RPGM - Completed - Dead End Colosseum [v1.10] [TORAKUTORI]

Overall 7/10

A solid h-game with solid gameplay

It isn't an experience I will be repeating but it was definitely worthwhile playing once

The gameplay is decent enough, not good enough to carry itself without the h-content as reward for your progress but not bad either that it hampers the experience. More in-depth combat system than most RPGM games out there have but at the same time not good enough that you will find yourself playing it just for the combat

The story is not interesting and I quickly found myself skipping all the dialogue. Just a lot of waffling that had nothing much of interest there partially it is because right from the start the premise is very superficial and more like a porn flick than a game

The h-content is not super high quality in terms of its visual style and design but what adds a lot of value here is that most h-scenes are animated. The downside though is that in general most the h-scenes feel the same and look very similar. Basically the protagonist being gang raped. There are a few consensual scenes but the bulk of the scenes are game over rape and the bulk of these is just the protagonist getting gangbanged

So while each h-scene is technically unique it doesn't feel super unique. I would recommend to first start playing the game but if you quickly find yourself getting bored. Go to the main menu and keep clicking on the first letter "D" in the main menu after 10 clicks this unlocks the full gallery. All scenes in the game are in the gallery. There is no combat sex mechanics. Just the few event scenes and the game over rapes

I also don't quite get the point of the whole slave mini-game. Even the devs realised it was a bit pointless as they even added a development skip tool built into it so the devs themselves quickly realised the slave mini-game just didn't work but still kept it in the game lol

All those h-scenes from the various slave routes also are available in the gallery

Very engaging battle system and decent porn combined with training/corruption mechanics. There seems to be some solid writing too but a lot of it is lost in the MTL(which is, on the whole,. fairly legible outside of the usual issues with being unable to determine pronouns but falls apart in places where the high-concept plot points start showing up). The live 2D is pretty nice too.

Overall there's much worse ways to kill an afternoon.

Gave this game a shot because the MC is pretty hot and the art looks nice plus the mechanics seemed unique and interesting. After about 2 hours in I just couldn't bring myself to continue. The characters never stfu and let us play the damn game. This is made worse by a terrible translation (worse than usual although that may be because the text is seemingly never ending). There was basically no lewd scenes (I heard you get some on defeat but I was so busy skipping text I couldn't even get far enough in combat to be defeated). The combat was clunky and not all that fun. Just overall poorly executed which is a shame given there seems to be a lot of work put into the art and story.

MTL IS HORRENDOUS, Like it not even worth it to follow the plot of the story, but everything else is actually pretty good. The gameplay is pretty unique of it self, you don't just go out in the game world and manually do everything it just following days by days. highly recommended if you want to play something chill.

I actually really enjoyed the premise, characters, and gameplay. The issue I had was with the MTL.

Usually I would not dock so many points off for MTL, but this game specifically has a lot of dialogue. It can be skimmed over fairly easily but man does raw unedited MTL makes direct dialogue kind of miserable. The CGs have perfectly fine translations though (priorities lmao).

Tips: Public Order doesn't matter at all, the battle system is a waste of time and makes days drag on and on (unless you're hunting hscenes). The 50% burst move that spends all your action points hits once per consumed point, which makes it very good for stunning.

Scenes: Save scum negotiation segments, you need to "fail spectacularly" to get a scene. Reload save and perfect it (with an S). Save scum all the colosseum fights too (obviously).

Grind those balls ! Got you attention ? good.
This game requires a "lot" of grinding. It can easily be beaten within 2 hours so yhea. I dont hate the grinding for the reason that its easy, and isnt frustrating to deal with.

Gameplay: 4.85/5
The combat system is very unique and creative. I really love this as this as this makes the gameplay actually intriguing instead of plain old boring combat of usual which act as a gate to Hscenes. This is fun.
I like the interrogation minigame but the mtl makes it unbelievably hard which is why this turns into a gamble rather than pay attention and use brain. It would be a 4.9/5 if it wernt for the MTL. Why not a 5 then ? Well the game should have been longer and had for fights and unique side quests. Love that one could CHOOSE to spend time with characters for more development.

Hentai: 3/5
This is much less a hentai game it has a average amounts of CG. Needing to get true end for gallery is frustrating as there are no hints and due to the MTL. Like the slave system. But yhea thats it. No animations, no unique stuff.

Gameplay Time: 4 hours

It's a raising sim style RPG where you gotta raise your stats, earn money, and manage HP/stamina to prepare yourself for the next big fight. Along the way you can use the money you earn to improve your equipment and skills to get the edge in combat.

Combat itself plays out in a fairly unique 1-on-1 dueling system. Your actions are divided into attack, defend, and rest actions, which have a rock-paper-scissors dynamic between each other. The twist is that you don't always know what your opponent is gonna do, but as you fight your character might be able to predict more actions based on how high her Int stat is.

Over time you build up TP which can be used to super charge your attacks or enter a powered up mode. Bust through your opponent's defenses enough and they'll enter a Break state. People who've played Octopath Traveler might be familiar with this type of system.

The sim elements are fairly simple. You have a calendar and typically 20 days between matches, and you spend these days either working, playing training, or resting. You can also participate in a series of duels that can earn you more and more money at the risk of fighting incredibly powerful opponents.

All of these activities are also bound to the town's safety rating. The more jobs you do, the safer the town becomes, which means the stores will have more items in stock. Neglect your jobs too much and you might find yourself low on recovery items that help you keep going without needing to stop and rest.

Eventually you'll be able to start doing lewd jobs and allowing yourself to get sexually harassed doing other jobs. Getting harassed raises your lewdness, which eventually unlocks more lewd job opportunities as well as adding H scenes to the other jobs.

While we're on the subject of H, besides getting H scenes tied to your lewdness the other way of getting H scenes is through game over. Because of "the rules", losers in tournaments forfeit their rights to the winner so losing a match makes you your opponent's slave. This puts you in a sex slave mode where you have to pleasure customers for a number of days. And thankfully this mode can be accessed from the main menu even if you beat your opponent if you want to mess around with it.

Another source of H scenes are the 5 side characters you can raise relations with through the Play activity. Besides getting some nice bonuses you also get some H scenes at the end of each storyline.

If there's one major flaw I had to point out, it's that this game is so needlessly wordy. The dialogue is dense, and unfortunately some shabby MTL makes the experience worse. Thankfully you can just speed through the dialogue with ctrl and if you probably aren't missing anything important aside from the red text you can scroll back up to read.

The game is simple yet novel with some nicely drawn CG. Aside from the wordiness I found a lot of enjoyment. Generally I found the game not terribly difficult as long as you're diligent with your jobs and you abuse the super mode in combat, at least playing on normal.

Honestly, it's a little hard to give this 4 stars in its current state, but there's just so much text that AI translation is the best we're gonna get and the game is a fresh enough usage of RPGM features that I'll give it +1 star for that.

Gameplay/Mechanics: 3+1 star for a unique blending of styles for a total of 4/5 stars
Fairly unique RPGM that makes use of a nifty rock-paper-scissors style gun duel, timed debates during story progression to get info and bonus stats, and management game.
While I like the take on combat, I think the game would benefit more from it being faster paced battles. You load your 6 "shots" into your gun, then start the round. While most combat ends in 3-5 rounds, every round can take a while. I feel like it'd be better for the weaker foes to be feasible to drop in 1 round in the Battle option. Additionally, the animations are nice for a while, but they get old fast. An option for turning off animations would be nice imo. Lastly, while you can build your skills and specialize as you please...they don't add a whole lot to the fight dynamics. Neat, but a bit underwhelming.
Regarding the debates, I feel it would benefit from having a setting in the options to turn off the timer. I like it, but it's probably not everyone's cup of tea, and the translation on this game is subpar compared to a lot of Dazed's other AI translations. But there's not much that can be done about that given how much text there is.

Story: 3 to 4/5 stars.
Honestly, if the translation could be improved, it might even be worth 5 stars. But you gotta do a bit of self-correction of the text which slows it down a lot. And there is a LOT of text. So having to proof-read and edit the text in your mind as you read detracts a lot from it. There's notes in the translation notes text file regarding the work, and it's just an unfortunate artifact of the game being large, complex, and unlikely to be able to get the TLC it'd need to round off the rough edges.

Art: 3/5 stars
It's a little forgettable simply because it's interspersed by a lot of text and a lot of management and a lot of fighting and nothing particularly amazing. probably 4/5 in a more compact story, but it's a bit underwhelming all things considered. Also doesn't help that a lot of it is only accessible by losing fights/exiting the game to view the Game-Over-Rape from the recollection after winning the fight and I'm personally not inclined towards games that require you to lose to see a lot of the H-content.

Overall, this game is definitely worth checking out. Sounds like some people have issues with it running smoothly but I didn't even notice any of that till going back to the thread to write this review. Easily 3/5 stars assuming it runs fine, and I'd say it'd probably be an easy 4/5 stars if the translation could be improved. It's a rough gem of a game with it's own unique feeling style.

TLDR: Good alternatives to the 999 RPGM with cookie cutter gameplay and 9999 VN out there. It's a game you can actually play, and has some OK scenes in it. 4/5


Pros:

• Turn base rock-paper-sisscors gameplay. Easy to understand.
• Has different skills to create your build, though I wouldnt say most are game changing
• OK to decent scenes depend on what you look for. Mostly game-over scenes and the extended training scene after you lose, which is fairly unique out of all the h-games.
• Has voice sounds

Cons:

• Can get grindy with both the scene hunt and the stat build up game loop
• Can be challenging if you decide to run on harder difficulties since this isnt a farm until end of world game. It's like any roguelike game where you have fixed number of stages to power up yourself before the boss. Personally I have no problem with it but its up to each person
• Scenes could be better & more varied. I wouldnt say the art style is the most polsihed, and they can benefit from more variation in kinks imo.

As in terms of optimization, my laptop was able to run the game fine without much crashing, and no game breaking bug in my 2 playthroughs from what I can recall. Again, personal experience only so take it with grain of salt.

This should have been a 5/5, but goddamnit there's so many flaws in this game.

First, the way the game runs. It has not one, not two, not three but FOUR processes used to control the main window where the game opens, and you get 40% cpu usage, and you get lag. I am not joking.
Also, if you hold Ctrl too much you get infinitely repeating SFX audio in H-scenes, forcing you to restart the game.Also, if you accidentally press Z when your item inventory is empty, you get crashes. This is not acceptable for a Completed Full Release.

Second, the gameplay. It may seem fun at first but actually, you are desperately fighting against the clock because you will be locked into a bossfight from which there is no escape literally, not even save scumming can help you, so you need to desperately farm up your attack power, health (which is actually stamina because fuck you) and hope that you can become strong enough to face the boss. If you could enjoy the different activities while farming up to prepare for the bossfight this would be okay, but they literally force you to go to the bossfight and you can't delay this at all.

Next, the items and skills. Most of these are complete and utter trash, and since we are technically on a speedrun to the next boss here, wasting money can literally break your run and force you to restart.
The only useful ones are - health and motivation consumables, the skill upgrades from the 0 stamina bullet shooting attack and maybe the block, nothing else. The devs maybe intended for the players to try and find their own fighting style, but we are on a goddamn speedrun and unless we are perfectly optimized, you literally can't beat the bossfight and your run is over.

Next, the combat. It is turn based rock-paper-scissors where you pick your moves and try to guess the enemy moves and act accordingly, if you don't guess correctly well you will probably take damage. The gameplay is ok assuming that you have invested your money into damage health and aim, otherwise you will have a bad time. The good combat is the only reason I rate this at least 2 stars.

Next, the story. So, I held CTRL most of the time because I don't have time to read AI translated gibberish, roughly, you are an anime girl in the wild west armed with dual pistols, the city sheriff is an idiot who doesn't invest in a police force and so the city is infested with crime. Your task is to do police patrol, or escorting VIP-s to safety, or other good tasks to improve the safety of the city. With these tasks you improve your own stats gradually. When you do that, you can spend your time in side activities like, romancing the side characters who own the shops, spending loads of cash for training, but as you avoid being on patrol, the city chaos increases and eventually you will be forced to go back to your patrolling and guarding and so on. There's opportunities to be a prostitute to farm larger money rewards, but the city chaos will increase. You can play through the entire game without getting harrassed or violated in H-scenes.

Next, the H-scenes. You think grinding the prostitution tasks is worth it for the porn? For the money? Nope, not at all. You think beating the game unlocks the gallery? Nope. You think the H-scenes can be obtained easily after you beat the game? Nope, it's an absurdly tedious grind, so don't bother.
There's many harrasment scenes while doing tasks, there's a very small number of prostitution scenes, the main H-scene focus is for the game-over extended scenes where you are captured and agressively abused by perverted bandits because you lost to the bossfights. Once you go there, you only options are very messed up and perverted - you let the bandits abuse you and reach a 100% submission rating (it takes literally ages, please for the love of god edit the corruption gain rate in the settings to get this over with faster if you are here to watch the porn) , thus leading you to a final game over H-scene. And as I mentioned earlier, you can't unlock the gallery, unless you drop a save file.Oh and remember those romance scenes I mentioned? If you even attempt to do these, well you won't be able to beat the boss and gg your run is over.

So, is this worth playing? Well, for the unique combat yes, for everything else, no.

Very polished break from generic rpg maker scene collector spam.

CORE GAMEPLAY
The MC has to fight in the DEAD END COLOSSEUM for reasons. The battles utilize a rock paper sicsor system with Attack Defend and Rest type skills. You can spend TP to boost these skills. Outcomes are determined by Stat contests: Atk v Def Hit v Eva, ect

STATS
you raise these stats via working/ training. These actions take stamina/ willpower. Attempt them while being low on such and the action can fail. You recover stamina by resting and willpower thru socializing.

SOCIAL
the game has 5 companions you can increase relationships with for buffs and scenes.

H SCENES
This is what knocks off a star. While working you can turn on harassment to increase lewd. More lewd, different variation of scene. The problem is that a lot of these are shared assets. This continues all the way thru customer service into prostitution that has a SINGLE repeating scene. The majority of the H content comes from losing

LOSE TO SLAVE
for each opponent if you lose you become their slave and proceed to be trained. Once again a lot of shared assets with different costumes during said training but at the end is a full animated scene. If you don't want the tedium of losing on purpose, you can play each slave route from the title screen after beating their respective arena opponent

TLDR
Good quality scenes while slightly lacking in quantity during a decent resource management gameplay loop while avoiding generic rpgm combat: Worth playing

The art is nice and the gameplay is pretty original, but unfortunately it is filled to the brim with text. I wouldn't have an issue with this, if it wasn't also unreadable at the same time. If I have to ctrl though a game, I can't enjoy it

The art is good.
The plot is CTRL
The battle mechanic is interesting yet a grindfest, perfect to play Beethoven Virus.
5 romance-able characters.
You work and the city becomes great again, you skip work and everyone wants to talk to the manager.