review for v0.3
The dev has stated that this is their first game. As a first game a lot of its shortcoming are very understandable. This is not a bad game at all, but it's lacking a lot of polish (especially in the gameplay/UI department) that keeps it from being a good game in my opinion. I wanted to like this game, but a few key issues kept me from wanting to finish the content that's currently available.
Writing: 4/5 - I noticed a few mistakes. But there were no consistent problems that bugged me. I'm not a big stickler on grammar though. It's more than passable.
Story: 3.3/5 - It's pretty basic for a corruption game. You're gathering energy for a demon. Seen the setup a hundred times before. The characters mostly make up for it.
Characters: 4/5 - They're not amazingly deep, but they're more than servicable. There's a sense that everyone has a backstory and a history. And no two characters are exact copies of each other, from what I've seen so far. I do think the dev may have made a mistake by making the cast so large to start out with. Because now there's a bunch of girls who don't really have a lot of content, and probably won't all get attention for many updates. Also... that introductory scene in the classroom was way too long... I kept waiting for it to finish, but there always seemed to be another character that needed background information explained. It would have been better to only go into depth with the characters that currently have content, then give the others background information when they become relevant (IMO). But I think the dev did it this way because they want every girl to be available at the very begining of the game when it's finished... still made the scene a chore to get through.
Gameplay: 2.5/5 - It's a typical sandbox game. There's some grinding here that doesn't seem to be too bad. But it's annoyingly inconvenient how the game doesn't give you any indication of how much grinding is needed to get to the next step. You don't know what love/Corruption stats are needed to do each action, so you can only grind one of those at random until you unlock what you need. Also, there is never anything in the text or a pop-up that indicates that the love stats have increased. The only way to check the stats for a girl are to go into the phone... which you can only access at your house, in your room. It's this lack of access to information which really killed my enjoyment of the game. It's a chore to see how far you're progressing, even if the grind isn't excessive or anything. Couple that with the just passable sex render quality and I really didn't feel motivated to continue.
User Interface: 2.5/5 - It's not terrible. But it's just shy of being decent. The dev has stated that there are updates planned but in its current state it's mildly annoying. Navigation is... Ok, but clunky. I think some of the choices for where they put the navigation buttons where non-intuitive. Like it would be better to have the button to go home always to left or right, since it's one of the most traveled locations. Also the Phone ui and most of the talking menus are annoying to navigate if you want to pick more than one option at a time. For instance, say I wanted to check the stats on two seperate girls. After I check the one girl, I'm automatically kicked out of the menu entirely. So I have to re-open the phone for each girl I want to check. Also, there are no "back" buttons that allow you to cancel if you accidentally click on the phone. You have to select a girl regardless.
Art/renders: 3/5 - the character models are all fine. Nothing amazing for Koikatsu, but overall they're attractive. If I was basing this just on the models, I'd probably score this closer to a 4. However, the sex scenes are kind of lacking. I"m not the type of guy who demands Animations, but I do need some variation between images to give the impression of motion. The dev seemed to kind of try to do that, but i noticed in most of the hand job scenes the girls hands were in the same position on the guys dick. Like in image one, the hands at the base of the dick. In image two, the hand is still at the base of the dick at slightly different angle. It doesn't give the sense that a hand job is being done. The blowjob scenes were a little bit better... but nothing to write home about. I think there either needs to be greater render variation, or more detailed text descriptions to give a good sense of what's happening in the scenes.
Overall enjoyment: 2.9/5 - it's not bad... but it lacked what many other 3 star games have to drive me to completing them. I think the biggest issues is the lack of clear definition of goals. Without knowing exactly how many points you need to reach the next corruption level, my personal motivation to grind goes way down. The UI polish stuff is annoying, but something that is expected with a first game. I believe this dev can truly make this a 4 or 5 star game with time. There is a lot of potential here. But right now it's just slightly below average in my opinion.
. Just one small suggestion, the outfits need to change based on the corruption progress .
