Review revised for v0.6.32:
I have some problems with CoC2 now, but let’s start with what’s still awesome:
CoC2 combines sexual deviance and epic adventure to create a story about a character who can fight and/or seduce their way through the armies of darkness to save (or corrupt) the world. The choices you make will change the world around you. Not only will interactions change and different options open based on whether you’re pure(ish), neutral, or corrupt, but you can permanently alter certain locations/characters in the world by choosing to remove the corruption from the location, or help it spread.
The combat can also be extremely challenging and rewarding. I remember while fighting the elf queen in the fortress, I kept being instagibbed by her nukes and getting frustrated, thinking the fight was just poorly designed. I realized it was a combination of things happening. Although she really does hit hard, what was really making the difference is that she had so much more agility than me, which allowed her to attack twice for every action I did. I could’ve turned on the game’s “Easy mode” to lower the combat difficulty, but instead I went back to town and tweaked my character, switching some my min-maxed stats into toughness and agility, as well as picking up the daily spell that gives a health boost, and I was able to beat her. That victory felt great!
The UI is very clean and beautiful. Now, to the cons and the reason for my revision…
This game’s direction has drastically spiraled out of control since my original review in 2020. The beginning of this game, and indeed the entirety of CoC1, focused on corruption, depravity, and ravishment (GOR). Every character you came across had been affected by corruption in some way and often had an interest in corrupting you. Corruption was a central part of their backstories and their motivations, and it was something that made CoC genre-defining as an eroge.
However, so much of COC2’s content after the elf fortress now feels focused on collecting curvy furry waifus and kids rather than corruption. There are so many characters and locations in this game that feel almost disassociated from the plot—the foxes in the den, for example. If you were to cut their story text and paste it into any other game, their stories would be just as relevant to the other game, and their loss would have no impact on the plot of CoC2. That, in my opinion, is a very bad sign for a very substantial body of writing.
I haven't been excited for any updates in years and I wish this game would return to its roots/main plotline.