Java - Corrupted Saviors [Release 70b] [CSDev]

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.

I really want to like this game. Unfortunately, there are several deal breakers that haven't been addressed over the years(!).

• Bad nomenclature. If I need a glossary open next to me to play this game, you need to go back an rename everything the make more intuitive sense. (Eg, “you need to break her vulnerability”, “increase her EXPO the increase her SHAM”.) Tooltips that explain each stat would be a good first step.
• Bad and repetitive UI. In a text-only game, you need the UI to support it. The main text area repeats about 100-300 words of text per round, that are essentially copy-paste each round. This breaks flow and makes it harder to follow what’s happening. Factor away all the copy-paste text into a stats-zone, and leave the main text body for the more unique text.
• Bad porn ratio. If there is enough porn here to get off on, it’s spread so thin that you will never stay aroused long enough to finish. I recommend adding more lewd images for each action. At the very least, add moding tools for the community to make their own lewd image-packs.
• Shitty tutorials. I’ve played the official tutorial and several unofficial fan-made walkthroughs, and I still don’t understand the gameplay loops. Perhaps release a series of long-form youtube videos? Publish 2 or 3 playthroughs, each one showcasing a different playstyle.

I hope these issues get addressed. I really like the concept, tags, and potential of this game. Good luck to the devs.

A game with a high learning curve, well high when compared to most porno games, it does take a bit of time to get used to all the stats and such but once you do the games becomes amazing, if you are a fan of stat management games then you'll love this. My only problem with the game is it having barely any pictures though to be fair these types of games barely ever have pictures.

Reviewing as of release 30.

This is a great game with, as others have mentioned, a complex system that's not too easy to grasp right away.

I played for the first time on release 23 and have messed around with it a bit roughly every release or two.

My first run was a disaster, I think I threw in the towel around day 30 because I wasn't making progress and all hope seemed lost. Next run or perhaps the run after that I managed to get a few total breaks, but I only managed to capture two of the girls, but it felt like a great victory because, unlike a lot of other games, it wasn't an easy, cheap victory that's just handed to you. I struggled for every break and evil point, and winning felt satisfying. On subsequent runs I put to use what I learnt from the previous one and did a little better each time.

I've not really looked through the forum for strategy guides or the like, because that feels essentially like cheating. As one of the tips say - nothing is randomised apart from the starting heroines (or words to that effect). So why spoil your victories by copying how other people say is optimal? To me that feels like taking all the fun out of it, you might as well have someone else play the game for you.

On my run in release 30, I managed to get all 4 total breaks for everyone, had the final battle around day 40 and captured all 3, beat loop 2 and captured a superior chosen on loop 3. There aren't many things more satisfying than putting into practice the things you've learnt and improving each time you play, and that's something I feel this game is excellent at providing in an easily measurable way. That run was great, but I'm sure I could do even better next time.

As an aside, the QOL changes like including what's necessary to have the chosen generate more evil points are great, e.g. at 5% of the trauma needed or hasn't had enough vulnerabilities broken for the amount of trauma. Giving you an idea of how strong your commander is should also cut down on people mistakenly investing in using one too early on. I look foward to more, perhaps avoiding generating the same chosen 2 loops in a row, though I don't know how easy that would be to implement. Fighting a 'Prayer' 3 loops in a row and a 'Honey' 2 in a row was a little annoying but I think can be chalked up to bad luck.

My recommendation for new players is to consult the 'guide.txt' file and don't be afraid to check it again when you're lost. Knowing what traumas and circumstances do what takes a bit before it'll really sink in but it'll all click into place sooner or later.


Edit: The fact that things aren't randomised is for me a HUGE plus, I hate when I basically have to replay a fight hoping I get a lucky crit or something so I can advance, and this game doesn't contain anything at all like that. You can go back and replay parts and see if you can do them better one way or another without any RNG being involved.

If you came here looking for a sandbox game where you are able to do what you would like to try and corrupt the heroines that oppose you, you unfortunately will not find that here. Corrupted Saviours is at heart a puzzle game, there is a very narrow path to victory that if not followed, will lead to you having a bad time. This, coupled with the terrible tutorials, unexplained mechanics, and lack of tooltips leave a game that misses the mark of what it could be.

Nice to see the existence of complex mechanics, but currently, the game is nigh-impossible to win or even perform passably at without following extremely strict guides, or outright activating cheats. Desperately, desperately needs to tone that down - at present it's just not that enjoyable to play.