RPGM - Completed - Kunoichi Karin [v1.2] [CHERIS SOFT]

Note: I am playing with the improved translation. The improved translation solves most of the issues stated in other reviews, such as incoherent text or text going out of bounds. I have not noticed any translation issues in my full playthrough.

9/10, one of the best RPGM H-games out there.

Difficulty and Gameplay: Generic and not very well balanced [C]
The gameplay and the difficulty is one of the few parts of this game that isn't amazing. The fights, both boss and normal mobs, are pretty boring as you aren't given much options except a typical RPGM stat-check. This isn't a game where you can beat the final boss with beginner stats as long as you play good enough. If you've played any RPGM game you understand how everything works already, some grinding is required.

H-Scenes: Good [A-]
Not sure what to say. A good variety of H-scenes for multiple characters that are well drawn, the artist has a unique style that makes their work stand out. A wide variety of common fetishes are covered, but nothing too extreme either. The only way this could be better is if it was animated.

Atmosphere/world: Among the best [S+]
Living world with moving characters, each city is alive with dozens of buildings, stores, districts, and streets. Each with its own set of NPCs, each NPC has an unique set of lines with the lines changing based on the advancement of the story or the fulfilling of a specific quest line.

Many locations have an optional quest line, some of which will lead to an ending. There are multiple secret locations as well.

Story: Good [A]
Now, if this was a professionally made anime or game by triple A developers, I would probably rate it only a B, as at parts its story can get pretty cliche-y. But for an H-game? It is among the best. The character designs are unique, their motivations are clear and well written. The plot of the game is gripping, and neither too complex nor too simple. The ending was a nice homage to a shounan anime final fights.

it's garbage just from the translation.

H-scenes are still pictures with text. but text is a lot of time out of bounds so you dont even see what's written, even what's written is MTL.

but biggest offender is a LOT of stuff is not even translated. so only from the translation problems it's already trash tier.

but since H-scenes are bad as well, require a good text, which is impossible with bad english this makes the game not worth to play at all. not recommending it to anyone unless you speak/read japanese. even if you do, it's still a mediocre game at best. just avoid this

Didn't expect this game to have *this much content*. Five stars just for having a complete game filled with content, and not being yet another RPGM-spam. The story is actually good. The main city is huge. Also actually rewards you for exploring and interacting with NPCs. Actual side quests with alternative endings.

Rpg-type game with good graphics and fairly polished gameplay, it has some flaws in both design and plot level but it makes up for it with a fairly entertaining system, a new game+ with some additional bosses is missing.

The game is excellent. Excellent plot. But, the game is very long. It took me about 13.00 hours to complete the whole game. Lots of h event. Lots of endings. The art might not be the best but it is consistent. Dungeons are easy to navigate with lots of items to find. Enjoyed the game very much. Definitely would recommend trying. Keep up the good work developers.

PROS:

• Good plot, maybe i am not the best to say it but from what i experience in my run (10:34:55)
• A lot of h-content and normal content too
• You can instakill non-bosses striking behind them, if you play like a ninja you are rewarded
• For the game genre this game has a tolerable amount of grind
• The art might not be the best but is consistent
• Pregnancy tag (you can also see your childs)

CONS:

• A LOT of story, i was just here because pregnancy
• The art is a 7.5/10, i could be better
• The pregnancy system is slightly more complex than bad ending, but is also bad ending, and the pregnancy is a cinematic, doesn't affect gameplay
• Giving birth is not available till chapter 5

Observations:

• After you finish the game you don't unlock everything. That piss me off because there are 3 endings in a 8+ hours game so you must invest an enormous amount of time to unlock everything.
• Some of the trophies and lewd unlockables are behind japanese text in png buttons format. Good luck with that.
• You can exploit the instakill mechanic in some points. When you enter a new area and if a enemy spawn facing back, you can oneshot them and then go back to the previous area and then comeback again to the area. the enemy respawn so you kill him again. Using this way you can level up easily. Around level 50 you unlock all the abilities (or that happends to me).
• You can also try buying the inn at the left of the first town to her money the fastest way possible (high lewd require)
• PAGE 17 MY MEDIAFIRE SAVE FILE

I loved it. Story was interesting enough to keep me playing, the mtl is hard to understand, but if it ever gets a translation, it will be a banger.
This version has an exp bug so I suggest using a save editor to edit your stats to run through the game easier/faster. You need really good stats because the bosses are a little too tanky in my opinion.

Up until 1/3 of this ~23 hour game I was ready to give it a 4 star, maybe even 5! After all, there's a lot to like it here and you can see it's a labor of love, but after grinding the other 2/3 (~15 hours) of the game I have to drop it to 3.

I'll echo what others have said here:
Art and scenario design is superb and character concept is very good there's no doubt about this. No deformed/ugly males, no blank faces! Main town and most scenarios are rich and very detailed.

Gameplay is ok..ehh...and so is the story, and that's where things start to fall apart.

Trying to be succint, I can only say the combat system is unbalanced and flawed by design. Most abilities are useless and cost too much to use, only the MP is actually useful. Itens are expensive. Fighting enemies doesn't give you xp (surely a bug???) only if you hit them from behind. There are too many dungeons, they are too long and they are not fun and engaging dungeons like some other "kunoichi" games. There's next to no H content in dungeons, which even made me wish this game had more battle molestation - something I abhore. Dungeons make about 70% of the game runtime.

Then there's the story. It's like the author decided to create the most basic "oni"shonen story ever, and I mean completely fucking vanilla. No surprises, no dramatic curves, no attempt at making it anything fresh. Literally everyone in this universe and the next knows your father has become a demon and you gotta fight him in the final dungeon, troubled enemies become allies and big bad dies because of its arrogance. On the other hand, it's not terrible, it offers a cohesive (if boring) narrative that could serve as the backdrop for developing Karin's sexual escapades. Could've. Which sadly takes us to the next point:

First, gotta say, the H content is pretty good --- for the extremely brief moment this games remembers it is an adult game.

Style-wise is incredible, but the pacing is simply terrible. It starts slow, which is fine but then in just one or two chapters it throws you into what is 90% of the game's H content. Most of the content is set in the main town (edo), that means most of the other towns have no content. There's very few (or none) new content as chapters go. If you burn through everything in the earlier chapters there's nothing to do except whore in edo during the night, which gets old after you see the same scenes over and over again. Even the support female cast have a sad participation in this game, only through a few, and I mean VERY few defeat rape scenes, which is a shame because all the female cast is pretty good.

Corruption is badly handled. The game doesn't give you the opportunity for a slow burn here: If you want to see h scenes you have to grab the protagonist by the neck and throw her into a brothel and/or sell her virginity to some old people just because. No, there's no "need money" plot here. She's also not sexually curious, so you are not given any narrative purpose to seek it. As expected, you have the usual binary states of sex scared and sex deranged. Basically, the adult content is built like a separate mechanic from the main game instead of woven into it.

The game simply doesn't give opportunities to develop increasingly erotic situations inside the narrative, usually only offering a "pimp" or "not pimp" box option which makes for a boring and flat story. Authors have to figure that if their main storytelling interface are words, then they have to make them interesting, else you're better off checking pornhub or something.

Again, the old j-ero games pitfalls of lackluster build ups, dead horses, abrupt sexual development, dependance on rape and prostitution makes this game another run-of-the-mill experience.

That said, if this game would undergo some 2.0 treatment - preferably with a writer, or after the author learns more about writing - this game already has the framework - and potential - to become something incredible!

Really Good game, has nice cg (i wish it was uncensored) and machine translation so I dint pay much attention to the story as te text didnt make much sense, still I got the gist of it and i liked it especially the ending
sadly there is no full cg reward for beating the gameso thats why I gave it 4 stars
the combat is good but it could have used more H attacks enemies

I really wanted to like this game, I really did. The town is fun, Karin is a top tier main character, the art is great, and has decent pregnancy content.
The good stuff ends there.
You unlock 90% of the cgs in chapter 5 and chapter 7 of a 13 chapter game. The beginning (ch 1-4) is a bunch of pointless sidequests and the ending (ch 8-13) is a boss gauntlet, and you need to grind for them. For example, I grinded for around 20% of my total playtime and by the final boss, only 1 character (karin herself pumped with every stat booster in the game) was making measurable dents in their hp pool (avg 1500 a hit under multiple buffs using super move for a 20k-ish hp boss). Most side characters are so useless they are just potion bags for karin rather than actual decent additions to the gameplay or story. After the final boss, you get a 20(!) minute cutscene where it feels like the creator wanted to add another dozen elements and more chapters but chose a fucking cutscene instead, let alone the content of it having the chance of making the game even more bogged down.
I beat the game at level 28 and there are skills up to level 50. 50. If I had an hour of grind and a 6 hour gametime, that might double my playtime just unlocking unneeded shit.
The game feels so lumpy. 50% of the scenes are unlocked at ch5, where Karin can whore herself out and raise pervert level. The other 40% is in ch7 where you unlock the red light district. If you are just here for cgs, in a 13 chapter game, someone can send you a save with a slightly experienced karin at the start of chapter 7.
The cgs that aren't just repeatable stuff of karin whoring herself/the handful of battle "consensual sexual contact (and yes, the game asks)" are just singular mini routes that are concluded in a handful of scenes (kiss, blowjob, sex) followed by a pregnancy ending. I didn't even realize I had as much of the cgs unlocked as I did until I checked the recollection room to find a specific scene and saw that there was none left besides a few tentacle scenes and the endings and I was barely halfway into the game. I only have a few cgs left but I have no reason to ever want to finish this game, it feels horrible to play and the 2-3 small scenes left are not worth the measured +2 hours I would need to get them.

I know this is awfully organized but I think that makes me just following the cheris soft example.
TLDR: Looks neat, horrible game, just grab a save or move on.

- Very good quality
- Very Good CG
- very Good Gameplay
- Very Nice story
- overall i would give this game 5/5

Hope dev can add more content in the future.. I really love the UI and the mission is amazing. I believe this dev used some kind of plugins.

Con:
-Story is boring,keep going back flash
-more and more grindy the more you progress the game
-unnecessary big map and maze which basically just waste ur time exploring
-cannot start new game+ when cleared so you have to regrind with brand new lvl 1 character
-give you a easter egg to find hidden gem but the reward is just author afterword. you waste so much time find 7 gems and that all you get.
-game don't even let you replesh pot in the late game. so good luck to those that only have one save.
-skilled are so limited in the game.

At first I wasn't sure what to expect from this game, considering this is only the third game from this circle and their other games aren't translated. But after completing it, I can confidently say that this is a fantastic game.

Story

The story is well written and executed. While fairly lengthy at 13 chapters, most are short and engaging enough to make you want to keep playing. The plot is centered around Karin, a seemingly normal girl who works at a sweets shop but has a double life as a famous thief. The game eases you in, making you think the plot is just robbing the rich repeatedly but by chapter 5 the real story begins.

Regarding the main cast, the MC and party members are all very likable. Karin herself is the star of the show. You always want to root for her and hope she'll pull through whatever ordeal she's facing. This is further reinforced when combined with the many bad ends she might encounter. There are numerous side characters but a few manage to rise above the sea of NPCs and stand on their own.

Gameplay

The devs made a smart decision to allow the player total freedom. There are no time limits, no penalties for waiting or anything of that sort. If you want to delay the main story to grind money and xp endlessly then you can do that.

For the combat, you can fight in traditional RPG fashion through turn based battles or sneak up behind enemies to insta kill them. Unfortunately the only way to gain XP is to do the latter. Fighting enemies the normal way doesn't earn you any XP which is a very odd design choice that I heavily dislike. If it couldn't get any worse, some enemies are programmed to seek you out relentlessly so stealth is useless against them.

Provided you didn't neglect your team, most bosses will be easy to take down. But if you did, then there are a bunch of healing items and permanent stat buffs that can patch up any deficiencies. I spread out my upgrades evenly across the team but looking back now, the best strategy would be to use eveything on Karin.

Dungeons are straightfoward and easy to navigate with lots of items to find so you're encouraged to explore. Rushing the boss is fine too, since most dungeons can be explored again after you've beaten them.

Now for the most important part, all the H content. The majority of it is accessed through events as regular Karin. The exceptions to this are the boss defeat scenes and some enemies that have sexual attacks. There's a huge amount of events and the variety is just as big too. Some events are divided into 4 stages, with each stage progressively corrupting the heroine. Stages don't repeat, instead they keep on going until their own ending, which results in a game over. I don't like this system, I'd rather have the stages repeat themselves depending on the level of Karin's corruption. Sadly, other events that only consist of one stage also don't vary from corruption level. A nice quality of life feature is that you have the option to avoid H events. It's great because it shows that the MC isn't a gullible idiot and can sense danger.

Corruption is easy to gain and easy to lose. So if you've whored her out too much and want to see pre-slut Karin, just pray to the shrine a few times. I say corruption, but the only major difference is only when the stat reaches 100. Unfortunately it's not a gradual decline and you can only see the difference during prostitution scenes; where it's either normal or lewd and no in between.

I greatly enjoy games where prostitution is a focus rather than an afterthought. Here it's very much a focus, to the point of being integrated into the main story. At night, normal Karin can approach men on the street to do various lewd things or she can become a formal prostitute in the town's red light district. Sometimes after one round, a customer can request another go, which is a simple idea but very effective.

Art

The art is superb. Characters have realistic proportions and aren't exaggerated. It's also clean and not cluttered, to which you can clearly identify what's happening on screen immediately. Their designs aren't totally outlandish but are accurate to the time period the game's set in.

Summary

Kunoichi Karin is an outstanding game and one that totally deserves a playthough. The devs spent over two years making this game and the high quality matches the time spent making it. From the in depth story, to the simple gameplay, the vast amount of unique CGs, this is a top tier game.

Edit: Apparently, gaining XP through battles was broken due to the MTL and not by design from the devs. So if you find yourself underleveled or think the game is unnecessarily grindy then it's because the MTL broke the game. For example, by the end of the game my party was all lvl 40, a whole 10 levels down from the final boss.

How a substantial bug can pass by unnoticed is beyond me. So don't let that negatively affect your perception of the game since this current version isn't indicative of it's true performance.

This is a Cheris soft game, the developer makes longer games with deeper stories than most h games, but decided to build this one on RPG maker (probably because people like me secretly pushed to have it made this way to be auto translated when the developer asked)

The combat isn't too deep, and there is a cheap assassination mechanic. This game is surprisingly grindy, which would usually turns me off, but fortunately there is a crazy amount of quality artwork to balance it out. Lots of mini games and stuff to explore in the town.

Anyways, if you like games like Magical Girl Celesphonia, I'd recommend this one.

Typical RPG from Japan. Good art but bad game.

I do like the quality of the art but I can't for the life of me understand why you make corruption games where you must seek to be corrupted. If you lose in combat it usually ends in a game over screen without any scene, and even in the case of bosses it is a game over after a scene. You'll never play after the consequences. Most enemies in combat try to kill you, and those few enemies that sexually assault you in combat ask for permission first. Well, I suppose nobody gets offended this way... but kind of kills the fetish for me at least.

The sneaking part is not the worst I've seen, at least it's quick when successful and fairly punishing if you fail. It's a real shame losing all the HP just ends the game, a missed opportunity. Few design changes would have made this a much more interesting game for me.

Gets very tedious towards the end, the battles are, honestly, terrible. There's very little skill variation and bosses have way too much HP. The world is fairly large but there's not much in it. The maps are decent looking for RPG maker game but hardly something to marvel at, so it all just feels like a bit of a waste.

The story is long, too long I would say. Kind of reminded me of those anime series they make for kids where it just drags on for 500 episodes and barely anything happens. Those series have their fans and it seems this one has fans also. I think flashbacks are most often a bad way to tell a story, this one has plenty of that.

I'm not sure what to think of the scale of the game. On one hand it's quite a large package, but at the same time while it is long and rather wide it is also very shallow. Lots of empty locations. This game lacked the sense of wonder of exploring what I've come to expect from similar titles. There are, as far as I can tell, not much choices along the way. You will pretty much experience everything there is when the game wants you to. The only option to choose seems to be getting fucked or not, the progress of individual corruption seems very disconnected from the general progression. And I don't even dare to imagine how dull the virgin path is. Choosing not to see sex in an adult game? In most games that's the challenge path but in this one it's just choosing "no".

Overall a bland experience. Pretty, but not exciting.

Just finished playing this game exactly a week ago since its launch in JP. Definitely one of the best RPG Maker Eroge I have played in a while. The story is well planned and well executed (Although, the first few chapters (1-3) may seem to be tedious at first but it is understandable as it tries to get the player to understand and familiar with the environment and the NPC surrounding the areas, mainly within Edo), various events and options you can choose and do, and a lot of alternative endings you can end up with (Not counting the Main 3 Ending)

This game is better than I imagined. Over 100 CG with erotic sexual harassment in the city, sexual harassment attacks from enemies, defeating bosses, and stage events in the city. The hint of scenes will be taught in the recollection room so you won't be stuck.

Bit grinding because the boss was really hard. Personally, I was grateful to be able to go to the END as soon as after 20 hours of playtime, and tips here when you are fighting a boss is ALL BUFF AND BUILD just for Karin.

H content is focused on the mid-game (around chapters 5-10). And not only erotic but also the main story is made with a key point in mind, the story is also very voluminous, but there are plenty of sub-stories other than the main story so you can enjoy it.

I recommended it to have a good time for the new year!!!

Pros: Artwork and length of game are both really good. Variety of routes and sexual scenes is good.

Cons: The RPG elements are very grindy and tedious. The enemies are not that tough, but the bosses are VERY hard. You have to grind levels to get increased stats (there are like 12 stats in the game too), but that is not enough you also need to apply these permanent stat buff cherries. There are hundreds of these stat buff fruits hidden in containers in towns and dungeons, so you have to look in every container to find them (and you need them because the bosses are hard). Actually applying the fruits is a pain as well, because you have to eat them one at a time, so the whole stat increase system is very tedious and grindy). The actual dungeon layouts are also hit or miss, they become very maze like with dead ends everywhere, but there are some puzzles to solve that differ from dungeon, so they aren't awful to go through, just tiresome. While there are a large variety of routes, I did find them all to be very short and somewhat repetetive. Most of the sex routes, that lead to an ending, only involve 4 one-time scenes (1=intro touch, 2=kiss plus blowjob, 3=sex, 4=pregnancy ending scene). I wish these routes were longer with more scenes, so we could see our heroine fall over time. Also, like 90% of the sex scenes can be unlocked by the halfway point of the game, meaning to finish the other half of the game, is really just grindy RPG fights and dungeons with not much reward.

Conclusion: The game is good for the first half, but becomes tedious and unrewarding in the second half. 3/5