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

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

Even on the lowest settings the game is ridiculously difficult and it's way to easy to find yourself forced into a corner of bad decisions making progress in the game almost impossible. It's also a shame there's no real guide in game to help you reach the builds you need. It's basically a guessing game unless you do multiple playthroughs and the helping of a community/wiki/guide which is, as always, annoying (and even then it's still difficult).

Like most eastern hentai-esque media the scenes quickly lose their charms due to repeated dialogue, repeated CG scenes and a lack of interesting characterization that would make the porn interesting on any level more than a superficial one.

Still, despite all that, the world-building is pretty tight, the game is very determined to be a realistic simulator where almost everything that happens to the character is affected by you're choices, the artwork is pretty as well as reflective of the events that the character undergoes as such, giving a feeling of authenticity to the whole thing and the NPCs are surprisingly interesting, though sadly probably not interested in having sex (or at least, none that I've seen yet).

I'd probably give it an 7.5 or 8 out of 10.

A game about a survivor of a horrific tragedy trying everything she can do to survive and hopefully more than that in a brutal and heartless world. Explore from one place to another, interact with one person to another, and most importantly, explore your questions and answers from one problem to another. It's all about survival, and what's scarier is that it takes place in a world where there will not be a sliver show of mercy even for the most simple mistake. A game that will test you on unforgiving grounds.

This game is really a breath of fresh air in the RPGM genre, the art is so dark and makes you feel the emotions of the characters, the map design, the death animations blend just right with the choice of using the pixel animation along with the constant darkness not in just lighting but the mood of the game, just put some good quality headset and immerse yourself in the game.
There are some things lacking in my opinion, mainly the storyline, i find it a little difficult to go from the start of the story to a proper end of the story, and i mean it in the way that i find myself just exploring and doing random stuff instead of going for the storyline, i guess a little scroll or just some space on the menu with a label saying where to go or what to do next should do the trick, doesn't have to be that way too you can be as creative as you want in implementing that, i found some quests in chinese? i think, they should be fixed in future updates so just pointing it if didn't notice.

really great game. amazing art, an rpg that has great h-stuff, and its really great you could play for the fun of it too. People say the game is very hard, but it really isn't . Tons of stuff to do at its current version with customization, weapons, etc., looking forward to more!

I personally don't like female protagonist h-games as I hate playing as a hyper slut or as rape bait. I don't understand the mentality of wanting to play as that as a man. As such, I wouldn't have touched this game until I read about the gameplay and the moaning/bitching about how hard the game is.

You see... This is more a game to me than an h-game. A fairly addicting one at that. Sure there is h-content, but it's almost always grotesque and hardcore rape. Not my cup of tea and I'm sure it isn't most peoples. The h-content feels more like a worse-than-death punishment. So when I'm playing, I feel like my goal is not to see all the sex scenes, but to protect Lona. If she falls I feel like I failed her, which drives me to play smarter. This is what I mean by it playing more like a game, because normally your goal in h-games is to see all the scenes.

At no point in the game did I ever feel powerful. However, through your experiences as a player and through acquiring traits, you will slowly start to overcome obstacles. Indeed, player experience in this game is much more potent than in-game experience. While Lona is by no means a powerful warrior, I slowly turned her into a grizzled guerilla soldier. While I can't stand toe-to-toe with the fat ugly bastard 3x her size, I can instead throw a rock at his head and lead him through my Viet Cong hell of spike, arrow, and boulder traps. Then smack him in the back to stun him and lay down more traps to repeat the entire process again. In a way, LonaRPG is a game that plays to human strengths of ingenuity, tool use, and tactics. Strength alone will not save you as strength can be wasted on the foolish. That is why a gorilla ends up beings locked in a cage. You will need to learn how to carefully approach things no matter your class.

I would have played this game even if there was no h-content, but with the way the market is I probably would've never found this if there wasn't any. I'd put this game up there with LISA in terms of fun & unique RPGmaker games. It is dark and difficult yet has little bits of humor tossed in. It also feels rewarding when you overcome the unfair circumstances. I'm glad I played this game and while I know these types of games aren't for everyone, it's respectable that a developer kept committing to their idea and ignoring the criticisms. Even more respectable that they first put in the goal and ending in the game before adding all the extra shit as that's something a lot of developers don't do nowadays which cripples their game in the long run because they bloat it so much.

LonaRPG is a difficult game to rate. It certainly isn't average. The developer has clearly spent a lot of time and care on making the game refined to their vision. The only problem is that vision is questionable.

The world is meant to be gritty, dark, and unfair. But that doesn't really make for a fun game. Everything is out to beat the crap out of the main character. Walk around town? Meet some thugs that beat the crap out of you. Walk outside of town? Meet some undead that beat the crap out of you. Try a job in the tavern? If you fail, get the crap beaten out of you (and the job is an absurd you either succeed and get paid or get beaten).

This would be fine on its own, but every aspect of the world is grindy, repetitive, and mind-numbing. You have to constantly manage your hunger and stamina, neither of which regenerate on their own. Stamina is annoying, in a very bad way. It consumes hunger to replenish, and you literally have to stop moving for a good bit just to fully replenish it as you use your Rest skill multiple times. Hunger is worse. You have to constantly feed Lona and make sure you have an absurd amount of food in your inventory. No anime character holds a candle to how much Lona eats. Oh, and if you happen to run out of food and your hunger depletes, it's a very, very slow slog to anywhere, even though that 'where' is normally a bad end.

This is all made worse by the fact that if you want Lona to ever be anything beyond a defenseless child you will need to grind the crap out of trait points and money. Meaning, before you grind yourself into oblivion, Lona can do exactly squat in combat.

The developer has achieved their goal. LonaRPG is a dark, gritty, unfair game. However, it's mostly just unfair. And grindy. So grindy.

As for the good, well, you can judge for yourself about the art. The game is at least trying its own style with RPGM. It's very polished in a number of ways, visually, but that doesn't really fix the dumpster fire that is gameplay for me.

Oh, and for those who care, Lona is a bleeding virgin. Even for her arse.

First of all, content warning. This game can get VERY messed up.
That said LonaRPG is a very unique game that blends the dread of your own mortality, with the harsh reality that you should still strive to not meet your end too soon if you can help it.
While I can't say I've played a whole lot of this game, as I simply don't do well with harsh and unforgiving game difficulty, I have to say this game as an RPGM game is very impressive.
With good is a bit gross and unsettling art, fairly decent if hard to follow story lines and mechanics, it is very easy to say this game IS NOT for everyone and that's okay.

This game has all sorts of content, some of it toggleable (mostly just the scat and piss content as you're character is literally hungry and needs to eat or risk starving to death). Monsters, pregnancy, shit, bizarre piercings, pissing, etc.

So can you nut to it? It depends largely on what you're into, and ranges from yeah probably to hell no you'll probably gag instead. If blood is too much for you, probably not.

Is it worth playing for the gameplay or the plot? Yeah I'd say so. Rare that I can say that, but LonaRPG is truly unique in that there probably really isn't anything quite like it. If you enjoy challenging, brutal grim dark settings, with a goal of just surviving (as far as I can tell) then sure. Its interesting use of the RPGM engine is rather unique and if the content doesn't bother you its definitely worth a try.

7/10 unique, brutal, unforgiving, maybe a bit too messed up for the faint hearted, but worth a shot if you can look past that.

AA tier | good art , good mechanic , good story , very sandboxy , decent playtime length , replayable , good sfx too. still , a lot of thing and contents can be added. gives out a lot of unique experience even though it runs on rpgm

The game is great!
This game is beautiful not because of the hentai, but because of the story, the atmosphere, the gameplay! The drawing is great!
This is the erotic best game, there is no better game yet!

One of the best, complex, and elaborate survival RPG Maker game on the internet, even without the H content. In this game, you'll learn how painful it'll be to survive as a lonely orphan in a hostile grimdark fantasy world, and why we need (an army of) Goblin Slayer in that world.

While the learning difficulty is steep, the content of this game is huge enough (way too huge, even in it's unfinished state, at the moment of writing) that it could spawn several knockoffs for a quickie (looking at you, you half-assed "finished" RPGM eroges).

For those who doesn't have the luxury to learn the mechanics and just want to play it for fun, it's recommended to use the Cheat Mod, you'll need it.

And for the rest of you degenerates, remember, dying is fun.

God Bless EccmA417

On my top 3 for sure, wish there was more games with such good detail such as this one, the bruising and getting dirty are 2 examples of how very unique and very good this game is! keep up the good work!

Games got a steep barrier of entry. But once you learn the mechanics its actually a solid game and doesnt need the sex to make it good, the hentai is an extra bonus.

Support EccmA on Itch io for more development

At this point, I'm playing to become the most powerful being this island has ever seen. The sex is great, mind you, but this game has rich plots, hilarious cameos and references, stealth mechanism and fucking achievements to unlock! You really don't skip all of that to go prostitution, just no!

Man, this game is great. And i can write a bunch of paragraphs about how this game is great and all(and i only played it for a couple hours). But i won't, it's already been done by the people more competent than me.

So that said, stealing is fun, traps saves lives, and my only complaint is that it's not a finished game yet.

P.S. Found a fun money exploit. You can keep stealing money from central square guards as long as you want. A literal life saver, considering how brutal the early game is.

one of the best hgames out there, it's on the hard side but it's enjoyable (at least for me)

it's a hgame where you dont want many of the h side of it cause it gives you a disadvantage or might kill you outright

the only downside of this game it's still has content update, cause you have to start over again everytime there's an update(there's always bug when i transfer saves from prev version to newer)

Nice gameplay and its hard, You need to think carefuly and fast, You can die easily in this world, This world is big and has many mystery. The art is good and has many way to play. Hope the gamewill update more, I Love to see Lona in Armor. The game has some easter egg tooo

guro dark atmosphere and nice gameplay, worth to play or try at least, definitely one of the fun rpgm out there, really loves it, cant wait for full release and more content added on the future updates