RPGM - Ethereal Sunder [v0.15] [EtherealSunderDev]

REVIEW AS OF VERSION .15
the good things
~cute and adorable protag who dosnt have hot air balloons on her chest posing as boobs
~great H-art and art in general
~good story so far
~good game mechanics aside from 1 ill get to in the bad things
~very likable characters all around
~easy to navigate world thats not to big or filled with useless crap

the bad things (or more so thing)
~the combat system in this game is absolute dogshit, if you need to add in a setting to turn off 99% of the fights then your combat system needs to either be overhauled or removed. this is what gets the game a 3/5 for me.
~the combat is also literally worthless outside of bosses because since theres no leveling or crafting systems so enemies drop nothing and only cost you health and mana
~the skill tree progression is horrible, you can unlock the entire thing before even starting the story by grinding for like an in game week so the few fight you have to do are piss easy.

small nitpicks
~the only character in the entire game to get a portrait/image is the protag girl, id suggest at least giving other major characters like the gang bosses a portrait if not a full body image
~enemies do a tad to much damage for there being no way to heal in battle aside from your ult that you can only use once per battle, id suggest adding in a low level healing spell. (or you can just turn off 99% of the useless combat lol)

TLDR: the game is pretty great outside of the combat, defiantly one to give a try especially if they keep adding good content. zwz

I want to like this game.

Ethereal Sunder isn’t breaking the rpgmaker h-game mold in any significant way. A plot about a naïve girl heading into a den of scum and villainy to retrieve some magical mcguffin is about as boilerplate as one can get in this industry. What I do respect with this attempt is strictly the choice in character design for the protagonist; while lolis are common across the pond, seeing them being attempted in a patreon-funded project takes some balls. I can only hope that the site doesn’t catch wind of such proclivities any time soon.

This is where my praise hits a brick wall. While the art is nice, and the dialogue is serviceable, the meat of the game is an absolute slog. The progression of the plot is roadblocked by the need to gather mana, which is required for stat upgrades, combat skill consumption, and to bypass a literal roadblock later in the game. On paper, this doesn’t sound so bad, as it gives an incentive to scout out the town for sidequests and secrets. It’s when you have to deal with combat where the entire game falls apart.

The dungeon segments are such a bore that the devs have currently put in place a bandaid option to skip most encounters (boss fights are still required, however). There’s a rock-paper-scissors element system in place, vaguely similar to the one used in Karryn’s Prison. However, there is no nuance at all here, and no h-scenes are linked to combat either, making the entire endeavor even more pointless. I’m not saying that combat sex has to be in all rpgmaker h-games, but if you’re going to omit such an easy thrill, then you got to compensate somehow here.

As the lewd content goes, it’s your usual slow corruption affair. Not much non-consensual content, but that’s to be expected while working under the heavy hand of Patreon’s ridiculously-strict TOS on such subject material (this is strictly conjecture, as they're already toeing the line by having a loli anyway). The only issue at the moment in this regard is how little sex there actually is at the time of this writing; there is only one penetrative scene in the game, and you can only get it by purposefully failing an event late in the main plot line.

The devs do monthly updates, and progress has been slow and steady, so these issues will (hopefully) be rectified in another year or so. I would suggest anyone interested in the game to wait on playing it about that long as well; there is not enough h-content to justify trudging through how bog-standard the rest of the game currently is.

As said in earlier reviews, this might be the best corruption game known to F95zone.

Maybe the engine(RPGM) is common among H-games of all sorts, but this one, among all others, brings:
*Good storytelling on it's own, one of the games i enjoyed reading;
*Really good artwork of both regular and H-scenes;
*Variety of in-game events/minigames to compete in and complete them;
*Different progression system of a Main Character, no longer farming 1000 pieces of equipment;
*Innovative approach on mana consumption, now it has a severe impact on our character.

Overall, i liked this gem of a gamedev, wishing author the best outcomes in his far and close future.

cute character
slowburn
good writing (for a game like this)
nice music
regular updates

not that much content yet
somewhat repetitive
the mansion event is not fun
linux version is/was bugged first event

A damn solid game with a consistent as well as receptive dev and a protagonist of utmost beauty.

There are primarily only three things I care about: Content, Character Design (and by extension, character writing) and Porn quality itself. So let's go through each one.

Content:

• Consistent monthly updates
• Satisfying update size (no churning out infinite bugfixes)
• Currently slightly meagre amount of erotic content BUT each time your corruption levels up all of previous interactions attain updates and new scenes to match the corruption level.
• Various interactions with visions of more.
• Interesting worldbuilding, especially the magic system. I was unexpectedly drawn to it.
• Great characters outside the protagonist; all of them having distinct personalities that result in different situations and tones (You've got the masochist, the molester, the theatrical twins and so on).
• An interface that showcases the characters thoughts on the last sexual encounter, giving more insight into her development.
• Somewhat fun triangle-based combat.

Porn:

• High quality art.
• Great mix of femdom and submissive content.
• Good variety of situations and acts that fittingly showcase the protagonists best parts, and allows for accompanying writing.
• Corruption feels satisfying, gradual and well-paced as of now.
• Occasional animated sequences.
• More interactions unlocked with higher corruption, e.g. being groped can let the protagonist lead men away for prostitution.
• Excellent dirty talk and inner dialogue during scenes, further accentuated with plethora of facial expressions.
• At times, genuinely hilarious - like the Twins scenes.
• Distinct characters with personalized sexual content and interests. This makes it so that sexual encounters aren't just monotone, but follow a consistent narrative and sexual development with each person.

Character:
Now what I would say is the best part of this game and experience.

• Extremely adorable protagonist that ticks a lot of boxes (lolibaba appeal, bottom heavy with a tiny chest, well-dressed, hikimayu-like eyebrows, bountiful facial expressions, strong body language, divine legs and hands)
• Personality creates a lot of amusing reactions and inner conflicts. She's a narcissist, bossy, slight tsundere undertones, willful, snobby, noble, keen and sexually ignorant as well as curious. All of these traits come into play seamlessly, highlighting all of her best parts and creating gap moe, both in cuter interactions or in her descent into sexual deviancy.
• Well-written. From her interactions to her inner dialogues - it is all satisfying to read.
• Great as a lead as she can keep the game interesting and even informative at times outside erotic scenes.
• A natural at soft femdom but can also be adorably submissive, overall a great switch.
• You can track her corruption and thoughts on the last sexual encounter.
• Natural and smooth transition through corruption stages, rarely feels like too big of a jump has been made. I even welcome the bolder moments when she tries to surprise others and even herself.

The Bad: Fixed in 0.13.5

• Grindy and time-consuming. Needs a feature that let's you skip day cycles more easily or at least reduce the grind (the only way to progress time is to replay scenes or play minigames).
• Overwhelming dungeons flooding with encounters. These kind of levels always downgrade the enjoyment from the sheer amount of time or effort they require when that isn't what you came here for. Just feels like time padding but does serve as a reminder that the protagonist is a powerful mage.

The game is shaping up nicely and I am eagerly anticipating each update. It's one of those you can revisit every 3-5 months and leave satisfied.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned drawbacks do drop it down a whole star for me when normally it would potentially be 5/5 enjoyment wise as it has fulfilled my 3 main categories (and is looking to deliver even more). Very optimistic.

Edit: The wonderfully receptive dev has graced us with an update that has solved all flaws mentioned in this review and thus it warrants 5 stars from here on. Just make sure to read the blog changelogs to know about it.

Great innovative concept. I loved it.

For a bit.

But then I realized that the "challenge" is geared to make you grind, not to challenge you. To get anywhere you need to do mini games a hundred million times and the dungeons still aren't fun - imagine that.

The pay off is somewhere on the horizon, but the slow corruption is still very much in its infancy, so you get nothing for your endless soul destroying mini game adventure.

There's is a great game in there. Somewhere. Unfortunately, it's just scaled to be time consuming before all else. You could save edit to make it manageable without sinking the equivalent of 12 Seasons of Dancing with Stars into it, but then you'd realize how little actual content there currently is beyond the grind...

Make your game fun, if you want people to play it.

[v0.11]
Even with the game having obvious faults, this is the most enjoyable and interesting "standard" heroine-game I've played in a long time.

The setup of the game and the story is very standard, with the "pure" heroine being stranded in a "corrupted" and dangerous place while being pressured to do dirty things to survive. The writing or assets for the scenario are nothing out of the ordinary for this type of RPGM-game.

However, what the game absolutely nails is it's MC. The characterization for Eilayda is built on standard tropes, with her being haughty, naive, sheltered X000-year old fairy-girl, but the game does a distinctly good job of never making those qualities detrimental to her character. She isn't made too stupid naive, or arrogant to be in a nominal position of power (or walk and chew gum at the same time), and she reacts to the plot and other characters fairly realistically, having an internal dialogue of trying to understand their motives and moderate her response accordingly. The end result is that she feels like a likeable, believable protagonist. The bar is very low for good H-game heroines, and Eilayda clears it with meters to spare. Sometimes, that's a sign that the story is going to do something pretty brutal to the MC next, but I'm sort of hoping that isn't the case in the finished version...

The game does a decent job of having interesting gameplay-systems, with many custom minigames made within the limits of the RPGM-engine. It also makes an attempt at having an original character-building system, in having the heroine's mana be used as both "exp." and a combat-resource, while also limiting your healing. However... this might also be an example of why these systems might not be that great of an idea...

As much as I enjoy the heroine and the concept, I have to agree that the game is very grindy. The amount of content in the current version is still pretty low, and there is enough things to do for one daily cycle of minigames to do, as you slowly grind up more mana and daily gold to clear just the second dungeon. The game makes the choice to stricktly limit your healing to once-per day, with no repeatable healing-spell, and then designs the dungeons to have combat that is stricktly detrimental to you, that needs to be cleared over multiple runs through. In short, the grind is pretty annoying, and the slow-corruption doesn't have enough tools or events in yet to make it interesting. (Not that I dislike the the slow pacing of the corruption itself) And, of course, the current version lacks a major payoff for all the grind, and it will no doubt be more annoying the second time.

On the art-front the game isn't doing anything amazing, though the quality is still good overall. Only the main character having unique art, without particularly many frills like extra facial expressions. As I said before, the amount of scenes is currently kind of low, and besides the welcome hints of MC-sadism, there isn't anything particularly unique about them.

In short, the game is mostly held up by how much you like the MC, who's a pretty likeable character, especially for the archetype. It's unfortunate that the game doesn't seem to be heading toward breaking the mold of heroine games, but if you don't mind the sameyness with many games that have come before, this is a well-above average iteration.

A nice slow going corruption, cute female protagonist and a really not too shaby story. It's a clear yes for me and I'm always looking forward to the next update. The battle system is a bit odd at first but it's getting regularly updated and improved.

A lot of the low reviews seem like they didn't read the mana system and are just bad at the game as I have no idea how you could run out of HP potions. Or they talk about some bugs that I have never seem so idk if they were fixed what they are on about.

The actual game, by which I mean the porn in the porn game is great. Nothing fancy like animation but the art, pacing, situations and writing are all great. Not to mention the " petite" protaganest if you know what I mean. We don't get all that many of these kind of games that are actually decent so you are goddamn right it is a 5/5

Some might say the updates are slow, I would say they are amaturs who don't know the meaning of a game actually having slow updates. Other might complain about "stock" enemy art or some other kind of nonsense, I say who gives a damn, don't waste dev time on useless art like that and focus on the good porn part. I saw some talk about it being "grindy," again I don't know who these people are but the "grind" in this game is a few minutes at worst and comes with your choise of mini game.

Now for combat, yes that is a weak part of the game. It is typical borning turnbased stuff, but I have seen far worse and im not here looking for the next RPG maker inovator in fun combat, you just push through it easy enough and move on. (I am a big fan of having H content in / during combat though, so if the dev wants to add a bit of that in, then the game would be even better)

It's crazy that this game is not rated 5 stars. It has the potential to be one of the best RPGM corruption games ever made. The art, the lewd scenes, the overall structure of the game and the corruption progress are all superb, all very nicely done. Althought it's still at an early stage(development started only 7 months ago after all) you can clearly see that it's gonna be brimming with content in a very short time, considering the developer's work pace - he releases a new build every month with atleast one h-scene(it's usually more than one). Really hard not to recommend.

This is an.amazing slow burn corruption female MC game, there's a bunch of lewd scenes already in the game , mini games and battle system.are fun as well, game gets updated on the first Friday of every month

Review for Version 0.6.1

Game in and of itself has a solid premise for itself and can be quite if the author won't decided to derail everything that's been set so far. I'd honestly say that if enough of both love and horny ( from author ) put into the game it can achieve an amazing heights, that I very much hope to see. In simple points.

Gameplay - Set up of the game is rather interesting. With the resource management between gold and mana it's fun and not too challanging to keep up with what you need.

Character - She's very cute and has a rather specific art style. It's always nice nowadays to get a character that is varied in look to the rest of the genre and not just a pair of tits with legs. Variety is a spice of life, after all!

Combat - It is in and of itself quite simple. Triangle reminds me a lot of the Fire Emblem series. To a point it's just too simple. I'd deeply recommend adding in mid-battle lewds and cut-ins or even sex-based attacks and stances, so it's not just player clicking one and the same button every time.

UI - It's not clattered. Simple and easy to understand, thankfully.

Lewd - It's so far the main weakpoint of the game. With those few updates it doesn't seem like much has changed and those who come here only for that should honestly wait for a bit longer. At the pace the possible lewd development it's going it's going to take a good few months to achieve any meaningful level lewdity in the game unless author will swap their attention onto it.

Over all, the game is in it's infancy and probably will be for a while but has a huge promise that I hope will be fulfilled. I have only best wishes for author and hope that one day - once it's sufficently developed - the game will become a big hit.

Ethereal Sunder [v0.5.2] [EtherealSunderDev]

For now it's a game that promises well, it's still short, the scenes are still few and not very intense (which I loved, the corruption must be slow, I don't like it when a character changes behavior from one scene to another at random).
For now I can only say that I await future versions.
Obviously the rating is only temporary, the 4 is given on trust and from what I've seen so far, it seems like a game very suitable for my needs.

Nice this game has very great potential, especially in terms of developing the eroticism of the main character, as well as a frantic grind in which the choice of an erotic outcome will seem logical. I hope that the author will add elements of costume changes and events associated with them. The most important thing is that I will tell others about the progress of the game and we will support the project.

This has great potential, and I can't wait for more scenes and scene variation. I don't think we've had a loli porn game with the "What does she think about ____" mechanic yet so that's a real plus, and I like th main girl's haughty personality.

Perhaps the grind could be lessened, but I have a feeling it will start to feel like less of a grind once more scenes are added.

Honestly, sadly one of the worst rpgm games i played, there are games with anoying grind, or bad gameply, but this game is made out of it.
Fights are boring, random, mindless, and you can t avoid them becaus some enemies will just sprint to you at the speed of light. You can get atacked at any moment on the main map and all this for a few repeating scenes. I get that this game is wip so im willing to forgive lack of content but the gameplay foundations need 100% rework.

i totally recommend this game because the main character is so appealing not only in term of appearance but personality too, the gameplay is also very smooth, i haven't had any bugs so far even tho i used save editor and you can tell a lot of work is being put into it, the story is also interesting so far I hope we get to see it finished and have more future updates

I very very like female protagonist corruption game. And this game meets the specs perfectly. The picture is beautiful, with a little movement adding to the mood well. The battle system is easy to understand, very basic. Please continue to develop it.

Review as of 0.3.6 version.

Game has potential, but as it is currently its takes forever to get anything done and bugs... bugs are everywhere. You can by just questing normally and exploring softlock your game, with only way to fix it is by loading the previous save or starting AGAIN because a flag failed to trigger.

Sex scenes: So far there are 4 scenes in total and all of them are CG scenes that are quite bland and spread apart.

Gameplay: Intro takes forever, it just goes on and on and on, as if there is content there. Author shouldn't have bothered with insanely long intro when entire gameplay is done in different area, with most of content not implemented and so far using free assets.

Fights: They are just free asset, there are no scenes in there. Why they exist? To make game longer. Nothing else.

Bugs: A lot of them. Most of actions are trigger based. Basically if you have not have done some trigger or it failed to work, you get soft locked, with only way to fix is reload last save if it wasnt borked at that point already.

Heroine: There are some moments when she looks weird. More male then female on some sprites. Its like whoever drawn her couldnt set his mind on art style or they were drawn with large wait time inbetween.

TL DR: Has promise this game. If dev just deletes whole RPGM garbage fighting system that adds 0 content to the game, except adding a quality drop. I would wait till v1 at least before trying this out. Its quite harsh review for such early state project, but Im not going to praise game that can just die out like hundreds other promising games before it.

Very fun game however gameplay can be a bit difficult due to the constant miss and RNG. Maybe devs can add some info regarding about the accuracy percentage or stats. (eg: dex?) Graphics is very nice and I enjoy the corruption of the heroine. Can add more molester not the thugs or bandits (Avoiding them is a pain in the ass when they can run faster than you sometimes). Hoping for more content from the devs