Ren'Py - Corrupted Kingdoms [v0.22.3d] [ArcGames]

This review is on version 0.19.9.

"Corrupted Kingdoms" is a game I have been following for a long time, and one I have mixed feelings about.

There's no denying the overall quality of presentation. It's a rare case where it feels as though the game uses "Koikatsu" renders not because they're easily accessible, but because it's genuinely what the developer liked and wanted. Beyond even that, however, the interface, music selections, settings, plotlines...they're all, by and large, very good.

But, while I have heaps to praise about this game, from plot details to content variation, I find myself becoming increasingly disillusioned with it, and there's no better way to explain why than to look at the lie plastered on the front page:

「You are the hero - or possibly villain - of this tale」

The game has abandoned its focus, and it can be seen sorely in almost every aspect of the game.

I want to start by saying this game has effectively become kinetic throughout the development of Arc 2. There is no choice for the player to define themselves, you are as Arc has written you. The premise of "Awakening" and "Shattering", which originally seemed to promise control and morality, has largely been abandoned - any grey area is in the MC's use of his powers on passerby.

The notion of "passerby" brings me to my next point: the character count. "Corrupted Kingdoms" has a portion in the UI that tracks your "progress" with characters, presumably the intended main ones...but the sheer number of characters has gotten out of hand. The UI has never been updated to reflect the current reality, but you would need to double or even triple it to account for the cast of repeating characters, nevermind the one-offs. Now, to be completely fair, the divide (with a couple exceptions) is by all indicators a matter of quest instances, those shown have multiple quest sequences to complete...though personally I believe that's a bit rubbish, I'd like it to account for all characters because the feature literally exists to track characters. But mostly all of this is a problem with "focus", because so very many of these characters are feature-incomplete while the game chugs along.

It just feels like the scope has gotten so grand that the content has suffered for it. Particularly like a character? Get stuffed, here's another one...or two...or three. And you know what? I like getting to meet such a huge cast of characters...I just hate not getting to meet them again. It may sound rude to such a high-level project, but if you're going to add a character, they need effort directed towards them, not whatever you feel like doing now.

Act 3 has exacerbated these problems even further, and has reformulated itself into an almost entirely different game with even less focus on character interaction. It's beginning to feel so front-heavy as to almost be a bait-and-switch. There was a time when this game was a clear 5 star from me, but increasingly I've felt my interest, and as a result my opinion, continually lowering.

Now, don't get me wrong, "Corrupted Kingdoms" is still good, especially when considering the standard for games of this type...but don't be fooled by the fancy taglines or the story's beginning: While it does have some neat lore, this is a collector game and little else. It's terrifically sad when it used to be more.

Edit (0.20.9): I want to add a quick addendum for the dev. Given your statement regarding the situation with Patreon, this appears to be a good opportunity to address some of the game's shortcomings as you'll be reworking vast swathes of it anyway.

I hate to give a bad review but the game enters the point where i simply don't care any more. First the effort, time, skill and love put in this game are really top notch.

But i think they main concept got lost. I mean there is nothing more wich is corrupt. You have a happy harem. In the early version where it was just you and the bar maid. I was corrupting her. Now it's a hero story with some vanilla sex. Also there is not a single story affecting choice. All you decide is if you want to see a lwed scene or not. Other choices just change the flavor of the text.

This is one of the longer-running, highly-rated games on the site, that I've avoided for a long time, and well...

It has good parts.

What this game lacks, even more than budget, is restraint. I believe a project with this level of high-effort deserves to be judged more harshly for what that effort has been directed towards.

A good lewd game is usually one that has a strong theme that's supported by strong technical execution and enticing lewd scenes. Here, there is some heart, and some effort put towards the strong central theme of power-fantasy/harem-protagonist stuff, but the game very rarely directs it's full attention to those core central scenes and mechanics that matter, and it just throws "content" at you. More stats, characters, scenes, random events, whatever the creators could get out of the Koikatsu-visuals. Just dozens and dozens of scenes that can be viewed in any desired order, being relatively free-form, but also lacking proper pacing outside the better, restricted sections.

The game has no problems throwing stock-animations with stock-porn-music at you with a couple of lines of dialogue over and over again. Sometimes the game bothers to add in the context for the scenes, but not often enough. There are scenes that are slightly better executed, but I have yet to see a properly built up erotic scene. The pacing reminds me of serialized fan-fiction more than anything else, where "content" has been added based on a need for the current update, rather than the project as a whole.

As for the story, I think there is a strong core of magic-power fantasy hiding behind everything else, but it is kind of hampered by the adherence to harem-anime tropes, that don't always go together. At minimum, they should have given the MC at least one original character-trait, because having character-dialogue that consists of "I like to eat Ice Cream!" is actual brain-poison. The strong parts of the writing feel like they're being suffocated by all the stuff that is bad on purpose.

Without going deeper into the plot and decisions made, I think the game would genuinely be better if there was less of it. Less heroines, with sharper more interconnected storylines, more high-effort, well paced sections between periods of resource/relationship/stat-building sections, and a better presentation of the sex scenes. Limit the dev to one random joke-area that they can make using whatever assets are in the Koikatsu-editor, and make everything else be story-areas connected to plotlines related to the main themes of the work, which would be domination, mind control, mental changes, magic-use and power-fantasy. Also limit the number of things the MC is good at, and just use those limited strengths to get whatever the MC desires.

...not saying anything actually needs to happen with this project, as it seems very near feature-complete, but just as general opinions on what type of experience I would enjoy more in this formula.

Very average game.

The story is okay but I was never really invested.

The music can get annoying but it is mostly fitting.

The sex scenes have good animations but sometimes the camera is really bad.

The characters are very basic but I enjoyed most of them.

The gameplay isn´t really good it just felt boring.

The dialogue is mostly good but when it tried to be funny I was just annoyed.


I would recommend it not really special but it doesn´t really have many problems.

Love the game! I like this type of game specially with pregnancy on it.

Story is good specially the twist about who the MC really is and his gramps. There's so much question and mystery about it and i'm looking forward about it. About the girls in the game i'm looking forward for the other girls that can get preggo specially Gwen. Kinda sad about her for protecting the MC.

Been playing RPG turnbased or whatever it is in my entirelife. For a game like this the mini games and others this aside from reading some stuff like VN are quite good since i hate VN, i rather watch hentai or read manga if i'll just play VN. Like the idea of chapter 3 about war, it's just can you put more to it. Kinda expecting to have more places to go once you conquered a district and put something like dating or making love on it. Also if you can put like a time travel so you could go back to the recent chapter without war. So you can play around get the girls preggo or grind something, while waiting for the new patch or content of the game.

Overall i like the game!! I will still give a 5!
I hope you could create another game with pregnancy with it. lol
Moreee power to yaa!! I wish i could donate but im just a pleb, hopefully i could donate so i could support you

Well, the game took MANY TURNS. I found most of it AMAZING, and really enjoyed that it turned out much bigger than I expected... however, I feel that it would be more enjoyable with more situations in which your choices matter.

Also, i'm hesitant of the current state of things, as of version 0.19.4. The new gameplay combat loop got boring extremely quickly for me. I hope what is left is worth the grind, but given how much I enjoyed it until those recent events, i must give it a try

Probably the only porn game in existence (outside of Steam) that has Discord integration. It can be disabled.. but it's enabled by default.

I doubt I'm alone on this... most people don't want everyone on Discord to know what porn game they're playing.

I don't understand why this is even necessary. Up to the dev I guess, but it should at least be opt-in instead of opt-out.

First of all,I did not expect it to go so long,I thought it woud be a quick playthrough, which it was not . It took me 4 Days to play through, I thought i coud play it in one night, well i was wrong.
With 17 main girls there is a lot to do, and those 17 arent thr only girls, ther are a lot of side girls with whom you can have fun. Most of the Main Girls have there own Story, which gives you a lot of diversity so that it dosent get boring.
The world you play in is really big, which is really cool caues you can explore it, but it can also be a pain sometimes cause you have to move constantly from one point to another. A button to go direktly to your room would be a good idea.
I like that there a different Currencies. Well i uesed the Cheat menu at the Laptop to get the Money i needed, it would have taken me even longer to play through the game if i didnt, but it did say that in the final version its going to be removed. So the Idea of different Currencies is Good.
I really like the new game aspect in Act3
One thing that i think could use some work are the Sex Animations,
a lot of time it looks like he only puts his tip in whitch i think is a waste considering that he has such a large Rod. And some of the Camera angle could be better.

Over all i had a great time playing it
I played the 0.19.7a Version
I give it an 8/10 considering that it is work in progress amd there is room to grow.

Note: I don't believe a complex opinion can be properly represented by a number but I do understand some people are impatient so I don't use the star system normally, my ratings are as follows. 1 don't recommend, 3 unsure please read review, 5 recommend.

I have been sleeping on this game for a while, I think because it looks like a lot of other games and in fact has some locations there are premade assets you can find in other games, point is I legitimately thought I had already played it. If I ever did it was in a much earlier build. Regardless I decided to check it out this week and now ima tell you about it.

The art is good if you're into this 3D anime style, I like it especially with accompanying dialogue but that's for the individual to decide, I think it's done well, lots of variety in terms of personality and body type I'd say this is an overall positive.

In order to talk about the one thing I don't like about the gameplay I need to talk about the story and characters now. The story of this game can best be described as the moment when you tell Fawkes to go into the radiation filled chamber to enter the code and he says "no, this is your destiny vault dweller, I cannot interfere". It's that but it never ends, every person in this plot has way more information than the MC, including you the player, and none of them, no matter what, will ever just tell the fucking MC ANYTHING. It's not just infuriating it's bad writing and it makes even less sense if you're a cunt the whole game. It's not fun to uncover a mystery when even the player is already well past the MC's information, I figured out a crucial plot point within the first 30 minutes of playing that isn't officially revealed until almost the end of the current update. Could this motherfucker be any dumber? The reason for the story being told this way and even the MC's absurdly low IQ are explained in the plot, which makes it okay right? NO, NO IT DOES NOT. Knowing the story is merely pretending to be retarded doesn't make you feel less retarded for reading it.

The plot is interesting but it's also tiring, everything you know and understand is constantly changing but not really and don't worry because everyone else in the plot figured this would happen anyway and already prepared the solution which they had the whole time but couldn't tell you because it's your destiny to figure out the solution on your own, which you didn't do because you only uncovered a half truth and didn't know the whole story that someone else could have explained to you before you even started but didn't because ya know? There are too many plot points that all intersect in frustrating ways and I end up just not caring.

Luckily the interpersonal character stories are much easier to keep track off and far more interesting. Even if half the reason for that is the sex at the end. There are a lot of female characters in this game and you can bang the vast majority which is refreshing for this sort of game, lots tend to be unfinished with ghost characters of what will be later floating around this doesn't have that nearly as much.

So this whole game is basically you creating a massive harem of girls you magic touch into loving you, unless you're a weirdo, while uncovering the mystery of what happened to your mom who vanished in the forest one day. Eventually this comes to ahead and you look in the wrong place for answers and the games entire dynamic changes. This is the big annoying thing I wanted to talk about, at some point the game stops being a casual open world dating sim thing and turns into a territory control game where you need to play JRPG battles and retake the town. For clarity the actual territory control aspects aren't in the game yet but the JRPG crap is and so is the game removing half the map and most of your harem as well as crippling one of the girls, my brother in Christ why?

Honestly though if the content in the game before this didn't feel so unfinished I don't think I would have minded as much, as it stands it feels like there was a lot of stuff that was supposed to happen but never did, you can take the girls clubbing to get ogled at but you can't fuck them in the club? What? Emma's story feels non-existent you become the dean of the college and don't let her back in? Does she even want back in? whats the deal with the quiet girl? it makes the change to a war territory control thing so much more jarring when there's so much you don't know if you finished.

It's like the developer decided to make a pizza piece by piece and he has a pizza stone to use as reference but he keeps putting random ass toppings on each piece forgetting what he put on the one before. This is reinforced by the fact that the game apparently has weekly updates which is fucking insane. I hope eventually when the game is in a better state the dev can go through and create more content where it feels it's lacking but we'll have to see.

In conclusion, this game is a bit of a mess, it's balancing a lot of plates in the air but I just want my food, I am still recommending it because I think it has a lot going for it and there is a lot of scenes to explore but I worry about the games future. Guess we'll see, ta ta for now.

love the art, especially bunny kingdom ehehehe.. only can have one child though, but good enough.

some places need direction and others, making you need to keep notes. but that can be easily solved by looking past the guide.

Great characters, the girls are pretty, and there is a good justification for why you get sex so fast after meeting most of them, the only lacking part of the sex scenes are the animations, which are the same old every other project of this kind uses.
The game starts very linear and quite limited, but opens up a lot on the second chapter, so don't judge the game before you get the Manor, the best pa- TwEnTy FivE CoMe DaNcE WiTh Me
TwEnTy FivE CoMe DaNcE WiTh Me
TwEnTy FivE CoMe DaNcE WiTh Me

I'm not sure how I feel about this game.

Actually, I do: I rate first two acts five stars, definitely. They do have problems, but those are incomparable to the rest of genuinely good enjoyable content.

First act is a little weak overall, being just a cliched story of making harem with hypnosis, but it manages to tell coherent story and add a bunch of plot hooks for the second act to pick up.

And pick them up second act do! It's still the exact same linear VN about hypnosis and harem, but it has plenty of non-obligatory expansive side-quests to distract player from main plot for a good enough reason and a good reward. Not that main plot desperately needs it, growing from a simple hypnosis doujinshi into a not half-bad story about... Wait, is it alright to post spoilers if I'm writing my impressions about the game so far? Ah, fuck it, spoilers ahead, you'd been warned! ... story about your past reincarnations and how you will be the one to bring peace where they failed, neat. Mechanics-wise, growing your harem via all the different side-quests allows to build some income, gain stats to outwit and overpower opponents in main and side-quests, and just get access to a bunch of new scenes. The loop is self-sustaining and at some points it becomes easy to forget, that bunch of this stuff isn't even necessary.

There are some loose threads hanging for act two, as mentioned before, but they don't disrupt player too much. Honestly, for a game by a single dev, acts one and two offer plenty of content from four years of development. If last part sounded sarcastic - it's not, there are many devs, who do much less in four years, and leave much more unfinished content over same time, so I'm, personally, impressed and even pleasantly surprised by most of it.

Most of it... But by the end of act two many characters suddenly change, start behaving opposite to their initial states, and even openly admit as much. If anything, it feels a little jarring, but, well, the story is building up to climax, so many of these sudden twists will likely be explained in act three... and, oh, sweet Mother Maria, the third act.

As of right now, act three is very much bare bones, so I don't want to complain about quality, but the quantity makes me worry about it anyway. As it seems to me, the main problems is that act three is just its own game, completely different from one and two. It got its separate from first two acts stat system, spell system, income system, map system, dialogue system, additional disconnected graphics and even a completely new harem.

Some characters from previous acts are still here, although, as said before, completely different from before, and, definitely, probably, hopefully, there will be more of them in the future, but so far majority of them was swept under the rag in favour of six new girls. And whereas in act two you had all the different stories and side-quests for every girl in and out of the harem, in act three you just fight a girl n-times, utilising act-three-stat-system, then maradeur her location x-times in a row to build something for what should become act-three-income-system, and use act-three-dialogue-system to break girl down, completely ignoring previous spell system and whole hypnosis theme in favour of "dick - big, bitch - weak". One might argue, that these are not main love interests, fair is fair, but so far none of the main girls have recieved any significant content for act three, save for a couple new sex scenes (previous side-girls faring surprisingly better in that regard with, something, half a dozen new sex scenes), but no quests to even speak of, even though some of their storylines desperately need development.

Meanwhile, act-three-harem just recieved a whole new "rehabilitation" mechanic, which sounds great, you can have so many potential choices: let them actually get better on their own; brainwash them with you powers to make sure they get "better" with you; fry they brains like a true villain and use rehabilitation to build a completely different personality to better suit your needs - but in reality you just use act-three dialogue system b-times in a row, go on a fetch quest to girl's location using act-three-map-system, and use act-three-dialogue-system for the final time to "rehabilitate" girl. In the future, probably, it will translate into respective girl's location granting player bunch of bonuses, but so far it gives, like, two lines of dialogue in act-three-dialogue-system when observing girl's location, and not even to every of the six.

And if anybody is reading this, you are probably asking: "Why are you constantly doing this act-three-bullshit thing?", - but that's the thing: there's only a single right spot on the map, where you access a separate act-three-map, and then from it you get to all (beside the new dialogue) the other act-three-systems, where majority of act-three content, so far, is available, and it's simply absurd. I think, peak of this absurdity was when I went into act-three-map to build aforementioned "rehabilitation center" at girl's location, then went onto main-map to visit girl's location there and get the fetch quest, then gone back to act-three-map to get gizmo at girl's location, then returned to girl's location on the main-map to hand item over, then finally arrived to girl's location on act-three-map to get my two new lines of dialogue.

What. The. Fuck? Not sure, if Arcgames just got tired of CK and decided to make entirely new game, using CK shell as advertisement for it, but so far act three is not much more than proof of concept. I hope in future updates main girls will finally get some attention and amount of repetative tasks will be cut by more than a half, but for 0.19.0 you really should stop after completing act two, rest is just unfinished and should not, must not reflect on your impressions from the game, which is, again, I believe to be five stars.

The game has several choices where there is no choice. Feels like a VN despite not being one . The story is alright but nothing great. The main character is passionate about what happened in his past but the player isn't given much reason to care.

There are only so few games where you can feel the author give it their love and affection when writing and making the scenes, every character has life in them and makes them feel ALIVE. Several moments in the game made me tear up, shout out of my lungs and well of course get an erection, but I just want to say, this is more than just an H-game, it's a masterpiece and I can't wait to play it fully. SO thank you maker for this lovely game!

Interesting story, pretty good animations that fully transfer feeling of action and pretty good optimization. For someone this game can be special so try it out by yourself, anyway you will loose nothing.

I played again after like two years and it surprised me for good. Very nice to add the war minigame. It makes extraordinary a game that can be good even just as visual novel. Apart, in all the game the use of characters is smart and enjoyable. Exploring options and places to get more scenes is a good feature too. It gives kind of a experience of exploration that is only in rpgmaker games. Best wishes for the closure!

I found the game very enjoyable. The girls are hot and liked the story progression. It's not Shakespeare, but it's more than you expect from a lewd game. A cute and original game that I'd like to recommend.

Good content, good release pace.

Barriers to new content aren't ridiculous and require no significant grinding.

Gameplay is visual novel, so there is not much beyond reading and clicking buttons, but story is okay.

Absolutely loved what I've seen so far. This game almost reminds me of Harem Hotel in some ways, which is definitely a good thing. Of course, the mc can be much crueler in this game than in Harem Hotel, which is a pretty massive difference...but it's not something that I'm inclined to hate.

Can't wait to see what the next update brings!

Good game, the things I would improve are the quality of the scenes and animations. The Game System and mechanics work quite well, and I really like the fact that we have both normal girls and monster girls.