RPGM - Completed - Kakuriyo Village ~Moratorium of Adolescence~ [Steam] [I'm moralist]

Okay, lets start at the beginning. I followed the development of this game because it seemed like it had a lot of potential for a good, balanced NTR/vanilla game that had a lot of interesting elements and themes where the scenarios could just write themselves.

The basic premise is that you and your childhood friend, who is a tomboy, are getting lost and stumble upon a strange supernatural village that opens up to the rest of the world only every year. In the village, people are immortal and don't age, but they are very horny. And the village has a weird rule about females being up for grabs, unless they are married. And people who lie about their gender (esp. women) will be severely punished for it.

So far so good. In the vein of many good scenarios and eroge plots, where you are a fish out of water and a bit naive, stranded in a strange world (one reason Legend of Krystal was such a good thing back in the day, cause of the setup), unable to leave and having to take care of each other, you and your childhood friend hide that she is female (although you could have just gotten married since the rules say married women are off limits ?? but lets ignroe that plothole) and you have to live together and survive a year in order to be able to make the decision to either stay in the village forever or leave it.

You meet a bunch of characters along the way and hear their story and experience their little scenarios.

Putting aside the fact that the two main characters are rather young, which makes me a bit uncomfortable (at least they both do have sexual body characteristics) - but this is nothing unusual for hentai or eroge, love it or hate it - the scenario is very promising.

Unfortunately, the writing and gameplay squanders almost any promise this scenario offered. Aside from some of the erotic scenes being quite grotesque and brutal, the gameplay basically just consists of a loop of you and the girl waking up, walking around the village or staying home, finding events all over the place where they (most of the time) watch other people having sex or doing sexual things, then go home and have repeatable erotic scenes (a handful of variations) at home. Its mainly resource management to make sure your friend is not revealed as a female (all things that make her appear as a female like going to the female bathroom or getting jumped by perverts or girls dressed as dogs that smell (?) her being female will raise that stat), while trying to satisfy your own desire as a male (which is constantly raised by the weird magic surrounding the village) and developing your relationship. The scenario basically puts the characters in a position where their own relationship grows just by the nature of avoiding getting a "bad ending" (cause if those stats are too high you will get a game over h-scene) while also having some events that has you observing others having sex, which often involves women being r*aped by the men in the village.

In the end, for me, it is the most boring turn of events and scenarios that could have come out of this setup.

As somebody who enjoys NTR, esp. hidden cheating with omniscient or partial observing player while MC is clueless or Netori, this game could have been a dream, but unfortunately there is only one NTR route in this game, and it literally is never present. You have one event that triggers it, nothing you can do to avoid it after (unless you have put NTR to "off", which is an option), and you never see anything that indicates NTR aside from one scene where your friend was missing shortly and lies about where she was. The only NTR scenes you see are at the very end after you rached the conclusion of the game, where the scenes will be revealed to you. And the payoff of the scenes is poorly executed imo and misses the mark a lot of us with that NTR itch are looking for.

Now, the game never advertises itself as NTR, so I don't deduct a lot of points for it not being present much. But I do deduct points for implementing a NTR route anyway that ultimately falls flat in the end.

Not gonna spoil any endings beyond that, but generally, the gamplay stays the same for most of the game, the scenes you see between the characters are very average in writing and presentation, the conclusion is something that could have been a solution 5 minutes into the game and otherwise is very straight forward and boring.

In conclusion, this game wastes a lot of potential and "free real estate" that came with the scenario and setup. It is too brutal and grotesque in some scenes and too boring and bog-standard in others. The developer/writer is way too blunt with their scenario, dialogue and scenarios and the game ends up being very disappointing in the process. A missed opportunity altogether.

If you are uncomfortable with the questionable age content, avoid. If you are looking for a good NTR, avoid. If you are looking for good BDSM, look somewhere else. If the setup really speaks to you, temper your expectations. There are better stories out there with childhood friends, vanilla or otherwise. Unfortunately not many stories pick up the "stranded and cant go home" angle, but it's not worth it to get too invested in this game even if you are longing for a story like this. Cause this aint it, chief.

I 100% agree with Binklee's review and would only add one or two points to that. The ChatGPT translation is good but leaves out the girl MC's sex stats window. This is arguably one of the most important things in the game to translate. I know that a lot of devs actually make those menus images and not text that is easily extracted and translated, however not having that menu in english is one of the most damaging things that can happen in a translated porn game in my mind. Secondly though the art is relatively impressive most of the images are very fetish specific. Not a lot of generally hot material. And most of the images are very static as most high effort still art hentai tends to be (it's expensive to pay for multiple images to make a scene, cheaper to make one image with two or three small variations). So while the art looks promising it's pretty limited and is even more limited if you aren't into the more niche fetishes the game focuses on.

I'm gonna give a brief summary of the game before giving my rationale for the score:

PREMISE:
You and your childhood friend / romantic interest get lost in some forest and stumble your way into a magical divine village, the entrance and exit of which only opens once per year. In this village, no one ever ages, or wants for anything, it's a paradise... for men. See, here, women are considered subhuman and exist purely for the sexual gratification of men. There's just one rule: hiding one's gender is strictly forbidden and comes with severe punishment. The native population is a bunch of weird elf creatures that seem totally fine with this, they LIVE to be treated like trash, begging to be "raped" (doesn't make much sense, that seems like consent) then thanking their "rapists" afterwards.

At the start of the game, your childhood friend just so happens to be wearing your hoodie, and since she's a bit tom-boyish (amongst other reasons we won't get into) she is mistaken by the warden of the town for a boy. Presumably, in order to protect her purity you two just kinda go along with it and don't correct anyone. And thats the goal of the game - make it 1 year without anyone discovering her gender so you two can escape back to the real world.

MY REACTION (any NTR enjoyers?):
Given that setup and the tags, I was very much expecting this to be an NTR game, little by little more and more human men would discover the truth, and she'd end up fucking them to keep them quiet. However, that is not what happens. To my disappointment, this is absolutely NOT an NTR game. All the NTR is confined to a single route, and even then, most of it happens off screen, and doesn't actually have ANY pay-off until almost the very end of the game, several hours in.

This is an extreme BDSM / Bestiality game, that just so happens to have a singular NTR-ish route, but the brunt of the game is about the rape of random villagers. This, however, is not why I'm giving the game a low score - no where did it explicitly say it was an NTR game, in fact, as you start that route, it even tells you that your "girlfriend" will remain faithful and won't cheat. I'm not gonna dock the game because my expectations were misaligned, nor am I gonna dock it because I'm not particularly into the fetishes on display (looking at you, urethral insertions...). No, the reason I'm giving it 2 stars is because...

The Review:
Basically nothing happens in this game. It's sooooooo BOOOOOORING. Half the lewd events in the game are just dialogue between characters I don't know and don't have any connection to. The gameplay loop is just wandering around and rolling the dice on whether or not clicking on an event will show you a random CG of yet more unrelated characters fucking. The way you "lose" the game is by ending a night with your "girlfriend's" femineity bar at 100%, at which point in the morning some villagers will show up and take her away to be brutally tortured and left for dead. As weird as that end was, the game does score some bonus points by basically bringing you back into the game at the point you were at before, and having "God" retcon that ending out of existence so you can keep playing. Equally, and another positive of this game is, unlike other games where the fail state is a small cutscene or a CG then a game over, this games failure state has an actual story. Time progresses and you get to see full scope of how this village punishes your "girlfriend", which even though the content was pretty fucking weird, I can at least respect the effort.

Not to worry though, actually increasing your "GF's" femineity is pretty easy to avoid - the main way it increases is by interacting with the hostile mobs that roam the streets at night. These mobs were another disappointment for me, as it was kind of implied that perverts and horned up men would be out and about - I figured the way you'd increase your meter would be by these townsfolk bumping into you and your gf and slowly realizing "hey wait a sec, that's woman". But no, the actual mobs that roam the streets are ghosts, and girls in puppy play bondage. The ghosts increase your gf's femineity rating by... being a ghost I guess (bitches love ghosts), and the girls pretending to be dogs will sniff at your gf and catch the scent of her pussy or something (it's explained later in the game).

But wait a sec, why do we care about this at all? Why risk all this for a year? Why not just come clean at the start instead of trying to hide it? Well to prevent her from being raped by all the men of the village, right? WRONG see, there's a rule to this village I left out of the summary at the top: married women are off limits, and are only available to their husbands. So, easy fix, just get fuckin married. Well, some of you might be saying "that seems a bit extreme, marriage is a big step and these characters probably didn't know the extend of the punishment at the start". Wrong again sadly, the literal first scene in the game is the warden of the village sitting you both down and explaining in clear detail the rules and punishments, then goes on to show you a live example of a rule breaker just to drive the point home. I'll reiterate, the very first thing that happens in the game, before we're even introduced to the characters, is our MCs watch a unsettlingly young girl, tied up in a cage, being violently raped by a dog. Idk man, I usually have a high tolerance for suspension of disbelief when it comes to hentai, but when the writer of this game gives the characters suuuuuuuuuch and easy way out that they just don't take, I sorta check out. Just get married, and you're fine. Or fuck, it, just lie and say you're married. What are these villagers gonna do, pop on over to the human world to check for a marriage license? Or just have your GF not leave the house, simple as that. The men in the village aren't gonna bust down the door, they all seem fairly normal, plus they can fuck a cornucopia of women of all ages (and I do mean all, as troubling as that is).

Conclusion:
This is an extremely fucking weird and ultimately boring game that essentially boils down to a picture hunt. The MCs are basically irrelevant and the writing is bizarre. I would 1 star this, as I think it's a total waste of time, but I'm adding a star because the translation is surprisingly good for being MTL. It's a little janky in areas, but it's totally understandable and not really distracting for the most part.

Honestly impressed with the ChatGPT translation. Im a software dev but sadly I havnt got the time currently to help out - but genuinely curious to see how this takes off. Played this on the old tranlation quality and trust me the difference is like night and day. Dropping my rating on the translation quality and not in particularly the game.

honestly this game isn't that bad, the main game is basically to pass 24 days in the village with a few extra things to do here and there, but the thing i dislike are the soundtracks when you are exploring like it somehow doesn't fit and feel out of place,

there is also 3 bad ends you can find but some of them are tedious and takes a while, thankfully you don't need to if you don't feel like it as there is an "unlock all scene" button in the gallery

the translation is a bit iffy at times but it's probably the better MTL we have

overall, it's pretty good.

If we judge the game objectively, it's a very good example of a Japanese game. It's clear that the author really put effort into his creation. Dialogs, UI, scripting, maps, characters... It's not just another product to make easy money. If you want to immerse yourself in the world of a lustful village with your (future) girlfriend, I definitely recommend it.

However, I also would like to judge this game subjectively. As a sick pervert obsessed with NTR themes, I expected MUCH MORE from this game. In a village engulfed in debauchery and slave rules, there are only vanilla scenes and a bit of cruelty, which, however, is not revealed and not explained. If you want to play this game only for NTR - don't bother, it's not worth it. There are only a few scenes, and they're not better nor worse than in any other JRPG.

Nevertheless, it's still the best thing I've played in a long time. I wish the author all the best, and cross my fingers that the next game will be even better.

This game doesn't have a half-bad setup or loop, but is weirdly paced and doesn't feel super consistent about whats going on.

While the scenes themselves aren't bad there also were many that there simply wasnt much to and a majority of stuff that happened for me was more people talking about lewd stuff happening, until I provoked ahigh exposure stat later on in which case the game ended with one longer scene.

The male mc is kinda default nondescript childhood friend and thus not interesting, but you only get to walk around with the girl following him around in the parts I got, which wasn't super exciting. As another review mentioned, this game is not as focussed on ntr as you'd expect for a long while.

I felt out of the loop of where i am at in the game progression wise as the status pages weren't translated (the poster explains this in this thread), but also because the translation has just enough jank so you never know for sure what characters mean or if they mean the opposite of what they are saying. This also takes away from the scenes.

Just a bit ago there was a game translated with the same tools if i am not mistaken, Sol Rui -after mini-, and in my review of that I mention that it gets away with having some jank in its scene translation because it has a very active visual element which works as a crutch to pull attention away from that and helps communicate whats happening. This game doesn't have that and thus the shortcomings of the translation are more front and center.

The game is mostly about collecting scenes which are beautiful and the females are IIRC voiced so it is nice.
As an NTR fan, I'll give an NTR review.

Scenario wise? Boring
Scenes (art)? Well designed
Conversation? Lacking
Easy NTR? easy but doesn't feel worth it

In general, play the game as it is tagged besides NTR, rather than focusing on NTR. The NTR build-up is low, not slow but just feels lackluster. Few rounds then boom suddenly NTR then have to go through another process to see the scenes. So it is like, end-game content.

Now if you are not here for NTR, well this game serves a lot of tastes and the end-game has multiple endings.

Played it in japanese and loved it. MTL is not the best of course.
Game is basically about a village where women are completely submissive to men. You and your girlfriend happen to find yourself in that village but due to your girlfriends tomboyish appearance, most people think she's actually a man.
So your girlfriend is safe from other men, as long as you make sure she's not caught.
You can basically choose how you want to play. If you're into NTR, you can just make sure your girlfriend is caught in several ways.
If you're into vanilla you just spend a summer vacation with your girlfriend. Having a fun time together. There is also a "Anti-NTR" mode but in my opinion, if you want to avoid NTR its not so difficult. So its kind of redundant.
There are no battles or anything like that. Its mainly about exploration and finding scenes, while bonding with your girlfriend.
I can recommend it, its a full experience with tons of high quality art and occasionally some animations thrown in.