RPGM - LonaRPG [v0.9.0.5 Beta] [EccmA417]

The course and beginning of the story are very effective. With the impact of visual designs and narration arrangements, you have a high chance to immerse yourself in the world of the game. The game has satisfactory length and details as a good RPG. Still, the mechanics and storytelling are so occupied with the combat mechanics that after a while there is almost no need for sexual interaction. Sexuality is, even so, purposeless that it is more beneficial to progress by battling in some places, and for this motivation, calling this game "erotica" does not seem satisfying and possible to me. It would be more appropriate to call it an adult RPG with a focus on the gore content. I recommend that pals who read mostly erotic and passionate novels should not anticipate having similar experiences with this game. The graphics and gameplay of the game are unmistakably a very consistent and quality production, so it definitely deserves high admiration, but unfortunately, I cannot say that it is a good erotic game, it can be considered a bit of a disappointment in this regard.

I cant feb to this but its damm good game!
bdsm not my thing but rpg part is great it takes a little getting use to but when you get controls it all comes together. Don't get me wrong game is hard and it meant to be like that. pregnancy system is good and many more futures awaiting to be explored.

I honestly don't know how the fuck you are supposed to beat this game without cheating. Actually, I don't know what the fuck came to the dev's minds when they asked themselves "Hey, you know, that thing people like in porn games, yeah, the porn ? What if we make it has painful and obtuse to reach as possible ?"

This game isn't a RPG, it's a punching ball simulator. You stamina stat goes down like it's nothing at the slightest action you perform, and once it's out, you better hope you're not surrounded by enemies or it is a slow, insulting death without anything you can do to prevent it. The only way to win fights in this game is charging blindly, die, memorize where you went wrong and then try to route out a path where you spend as little stamina as possible, and then leave as soon as the quest is done.

Of course, since it is a hard game, resources are scarce and you have nothing on you at first. You can try to prostiture yourself to earn some money, but every action with the NPCs in the hub world uses a stupid dice roll system to determine if you're allowed to do that. Want to prostiture yourself because you're desperate ? 10 vs 75, too bad. Want to escape the goblins ? -27 vs 1. Seriously, what the fuck are those numbers ? There's absolutely no way for the player to increase their stats enough to get a good roll, and I got these on the "easy first quest" you get at the guild.

The game has a tutorial, but once you're out of it and step into the hub world there is no direction on what ou should do. No tip to guide you, no indication on which zone to reach, on which character to talk to, and since the simple fact of moving from one tile to the other drains your stamina like crazy, you'll be spending your time just reloading your last save file just to explore a different tile. Like, what the fuck ?

And don't forget the fact that if you lose a dice roll against a pursuing enemy (which will happen almost all the time), the game takes its sweet time to get you to the gave over after a couple of minutes trying to skip all of it to get to reload the game. Don't get me wrong, the artsyle is nice, but the only way to get it is by losing fights and dice rolls, and with unforgiving the game is, I didn't bother looking for them.

There is a skill tree with different options in this game, so I thought I could take a slutty path to get money faster and make it easier on me, but it seems the only way to win is to go full stealth or combat-focused to win the encounters, so I'm not gonna bother with these either.

Honestly, I don't understand how people think making porn games hard as fuck is going to make them more enjoyable. You're locking a lot of people out of a game they could have easily enjoyed and spread the word around if your game wasn't just unfair. At least please ease the player into a difficulty curve instead of throwing the player into a tutorial they might not even win. That's how hard the game is.

If you want to have fun in this game, just download the cheat mod, or do like me and brower the game's folders for the sex scenes. I don't recommend this game at all.

Props to the dev team, their porn game looks good. I have tried an hour or so and the idea seems interesting, and it could definitely look good when finished. However, it feels awful as porn and as a game.
The game itself is horrifically dark (tone and actual screen view), partially explained, and punishing to the point that you could in theory scrap a save if you take 2 damage and not 1 damage from an event. On top of that, rather than juggling rpg elements, resource management, and a world, the gameplay is also crippled by having to bother with porn, and as a result, actually finding porn in a porn game is more of a punishment in the game's own mechanics. ex. I got injured/am out of resource so Lona is sexable.

As for the porn? Not only does the game have one of the cardinal sins of a porn game, that is, punishing the player for going for it, any sexual activity negatively affects you; or worse, putting both hands on keyboard to play a porn game that actively resents you for playing it for porn. The gameplay loop could be replaced with playing a survival game like an idiot and anytime you die, you pull up a hentai screenshot or two. It is also limited to Lona, who in all honesty, as a malnourished war orphan (whose age might be low on the magic 1X scale), is not the greatest pull for content.

Overall? While this review is kinda just a thought dump, I can summarize it as such: the game feels like both sides could be good with the effort put in, but both are unpolished, drag down the other's quality, and punish you for aiming for the other. It just does not personally feel worth it to invest more time or effort for a product that is subpar.

This is one of those games that you actually want to play not only for the XXX stuff. It't dark, it's interesting, the story really gets you going.

It really brings that "I actually wanna tryhard and beat the game" feeling which I find present in "Roundscape Adorevia" and "A Struggle with Sin".

On the visual side, the art style really lends itself to the atmosphere.

It is a definite 5 star in my eyes, potential coupled with whats already there can make this game one of the top RPGMs out there.

The best game in its genre. Craft, pumping, missions, dialogues.
The map in the game is large, but almost every location has additional missions. The game will not be boring. There is a bug in the game when you come to the church on the mountain in the mission crashes. I think this will be fixed. I played in different ways, as the author of the game intended and just with cheats. I destroyed the very fortuneteller at her house, destroyed Ellis (from the records you can understand he is not our friend) The puzzles in the game are difficult for a beginner. For about 3 hours I could not figure out how to rotate the drawings so that the door to the fish dungeon opens. You can play the game in different ways. I found a way to get into the fish dungeon without Ellis. Then the script is triggered and the ladder extends to the heroine. (spoiler: D) The game itself is perfect. Yes, the animation here is not very good, the pictures are static. But this can be forgiven and understood, because the game is real top. Top 1 on this site on the engine RPGM

Man this is awesome stuff, love it! Somewhat grim, though.

PRO
* Graphics and arts are superb, the heroine is hot and appealing
* Thoroughly worked large open world, lore and plot
* Tons of various content, both the gameplay and the sex scenes
* Graphic violence, gangrape and weird shit

CONTRA
* The game is generally hardcore and unforgiving

now THAT'S a very different game. i love the gameplay and the nastiness but i'd love it if the dev's would go easy on the players. without the save editor it's pretty much impossible to get through in the game.

No balance in this game. It's rigged to make the protagonist miserable. Leveling up barely changes anything. Stamina constantly runs out when you're in a pinch. It's more of a punchbag simulator than an RPG. Extremely unsatisfying experience.

Game that requires thought, planning, and skill, while also itching the horny urge and has a LOT of scenes to "play" through. It covers a lot of the extreme side of things which I absolutely love! It's hard to keep track of every little thing to do, but with time it's easier.

The choice of implementing real-time combat in a HRPG is both rare and excellent. This change how random encounter in the world map works. The only little problem I see in the battle system is those keymapping. It would be more efficient to have a universal attack key, and another key to switch the function of the prior key (maybe change the main hand action with secondary hand action). The AI is smart, it will change attack direction if provided the space, know when to run away, and have vision system!!!

EccmA really could've added another default keymapping with wasd+67890yuiopjkl though

Pretty decent grim hentai rpg maker game. Very high quality art and animation.

Only downside is needs more content, just more to do, more missions, and some more interesting things like maybe a relationship system

Okay i am gonna be honest about this game.
This game has a very big versatility, that means you can do a lot of things exploring the world. There is so many different quests, places, enemies and items.
But most important is that this game has a lot of graphic violence, such as scat(which can be turned off on the menu) , miscariage(which can happen a lot and the scenes are pretty heavy) and others types of violence, such as the fact that the heroine here can be killed by traps, by starving to death and others things.
So I strongly recommend for those who are not into this type of violent content to avoid this game, since as i said, it is pretty dark and violent.
About the art, well at least for me the art here is okay, neither very good neither bad.
About the pregnancy, the game has a pregnancy mechanic that allows the heroine to get pregnant by a lot of enemies/npcs, but be warned once more, the pregnancy here also can be pretty violent, since a miscariage may happen even if you take good care of heroine's health.
So yeah, I'm not saying this game is bad, however it is not my type of game.
Note: This game is very hard, you need to be very careful about exploring the places looking for resources such as food. Also the combat mechanic here is kinda lacking for me.

7.3.0 is the version I am reviewing, and I am playing on a phone with a Expert Weapons Lona. Experience may vary.

Knowledge is power, it's the biggest takeaway I have learned while playing through this game.

If you do not respect the game, it will brutally beat you down until you do. Mistakes are punished, and saves are recommended.

But when you do learn, you will feel things click into place. My current build is a mix of stealth and brute force, knocking people out and then backstabbing them will deal enough damage to blow a good portion of them into tiny meat bits.

Which I then throw into the pot and cook into a good ole meat soup. Delicious.

This is absolutely top tier compared to most other porn games, and a keen eye will see the passion it took to make it to where it is today.

It is an excellent game, and I hope the dev never loses the passion for it.

great game yall but you may wana add the horror tag cause holy fuck the give up scene in the monster cave is messed up and definitly fits the bill of horror. the combat and graphics are great though especialy for an rpg maker game.

Really good game, especially the ambient and tone of the story, everything is so dangerous to the point of being funny.
It has major drawbacks in gameplay, combat is so hard in early game that saving becomes an obligation, can see why so many people drop it, but overall is an entertaining experience.

I wanted to like this game, I really did. There's so much passion in it and such a fanbase supporting it, but holy hell, does the game part of the game drag is down so hard.
Combat feels awful, stamina management punishes you for doing literally anything, and progression in the game is a combination of painfully slow and wildly unpredictable.

The art is great, I can give it that, but everything else made me drop the game. I tried picking it back up four times, and never found anything good except the art. Unless the game only gets decent after five hours, I can't recommend it.

If you're stubborn, just make sure you get mercenaries. Indiana Jones and the Dog are cheap and renewable, until one of them walks in front of your attack, turns hostile, beats you down, and rapes you in the span of seconds.

Reviewing as of 7.1.6.

This is a unique and high-quality game. It does an excellent job of creating an atmosphere of desperation and hopelessness, tying in appropriately brutal, nonconsent content, and creating challenges that are unfair and somewhat subject to the whims of RNG but not insurmountable with preparation and knowledge.
No matter what level Lona reaches or how geared she is, she remains a little girl and can still be zerged or taken down if caught at a heavy enough disadvantage. There's definitely a feeling of dread forced up when things align just right to fuck you over. The game also has some of the best capture sequences I've ever seen in an H-game, if not the best. The odds are tremendously stacked against you, and you really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to accumulate enough resources to even attempt a worthwhile escape attempt, especially if you are captured while injured or starving.

For example, imagine that your companion leaves at just the worst time, and your level 40 Lona just happens to be waylaid by bandits in Noer immediately after. Normally, you'd Bloody Mess these chumps with little issue, but your Lona is sick, injured, and hurling drugs out. She gets captured and endures days of abuse while waiting to capitalize on a good chance. Eventually, you build up a gook chunk of resources, break down the cell door, and steal away into the night, aware that a misstep could have meant death. That's tension. That's drama.

That said, playing the game on Doom mode is practically a requirement for a good experience. The mechanics fall apart when coupled with savescumming. An otherwise tense game becomes an annoying trudge where all failure does is determine how much time you waste.

The game would be a 5/5 if it wasnt for the combat or if the devs used more than 1 braincell for the systems the game has.

Stealth doesnt work properly.
Combat is unresponsive and the dodge key is Useless.
Companions, very often more of an hinderance than help. (yes I used them correctly)
There is an "SP" key apprently, WHY NOT JUST CALL IT SPACEBAR?
The game is just difficult for the sake of being difficult, it doesnt need any skill and you need to minmax everything to the last detail.

Review made at version 0.7.0.3. The game is currently unfinished.

TLDR:
If you're into non-con stuff, this game is an absolute buffet of content. The highest possible praise I can give this game is even if all of the lewd content was removed and the creator slapped a $20 price tag on it and put it on Steam as an early access indie game, it would still be worth your time and money. The absolute love and care put into this game along with the incredible attention to detail does wonders. Its not perfect, but its the best hentai rpg i've played by far.

Warning: I will be spoiling parts of the story here, which you should avoid. The story, while currently incomplete, is actually quite good.

Lona RPG is an absolutely brutal game with a shockingly deep story. The game focuses primarily on non-consensual situations around the main character, Lona, and her allies. How the creator of this title managed to get most of these mechanics to function properly in an engine like RPG Maker is simply beyond me. The second I tested out using the lightning staff in conjunction with the conductor spell from the lightning spell book to fry an entire crowd of goblins at once, I was floored. This game has eaten up more of my hours than some triple A titles. I highly recommend trying it out for yourself, but i'll try to touch lightly on a few different aspects of the game in this review.

The Story:
The game takes place on the island of Noer, which is isolated from the mainland. The island is host to two cities, that of Noer and Sybaris. The entire backdrop for the game is that the northern city of Sybaris has been overrun by an unexplained black mist which turns people into horrible monstrosities. The people caught in it become infested with parasites and mutate into twisted abominations while the very landscape takes on a fleshy and almost alive appearance, growing horrific appendages out of the very ground to attack you with. This naturally led to a huge migration of people moving southward from the now infested city of Sybaris to the relative safety of Noer, its sister port city, for refuge. Through the main quests, Lona is confronted with the refugee crisis and quickly encroaching disease of the mist. Being a refugee herself, and under constant attack from her desperate kin, the city denizens, bandits, slavers, goblins, and eventually the infection creeping towards the not so safe city of Noer, she can choose to help the refugees through a heroic noble she encounters, though causing instability along the way, or help keep the status quo by siding with the elite of the city of Noer. I was surprised that both sides did have their merits, though one path is obviously the "good" path, the creator was careful to try and make each side look appealing. My opinion of this game went from 4 to 5 stars when I accidentally discovered that you can indeed fight your way back to your homeland and witness just how devastated the landscape is, and the detail is everything here. So many of these h-games give the story as set dressing and never quite show you what took place, but not this one. Trekking through the horrifying living landscape and coming upon the exhausted defenders of South Gate Checkpoint and helping them fight off waves of monsters in a desperate defense only for Lona to climb a tower and lament over her now collapsed house and missing family was actually really bleak and moving. In a hentai game. There are powerful moments like this in a hentai game. The fact that this kind of game can create genuine powerful moments like that is a testament to how well made is truly is. No quests had led me there, I had found it completely organically while I was exploring the landscape. These bits of amazing game are just hidden and waiting for you to find them. Also, while exploring Sybaris, there will be imagery that will legitimately disgust you. This pixel game does body horror better than some modern triple A titles.

The Lewds:
The lewd content in Lona is fairly simple. A lot of the actual animation is Pixel animation followed by a few CG cut-ins that are altered depending on what situation Lona is in and what is assaulting her. The great thing is that the CGs are dynamic and change depending on your character. Is she dirty? It'll show the dirt on her. Is she blond? Pregnant? Long or braided hair? Yep, it shows all of it. Did the monsters tear off all her clothes save for her glasses and her cape? You guessed it, the CG will be altered to show that too. I was actually very impressed with the detail and features in keeping continuity through everything. Other than that there are a few character CGs to find of allies or random women having sex, but only about a dozen of them, Lona is the true star of the show. While the pixel animation may not be for everyone, the heavy role play, detailed continuity, and fantastic character art should be enough to provide something for everyone.

The Gameplay:
The combat in this game is surprisingly quite good. Let me preface, its far from perfect. There are tons of things I will critique about the combat in this game, but it is a fantastic foundation upon which to build more into the game over time. There is no turns to be taken in this RPG, all combat is real time. Primarily there are three different playstyles to choose from in the game: Physical, Magic, and Succubus.

Physical
Physical is just what it sounds like, you use weapons such as swords, shields, halberds and bows to deal damage. In my opinion, while this is the strongest of the builds its also the most lack luster when compared to the other two. There is a stealth system which works in tandem with the physical system, allowing you to sneak around and backstab enemies for huge amounts of damage at a time, but thats really the only depth that gets injected into this playstyle. Other than that its usually block, hit, block, hit. Maybe shoot for a leg injury with your bow, repeat. Not awful, but not great either.

Succubus
Succubus is using sex to take down your opponents, which flips the script and has Lona actually assaulting her enemies entering into a small minigame in which the player can choose what body part to use in which to get the job done most effectively. This can be interesting when getting into the pregnancy and Rebirth mechanics in the game, in which you can restart the game as a different race depending on which race had impregnated you in your previous life granting you some interesting new abilities like transforming into a mermaid like Siren. While there certainly is a lot to play around with here I personally don't like this playstyle. I feel i'm missing something when I play a game loaded with non-con content as a character having mostly aggressive consensual sex, but it really is fun to do a playthrough with and see what the content is like.

Magic
Magic is where the developer flexed his creative muscles. The types of spells you can cast depend on the items you're currently holding in your main hand and off hand. Currently in the game there are 12 unique spells (13 technically, but its a gray area). A lot of the time the spells will compliment each other, like a fire spell that lobs a stun bomb to let you more easily aim a fire ball, which does high damage but has a lengthy cast time, or the aforementioned conductor which you can strike with lightning spells to split your damage into a crowd of foes. The magic spells, while a little clunky feeling in a combat system that is this twitchy and fast paced, is a hell of a lot of fun to use, and its really great to see Lona's reaction as her power increases and takes on intense and thrilled faces upon blowing up crowds of enemies with a well placed fireball.

The Party System:
Regardless of what playstyle you do end up choosing, LonaRPG has a very heavy focus on building a party consisting of Lona and two other NPCs, which you will need to rely on in the early game. While the combat is certainly soloable with some game knowledge, it is heavily, HEAVILY punishing of mistakes. Having companions of varying quality with you will put another warm body in between you the horrors that await you. Just be warned that friendly fire is on in this game. You can hit your allies and kill them which has caused more than one frustrated loaded save on my playthroughs. Not only that, but if you hit your ally and they survive, they may just turn on you temporarily to return the favor.

Conclusion:
LonaRPG is lightning in a bottle. It is the only H-game, let along RPGmaker H-game, that I can honestly say would still be a fantastic game if all the hentai were completely removed. The game deserves the praise that it gets here. It will show you things that make your horny, sad, disgusted, horrified, and happy, and bring you through all of those emotions a second and third time in just one sitting. It will be a matter of opinion, but I feel it deserves to be considered up with the titans of H-games such as Karryn's Prison and Violated Heroine. I personally feel it surpasses both of them.

Gripes and Moans:
Here i'm just going to spitball some things that I really didn't like in the game and wish to see change. While the game is really great, it is far from perfect. Hopefully i'll see some of these things change in the future. They're in no particular order.

- The magic system is clunky to aim in a game where enemies move this fast. It can be frustrating to line up spells when a goblin is moving at the speed of light around you.

- The hunger system is a little too aggressive. While yes I know its meant to be a constant concern it can end up being more annoying than anything, having to constantly stop your adventuring to stock up on soups and dried meats for 20 minutes. Almost every hour of gameplay had a third of it dedicated to gathering food. Theres a balance to strike here and this ain't it.

- Some of the traits are closed off depending on which others you chose. Some of these choices make sense, like picking a Timid personality type locking you out of the Tough personality type. Thats fair enough. Others really make no sense at all. Why can I not pick the Tough personality and the ability to use Magic weapons? Why can't I pick Timid and use high quality melee weapon? And why is healing your allies locked to the Succubus tree? The archetype of a holy crusading melee fighter than can heal her allies is well established, as is a magic user that can heal. Magic in this game is relegated to more of a support role anyway, why is healing specifically relegated to being a Nymphomaniac? And if I take both the High Quality Weapons trait and the Mana Weapons trait then I can't pick a personality type? Come on, man.

- Remove the game's ability to delete your save on the DOOM difficulty and add that as a separate "Hardcore" mode . A game like this would benefit greatly from a mode where it overwrote your save with every bad outcome that happened similar to Karryn's Prison, making you deal with every negative turn of events and assault that befalls you, but deleteing your save if your health drops to zero is too much. Stun locks and other BS in this game can happen. Losing your save in an RPG like this is generally a bad idea. Making that a separate option from the DOOM difficulty itself would make everyone happy. Hell, maybe I wouldn't bring Cecily and Grey Rat everywhere to rofl stomp my enemies if I knew that their deaths would be permanent and my save would be overwritten immediately sticking with them being dead. Instead I just save scum to bring them back.

- Add an option for friendly fire on the lowest difficulty while making it mandatory on the higher difficulties. I get the point of it, its to prevent every single encounter from being a spam fest, but wouldn't the option of lobbing spells or arrows over your allies be a good idea? Hostile archers can already lob arrows over their allies at you, so why can't you? Another place to strike a balance, but it feels off here.

- The physical playstyle needs more diversification. More weapons of varying types and qualities may help. Perhaps a way to enchant melee weapons to give them special effects for money? It would also have the effect of making them more devastating to lose if defeated.

- A little bit more variety to the Forest/Mountain/Wilderness maps would go a long way, especially when you're running through them multiple times to collect herbs and food

- Enemies that do rapid attacks can be frustrating to fight against such as the boars and wolves. Slowing down their attacks a little bit to allow the player to block and hit in rhythm may help a little bit with it, or maybe adding more heavy attacks into their move set to allow for attack openings