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