Java - Corrupted Saviors [Release 52b] [CSDev]

This review is for Release 51 (although I have been playing since R22c)

TLDR: Insane learning curve, but great community and a cheat mode that makes the game possible for casuals or people who just don't want to think too hard for a bit, but needs better pleasure center pressers (art, varied flavor scenes, etc.) to increase/maintain appeal.

The game itself is incredibly hardcore with a learning curve that is only beaten by 3.5e DnD in that you need to dedicate a lot of time to learning how the game works and even then, you need to also understand even more that you cannot learn from what comes from the game.

On the plus side, once you lose your first run (unless it has been changed to just always be available) you gain access to cheat mode which grants infinite evil energy, so even if you are a scrub like me who can't clear any run on their own, you wind up getting what you need to be able to play through the game on what should be called casual mode.

The biggest thing that helps this game is definitely the community.
I have never met a community of players on ANY forum that has been as helpful, patient, and insightful as this community.
If you ever need help learning how the game works, you can always post a comment in the discussion section and someone WILL help you to the point that the next time you will need their help is when you reach the loops that have elite enemies because those ones are very difficult to deal with.

Aside from the difficulty of the game, the mechanics are fairly sound, I have only rarely encountered situations where bugs arise, to the point that the only bugs I can note at this time are:

1. Surround levels dropping for seemingly no reason as soon as a chosen gets un-captured (sometimes going from 7 levels to 4 even though nothing has changed aside from them no longer being surrounded)
2. Damage from basic attacks in the late game of loops doing almost no damage even though there are no negative modifiers in play and nothing has been done to reduce damage yet.
   ie: when an attack that should be doing damage in the realm of 50.4p points only does 23 points of damage for literally no reason.

And that's literally the only bugs I have ever encountered.

The character creation is nice, which is good because a text based game that is 90% math really should be spectacular in the writing department, especially since anything that isn't tied to the mechanics of the game is considered flavor text that you don't have to read unless you can decipher the chosen's strengths and weaknesses from their personality entry (which you can do, but you can also get psychic reading at the beginning of the loops, so not a needed skill).

The fact that the chosen can now have wildly varied body types and those can actually impact the game is awesome, but they need to have more of an impact in the flavor scenes since those have remained basically the same ever since I started playing, so I almost never even read flavor scenes anymore, I just scroll to the end to see if I gained any EE or breaks from the scene, then move on.

A problem that I do have with the game though that has nothing to do with the gameplay itself, is the use of AI art assets.
They used to be an optional pack that you could install yourself, but now they are built in to the base game.
With a game this immense in mechanics, getting professionally made art to use for the game should be a priority rather than using AI assets, especially since an artist could not only make better art, but they could take each of the flavor text scenes and turn those into whole ass dynamic images that turns the game from an exercise in programming into true fap material.
Seriously, playing this game always makes me want to go watch magical girls getting gang banged in public, to the point that I literally stop playing the game to jack off to something else, and when it comes to porn games, that is NOT something you want.
If there were professionally made images and art assets made for the game by a real artist, even if they just started out as colorless sketch images, it would massively improve the appeal of this game for many people, and for the hardcore gamers only interested in winning, you could just have a toggle button to turn off the flavor text images to cut down on scrolling.

All-in-all, it's a good game at its core, but it is so complex that it turns many people away, and the lack of decent art assets and no difficulty options aside from standard, custom made loop, and cheat mode turns even more people away.
Personally, I keep playing because it scratches all the right kink/fetish itches, and winning without cheating gives such a dopamine rush that it makes it all feel worth it.

So if you are hesitant about checking this game out, or are even considering leaving a bad review, I really recommend interacting with the community for this game, because they can turn a frustrating headache into something that is actually really enjoyable.

This game always is the most broken unbalanced game ever strategy-wise, but it is also extremely satisfying once you know what you are doing. Racking up those multipliers and combos feel amazing, no arguments.

However it's replayability suffer heavily from gameplay pace: the better you are at the game, the less engaging the story becomes. Once you finish your first / second cycles the next ones become more and more boring, and you see no points in continue playing.

This game deserves a Poor rating because of the UI and UX alone. It's not terrible, but it's distinctly below average. It's hard to understand what you're even meant to be doing, the game does not help you at all. The writing is of fairly high quality, but it's extremely difficult to feel like you're playing a game. I can read very high quality smut that I don't need to play a game to access, let alone a game that's this difficult to work out what it is you're meant to be doing. If the author ever reads this: you need a few hard UI and UX passes to make this game more approachable.

In a nutshell, you can't figure it out without a gallon of beer. Seriously, this game is so unfriendly and unnecessarily overpowered that I fell in love with it at first sight. I love games like this, the kind where the gameplay is a huge system that you can spend hours exploring, but the problem is that here it's done in the most obnoxious way possible.

It's h game, right? Right, but the game itself forgot about it, that's why you can't "have fun" here, because there is very little content, and the game itself takes you away from it.

Incredibly sharp rise in the threshold of entry. High threshold for such games is normal, as it is difficult to create a normal atmosphere in the game in which the incredibly complex game system, but in other games "mountain" high, but the angle of ascent is successfully calibrated that would not thaw, but here ... here the mountain is dotted with spikes on which dragons are sitting, and at the same time a tornado is passing by. Lots of obscure "at first glance" terms, lots of obscure "in the very long run" terms that no one will explain to you, why would they? Do you need them? And what is there to do? Am I doing everything right or have I already lost?

From the previous point follows this one, the need to read tons of guides in order to just play the game. And this is the shit I just hate, if the game has shit that you can understand only from the guide (well, or spend 50 hours on it) then the game design is shit, okay? In games with good gameplay design, there are few or no such situations, somewhere the player will be specifically told why what is needed, leaving out unnecessary details for the moment, somewhere will hint gameplay.

Showing everything at once. In a game with a huge number of features, you need to understand when to provide the player with these features, if they overload gameplay, it is worth some way to weaken its impact on gameplay for the first time, or at all blocked, hide that the player would first understand and master the basic mechanics, and then, delve into the details.

Here comes 4535 hours of play, so - everything seems to go well, great, the next move and... you lost because on the 3rd hour of the game did not choose the 2nd skill of 44, sucker. When the game party can last up to several hours, it is worth doing so that the player would initially realize that he sucks ass and that it is necessary to start again, which is often used in the form of challenge once every n days, which allows the player to understand whether he is doing everything right and compare their strength relative to something.

Disgusting UI. There is nothing much to say, the others have already described it, but just to point out that put the interaction with the chosen in the tab info, quite a strange idea. (I found it by random poking).

The system seems to be advanced, but in any case, the variability here is zero. At least a little move from the most effective path, for example, the dial of fun, why not? That's it, you suck your ass, restart casual-boy.

Honestly, the amount of work put into this game is insane.

Instead of listing all the pros and cons (as its been done by many people already), I'm going to ask you to give it a try if you haven't yet.

Its a bit hard, but the semi-built in tutorial does a decent job at getting you started. Once you begin to understand it becomes incredibly fun, to the point where I was playing it without the intention of rubbing one out.

Honestly: My congratulations and thanks to the developer for this amazing game.

I finally got all 3 distortions on day 13 after endless resetting and need to review this game.

Pros:

• A high skill porn game, I have now seen everything.
• Best automatic personality generation I've seen in just about any game much less an indie Sailor Moon ripoff.
• Even though the writing is scripted and often repeats itself the writing is surprisingly good and a lot of thought is put into character details.
• The chosen do bad things too, if you think about it who are the real villains? Still us.
• The dopamine release when I get the perfect battle is superior to any orgasm.

Cons:

• Text only and need to download packs.
• My brain is working too hard to fap.
• Girls start to feel less distinct since the text for each character trait is repeated.
• Very hard to learn, too hard for normies.
• Some information is pretty obscure, you don't learn fallen/distortion/superior mechanics until after your first run. They interact too. You play through a whole game just to find out it was the tutorial and you now have to learn how the actual game is played.

Suggestions:

• IMPROVE THE UI add the ability to check information (like chosen weaknesses, how traumas contribute to openings etc.) in battle. I pretty much needed 2-3 text documents of info on how game mechanics worked open at all times when I was starting.
• GIVE ME THE OPTION TO HIDE SOME TEXT, I don't need to see every EE upgrade on the menu every time I change the page I'm on, and a lot of text is redundant. Toggles based on dialogue type would be great for this.
• MORE DIALOGUE VARIETY! This is a game that benefits from having more stuff in it, it's not like you'll run out of disk space or processing power. Multiple dialogue options per personality type and more variety per corruption level (a tier break should have much more variety than just c/min/sig). More events like the day 14 broadcast would be great.
• CUSTOM CHOSEN, allow custom dialogue/descriptions for custom chosen. Helps with the above suggestion and unchanged lines can default to the standard. Would make mods god tier.
• EE becomes uninteresting after you get Tomorrow's News, I feel there should be some generic spender for EE or more interesting upgrade paths. I'd like to have access to more weak items that I choose circumstantially as opposed to a couple OP ones that I'm stuck with.

Other players have already said it many times before, so I won't repeat it here.
In short, this game is:

1. Unforgiving
2. Demands dedication
3. Lacks feedback towards the player
4. Long-winded and slow

Personally, I don't like this kind of game, where it pretty much expects you to read paragraphs upon paragraphs of documentation just so you can play it "right". Even then it's still hard to tell when you're doing poorly. And yes, you will be doing poorly and will only realize long after the fact, or if you even notice at all.

I'll just get this out here, to me this game gave off the impression of elitism, by which I mean when someone raised a complaint such as mine they'll just get hit by the playerbase with a "git gud" while not providing anything helpful at all. I know there are people out there who enjoy challenging and difficult games, and I'm not saying the developer should dumb it down or make it simpler, since it's perfectly okay if they enjoy making hard games.

Sorry for the rant. I suggest you avoid this game if you're looking for the standard RPG and/or sandbox game experience because you will not find any here.

This is the most poorly explained, obtuse, frustrating game I've come across in over 20 years of gaming.
The developer uses hundreds of terms without bothering to explain what any of them mean, how they work or even what the objective of the game is.
After more than 15 hours of trying to play and reading guides, I still legitimately have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing here. Am I trying to kill the "Chosen"? Am I trying to enslave them? I seem to be attacking them in utterly pointless duels that achieve nothing and result in a loss for me every time.
I'm giving this 2 stars because it's clear a MONUMENTAL amount of effort went into it. But holy shit, I have no idea what audience it's intended for.

Difficult to learn, satisfying to master. You will struggle, you will rage, you will beat your head against the opaque rules and mind-boggling math behind the game.

Then you will swallow your pride, you will find the guides in the game folder, and you will read the forums. You will start putting the lessons into practice.

Then you will win Loop 1, and the *real* game will begin. Stick with it, don't give up, this game is very rewarding in a cerebral sense.

Oh yeah and it's hot.

The good:
Currently really good as a 'game'. There's quite a large skill curve though before you get to the point of being good enough to get anything done. Some Minor QoL I'd like added (a button to show all inputs given in the current day would be fantastic for example, when trying to optimize)

The bad:
Some excess repetition in the sex/erotic content. Regularly updated though so I'm very prepared to go up to a perfect rating as the game gets improved.

(Review is as of Release 46b)

I'm giving it a 4 based on the fact that it does what it sets out to do, even though in its current form it's kind of not for me.

For starters, and this can't be stressed enough: while the game presents itself as more of a management sim, it is absolutely a puzzle game. Not only does the game hide this fact from you, but it also never tells you if you're putting the pieces together correctly.

It's daunting early on and the included text document only sort of clears things up. I say "only sort of" because of my previous comment about how the game never tells you if you're putting the pieces together correctly. Played correctly, this game is a "select the right options and make the numbers go brrrrrr" kind of experience. Hey, I like the Disgaea series, you may think. I'm fine with numbers going brrrrrr. But here's the problem: the game takes place over a number of days, and while you understand what your goal ultimately is, what you don't know is how close you are to achieving that goal. Did you actually do a good enough job of making the numbers go brrrrrr last turn? The good news is that if you think you didn't, as long as you don't complete the day, you can reset and start over. Owing to the fact that it's a puzzle game, there is no randomness: if you play it the same way, you will get the same result. But the bad news is, you don't really have an idea of just how well (or poorly) you're doing. And if you start poorly, you might as well give up, because you will pay for it in the end: the game is not exactly forgiving, and only gets more and more unforgiving as you progress. This is ultimately the biggest flaw in the game: even reading the text documents and some of the guides other users have posted (which is also a tacit admission that the included documentation does not do a good enough job of explaining how the game works and, more importantly, how to not suck at it) does not actually tell you if you're doing well enough in your game to progress. The game also occasionally freezes, particularly if you do too good of a job of making the numbers go brrrrrr.

I'm still giving it a 4 for a few reasons: first, the dev clearly has a vision in mind and it's one that some people absolutely do enjoy; and second, said dev is very active and seems very dedicated to improving the game.

After multiple tries to get into playing this, I cant say id recommend it to anyone. you have little control over how chosen personalities generate, the gameplay is a confusing mess, and by the end of the game you can reach meaningless damage numbers so big that they freeze the game, forcing late game battles to be refought multiple times if you aren't careful.

tl;dr: Puella Magi Madwarfoka Fortress, without the sandboxing

First off: despite the appearances, this isn't really a management sim, it's a very wordy and numbery puzzle game.

This is its biggest problem: it presents itself like a sandboxy sim, but the reality is there no RNG involved beyond generating the initial team of magical girls to fight against. Therefore there literally is an optimal way to play it, but if you don't play it the optimal (or nearly optimal) way, all your clicking amounts to basically nothing. And there is a lot of clicking.

This wouldn't be so bad if you were somewhat constrained in what you were able to do, but the game also presents you repeated opportunities to make "wrong" tactical and character-building decisions that functionally only serve to knock you off that very narrow path to progress. Botch your first several turns, and your entire loop is pretty much cooked. Losing is fun, and alla that.

And that wouldn't be so bad if there was a functional tutorial in regards to basic principles of playing... but there isn't really anything beyond some jargon-heavy tips.txt and a goal system that tells you what to try for but not how to avoid the multiple ways to screw it up.

Beyond that there just isn't much in the way of actual management/optional goals to pursue until well into the mid/late game, so what you're left with is a mostly undocumented, easy-to-gimp-yourself early/mid game of obligatory power progression that gates off the far more interesting endgame stuff.

And that's a definite shame, because that phase is where this game really stands out. But by the time you get there, you might not actually feel like playing this thing anymore.

As a distinguished enjoyer of:

• Hentai games that are engagingly difficult
• Slow burn corruption
• Corruption systems that are unique in their implementation, and not just "do x thing 5 times until you unlock the more corrupt thing, then do that 5 more times, repeat forever"

This game is right up my ally. Highly recommend and excited to see where the game goes.

For most people though, BEWARNED:

• This is not quick-fap friendly
• You will need to use your brain while you beat your dick (or pamper your pussy). Guides can help, but they don't make it completely trivial. You will need to read the manual/tutorial 100%, potentially multiple times.
• You will likely fail before you succeed. And it isn't the end of the world when you do.

But once you do succeed, it feels THAT much more satisfying. It makes the Chosen actually feel like powerful figures, so forcing them to succumb to their desires by exploiting their character flaws gives such an intense, moustache-twirling sense of diabolical evilness that 95% of corruption-themed H games don't have enough soul to resemble, not in the slightest.

The portrait packs make it significantly hotter too imo, don't forget to make use of those. Shoutout to Chekov's Ghost for making the best packs

Completed two loops in Campaign in Release 40c. Not a fan.

Once you learn the game, there is almost always a clear winner in each situation. You could do B, but A is better, so do A. Item choice is anemic. The skill tree could be made linear with little difference. Which Chosen you get are set, even if you choose the other city. Distortions are more challenge modes than alternative win conditions.

The core concept is good. The core systems are interesting. But there is no room for play style, only the right choice hidden among many, many possible mistakes.

This game is great, if you are willing to invest the time required to learn how to play.

It would be easy to dismiss most of the negative reviews as skill issues, because whoever looks at the screenshots and thinks this is quick fap compatible, is obviously an idiot, but sadly they do have a point.

The gameplay is very unintuitive and difficult to digest at first. It does not help, that you have to do essentially nothing for a lot of days at first and are given a way to waste your energy for no gain early on.
The ingame guide works, but playing it for the first time you might think it is outdated or just wrong.
If you try to do anything beyond the very basics in the beginning, you will fail and get the impression you do not understand how to play at all.
Doing nothing, when you have a time limit feels wrong.
So yeah, the first time experience could be better.

I recently started playing this again and had completely forgotten how to play, but i did manage to get a completely uncorrupted team to hate eachother and had about 15 of 50 days to spare after fully corrupting them, so it is very much possible to beat the game without cheats.
I did not play perfectly, because i know it is possible to completely fuck up the early interview with the chosen and i did not quite manage to do that.
The final battle is also pretty lenient and does not require you to do everything beforehand to win, but if you do come prepared it becomes very easy.

Saving every single turn is recommended.

There is nothing quite like it as far as i am aware. It has heavy themes of saviours getting exploited by the people depending on them and is deliciously depraved.
Lots of little vignettes, that depend on relations and personalities, flesh out the randomly generated chosen. You have many options to shape their path. There are lots of things, you can do after playing a classic run and the writing is excellent.

Very much recommended, but the first time player experience does suck.

I gave this game too much chances...
Downloaded and tried to play many times, description of characters and corruption is really good, but gameplay is terrible, very repetitive, you must play only after reading guides which is hell boring, i've come here to play game not reading guides.
Bad UI, no Android support (i had to play with Moonshine just because i don't like playing on PC)
I didn't get far but i'm sure in story wise (character corruption) this one is really good at it, but gameplay is huge barrier to it

Excellent at what it's trying to be. A text-based corruption-game with gameplay and high ammount of customizeability, with a surprising ammount of depth and polish to it.

The content here is tailored torwards a specific nieche of really rough, violent sex, although there is also a setting to lower the ammount of violence in the descriptions. Still, it should be mentioned that the style has roughly a 50/50 split between titillating and violent content.

But the game still gives you access to a very interesting, very unique fantasy of corrupting, tormenting, capturing and training magical girls, all through gameplay, and supported by very good writing. (made even better by the open-endedness)

Even if I don't enjoy all of the content, I have sank a fair ammount of time on the game, which is very much deserved. The biggest downside might be that the basic gameplay-loop is based on repetition, and thus after a certain ammount of time, you kind of start to filter out most of the content as you're chasing after the correct plays. It's a bit hard to split your concentration correctly to enjoy the game the best.

This game is significantly flawed - an excessively complex battle/stat system presented in a terrible UI - but has some good corruption content if you can figure out how to get to it (I'd advise cheating). At the moment it seems to need near perfect play to reach a tipping point which is easy if you're the developer who wrote it and understands how everything interacts but very obtuse otherwise.

IMO what should be fixed from easiest to most complex

• Make the UI less high contrast. Turn black background to dark grey or white background to light grey. #FFFFFF on #000000 is eye searing
• Add difficulty selection to the game. This can be as simple as a global attack buff/debuff
• Change to a variable width font for prose passages, even if it's still required for the stat displays
• Increase button sizes and add icons/color to be more easily distinguished
• Actually build a UI for stat displays instead of making them from ASCII art like a caveman. Attach to character portraits
• Further UI redesign, add some structure to buttons so they're not just in a straight line (considering the amount of effort that has gone into the main game it's bizzare how little has been put into the UI)

Great game.

Ingenious battle system. Takes some getting used to and hard to explain, but after a couple of tries it starts to make sense. It definitely has its own logic.

Well written. Any good corruption game depends on seeing similar situations play out and see it play out differently depending on level of corruption. The game simulates personalities, corruption and even relationships and does so impressively well.

Plenty depth. There is quite a few ways to skin a cat, or to corrupt a girl in this game. And then using corrupted girls to help corrupt others. Well done.

Moddable. It's easy to add your own portraits, characters, export and import and share with others.

Hotkeys. Hotkeys are always a good thing for games that some people play onehanded. And it's good that it has them.

Difficult. Could be a pro or con depending on your point of view. One of the first pieces of advice you get in game is the value of saving before trying X. That alone should tell you if this is a game for you or not.

What could be better?

Portraits. The standard portraits are serviceable, but they don't convey emotions very well. There are community portrait packs that help improve this, but the game could benefit from more emotive images, particularly for shocked/lewd/angry situations. It's good that this is supported.

Intro. Getting into this game is still a bit of a rough experience, and the guided tutorial can be quite bad, as you get random characters to some degree, and the tutorial might advise you to attack them at what isn't a weak spot for them at all.

Hidden Guide. The game has very good documentation about how the systems work. But instead of having them be accessible in game, they are in text files of the root of the game. I suspect at least half of people miss them. Why these aren't accessible in game, is a mystery.