RPGM - Darkstar [v0.65] [Harold]

[v0.65] To preface this review, I'm don't usually seek out RPGM games but I am a huge sucker for well done mind control games. As of writing this review I've played through two hours of the corrupt route and it far exceeded my expectations. Dialogue was well written with great setups and rewarding payoffs, especially as the story progressed. The visual story telling was executed really well with dynamic shots for environmental story telling. Every main roster character is endearing and the world building leaves me wanting more since it's so expertly carfted.

I have to confess that I did use the skip battle and puzzle function; which was nice that it was even an option. Looking back there were only maybe 2 or 3 battles that were skipped and there was definitely no need to grind. I'm sure they added a lot of impact to the story so when I replay it in the future I'll have them on.

Some reasons why this game might not be for you is 1) Quality of H-scenes 2) linear story or 3) art style. Currently the H-scenes themselves are nothing special in a vacuum, the slow build up (imo) is what really makes them shine. As for the story, expect a visual novel with only a handful of meaningful choices. This is made up by the fact that generally your fixed dialogue choices are written in a way which you can RP being a irredeemable villain or being more reluctant. Finally, as someone who generally prefers 2d over 3d, give this a try. It grows on you and if you like MC/Corruption this is right up your alley.

This game has a lot of bugs and things that will make it feel weird to play. maps will glitch out and be buggy and the menu is not the most intuitive. With this being said I think that while this game has mechanical flaws its story, atmosphere, worldbuilding, and h-scenes more than make up for it. The story and worldbuilding are both a lot of fun and quite engaging. The atmosphere is great as you feel the tense air during the exploration and the terror of unexpected enemies. The atmosphere is even helped by the sometimes clunky controls as they help add a sense of powerlessness. The H-scenes you should play yourself and find out.
If i had one thing that i would ask the creator of the game to change its how short it currently is as I'm desperately waiting for the next release. The gameplay is a high bar of entry but the price is worth it.

First of all, this is not your usual H-game made in rpgmaker. The game have a really enjoyable worldbuilding and different gameplay mechanics like a dungeon crawling (something like Shin Megami Tensei) and the combat system being more akin of a SRPG. Combat is not obrigatory, you can skip parts of the dungeon crawling if you dont like it and there is no need to grind.

For the H-part of the game, is nice. The models are quite good and the characters have distinct personalities and apparences. The only complain id have is the low quantity of H-events, but the game is being developed, so nothing to worry for now.

Overall a good experience.

I'm not sure what to make of this game, but what's clear is that I didn't enjoy my time with it. The game gives you choices, but zero context for what they mean. I find I'm constantly worrying about what the choices I'm making are meaning. There's a lot of dialogue, but very little is actually explained in a helpful way.
I played for an hour, and after being bombarded with several VASTLY different styles of gameplay, I still didn't even know what to expect the game to be about.
There was only one instance of combat, and it was so frustrating I had to replay it five times to succeed; A separate 3D maze puzzle that felt like it belonged in a free distribution of Windows '95; and not a single lewd scene... despite several references to the impending adult content.
The last straw for me was when the game prompted me with something akin to *This next decision is important, and will impact the rest of the game*, but there's almost zero context.

I'll give it two stars because you can tell an effort was made. While the character models aren't the most modern, care was taken into crafting the facial expressions, and it shows. Perhaps if you're a more patient person than I am, you'll find a game of this kind incredibly rewarding.

I always make sure to leave a review when I come across a well-written game, and Darkstar is very well written. I don't want to give too much away -so I won't- but if you have any interest in mind control then Darkstar will deliver on that front. If you're even a little bit squeamish about it, stay far away, because Darkstar will take you to a place where the sun doesn't shine.

I also enjoy games with interesting moral quandries. Not "kill the puppy or save the puppy" style situations where the right answer is obvious, I'm talking about situations where all options have a consequence and you have to decide which one you're most comfortable accepting. There's no doubt about it, you're the bad guy in Darkstar, but how depraved you get is up to you.

Minor spoilers ahead, but I particularly love the villain. She's a very dark shade of evil, but at the same time you can see how she got there. While it might be easy to hate her it's also easy to pity her, you're the closest thing she has to a friend and that speaks volumes about her character. I can't wait to see where that relationship goes, I don't think there's any happy ending in store for her but once again there are so many places the story could go that it's up in the air at this point.

Looking forward to this game, the universe is dark, life is brittle just the way i like it, so much route and things that we can do it seems.

To the dev, is there anyway to support you harold in the making of this game? You have made two awesome games so far!

You get isekaied. Game promises to give you lots of choices. But it feels surprisingly linear instead.
After 35 minutes all I have seen is a super linear info dump with one meaningful choice.

I encountered a combat system which was frankly worse than the already bad default RPGM. (basically RPGM but with tactical positioning)
There is no fast forward for text, and the save points are not placed before the choices.
So you need to repeat a lot of text if you want to check other choice branches.

So far what few choices I saw lead to the same results with potentially one exception that I did not take.
I explored all branches except for one: Drugging your elf waifu and handing her over to the noble bastard who wanted to rape her.
Whether you reject him outright or pretend to agree and then rush back to her and warn her so you can escape, the result is identical.
You are captured. before elf waifu can save you the castle gets wrecked by a demon and you escape.

Mostly the game was just exposition about the world thus far.
Then at the 35 minute mark I finally reached the initial "hero test" tower.
which turned into a prolonged FPS game that is worse than what you had in the 1990s.
Where you are forced to explore a boring maze with horrendous 3d graphics.
The controls for it are really bad as you can only move in the cardinal directions.
It is fully 3d and rendered in real time though, so why are you locked into cardinal movement?

After getting bored of it, I accepted the "cheat" of skipping to the 3rd floor.. but it wasn't even the final floor. After solving the 3rd floor puzzle I got lost wandering around in the 4th floor before finally having enough.

The game is an amalgam of too many different systems. all of them bad.
You got the bad RPGM walking simular exploring a pixelated map.
You got the bad tactical combat.
You got the bad 3D FPS maze puzzle that looks bad even by 1990s standards
You got the bad RPGM dialog boxes. without any quality of life features like rollback, fast forwards, or not having the same button be used to both advance text and pick the first choice in the list.
You got the limited saves.

The VN portion has art that is extremely dated 3d renders (but still like 20 years ahead of the tower section).
I have seen this exact same 3d renders before in other games so it isn't even original.
So far the plot is just a generic fantasy isekai. It promises to go original later, letting you take a corruption path and the like... but I have yet to even reach it.

tough perhaps a bit overeager on my part for giving it the 5 star rating. At the very least the corrupt route shows promise, it's well written, and the dev understands how corruption actually works, which is a rare thing here in f95.

the world building is solid and the characters are interesting even if the mc is a blank slate. This adds to the efficacy of the corruption since it's always better when you twist something with substance, even tough it's very much early days the devs knows how to make this stuff work.

All that said this is still a RPGM game and if you are like me and remember well the old days of pre-F95 RPGM games, of barely functioning games, bugs crashes and worse, not to mention a fair bit "one picture sex scenes" then there are some aspects of the game that will trigger your PTSD.

On the corruption run I ran into one bug that i can frankly can't exclude the possibility of it being a problem on my end. That said frequent autosaves and plenty of saving prompts from the game mean that any potential impact is minimal (although a greater number of save slots and the ability to name them would be welcomed). The sex scenes are not animated but they do have plenty of individual images, so to my mind they balance out.

In the end if one can stomach the RPGM tag and what it often implies then one will be pleasantly surprised by the competence on display here.

[As of 0.1a] Pretty good game with a surprising amount of choices and diverging pathways (esp for an RPGM). Combat is optional (*) but pretty fun (its simplified Fire Emblem style combat). Though I will say it takes a bit of time to get into, definitely not for those looking for quick sex scenes (first proper one for me at least wasn't til around 30 minutes in, which is about where this version ends).

(*) There is an option to skip combat but when I tried that it kinda just bugged out on me and I had to reload my save, likely will be fixed in future updates if I had to guess.