborious is it
I have to say it is really a labor to get to the good stuff, Long and punishing over all.

(I personally did try to just play the game without cheats, but I <<<Note the "I"
just burnt out and finally had to resort to RPG ACE Cheat.
Once I did that I could control the game much, much better, and bypass a lot of the slow burn of the game,.) (Sorry but I became to anxious to see the good stuff)

No long Review here, just my opinion
Even using the cheat I had a blast with this one, and for those who like being corrupted, and coerced into becoming a total cum drinking, butt fucked, and abused by everyone slut, then this is for sure a game for you to give and earnest try.

I think you will like it. ( I think <<<Note the "I" (Personal opinion))

H-Scene Variety
And insane amount of H-scene Variety is in this one for it's age.

1. Prostitution clients from the internet with search option for your desired type of client. (Normal, Pervert, scary, type of sex expected from you, and more.)
2. Train molester's
3. Perverted gropers on every street corner.
4. Blackmailer's.
5. Waitress groping,
6. Bathroom bondage pulling a chain one after the other.
7. Teacher Coercion , and forced use, or blackmailed use.
8. Peeping tom's
9. Voyeurism
10. street or back ally rape
11. Exhibitionism
12, Posting imaged, and getting responses on the internet
13. Even video's posted by pervert's of the sex they had with you.
14. and much more, was just a pretty well planed out game all around

ART
Well above average, and the erotic part's were very well done.

No real animation's other than some image swapping, but I think it was more than acceptable for a game of this vintage and type.

Translation
Very good, could have used a bit more courser metaphor's in many places, Bitch, slut, filthy whore, and what not, but it was very except-able in my Opinion.

The time limit
Yeah it is kind of buggered thing and most everyone I know hates having a time limit.

With ACE cheat running I was able to run my days up to and ungodly amount, and could also control my infamy, fame and what ever else I wanted to use and abuse to see all the game had to offers, and I still personally found it very enjoyable.

(I am sorry for hard core gamer's who despise cheater's, but it was my choice.)

Not a bad game, just not really my style. Not a fan of the time limit. Art is decent. Story is fine. Fairly depraved.Scene quality is fine. scenes are easy enough to get. Just a really bang average game. 7.7/10

This is a very good developer, and if you like corruption-games, this doesn't deserve to be forgotten.

That said, it's arguably the weakest game by this dev, especially considering all their games have pretty similar protagonists.

So, what this game does well is providing you with a variety of choices for different kinds of acts, actual gameplay-goals and non-linear proggression torwards your goals. That is rare in the genre, and a mark of a very good formula.

However, Anthesis still presents a pretty limited suite of options, and very heavily incentivises a specific fantasy, which is your non-con/molestation fantasy. It's something that's very common in these kinds of games, and really similar to things that worse-realized games can offer just as well, as the scene-writing itself isn't anything groundbreaking. There is a mental-changes angle in the game, but it's played very softly, and the only content fleshed out outside the stadard hentai non-con maledom, is exhibitionism (online). Overall, the game offers a very specific type of pretty realistic type of fantasy, which you will mostly enjoy if you're already attracted to this type of heroine. It's a slight upgrade to the formula, that should get commended, but doesn't necessarily need to be played by all, when there are better games out there, by the same dev even.

When it comes to corruption games, this is definitely a game that takes the cake! Its definitely in my top 10 for corruption games.

Pros

• I found the motivation a bit odd at first, a demon forcing her to do deprived things, but what I appreciate about it is that for one, it's not the standard trope of needing money, and secondly, there are other ways of getting depravity, but the game is showing you that she finds it easier to do lewd things if you decide to do so
• The art is pretty solid, a shame that it doesn't have animation, would definitely skyrocket this game to my #1 spot.
• Theres a lot of different types of content that is not really repetitive
• There is no combat! Some might find this a con, but I'm typically not a fan of a generic combat system just shoehorned in.

Im sure I didn't cover all the pros but let's jump into the cons

Cons

• Some things only require you to have a certain lewdness but others need to be unlocked in this weird dream world that the demon is in, inside of her mind, using the depravity currency. Which is kind of like leveling up, but it takes me out of the immersion. This paired with the fact that there's a time limit means you have to strategize on how to get the points you need to unlock the next thing and it ends up feeling like a chore.
• Speaking of timed games, it's one of the things I hate the most. Thankfully there's a post game which lets you play through the things you didn't get the chance to, given that you beat the game. Though I didn't know that at the time...
• Considering she's a student, I think the school portion could have been fleshed out a bit more, it feels like i barely went to the school.

It's such a great H game, especially if you love corruption. I wish it was longer!

It does what it set out to do, but it wasn't quite my cup of tea. I prefer my corruption to be a little more organic and consensual; a girl sliding down a slippery slope rather than being punted. Anthesis has a devil inside the girl's head slowly unlocking lewder portions of her brain. Our poor protagonist doesn't stand a chance, which is great if that's what you're into, but it's closer to mind control than corruption imo.

Anyway, my preferences aside, it'd still be a five star game if it weren't for the grindiness. You need to grind stats and resources a lot in order to unlock further tiers of events. It's pretty standard for RPGM type games and it's no better here than elsewhere. Still, I wish they'd cut it down at least a little bit. I must have run each of the early events at least a dozen times each. That's just excessive.

A relatively short Japanese corruption game, where you start out as an innocent high-school girl who has the misfortune of getting caught up with the devil. This game isn't too different from other Japanese corruption/rape games, with a notable exception being an emphasis on choice.

There are various ways that you can fulfil your contract with the devil, and you have the ability to choose how it will happen. This is different from many Japanese games with a female protagonist, since most of the time the corruption will happen whether you want it or not.

Pros:

• Choice
• Relatively fun gameplay
• Variety of events
• Nice art
• Character can enjoy her descent into sexual abandon

Cons:

• Sex scenes are highly static and not very varied
• Not much art, feels a bit lazy
• The story is just okay, all the side characters are just lecherous rapey males.

Verdict: If the genre is up your alley, give it a try.

this is the best game in term of prostitution , good in explore, managing power/energy/money, with day and night circle also has cute art as well, well made map
Downside is there a bit annoying "skill tree "

Played the game a long time ago remember replaying it. Was very enjoyable. You should give it a go at least once.

There are no bugs. Lots of content. A gem in the corruption genre if you ask me. Really give it a go.

Really Really good. that's basically my feelings about this game.

Writing is good, and graphics are good, and you actually have a choice in how you want her to evolve, or not evolve.

I only completed it while turning her into a complete cumdump.

But I will play the game again and see if I can't finish it as a virgin.

Lots of ways to generate the points you need without her actually doing anything naughty.

for example... You could just talk to one of three guys that gets turned on by looking at your chest while it's raining, making your shirt see-through.
That will give you 2 points every time.

if you spam the Z, shift or enter key while holding down CTRL. you'll generate points pretty quickly, without her gaining any lust or other points, because she's clueless about them looking at her breast.

So.. just there you have a way of completing the game and getting the 10000 points you need. (Yes.. that would be a nightmare grinding it that way) But there are other ways without making her a slut. And it's also the only ending that isn't bad

The only thing that could make this game a little better, would be if the writing gave ppl more feelings.. Because in this game.. nobody cares about anybody or anything but their own lust it seems. Nobody is bad or good here. Just horny...

Adding more feelings into the story would make it even better. Make the player actually feel crappy if they send her into a toilet stall to get raped over and over and over again, or if they are into that kind of thing. It would make them turned on like hell.

Right now you don't actually feel bad for making her do terrible things.
Anything that makes you feel anything bad or good is always a plus.
Feelings makes the games better. Just make sure they have a choice.

That said.. The game was great.. maybe a little grindy.. but I didn't mind. actually enjoyed it.

I just wish I could make her take her panties off and give that guy at the stairs a real peep show.

Pros -

• decent art
• some scenes are particularly interesting given the corruption theme
• gradual variation in CGs suits the corruption theme and makes the otherwise simple game mechanics more enticing to play
• the gradual progression of (self-)corruption can be felt; kudos to the devs in that regard
• a gallery and a sandbox game mode exists after beating the game
• good translation

Cons -

• no CV
• grindy, unnecessarily grindy
• the energy system can steer players into grinding prostitution repetitively and excessively. Good use of the bath mechanics and gold medal item (one that reduces infamy) is required to avoid grind but is not given any mention in the intro
• instead, the intro bombards the player with all sorts of artificial parameters; these are much better to be integrated into the game
• the art is a tad above many similar games but still feels cheap in most instances

Having played a good number of H-games, the art quality of Anthesis is good. The gameplay quality is also good in relative terms. Enough of the game is intriguing and fun to explore (in a hentai way, ofc). Also, the translation is good and that's *not* in relative terms. Compared to a lot of the more linear VNs though, the art of Anthesis leaves a lot to be desired. Simply put, those CGs are cheap. As for the gameplay, it supports the theme well but is unnecessarily grindy. Unfortunately that's a shared trait of a vast number of JRPG games -- games from Japan/Korea do tend to mistake grinding as game content.

There are 110 sex scenes in total, and 37 base CGs. This may sound incredibly repetitive, but there are so many variation images, you’ll never notice. Adding blindfolds and handcuffs and all sorts of accessories, these variations change the meaning of the scene entirely. While the base image may feature vanilla sex, the variations turn it into a humiliating public exposure scene!
There are too many scenarios to count. You have massages, peeping toms, train molesters, blackmail, and even sex with your teacher! This game is vanilla content done right! Better still, it dips into other fetishes along the way! If you become a total whore, you can actually call your best friend while having sex with her man! It’s called the “Bitch Ending” for a reason!
Players can decide just how lewd they want to be. Deviants may want to publicly prostitute themselves to everyone in school, but not me! I worked as a waitress while giving handjobs for money, but stayed a sweet innocent schoolgirl.
The corruption is incredibly detailed. Even when you consent to sex, your character will likely demand the guy pull out and wear condoms. But once you’re corrupted enough, she learns that bareback is the only way to go!
My one complaint about the hentai is the lack of meaning to virginity. There are about five ways to lose your virginity, and none of them are memorable. It honestly feels like the deflowering scenes were an after thought.