RPGM - Completed - Captured by Dark Elves: Arachna’s Return [Final Edition] [Darktoz]

On the surface, this would be right up my street. Dark Elves? BDSM? Femdom? Fantasy adventure? Unfortunately there are caveats.

The art is ok - not great but not terrible. The gameplay is a hell of a grind, and honestly not very fun, although for some reason I went above and beyond with applying myself to it. The sexual content does cover a good selection of more hardcore kink, although I believe you cannot see it all in the same playthrough.

Ultimately what stops me being too enthusiastic is the setting and the writing. I've never been a big fan of the 'matriarchal world' type settings that this developer and others favour. For me, it robs the BDSM dynamics between the various characters of any actual power play - they aren't really doing dominance and submission, it's just the law! It also flattens the characters - the males are all wimps and the women all tyrannical. The slight variance on this feels more taboo, tbh.

Anyway, I did enjoy this enough to follow the developers other work, which I think shows some growth.

Bad. I started to grind and it might as well given me an aneurysm after 30 minutes.

Graphics wise the models are nice but overall this game looks like it was made 12 years ago, not released in 2021.

Plus the whole ranting about cheaters in his guide and the billboard of "stop stealing muh games" is almost laughable, its just cringe. I'm not going to go into detail about why that concept itself is inherently flawed. The dev chose to make an rpgmaker game which generally has some degree of grinding really basic combat encounters. Some rpgmaker games actually make it work by introducing new stuff as you are grinding, but this one really doesn't. So whining about cheaters in the obviously very well curated experience in a single player smut game... did the dev know what kind of audience he's talking to?

Also no gallery. Would rate 0/5 stars if I could.

Piss off.

The beginning was engaging, you get captured outside in the wild, turned into a slave, thrown in a prison, and your new life is to serve the dark elves.

I enjoyed the first hours, the intro & chapter 1 were nice, but the problem is that the more you advance in the chapters, the worse it is... I even stopped the game in chapter 3, it was just so bad...

+ 100% femdom game
+ True feeling of being a slave
+ Bunch of characters with their own personalities
+ The writing & music are ok

- Very grindy and repetitive
- Gameplay never changes/improves from the beginning to the end
- Low-effort sex scenes (just 2-3 frames looping)
- Lazy re-used sex scenes
- You have to talk with npcs and try all their dialogues to see if there are any new dialogues, it's so badly designed. (they should be in yellow if new interactions, and grey for old interactions, like any rpg game)

Graphics: 4/5

3D renders, nothing outstanding but good quality overall. Basic animations for sex scenes.

Gameplay/UI: 5/5

I certainly don't think it's objectively "great" gameplay, it's not, in fact it does get a bit grindy sometimes, but only if you really want it to be. The game doesn't force you to farm anything, I just did it because I felt like it.

I'm giving the maximum grade here simply because so far this is the only RPGM game (and I've tried dozens) that I actually finished without being bored to death by the combat aspect of it.

I still think RPGM is shit and is very poorly suited to porn games, but this game is the best use of it that I've seen so far.

Story: 4/5

The writing is good quality overall, the characters are nice and have their own style and personality, but the plot is not ambitious enough and doesn't have enough lore to justify giving the maximum grade.

Music: 4/5

Pretty good overall

Content: 5/5

Its about 10 hours provided you don't completely skip the gameplay part. It's not a huge game but it's pretty well-rounded, has quite a lot of different endings, I tried a few and they're all good, it doesn't leave you with the feeling that something is missing.

Conclusion:

So all in all it's far from perfect but assuming you're into femdom I'd still say that it's a must-play.

Great game. A bit too grindy with the combat and unless you really grind hard it feels like the Elve's needs increase faster than you can acquire the skills.

Suggested improvements:
Lower frequency of combat encounters
Increased exp gain

Nice to haves:
More sexually aggressive scenes towards the slaves; other then the torture scenes they're rather gentle.

Version: Final Edition

This game could have easily been a five star game, if not for the fact that this was made in RPGM. The story, the art, the setting are amazing, yet it held down by truly horrendous gameplay mechanics.
Painful and long grind, non-existing progression, no gallery.

Its a type of game that takes one step forward and two steps backward.

In my opinion, this game is damn near unrivalled in it's genre. If you're a femdom fan, this is an absolute must play regardless if you like the general style and setting or not. I won't spend too much time fawning over the quality - scenes are awesome, animation is awesome, story is awesome, graphic design is awesome, dommes are awesome, range of kinks is awesome, yadda yadda, that's obvious. However, there are several "buts" and asterisks to this opinion. As evidenced by the overall low score of 3.5, a lot of people didn't like it. I fully understand where that is coming from, despite the game being brilliant. So if you're looking at this wondering "The game looks awesome... so why the mediocre score?", I wrote an explanation.


The game has some of the most anti-player, anti-convinience, anti-marketability designs I've seen in my life. To say that grinding is batshit insane, is to say nothing. You will be slapping zombies and stomping rats for so long, you'll forget you have a dick in your non-mouse hand. You will mine so many rocks, the stock "clank" sound asset will haunt your dreams. There are no difficulty settings, no codes, and no built-in systems to circumvent the grind - hell, even if you use save editors to essentially give yourself godmode and onehit every enemy, it still takes a frustrating amount of time to progress. Actually, it's even worse, because you don't just grind to progress - you need certain story-related skills to pass skillchecks during H-scenes. Each level-up gives only 1 ability point, and ability point requirements scale up with the skill levels (1 for 1, 2 for 2, 3 for 3). Every level is tens (later hundreds) of rocks smashed and mobs killed, and it scales exponentially as levels progress. If you skip that, you will fail skill checks (and miss scenes), therefore you will fail relationship checks, and therefore you will miss access to most endings.

So that's it, that's the big deal? Grindiness? Unfortunately not.

Since the game is made in RPGM, you cannot save during dialogues. And dialogues are long. Very long. Occasionally, you get to say something - and you must choose from 6 or more options. Sometimes, those "6" options actually just boil down to 2, but you can't know that in advance. Sometimes, the choices only affect a single line of dialogue, and sometimes they change the narration significantly. If you want to test the outcomes, you have to reload the save, and fast-forward through dialogue and animation. Six times. If you want to check the different endings, same rule applies. You save before the epilogue, fast forward a very long animation and dialogue, make the choice, then you also have a FIGHT after that (depends), and only then you see the ending. There are 6 endings you can get that way.

Unfortunately, there's more. Virtually all H-scenes are non-repeatable, even the optional ones that you trigger yourself. There is no gallery. There is no "map" like in many other games, saying how many scenes are undiscovered or where you can unlock them. You have to make rounds between characters after every plot milestone to check if they have new scenes, and after you do see the scene, that's it, and you never see it again. This game provides absolutely no way to individually balance gameplay and fucking - and it's a design choice, the dev has explicitly stated it was his decision to make the game this way, and he intentionally did not include built in ways to make your life easier.

On one hand, I respect the principled approach from Darktoz, he actually made the game 100% rigged towards his own vision. But on the other hand, holy shit this game would recieve SO much more recognition, if he actually worked on accesibility and marketability instead. That said I still think it's absolutely brilliant and my top 3 all-time favourite, and an easy 5-star position despite a massive wall of text I've just written about it's downsides.

Two disclaimers: 1) Play this using save editor, somewhere in this thread it says exactly which line to edit to max out your skills. 2) Disregard people who complain about dickgirls, all dick-related stuff is purely optional (the optional scenes you can skip, and the main plot always gives you an option to choose between pussy and dick).

There's a bit to much cock sucking, pegging and strap on play for my taste but still a good game and i enjoyed playing it. Also not sure if the leveling up and skill points were meant to be as hard to get which kind of sucked but i tweaked them a bit so i could enjoy it more. I would play a sequel if one is made

Version: Final Edition

Darktoz i will be honest with you, you have some great 3D skills and some skill in story writing, but God man, you do not know how to make a game.

The first thing that stood out as a massive negative is the grind, by far one of the worst grinds in RPGM i have ever player, not only is it long, boring and repetitive, there is nothing to progress, no armour, no weapons, no skill trees, cant even distribute skill points, NOTHING. A harsh grind can be forgiven if the progression of the game is great, but the only progression you get is story progression. Even with cheats this shit was grindy and boring.

I looked at the game guide, and it seems you dislike cheaters in your game, fair enough, but maybe a lot of people would not cheat if the game wasnt so mind numbingly boring to progress.

Also why the fuck is there no gallery at the end of the game, the wast majority of RPGM have a gallery of some kind, this game doesnt have one, pathetic.

The game is good, ya can pass many many time playing it and lose the time as I did, but, the xp or leveling up system is a bit awful, you loose to much time for take 1 level and have some events how need you have some skills levels, and some scenes can be a bit awful too, I don't liked you don't have the option for chose to play as a woman too, I think will be much better for who don't want be FUCKED by a huge futanari as a man... If they put a woman update and improve the leveling system, this game will be five stars.

Really enjoyed this game, except for all the repetitive mining nonsense. The mining mechanic literally stretched out a two hour game into a freaking six hour game. It is really annoying. Some of the ending were not very satisfying, only a couple had extended endings.

Captured by Dark Elves: Arachna’s Return [Final Edition] [Darktoz]

I have to say, "Captured by Dark Elves" left me thoroughly disappointed. I can't mince words here; it's one of the worst gaming experiences I've had in recent memory.

First and foremost, let's talk about the dialogue mechanic. Who in their right mind thought it was a brilliant idea to make every conversation with NPCs a game of roulette? Every time my character tried to interact with anyone, it felt like pulling the lever on a slot machine. Will I get a relevant response or some random gibberish that has nothing to do with the context? It's mind-boggling that someone could think this would enhance gameplay. It only made every interaction a chore, wasting up to thirty minutes just to get some coherent information.

And let's not forget about the character endings. Instead of meaningful, thought-out conclusions for each character's story arc, we get randomness there too. Daily events with no rhyme or reason, sometimes the same thing over and over again. Darktoz apparently believed that randomness equated to replayability. Well, let me tell you, it doesn't. It's just a frustrating way to obscure the effort put into the game's storytelling and character development.

It's not that I didn't appreciate the effort Darktoz put into the game. There were hints of potential buried beneath this mess. But any positives were overshadowed by the clunky mechanics and the blatant disregard for player engagement. I couldn't help but feel that all the hard work and creativity put into "Captured by Dark Elves" were ultimately wasted on a game that left me infuriated and wanting my time back.

In the end, this game was a perfect storm of bad design choices. I can't recommend it to anyone who values their time and sanity. Darktoz may have had grand ambitions, but they fell far short in execution, and the result is a frustrating and repetitive experience that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

Game version: [Final Edition]

Way too grindy, even with cheats. Renders are 4:3 and average quality at best, animations are just vertigo-inducing two frame morphs. The writing is serviceable but doesn't stand out. The story setup and characters are interesting and fleshed out, but there's a distinct lack of choice and progression until the end where it's suddenly rushed into "WELL, WHO DO YOU CHOOSE?" territory.

You spend what feels like 70% of the game doing busywork like hitting rocks in a mine and fighting random monsters, the rest is comprised of pretty boring sex scenes, not necessarily because of their content, but the way they are set up.

Sex scenes all follow the same formula of "you choose the sex scene, you watch the sex scene" which boils down to two or three different animations with barely any dialogue, and the only "choice" during sex scenes is different ending dialogue depending on if you pass a skill check.

The ending came at a point where I felt like half the game was yet to play out and the two ending sequences I played through for the characters I liked (Za'Ress and Astrid) were pretty unsatisfying.

extremely grindy, without any reward for all the grinding. seems like just trying to force playtime. ~95% of the game is mindless repetetive grinding within a very limited engine. Then when you finally have enough currency to progress it's unclear what is useful vs what is actually wasting your progress (e.g. giving the thief skulls - doesn't seem to do anything, but the dialogue implies otherwise). Then the scenes - which are just extremely basic and most definately bottom tier. Story/Writing seemed... fine. I did not encounter bugs, which is good I guess.
So to sum it up: Story 3/5, Gameplay1/5, scenes 1.5/5 = 2/5.

Darktoz has outdone themselves. This game has been a long time in production with a metric tonne of renders, actual story and gameplay, and was even completed. If you're a fan of the content (please read the tags!) I have no doubt that you will find yourself immensely enjoying this game. You should definitely support Darktoz too!

What a waste of time.

Story starts out promising, there aren't many games with dark elves and even less with them holding you prisoner, so I was hoping for a nice ride considering the elven characters looked decent too.

There's an affection point system but its practically useless apart from a few lines of dialog when you choose the talk option to them, since the elves consider you below trash from start to end and abuse you in all sex scenes. I was hoping at least one of them will fall for you but no, this game is only for masochists, specifically ones that don't talk since your character only speaks when you pick whatever choices you're given.

Five hours of playtime and many rocks mined later all I got in return were some lazy reused sex scenes with "animation" done by combining 2 or 3 pictures. Couldn't even use someone else's save because there's no gallery.

Last but not least combat is complete garbage, designed only to drag out the game so it seems bigger. I was going to give it 2/5 because the story is at least somewhat original but after reading the walkthrough and seeing the dev mock cheaters, I'm lowering my score. You're practically forced to use cheats to survive this shitty game without going insane.

After initial release that was promising. Final product is disappointment.
What others have already sad, repetitive tasks so that game looks long, and 3-4 frame animation that you cant skip/forward. End was "rushed" (even tho it took more then a year to write all ends - in reality all end would take 1-2 months to make/finish) with repetitive and ends for multiple characters.

Yeah this game is definately not for everyone. But it hits some of my fetishes very well. Humiliation and the MC being futa dominated, I liked it very much. But I can understand if that is not your thing and I recommend staying away if that is not your thing. It is what this game is all about.

The story telling is great. The characters are well defined. The levels get a littlebit grindy near the end. But multiple endings make up for that. The game did freeze on me a few times. But I am a save game maniac anyway. Five stars from me.

I really wanted to like this game , but I can't ...

for the good , we have the femdom content , the scene , the dialogue , pretty good but that's all

for the bad part , this is the worst engine possible for this type of game

- mining gameplay is boring and repetitive , combat is useless and long ..

- the save system is really bad , because it's RPGM you can only save while you play on the map , imposible to save in the dialogue , or cutscene , and the probleme is each time you have to make a choice there is ton of dialogue and cutscene before this choice , so each time you want to test different choice you are forced to replay all dialogue and cutscene and you have no way to skip it , you can just speed up dialogue but it's really not that fast

- and the ending are very bad designed , for each ending there is multiple scene , but they are totally random , you can't choose which one you want , you just clic on "talk" or "sleep" or "wait" and you have a random scene
problem is , sometime you have 3 time the same scene , if you want a specific scene it's extremely hard to have it , it's pure random , if you have chance you can have this scene immediately , but if you are unlucky , you will only have others scene again and again for hours before having the one you want , and again no way to skip a scene you don't want to watch

so if you are a completionist and want to explore all choice possible and see all scene the game have to offer , seriously don't play it , you will go crazy ..

I edited my review I thought maybe some of the grind would be removed or reduced but twas not to be.

The strong femdom themes presented are rare in games on this site so it's a shame because they are interesting.

Took a lot of hours to get through. You spend most of your time "mining" which means standing in front of an ore sprite and pressing the z button to "hack" at it. Every now and then monsters appear. You have to battle a LOT of monsters to gain enough exp. to level up in four different areas.

If you don't level up your femdom captors are disappointed in you when they try to have their way with you and you unlock paths with certain characters by appealing them, i.e. by levelling up and not disappointing them.

So basically you spend hour after hour mining and battling to get a short hacky scene where they fuck you or abuse you and say either "useless slave" or "good slave" based on whether you've levelled up at the skill you need to please them.

The story is pretty good but all in all there's a lot of dialog, LOADS of grinding and very little actual sex content.

A quick way to make it better would be to strongly reduce the grind and experience needed to unlock new levels. Like by half or a quarter of what it is now.