Others - Corruption of Champions II [v0.7.27] [Savin/Salamander Studios]

I’m a huge fan of (isometric) RPGs and I never shied away from info dumps and wall of texts before now. Both this review and this game can be surmised in quite a short sentence: CoC2 is a bad porn game and an even worse text-based game.


Writing:
The writing quality varies wildly because there are so many different authors and nobody who actually review or enforce a style; overall, it is mediocre at best.

As someone pointed out in the other reviews, the MC is like the wind: it has no agency, it is merely a tool used by the writers to both describe and usher changes in their little world. Being a tool, the MC has no personality whatsoever: in one instance they can be a psychopath, in another a knight in a shining armor, in yet another a dom and the scene after the biggest slutty dumbass ever. *You*, as the player, have no agency either but to witness to the writers’ stories — the main plot ceased to exist past the prologue — and as such you have *no choice at all*: there are instances here and there, but they are far in between and just fluff (like choosing if a character is going to be a sub or a dom). The characters of these stories are… huh, okayish? They are nothing deep. I actually stopped caring because you are told their stories and background all the time, but you never really see them struggle and grow; the only exception is Ryn, actually, who is the only redeemable character alongside Kasyrra. Everyone else too is a tool of the writers to tell *their* stories.

If you see nothing wrong with this, ask yourself: what was more important in LOTR, the journey or the lengthy descriptions of the shire? CoC2 is what LOTR would be if Tolkien somehow forgot about the journey and spent the whole book describing the shire, tom bombadil, and telling Frodo everything about Morgoth demise and what not. Sure, those stories as cool but can you imagine pages and pages and pages of the shire’s description *again* and *again* and *again*? CoC2 is that, minus the beauty of Tolkien’s writing.

The sex scenes are plain bad. I wish they would stop reading coomer porn and read your average booktok smut romantasy book, whose sex scenes will probably be better. I don’t have words to describe how bad it is, but it feels like most of these writers never had sex; again, there are some exceptions here and there.

I remember, but I may be imagining it, that once Savin or one of the writers trash talked CoC for being bad and what can I say? They surely wrote something worse. But CoC never shone for its writing, it was fun to play and it was stupid. It wasn’t pretentious so you never gave it too much thought… after all, it’s a porn game! CoC2, unfortunately, can’t receive the same treatment: it feels pretentious and you can see how the writers think it’s some good, hot shit whose writing is on par with AAA games (Which is fitting considering the state of the industry).

The game
The gameplay is bad and spammy. It is annoying to navigate the map because there are so many boring trash mobs. I never liked this either about CoC1, but I don’t like erotica games with Grindy/complex systems. I think the only outlier are Seeds of Chaos with its management system that I kinda like and Kingdom of Subversion, which keep it simple and removes the trash mobs of lower level

The “Corruption”
Imagine a world where everyone was a sex crazed addict, where monsters and vandals alike roaming the land unchallenged, pillaging and raping the weak — or being raped in return. Terrible, right?

That’s *exactly* the oh-so-pure world the writers makes the MC protect from Kasyrra. The player can rape, or be raped, on a whim based on who wins the fight — sometimes the companions are raped too — and somehow this is a pure world. Kasyrra unleashed some bad shit, true, but most of what is wrong with the in game world is not on her. This is, straight up, bad writing. BAD writing. We are told how this world is good and cool and whatnot, but it mismatches completely both the stories of the characters and the damn presented world. This is as bad as CoC1’s world but without the demon corruption. CoC2’s world is fucked up beyond redemption, there is no corruption in this game because there is nothing left to corrupt: the inhabitants did this all on their own. Everyone wants to have sex with you or to sex with you, there are no stake, there is no build up nor growth… You end up not caring about the characters because, as I said in the writing review, they aren’t alive: they are placeholders to fill whatever lore dump is being *told* (remember, never shown!) at the moment by the writers and you, the player, are just a puppet they use as they see fit.

After reading through all the 4/5 star reviews that praised the writing/story, I genuinely started asking myself if I played the same game as those people. For all the hours I put into this game, not once did I feel captivated or truly immersed by the writing, and though you may call me overly critical, the only feeling I got for this product was that of a B-tier movie that tried to take itself far too seriously.

Writing aside, the Combat - a total joke. Minimum customization, 2 hours in and it felt like a chore, unfun and tedious. Even turning down the difficulty so that I can go thru it quicker, didn't make it feel any better. Would it have been difficult to make more interesting skills/combos, more levels and more ways to customize your playthru? Is it that much to ask in a game like this?


As for the Romance/Sex part of the game - any and all forms of romance or subtle sexuality simply do not exist. You find thing, you fuck thing. End of story. And trust me, that's kind of a saving grace, because the ONE storyline where you're led (LED INTO, you have no control over it) into "romance" and a feeling of building genuine connection and investment of emotions, the end result is that you watch helplessly as your literal daughter gets fucked by an antagonist. There is only one thing on my mind since that moment - and it's that the writer for the whole storyline, wanted to humiliate and laugh in the face of the players.
If you have a cuck fetish, you do you, but forcing it down our throats while making sure we absolutely can't do ANYTHING about it? How about fuck no.

This game is super well-executed, with writing that, while a bit dense at times, is easy to follow. Though there are no animations, it’s anything but dull—there’s plenty of spice to keep things interesting. Unlocking all the content takes time, especially since your choices can lock you out of certain paths, but it’s a rewarding challenge that adds replay value.

However, it’s not a game where you can freely roleplay exactly how you want. Transformation elements are minimal, and the rare potion scenes don’t carry much weight beyond their initial moment. If you’re hoping to play a submissive role, the story tends to push your character in a more dominant direction. if this had a proper character creator, it would have been perfect.

TL;DR - COC2 is fine definitely not better than COC. Less choices and less freedom for the player. Uninfluenced world and people. Too many writers leading to inconsistent tone and theming. Paraphrasing a quote from Dougdoug COC2 would be a "big bowl of candy bars with chocolate sauce all over it, tasty on its own and if combined still tasty but a mess and I would prefer the candy bars by itself." Also too many cooks in the kitchen can apply as well.

I want to make it clear that I played and enjoyed the first COC, so most if not all my feelings on COC2 will have some influence from the first COC. I don't think COC2 is bad by any means but if you take it in comparison to the first one you will most definitely find it lacking.

Let's talk about the gameplay and I will be honest it's bad, in my opinion there should be minimal to no gameplay to porn games, exploration feels like a chore moving in between every single room just to get to the point of interest. They didn't even have a way to quickly return to the fast travel until 2022 which is 4 years after the first release. Combat is garbage, bottom of the barrel crap that should be entirely removed. I am sure there are people who enjoy it but it's so slow each character has an attack and that takes up several lines of text, so eventually you might get fights where both sides have at least 4-5 characters each and make the combat log long for no reason. Combat in COC was faster both because it didn't expand beyond you hit X with Y for Z damage and they represented multiple enemies as a single group with increased damage and health. Also classes for your character are overly complex and feel like they barely add anything to your character. I don't see a point to differentiate the classes if you can just acquire almost all the magic and skills from people, just leave us as a blank canvas as COC.

The writing, I don't claim to know anything about writing but from a reader's perspective its not the greatest and I think this is the worst part. As a sex text based game the smut writing has to be top tier, so good that your brain can imagine the scene happening, I don't find myself enjoying the writing as much. And I can't tell if it's because they appear to have by the wiki's count about 45 writers writing for this game at once which causes the writing to be not enjoyable. How do you ensure quality writing from all people involved, from my perspective it feels like they don't ensure quality. I am not sure how to word it but when I am RP or wanting to put myself into the PC many scenes just don't have the feel like I am the one making decisions. If for instance you want to view it as a third party I would whole heartily agree that most if not all scenes are good but not for people RP.

The story, i think is a sore point for many people. The story is to put it bluntly in my opinion not about you the PC but about Cait. Cait's sister gets kidnapped and spirited away, it's Caits quest to go out and find her sister and chase after the demon. The inital reason you are there is to find riches and you are forced to help Cait on her journey, it's literally game over if you do nothing at the start. Many of the story beats and actions are not influence by you and it makes you a passive observer.

The characters are another sore point for many people. Some of the characters are open in their relationship and I feel that some including myself prefer to not have the character that we want to be in an open relationship. Nothing wrong if that's your thing but there are people that want the characters to our self. For instance Cait and Azyrran are two examples off the top of my head, Cait flat out says she can and will fuck others if you want to tap and Azyrran appears to already be in a relationship with someone and that someone doesn't like or at least care about you in the relationship if you are male gendered.

Overall COC2 doesn't feel like a sequel to COC but more like a fan fiction or just using the ideas of something great to replicate.

I've played a lot of CoC and TiTS. I can't quite put my finger on what keeps making me drop CoC II, but over the years, no matter how many times I come back to give this game another try, I've never ended up advancing far past the first area. I suspect that Savin is just a generally worse game developer than Fenoxo. The combat UI is awkward and poorly communicative, especially since the default is to bring along multiple party members, resulting in a lot of clutter. The TF system is a little more complicated than the other games. The overworld layout is seemingly random (in contrast to maps in TiTS), which makes exploration less intuitive.
One big issue might be the lack of a real hub zone. In TiTS you have your ship and in CoC you've got your campsite by the portal, but in CoC II the closest you've got to a personal hub is some inn owned by a bland wolf guy.
People complain about ntr in this game but, as someone who enjoys ntr, I don't consider it to be substantially present. The sharing/non-monogamy almost seems to have been included as much for the sake of annoying people who dislike ntr as it is to provide quality netorase content. I believe that Savin also wrote Anno in TiTS; he did a much better job with her, though in her case I also would complain about the ntr being rather touch-and-go and non-committal. It seems to cater very specifically to the sort of open relationship that Savin prefers, rather than conforming to a fetish that the reader might be expected to enjoy, which is a bit of an issue when the character in question is so key to the experience.
Overall, this game seems to me to be a tube of toothpaste with a long thin structure. There's technically a lot of toothpaste in the tube, but it's a real nuisance to get it out of there. At the end of the day the cost of toothpaste isn't prohibitive enought to warrant the additional effort required to extract the toothpaste from this tube, so I just set it aside and look at something else.

When I first heard of CoC 2 I was very excited, especially considering how good the first game was even in the 0.8 unfinished state we used to play it.

Unfortunately CoC 2 doesn't come anywhere close to the original. Funnily enough the original got me into adult games and I'm afraid it set a very high standard. So high that I'm very critical and choosy about games I play that come off this website.

It just seems that the original game is a classic we won't capture again, something that happens once . Like an evergreen? I'm not sure if that wording applies here. On the other hand there are other similar games, but they are very slow with update or they're abandoned.

We should have admittedly seen it coming. Trials in Tainted Space had a small hint that behind the scenes the creative well had dried up. The spark so to speak. It was still enjoyable, but nowhere as interesting as CoC 1. And as the years dragged on I found I rarely came back to TiTS. Instead I always came back to CoC, the original. Both TiTS and CoC2 suffer from the same issue, shovelware writing. The best way to explain shovelware writing is writing for the sake of writing. Aspiring to maintain a standard, but not quite setting it. Not really capturing the reader with the simplicity of what is shown. Anyone who tries can write a long enough story, detailed enough. But is it interesting?

It's not and it feels like they're just filling a quota.

Beyond the bombastic introduction to Kassyra this game falls apart pretty quickly with unnecessary companions who outshine the main protagonist. CoC 1 was always a game about YOU in a corrupted world and you peeled the layers of that world one at a time. That's what made it so seductive. The fact you were alone trying to resist waves of temptation. The robust transformation system only made it peak, and here that's an afterthought. Even TiTS has better transformations than this and more customization.

It was simple, if not mundane in design yet carrying a charm layered with adultery. That was CoC 1. CoC 2 does none of that and I doubt it ever will as the fundamental design of the game changed too much in comparison to the original. We can only hope something similar to the original will replace the spot CoC 2 was supposed to take.

At the end of the day. I can name almost all the locations in CoC 1 and even many of the NPCs. I can't say the same for CoC 2.

Been playing the game since 2019, and it’s had ups and downs. Speaking as someone who’s only really played the game and not interacted too much with the community, I’d say it’s reasonably well-made, and the combat’s actually pretty fun IMO. The biggest problems I have with it are the variable quality of writing, and the community interaction I have seen. Obviously the former’s just the result of having a bunch of community writers, which, I get it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. People like Skow and Gardeford just write in ways that I find incredibly boner-killing, and The Observer writes like it’s a completely different game; and that’s just the staff. A piecemeal product is always going to be predisposed towards being slapdash, so I can cut it some slack; but it’s not carte blanche.

The community mismanagement is the real crux of the issue, and probably why this thread is a festering pile of hate most of the time. I’ve interacted with Savin a few times, and he doesn’t seem like the unreasonable coomer most people here think he is, but it’s plainly obvious he doesn’t know how to run a community very well. I’m sure he’s a perfectly nice guy, but when your response to the criticisms of people is almost universally “cry about it, chud”, (which again, I have to admit, is right a good portion of the time,) maybe you should take a step back and at least hear out what’s levied against you.

Altogether, the game’s not quite the lightning in a bottle that the original CoC was, but as far as sequels go, it’s not as bad as it gets the reputation for. If you’re into the kinks it features, you’ll probably love it; if not, it’s just not for you. Don’t reviewbomb a game just because they hard veto’d your vore fetish. If I can give one piece of advice, just avoid the community as best as you can. The discord spends more time shitposting than anything else, and their forums are a ghost town. The less you know of whatever drama they’re on, the better; but don’t let that stain your thoughts about the game.

CoC1 was probably one of the better games I played when it came in terms of writing and variety of content, the game leaving you wanting more and enjoying what you do.

This game... not so much. It feels bland compared to the previous title, and hardly worth even calling a sequel, but rather a different game entirely (remember when this actually felt like a TF game where customization felt important?). It's clearly just become something of a circle jerk amongst the OC's as yoru character gets sidelined multiple times and feels like the side character to their own story (hope you enjoy NTR).

The characters were interesting but you barely interact with them in any meaningful way. Where last game you could have very fun andinteresting relations with characters in the camp, you hardly do much in this one and it loses the charm it once had. Hell even the sexy bits are so one tracked that the only fapping going on is whatever the writer's are doing with their own egos.

To end off, if you want to play a good CoC game that still feels like CoC and adds more content to have fun with, go play CoC1 with the Xianxia mod instead.

It has Kalysea in it.

Okay but in all seriousness, it's the best text-based game I've ever come across and filled with plenty of awesome kinks. The first game is probably responsible for unlocking like half of my NSFW interests so it's only natural I'd love this one too. The quality of the scenes is definitely improved.

The only real gripe I have with CoC2 is the combat. Personally I prefer the solo combat of CoC1 and TiTS in comparison to the group combat of CoC2, this is mostly for three reasons:

1 - There's tons of abilities being used each turn due to your companions taking their turns, this makes combat quite messy.

2 - There isn't much room for enemies to do lewd bind attacks on the player since it has to account for companions, meaning that combat has to remain sort of generic in terms of NSFW elements.

3 - I prefered having the lust system as a separate resource for combat.

Apart from that, not too much to complain about. It'd be nice to have a permanently updated wiki because I hate missing content but that's quite a bit of work, so I understand why it can take so long for newer content to be added there. Some extra manpower sent the way of the wiki to help with adding content would be great.

Honestly the game caters to a lot of my kinks so it works for me. I get to play a slightly Amazonian yet curvy submissive woman with a small dick who gets to be taken in a litany of ways that I enjoy.

That being said the gameplay is pretty one dimensional and overall the updates in the last 8 or so months have been pretty barebones and uninspired. That being said though it still routinely gets 3-4 updates per month.

The devs don’t take criticism well and have formed a nice echo chamber for themselves so requests for content even if you’re a patron either get outright ignored or responded with “write it yourself!” With high potential that even if you do write it yourself and submit it, there’s a very small chance it will ever make it in the game. (Most things from non staff members and a select few community writers get rejected for something or another, be it incorrectly using their insanely convoluted parser system or not liking the characterizations.)

overall if your sexual proclivities are in line with the devs and you can deal with overall mediocre writing (there’s a few good writers in the bunch and they deserve credit where it’s due, but overall it’s walls of purple prose in an attempt to seem like they’re doing more than they actually are. Think padding a high school essay.) you’ll enjoy the game . If not just skip it and don’t even think about bringing up honest gripes at the main forums

does certain things right.
UI is decent for the feel they are going for.
navigating through a text world isn't as confusing as other games like lillth.

some characters are so good they seem out of place, Briene. It' only briene.

Everything else is hot shit on a summer day.

you can tell what the devs get p*gg*d to while they write the scenes.
it's the futas.
this game should be renamed to "your fem-dom cuck adventure in a futa world"

you can go now, play and finish any gay harem game and you'd still be more straight than trying to convince yourself after reading any futa content (bar very few exceptions)

And it's an OC fest in terms of characters and their writing, everywhere. Amateur tier.

The scenes: walls and walls of text that this review is trying to be.
you can tell this review is bad by the star number. because you're smart.
you don't need this long ass rant.
the devs of this game think you need walls of text to get the point.

only good author is wsan and his content.
savin has talent but is too busy jerking it to futa to write for the customers instead.

Great Game!

A good amount of lovable waifu's and preg content (for futas and females).

I also enjoy the fact the much of the art has been unified under a single artist. Just really smooths things out and makes it look nice.

Overall, this is a great smut text-based game and would recommend to anybody interested in the genre.

Really great characterization abilities and surprisingly fun and loving characters and world building! The artstyle is sparce but pretty good, and it's really fun to learn about the various characters and their personalities. You can play pretty much however you want to, and it's very sex-positive towards all body types and preferences!

Absolutely poor imitation of what a sequel should be that has had 5 years only to end up worse than V0.1. I knew Savin, the main author and creator, had always had an.... angry personality when other people asked them questions, but their "it's the futa highway or shut the fuck up' attitude that flared up like 3 or so years ago was a massive turn off completely. The moment they started making content for one of the only manly dude characters in the game turning into a woman, what little hope and enthusiasm I had died. I am surprised Garret hasn't been turned into a bimbo wolfess yet...

If you want a railroaded story where futas are forced onto your character, and requires like 4 different button pushes for them to huffily accept your no, then look no further!

Look, in a vacuum, if you're here for a very specific set of fetishes and interests, namely in this case mainly NTR, this game will likely be up your alley if you're okay with the mediocre writing and occasional art

BUT, if you're a fan of CoC 1, you're going to be sorely disappointed. As a sequel, this game is a major disappointment. Namely because CoC 1 valued player choice and variety of content noticeably higher. In CoC 2, if you can call it that, it's the creator's fetishes or the highway

The ethics of making a sequel for an unfinished game aside, the only thing that makes this a sequel is the name and a vague sharing of the setting. If you want more CoC content, I would recommend CoC Revamped or similar instead of this

I've played CoC 1 and really enjoy it. but CoC2? Let's say this is not corruption of champions. it's just another game with more boring, and a lot of content has been cut off compares to CoC1.

Yes, this is not a review bomb. it's really disappointed.

The Story and written is... yeah you heard it a lot how bad it is, and I agreed with others review. I feel like this game is build to just trolling players.

Gameplay is too boring, limit, and pointless. while CoC1 you can build difference classes, no limit skills, you can use everything and however you want but still enjoy the combat and the story.

Nothing really can keep me playing this game.

Of cause If someone like this game, I won't stop them having fun.

But if you haven't play this series before. I'll recommend you should start with CoC1 original, or CoC1 with Xianxia mod first.

The issues with the overly verbose writing that makes you want to start skim reading, lack of player agency, the very existence of these kitsune characters, the plot and setting making so little sense that it contradicts itself, lack of reactivity, slow, plodding combat that drags on for obnoxiously long periods of time, lack of progression of RPG elements, forced fetishes, and the donut steel characters being infinitely more important than the protagonist while somehow having no relevance to the overarching plot has been gone over in detail by many of the other reviews.
So I'll just say that this game isn't CoC. And that's not to say that CoC1 or CoCX are untouchable paragons of erotic games, because they really fucking aren't. They have issues of their own. I mean that this game feels like it's almost willfully trying to not be CoC despite bearing its name. Like it's mocking the player with a smug, shit-eating grin for daring to expect a similar experience as CoC.

From a purely personal standpoint, the disparity in writing quality is ultimately what holds the game back the most. I like futa, femdom, and playing as a submissive, but even I can't deal with this rollercoaster.

Alright, two words.

Inconsistent Writing.

Imagine lotr but it was secretly written by 20 people that Tolkien met at a fetish fanfic convention, this is the game.
Right off the bat the game has multiple different writers shoehorning their OCs onto the Champion's face and making said OCs do whatever the hell the writers want. The game advertises itself as a choice driven game with you being in control of the story as it's your story in the first place but you're barely even participating in anything, at the start you're forced to do nothing as the ritual just happens regardless of your actions. The cat girl's sister is gone and you're left with a demoness with a cock bigger than your entire body out loose around the supposedly "pure" world of Savarra. Once you wake up after that totally not linear start to the story you're then forced to sit through the agonizing writing of The Observer as he tries his best to make the Champion sounds like the most annoying asshole on the entire continent of Savarra, oh what's that you headcanon your mc as a heroic brooding guy with a penchant for badassery? Well now he's an autistic asshole who talks like he's in a subtle comedy show where he gets to ruin every possible emotional moments in the story by using sarcastic remarks every single time somebody talks to him. Oh and did i mention that he somehow forgot that quotes exist and it can be use to denote that the Champ is talking? Yeah, that's what i meant by inconsistent writing because this guy completely disregard the fact that Savin wrote the way the Champion talks by using quotation marks like the rest of the characters in the game and instead makes the Champion talk like he's talking telepathically. Almost every scene by this, respectfully, dumbass writer has the Champion inner monologuing their own conversation so when you go from quotation to whatever the hell he's cooking here it just felt really jarring and awkward to read. I admit this might just be me nitpicking the writer and i do dislike the writer in general because of the disaster that is the Kitsunes written by his truly but i assure you it gets really annoying after getting used to Savin writing style in the tutorial. Just play it and you'll see what i meant

That's just the tip of the iceberg of writing inconsistency, it's clear from the getgo that this game would've benefitted with a clear planning of writing style and story quality for the writers to follow but somehow Savin forgo the word "planning" and decided to let loose a bunch of unsupervised fanfic writers to man this clusterfuck of a project. No wonder this game is taking so long to develop because they can't even have a consistent plan to follow in the first place.

The world isn't even "pure" and if pure means filled with sex crazed maniac who tries to rape you forcefully or not every day then i can't even imagine what corrupted is like at this point, hell even the living gods and goddesses partake in the raping massacre. Even worse is how the orcs are written in this game, which is the most obviously corrupted species of orcs i've ever seen in my whole life. Apparently slavery, raping, plundering innocent villages, and murdering random travelers is a normal pure occurrence for the orcs and the Savarrans tolerate said behavior without any problem whatsoever. It makes you wonder what even IS pure at this point, it's not just them but every single species is either out to have sex with you after battle or is out to rape you regardless, no in between.

I don't even understand the vision that Savin has for coc2 anymore, if corruption is the main focus then why is the world written like it's already a world far too gone to even save in the first place? Why is everybody doing things that you can't control? what even is the Champion doing? This game is already a fucking mess. From the disjointed story that gets completely ignored multiple times in favor of OC sidequest that barely contributes anything towards the overall narrative, lore, and story of the game to the convoluted amount of writers all writing in different styles for a single game without any supervision by the creator of the series itself, this game is not worth your time. Maybe in the future it'll at least be a fun little TF game but as of right now, this game is just one giant pile of a mess that rivals even TiTS

I have never played COC 1
That fact gives me none of the disappointment nor expectation for this game, allows me to judge it on its own merit and it is ..... not good

GAMEPLAY
The combat mechanics are under optimized, you can learn skills of other class without restraint, this is a grave mistake, it dilutes the importance of building strategy and planning. The level are too low, the combat perks too simple, the choices of branching for each class are zero while proper specialization for build are none existent.

The battle texts are too long, too complicated because each skill the player, the companions and the enemies unleash is a 2-3 lines of text, you are unable to properly understand the flow of combat due to the number of useless text on screen

The exploration are agonizing, if not simply stupid. You have to pray for the RNG to allow you to smoothly move through the zones because you are required to "explore" each and every space to able to move to the next location. If you are unlucky, you will be locked in boring events, battles and flavor texts for minutes, multiply that wasted time by a few dozen times and each new area is a chore, a torture to get to the new content


WRITING
Oh boy but this is a mess. This game's writing is not a failure of literature, it is a failure of management and vision. I love some very, very specific parts of this game, the romance are definitely better than TITS with some very touching stories, the H scenes are hot if a bit underwhelming for a game focusing on transformation

The problem lies in everything else, the stories are disconnected, each story lines are a little world of its own with nothing tying them into a world where demonic threats are looming in the horizon. This is a direct consequence of the biggest mistake of this game, it failed to give the player power, the power to shape the world, influence the events, the NPCs, the state of conflict, the sex scenes.

YOU ARE NOT THE MAIN CHARACTER. You are the POV for authors to tell the stories the author want to tell, to witness the planned events that the authors want to happen. Your character's personality aren't shaped by you, it is shaped by the story line you are in, you can be a cruel monster or a pure saint as much as you like on the outside, random events but none of them will matter.

The authors refuse to give what they promised, a variety of kinks, a world to be shaped, a chance to change and corrupt. From what I know, this is due to the excessive freedom given to authors, leading to a lack of focus. The main storyline is frozen while too many half-baked side quests and encounters are added each update

This game is nowhere near as terrible or broken as all the review bombing makes it out to be. I think people's reaction to all the drama surrounding this game is way overblown and deliberately ignoring this game's merits and the improvements made to its combat system or the overall mechanics.

With that said, this game is also nowhere near as good as all these years of development should have made it out to be, especially when it touts itself as the successor of one of the most beloved adult text-based games of all time. There are many things this game does that just feel wrong when compared to its source material with how it handles some aspects of its adult content or the progression of the story.

For starters, the premice of this game's story doesn't match at all with the actual narrative experience the devs put the player through. CoC is supposed to take place after the events of CoC1, in a separate dimension that has been invaded by a demon from Mareth, the place CoC1 takes place in. This demon has apprently slowly been corrupting this new world, turning people against each other and turning them into sex-crazed maniacs; and the player is obviously there to stop her.

The problem here, is that this supposedly "pure" world the player has to save, is already fucked. By the time you leave the first area of the game, you quickly realize that everyone is already a sex-crazed maniac, willing to fuck around with anyone and has no qualms about killing or raping people from different tribes who stand on their way.

That demon is supposedly here to corrupt this world, but what is there left to corrupt? There are many elements that suggest this level of debauchery was present long before that demon came into the picture : The raccoon mother and her daughters, the different tribes warring with each other, the fact everyone is so easy going about sex, and that no one seems to feel the need to contain their urges to prevent them from raping everyone on sight. You as the player never feel the impact of that demon's corruption, because there is no transition from the previous state to the corrupted state; even if not everyone is as corrupt, no one as any qualms with sleeping with you or someone else if asked.

The old CoC1 dealt with this so much better, with the people in the overworld slowly going crazy, addicted to sex and almost incapable of rational thinking; the city of Tel'Adre, built to attempt (and fail) protect the last "pure" citizens from the corruption slowly taking over the world; the goddess Marae, the embodiment of purity that you can accidentally corrupt in a side quest; everything in CoC1 conveys that notion of corruption very well, down to the actions you as the player can do that affect the NPCs around you.

This lack of impact of the corruption is also visible in the mutation mechanic brought from CoC1, where you could mutate your body to change your species, which gradually increased your corruption, affected dialogues and even gave you new abilities in combat. But in CoC2, mutations are merely a cosmetic effect with no impact on combat nor on how NPCs treat you during the dialogues.

Be as corrupted as you want, be as much of an asshole as you want, you will still be able to access the same content as when doing a pure route, with NPCs reacting in the exact same way.

This honestly wouldn't be that bad if the story itself was engaging and the characters you meet along the way were likable and memorable. And unfortunately, very few of them are. I personnaly don't mind most of them, I think they're okay for the most part, but the problem comes with the insane amount of exposition dump the game does.

This game is long, unecessarily verbose, and at times, very pretentious, such as for the kitsune content that might as well be its own novel considering how out of place and wordy it is. From what I gathered from the other reviews, the main writer of this game, Savinmander, seems to have... Let's say, a very particular idea of what CoC2 should be, and that vision does not care whatsoever about being true to the original game.

If anything, this game, and especially the kitsune episode, feels like a self-insert fanfiction of CoC1 rather than its own sotry building of the original. An especially egregious example of this is the codex, filled with entries of the different creatures you fight and some lor about the world. To put it simply, you will read one, maybe two of them, and then never touch the codex ever again. No joke, I once fell asleep while reading these. Thankfully it's an optional section of the story just used for lore dumping, but it's a clear evidence of the writers' lack of focus and pretentious writing.

This story, in many ways, feels really disjointed. It does follow a main thread with the imp invasion and the main antagonist, but many of the quests you do feel disconnected from one another, with very little relevance to the overarching plot. This is due to the fact that there have been many writers working on this game, with most of the interactions we see are the result of commissions from Patreons, as well as the writers' self inserts and pet projects, thrown in there with little care for what the other writers have created, or even for the main plot itself.

It's not uncommon to meet characters - even team members than can join you on adventures - with wildly different artstyles and writing styles for their dialogues, who have one or two interactions with the MC before having their story thread being dropped immediately afterwards, as the writers quickly lose interest and are not interested of picking up the work of others if they aren't the creator themselves.

Speaking of artstyles, most characters are visually what you would expect from a game in that kind of setting, altough this game really suffers from what I call the "Monster Girl Quest" syndrome, where many NPCs were drawn by many different artists with artstyles of wildly different quality, most of that quality being at the bottom of the barrel.

I understand it's hard to coordinate everyone to put out some content of roughly the same level, and there are some artstyles I do really like, like Cait's or the dog girl at the nursery; but for the most part, the artstyle is very boring and forgettable, and they really clash when multiple people appear on screen at the same time.

It's nice the devs have implemented a real preview panel to let us see what the characters actually look like, but due to this game being a text-based game, the preview's usage is severely limited. It also doesn't help that, given who wrote the sex scenes, all of them are really wordy and overstay their welcome quite rapidly.

The original CoC also had boring dialogues and lengthy descriptions, but these at least were easily skippable, whereas here, skimming too quickly through a dialogue can make you miss important plot points and directions on where to go next. It's not uncommon at certain points of the game to just blindly pace between each previously visited area on the map, praying you might trigger a new event that has popped up to continue the story.

Onto the gameplay. While it is much more functional and involved than in the original, it still unfortunately has some problems that drag it down a bit.

First of all, the exploration part of CoC1 is completely gone here, and I really don't understand why. Exploring was one of CoC's best features, where you would randomly discover a new biome and go "Wow, that's new, what kind of items and monsters will I encounter?" It did so much for the immersion and making the story feel like a real adventure, but the devs of CoC2 chose not to bring that into their game, and I just think it's a downgrade in that department.

Instead, the game railroads you from one area to the next without giving you much room to explore and find secret areas or new biomes. The game pretends to have different regions you can choose to complete in any order, but what happens is that you run into enemies way above your power level and you get curbstomped every single time, leaving you very little paths to explore. The beginning of the game is especially rough in that regard, where going east or south will immediately kill you, leaving you only the northern forest to explore early one. I don't get that this false pretense of choice brings to the game, when the dev clearly had a more linear story structure in mind.

As for the combat, I find it much more involved and developed than in CoC1. You character has multipe stats, attacks and spells they can use in combat, and even a class system dictating what kind of abilities you have. This allows you to make very different builds depending on whether or not you want to play more offensively, defensively or just acting as support for your allies. The latter are also a new addition, which each teammate having its own set of attacks and spells, and even different builds for some of them.

Which is great, and it's a pretty alright system honestly, but doing the actual fighting doesn't feel that great. Each encounter gets really wordy because of the sheer number of participants on screen, with sometimes for than 4 enemies per battle. Stats and paragraphs just fly by so quickly and so frequently, it's impossible to follow accurately what's going on at any given point, expect by watching the health bars rising or decreasing and determining which of your attacks deal the most damage.

It also doesn't help that many enemies have healing abilities, which can turn some encounters into serious slogs, where no side can ever outdamage the other unless by sheer luck. The game does give you some strong teammates, but some fights can last for like 10 minutes or something just because everyone keeps spamming buffs or healing. At best, it's very forgettable, at worst it's very annoying.

There are many other things I could talk about that don't feel right about this game, but I'd be rehashing what everyone else has already said. On a technical standpoint, the game is much more polished and depthful that it's original source, at the cost of everything else. The main plot is neglected half the time in profit of self-inserts and fanfictions, the lore dump is agressive and almost never used over the course of the story, the combat has its base elements set up but they are never exploited in a way that feels good.

I honestly expected CoC2 would be a community effort to show their appreciation of the merits of the original game, but it seems to have been hijacked by some of Fenoxo's friends who decided to make it their playground for their own fetishes and fanfictions, rather than a genuine story with interesting characters.

If you liked the original simply because of the sheer amount of adult content here, and you don't care about the story, you might still find something enjoyable here. If you're coming in expecting a good story, or a continuation of where CoC1 left off, feel free to skip it, you won't miss anything important.