RPGM - Completed - Magical Girl Celesphonia [v1.07] [Shimobashira Workshop/Kagura Games]

10/10

Celesphonia is a crown jewel of the corruption h-game genre. The corruption genre is about following a protagonist’s journey as they slowly go from (generally) innocent to absolute sex-crazed nymphomaniac. Understanding this is key to understanding how and why Celesphonia is as good as it is.

Story/Writing/Voicing:
The overarching story is fine. It’s basic, but also just good enough to pull you in. The writing in general I find to be quite good for an h-game. Amane in particular is written very well and is able to sell you the incredulous situation of being forced to be a magical girl; and of course she also sells the idea of slowly being corrupted very well going from a pure girl that’s hesitant to even masturbate, to a complete turbo slut if you so choose. There’s a bit of voice-acting as well, which is nice for the h-scenes.

Gameplay:
The gameplay is a fairly traditional turn-based, very rpgm-esque combat. While fairly easy, the difficulty curve requires you to at least pay attention to the mechanics of the combat for most of the game. Celesphonia does a very good job at navigation via teleportation and many exits. This is a problem for a lot of rpgm games where simply walking around and navigating to places is an absolute chore so I’m glad they at least thought about this.

Art/H-Scenes:
The artwork is incredible. The fact that Amane has two forms, both of which are very cute is a great way to give variety to the scenes. Even more impressive is that for a lot of scenes, you are able to change outfits and that is reflected in the scene as well which gives you incredible variety and ability to cater to your tastes.

There’s a metric ton of CG and of course an equal number of scenes. Just about every possible degenerate fetish you could imagine is included in Celesphonia from tentacles to exhibitionism to sensory deprivation play (no yuri tho, goddamn it). There’s gonna be something there for you.

However, this does come with a side-effect. The massive variety of scenes are not always thoroughly explored. Some scenes are one-offs, many scenes are two-piece. The absolute best part about corruption is the development. Watching as a character slowly becomes more accepting, more degenerate, and more lustful towards a certain act is what pushes certain threads from good/great into being incredible. For instance, the thread with the PE teacher goes for upwards of 8+ scenes, and the escalation of it is what makes it so good.

Conclusion:
I could go for much longer, but overall Celepshonia is a near perfect h-game. It’s not a perfect game. Sure the actual gameplay could use work, there’s no autoplay function, and quite a number of scenes don’t develop much.

However, what this game does best is that it sells you on the fact that Amane is getting corrupted, which is the absolute most important thing for this genre. She’s being exposed to so much degeneracy, while being thrown into a ridiculous situation, but the story and the combat and the variety of scenes all support the setting. Everything is working together juuuuust enough to pull you in. Celesphonia sells you the situation she’s in, why it’s happening, why it has to be her, and why she can (potentially) turn into a turbo slut.

Celesphonia is a masterclass of an h-game, and any fan of corruption would be remiss to skip this one.

I’ll be writing a review on Anthesis and Ambrosia soon, Shirobashira Workshops previous games. And let me tell you, this circle is the undisputed king of the corruption genre.

Huge fan of the slow but thoughtful corruption. AND there are multiple components to said corruption. This feels really well thought out and developed nicely.

Easy to manage corruption for a bonus! This makes it possible to pursue a pure run, but it's not entirely tedious to achieve actual sexy scenes without tons of grinding.

More of this please.

[v1.06]

Good game, but grindy and somewhat inconsistent:

The enemy types are human and monster, but only monsters drop SKILL EXP materials, making half of the enemies not quite worth the fight.

Odd skill EXP system choice- you get the "soul" (random chance, size based on enemy area), that you purify each (or all) for specific values, that are boosted by certain skills, so there's no real point for the soul, other than making it hard to estimate amounts.

Inconsistent- some equipment descriptions like small / medium /etc. increase, others just say the effect without it's properties, like "has a chance to win instantly" without having a percentage and since there's multiple items that do that throughout the game, comparing them is impossible.

Awful hint system- "get defeated by a certain enemy" is no use at all, still better than acquired H- titles / skills that say nothing at all. Or how about the monster encyclopedia that shows monster drops, but not their location.

There's a protection amulet, that disables penetration (for a mana cost), that goes ignored in some scenes.

Finishing a Story Quest finishes the day, but doesn't reset daily events, so actions can't be repeated.

Lastly, the GRIND- money, "souls", ingredients, H stats
ALL need to get grinded to get anywhere and it makes it boring.

Decent 3/5 game with flaws, mostly grinding, that make it tedious.

Damn what a good game. Can't say it's perfect but one of the most polished and entertaining RPGM game I've played so far. Art is fuckin awesome and to my surprise MC text lines are very adequate lol? Combat is kinda too fast tho

Reviewing info: How I rate/review and other info is HERE . W.I.P This sentence will not be included if review format is finalized and blog updated.
Review layout: Lazy/minimal format (others)
Review type: Game
Review format: Lewds
PROs
Great & Hot artstyle
✅ Fun story
✅ Great Cgi alteration
✅ Tons of outfits
✅ Tons of great flavor text that changes depending on your state/outfit/stats (NPC changes, the log type text etc..)
✅ Tons of fetishes
✅ Well done 3 stage corruption (which means that most events have 3 tiers of CGI events depending on corruption state. So those games are recommended to play that you see stage 1 event everywhere first then stage 2. Otherwise it will make chain of events/corruptions feel very unnatural (i.e see 3rd stage event and be utter slut, then move to another place and see first event where FMC is very reluctant & against the perversion)
✅ Tons of scenes
✅ Degeneracy route makes game rather easy & not too grindy
✅ Quest log tips
✅ Everything can be unlocked in 1 run
✅ Midcombat Cgi scenes are great
✅ Curses/parasites/hypnosis effects & permanent changes
✅ Everything you get through effects or so, you can do manually endgame (set corrupted gear you want/have a pet that puts parasite in you etc....)
✅ Also likeable FMC and her sidekick
✅ Game over mechanic done beautifully. (you get game over scene then game allows you to return moment before game over)
✅ Tons of skills which I usually don’t like, but it was done a in a fun manner. (you equip engraves that give you abilities & give you passives)
✅ Lots of fun unique items
✅ Beautiful degeneracy stats screen
✅ Equipment offers lot of different stats and unique perks
✅ Lot of unique game assets
✅ Long but addicting RPGM game (Think took me around 30 hours to 100% pretty much all of it, had few breaks now and then as don’t have stamina for such content rich H game )
✅ Most stuff you expect to have in H-rpg game, is in the game and a lot can be unlocked/bought ingame
✅ Secrets (areas, bosses, equipment)
✅ Difficulty options (I played on normal)
✅ Finishing game also unlock gallery unlock item you can buy
❔ Surprisingly game has birthing system as well but is more of a flavor thing than actual game content, but yet still you can get pregnant and you can deal with the child accordingly (I filled my Memoria area with kids)
❔ Get the usual kagura patch
❔ Extra „special“ slots mod is also recommended
CONs
❌ Pure route seems to be a lot grindier as per usual with these sorts of games (as corrupted gear is pretty much superior in most cases, aside the finale where you get ultimate synthesis equipment)
❌ The 3 stage corruption ain’t my favorite as it’s usually steep, but this one was well made (progressive slow corruption needs to have story heavy & very different gameplay approach)
❌ The final, final boss boss area warp point for some reason can’t be activated before fighting the boss (in others areas could) so I’m guessing it’s simply a mess up on development part
❌ Kinda feel that for sake of argument cheat tools after beating game once would been nice (mostly for gold & soul currency) But at the same time end-game farming for souls & money is fairly easy.
❌ Also miss that no visually shown images body part’s „level“ on stat screen
❔ The Item database/glossary felt a bid odd. Most of mob drops and locations were marked but some stuff I had to open „truemechasonic celesphonia notes“ to find some materials endgame
Comments
Bloody hell, this game was exhausting to finish. Something might fall off. Anyhow... this game goes 100% to my favorites. I enjoyed the fuck out of it. There was simply so much properly done regarding gameplay and the degeneracy element. Plus I loved the artsyle & FMC which made it much hotter.
Honestly... skill system made the typical H-rpg turned based combat a lot more fun. I also did read most dialogues and actually paid attention to story as it was rather enjoyable magical girl plot.
The degeneracy stats & title screen was also beautiful to look at and eventually hunt for.
I played on normal so didn’t have to tryhard with combat. Few fights offered some challenge, didn’t just mash Z . And the most effort I had to put in was the final, final boss. Where I grinded for some materials to make endgame gear + hunt for some special items to counter boss. So „normal“ I found a good balance.
A good game, a good fap. What else can I say. I consider this one of the best H-RPGm games I’ve played.
Total Score: 10/10
+FAVORITED
Game status:
✅ Finished

I've now played Magical Girl Celesphonia enough to have a clear idea of the game.

Let me preface this by saying: I mostly played the game on hard, only cranking it up to very hard later in the game. I didn't load my save when I lost, instead letting the story play on. In the same vein, I didn't lose on purpose (except when I wanted to see what could happen).

I generally like this game. I think it has something to offer; the story is alright, the "call to adventure" is alright, there is some humor, the porn art is nice and the combat is not too grindy. That said, the game has a few flaws in my opinion.

The game starts as Amane (MC), is attacked by monsters that recently started to appear. Initially the monsters had an easy time, until a magical book that she picked up at the library got activated and transformed her into Celesphonia, a magical girl. Not long after, her best friend is kidnapped by monsters, and she decides to save her. This starts her long quest to destroy the monsters. The story is actually rather decent for what it is. I wouldn't call it "deep" or surprising, but it is decently written and the pacing makes sense. This is already more than what RPGM games manages to achieve. The characters in the game is not all that much developed, nor is Amane in my opinion, but you still get the idea of a strong woman who fights for something bigger than herself.

The game is alright in terms of combat. Unlike most games, this game does not just spam you with mostly useless abilities. Instead you will unlock knowledge which you when equip. I mostly like this idea, but a couple of things didn't really make a lot of sense or were annoying:
1. I think that "Mending" (repairing your clothes) should've been a passive skill.
2. I don't think that it makes sense that equipping "Fire Magic 2" makes you forget the abilities from "Fire Magic 1".

Aside from that, I actually like the way that abilities are managed. Generally, combat was okay. There is a wide range of enemies, which is alright. Nonetheless, this game bangs its head against the same wall as almost all other RPGM games: the combat becomes repetitive. While it attempts to solve this with different enemies, you still end up fighting pretty much all of them in the same way.

Then there's the whole arousal system, which can be placed into:
Lust and Arousal. The problem is that the two systems kinda overlaps, which means that Lust fills a lot, and arousal means very little. Essentially Lust is how likely Amane is to - say - walk without wearing underwear in the park. Arousal is a more here-and-now modifier, and while it makes Amane wet on her picture, its only other point is to make her hesitate in battle. I think this is unfortunate. I think would've been more fun with a combination so that she being lustful in general, together with her being horny in the moment would allow you to do something else.

I did like the porn part, I think a bunch of the art was alright, and you were given options on whether you wanted to follow the groper into a stall and get fucked etc. As I saw the pregnancy tag, I really hoped that this was a "risk" of doing that.. but testing it out, Amane never got pregnant. It only happened after I took the ovulation drug and allowed the enemy to rape her. It was at that point that I realized that the tag is only really there for show.. It doesn't do anything at all.

Here's the short version:

The Good:

• The story is decent, and makes sense.
• You are not, unlike so many other games, forced into stuff you don't want.
• The game doesn't break character.
• The ability system is nice, and makes you want fight battles to get souls to use. It also allows you to take an active decision in how Amane should fight.
• I liked the equipment system, where I went for a complete AGI build. Dodging all them spells.. most anyway.

The In-between

• The ability system could've been better created. Like not forgetting the abilities from a previous ability, when you equip its upgrade.
• The porn part of the game is alright, but no overly amazing.

The Bad:

• I think its unfortunate that Lust and Arousal ends up overlapping, and at the end, only Lust really matter. Arousal is left in an awkward spot, where it only really matters in combat (where Amane hesitates at times) and not much else.
• No pregnancy. This would be fine if it wasn't tagged as having it. It is really not a part of the game, and it seems like its there to just have another tag.

At the end of the day, I actually really liked Magical Girl Celesponia, and I ended up playing it quite a lot. I suppose I would have given it 4.5 if possible. But since it's not, I gravitated towards 5.

Probably the best RPGM game created so far.

Many unique assets
Custom interface instead of the regular RPGM interface
Custom sounds
Great art, with some sound and animations
Combat is not half assed and pretty good.
Story that's actually interesting and not generic.

The only thing missing was pregnancy belly and birthing, but still, 5/5 game.

This developer improves greatly with every title they release, I honestly can not wait for future titles from them.

A decentish corruption game. But what really took this game over the edge were the titles. Obtaining titles was fun and interesting.

Story 3/10

Amane finds a mysterious book in the library and it turns her into a magical girl. At the same time, monstrums have started attacking the city. Amane reluctantly uses her magical girl powers to fight against the monstrums.

This fight has been repeating over the centuries every 50 years or so as the main boss never truly dies. But the last time the boss died was only 20 years ago. Something has changed.

You find out that the magical girl who previously fought was your mother. And this time you go into the monstrum realm to defeat the boss for good.

This is a pretty generic story that everyone's already familiar with.

Gameplay 8/10

The gameplay is enormous. It took me around 30 hours to beat this game on the easiest difficulty. This is because there's a lot of content. There's also some grinding involved as well. I won't be able to fully cover the gameplay because there's too much.

There's 4-5 times of the day (morning, noon, evening, night, late night) in which you can take action. Weekends only mean the School is not in session thus unavailable.

Many actions you take don't advance time. But some actions may advance to the next time. One of those time advancing actions is dungeon exploration.

In dungeons you have combat which I didn't focus much on. There's difficultly settings and I picked the easiest difficulty which means most fights are pretty trivial. However I can tell that the combat system is pretty extensive.

There's a system of lust which gates your in-game actions. There's 3 stages of lust from resisting to accepting, but at nearly all points of the game Amane will be resisting.

The maps are medium sized, which is just right. They're not boring, but they're also not sprawling. You can get a bit lost but just a bit of exploration is enough to un-lost you.

There's a system of sex titles you can earn by repeating certain actions enough times. e.g. If you stream something sexy enough times, you get a sex title for it. The titles do have effects such as decreased resistance to certain attacks. Other effects include the ability to take off your underwear.

Honestly the title system is what really made the gameplay so great. It's like a system of slow corruption. It was a little grindy to gain certain titles, but if you play the game freely, you just gain them as you play which is great.

Art 7/10

Amane is cute and sexy and the art is well done. Some situations have the art being reused but most scenes have unique art pieces.

There's a huge number of base CGIs but very little variation CGIs.

The writing is pretty decent. Each event chain does have pretty long accompanying text but because this is a slow burn game you can see Amane's slow fall to depravity.

It's a little weird because you can have Amane being a sex freak in one event chain and then start as a prude in different event chain. But what are you gonna do?

Overall 7/10

This is a very good game. It's a bit too long though with a bit too much content. I think h-games should aim to be around 15-20 hours long.

This is the 3rd time I'm saying it, but the Sex Title system is what really did it for me. It was pleasantly enjoyable to gain sex titles while just playing the game.

Basic rpgm rpg with....ehhhh....

Okay, so premise of a game reveals in first five minutes. There are a monsters (that are called monstero) in a world, you have high spirit aka mana that allows you to turns into a magic girl to defeat them. Its all using a special book that reveals you how to do this but thats not the point.
Sounds simple, if a bit banally, right!?

Well, yes, but it last for only like next ten minutes and then you start to dealing with human enemies. Thats not change anything non story related, but still.

Also, about battles. They are brain dead simple. Its possible to win almost all battles, including even some bosses, by just holding enter button.
Yes, there are lots of unlockable spells/moves/attacks but they all are pointless. Unless you want to finish fight in one turn and not in three. And there are no point in unlocking them since powerful moves opens up as plot progresses. The only spell that I used from time to time was heal. And even than there are 'autoheal' equipable item that able to mitigate all incoming damage to zero.

What about plot? Its...serviceable. Thats all I can say. Kill big monster to kill even bigger monster until you hit end of a game.

Porn stuff is.....bad.
BUTT WHY??????????? Well, its wide as sea but deep as puddle. There are corruption in the game, but it changes, in most cases, like three dialogue lines, and only in sex scenes. No impact on gameplay whatsoever. Only sometimes it actually add new content to the scene. And even than its same three lines.
And scenes are pretty similar.
Heroine (dont do drugs kids) was groped in a train!!!! OH NO!!!!
Heroine (dont do drugs kids) was groped two (2) times in a train!!!! OH NO!!!!
Yes some sex options are blocked by corruption level, but they are, again, pretty similar to existing.
There are defeat scenes but its a set of 3-5 static pictures with bunch of text that changes in a loop. So.......

Oh, and its way too repetitive/grindy too, as all asian games are. Fifteen minutes of real gameplay that are stretched out on two hours of gameplay, standard stuff.

Graphics is okay.

So, play only if you a big fan of game author.

Reviewed on v1.06.

This game is one of the best games made using rpgm.
You can see protagonist slowly turning into a slut or you can try to keep her virginity. It is up to you.
And if you want a challange, higher difficulties offer a decent gameplay.

Really great game overall, with a lot of gameplay and H content.

Pro :
> The story is consistent, even if it is quite straightfoward.
> The gameplay of battle is complex enough to be interseting, with a lot of spells to unlock.
> There is a lot of H situations, quite various. The CG are not excellent but good.
> The progression in lust corruption is cool. You can do a Pure run or a lusty one. And you can unlock new scenes, jobs or situtation with a higher lust level.

Con :
> The H content in battle isn't with all type of ennemy, and may be more diverse.
> Some H scenes are only unlockable if you loose several times against the same bosses, which can be repetitive.

I've been on-and-off playing this game for a few months and finally finished.
My save slot says it took 18h, so it's a pretty long game you can sink your teeth into for awhile. It's quite broad in all the things you can do, offering you loads of freedom in your day to day magical girl life.

My top kinks are excessive cum and multiple rounds and this game has a lot of that to offer, so if you feel the same way, go for it. It's also top tier in corruption / body stats. Only way it could have been better is if it had x-ray, but oh well.

Incredibly fun, delicious art, interesting story. Truly makes you feel like a magical girl. Are you still not convinced? We have interviewed some prestige gamers on theirs thoughts about this game.

"Dude, I love this game so much man!" - BigDaddy n0tail.

"My cock. Is. Throbbing. THROBBING!" - moist cr1tikal.

"It's fat." - b4nny.

"Let's hear what Ja Rule thoughts on this." - Dave Chappelle.

"Amane is Ness." - Matpat.

5/5 best game ever made, period.

It's a very good game full of story and character flexibility. A unique approach to 'learning' both combat and supportive active and passive abilities, and an engaging storyline kept simple. Quality art with no censorship and a very fun game overall

Great effort went into this game, which is really disappointing, seeing how terribly designed it is.

It's main problem is focusing on combat without creating combat suitable for HRPG. Instead it has that overused jRPG combat where you just spam attack and healing till you win. Even losing a fight is almost impossible if you don't fight underleveled. There is no point in thinking about builds or combos. Counter elements deal very similar damage anyways, so you might just as well spam one attack throughout whole game.

But that's just tip of an iceberg if we look at the rest of the game. Ambrosia had similar issue of hollow scenes that would no matter for character development and I was hoping for an improvment in this game.
No luck. There is quite a lot of scenes outside dungeons, but they have no impact on story or character. You see it, it increases your Hstats and that's all. You might even do it one or two more times to see different text, but they do not unlock anything nor MC has introspections about them nor they affect others. It does not have designed corruption progress, despite being corruption game. It's because corruption and story are two seperate elements in this game, which is very lazy aproach to give freedom for virgin runs. While in Ambrosia main story still was leading to getting corrupted (whoring oneself for info or repairing bridge, getting followers, becoming shrine maiden), but here it's never that direct.

I won't go on on dozens of mechanics this game has, like costumes, lust, domination/miasma/corruption, clothing damage, battlesex, skills system, defeat scenes, comments, statuses. There is really lots of them, but they also all show the same problems with the game. They do not matter. They are all here for you to have fun losing or walking in damaged clothes, but the outcome will be the same if you just boss rush.

So all in all, it is just another scene hunter. Story is terribly executed and railroaded, so that no character is likeable and it's just repeating "we killed monster, but now we need to kill bigger monster" for whole game.
Most painful is that RPG aspects got bloated by dumping every idea for mechanic that dev had and just leaving it for you to make a game from it.
You don't need to worry about anything here, because everything has so little impact that you probably won't see 80% of mechanics if you don't try to find them.

Still, it has high notes for effort that was put in. It doesn't change that there is lots of content and technically it's one of the biggest Hgames. Probably too big, as it's only good for collecting scenes and titles. It's like a playground for you to corrupt heroine, yet corruption never progress the story and only can risk in getting Game Over. Seems we have not deserved yet to get a game that is both big and has good designed rpg and corruption mechanics.

[Review for version 1.06]

Overall, this was one of the best H-games I've played during my "H-gaming career."

I tried the developers' previous game, Ambrosia, and I can definitely say they made HUGE improvements to this.

Although there are some of you who prefer "quick-fap" h-games, I would highly recommend this game to you! It takes quite some time to fully 'corrupt' Celesphonia to become addicted to sex, but trust me, it's worth it.

This game has a long runtime (9 hours for me), and the story is engaging and interesting. I'm not a huge fan of stories when I play adult games, but MGC's storyline was actually entertaining. As for combat, it's your usual turn-based combat. It may be a little disappointing when the monsters don't 'penetrate' Celesphonia when she is caught, but eventually that preconception will disappear during the later stages of the game.

Personally, I really liked the outfit system. You get to enjoy the satisfaction of customising your character to your preferences, and it really contributes to your, you know, 'beatin' your meat'. (¬‿¬)

Overall, I don't think I had any major downsides playing this game. The MC is likeable, the music is bangers, the outfit system is a literal godsend, and the art is a masterpiece, which makes this game a 5 (possibly a 6) out of 5.

Again, highly recommend you play this.

If you come for quick fap game, this is not the game for you. This is a long corrupted game with an okay setting, but somehow it feel quite empty.

The good things are the game has battle porn and the level of lust which you can choose to go to next stage when ever you want if the cap breached.

On the other hand, I like my porn game has good CGs which this game is lack of. It has good arts, but all CGs are static - I'm not actually mind it but it barely has any different expression or pose changing.

This is one of the better RPGM-games I've played, and probably the second-best heroine-RPG, behind Karryn's Prison.

If you've ever played a heroine game before, nothing in here should surprise you, aside from the densisty of content, and surprisingly good level-design.

MGC is a corruption game that understands the importance of "slow" corruption, simulating a much more slow and gradual descent into depravity in various forms. The character-building system is linear, and you can't exactly "build" the heroine, but it is still a very good system that allows you a lot of freedom and choice in what sexual content you want to focus on and see.

The game also has a rather high-effort take on the standard RPGM-battle system. The battle-system itself is bad, generic, simplistic, etc. horrible words, but there is variety and some depth outside of the battles, mostly to do with navigating the environment. The fact that the enemies are all generic repurposed RPG-enemies does little to help.

Shoutout to the excellent hypnosis-content, which kind of left me wanting even more. But alas, that's the trouble with this type of game that tries to cater to many fetishes.

it is very good that it makes me feel I will not play an ero game better than this game. it is the best ero game I played it deserve to be bought in steam or dlsite. also I feel sad that I finished it. the other games from the same developers they are also very good

Variety is the spice of life. It is also what elevates H-Games from the humdrum of GOR and Collecting Simulators to truly enjoyable experiences. Celesphonia, like Shimobashira's previous work - Ambrosia, has variety in droves, not only in terms of H-Content but in terms of how to achieve it and gameplay as well. Playing Celesphonia feels like playing a reasonable regular game but with the added spice of H-Content on top. Naturally, there are drawbacks. I'm not a massive fan of the art style and the way H-Content looks; the game can get somewhat grindy at higher levels; the corruption requires farming instead of happening naturally. However, these limitations do not in any way detract from one of the best H-Gaming experiences I've had by playing Celesphonia.

The story of an H-Game is expected to be a joke. However, what separates a good story from a bad one is how well it gives context to all the sexy shenanigans that ensue. I think Celesphonia does a fine job. There's a bunch of lewd monsters out there looking to lewd shit up and Celesphonia, the initially reluctant magical girl, decides to stop them since her friend gets done. There's lots of small tie-ins that lead to H-Content. For example, high miasma count means you get corrupted so our magical girl needs the help of a playboy masseuse to get that out of her system. What makes the story slightly more amusing to me is the dialogues at times.

What truly makes the game outshine most of the dross out there is the gameplay. Shimobashira gives you plenty of avenues to direct your attention to. You need to go to school to manage your reputation (low reputation results in getting punished ... sensually). You need to beat monsters to make sure the big baddie doesn't dominate the city. High domination means perverts and gropers abound. You need to make money to buy shit to defeat the big baddies so you can work at a cafe, prostitute yourself, sell tights to perverts etc. There are tonnes of things that can be done in the overworld when out of combat.

Combat itself is usual RPGM but there's a lot of variety in terms of enemies and attacks. Dungeons are long but not overly so. Enemies have different weaknesses and strengths, there's a myriad of collectibles, buffs, magical artifacts and macguffins to make you stronger. You collect monster souls and use them to unlock and equip spells referred to as engrams. There are hidden bosses in every dungeon that you can either stumble upon or equip the exploration engram to find. I found the combat generally engaging as far as RPGM goes. It does get a bit grindy at Very Hard and Crisis but I still wouldn't call it proper grind. In fact, I found the bosses easier to take down than going through the entire dungeon grinding. So if it strikes your fancy, you can probably just run pass or retreat from encounters and head straight for the boss if you're not super underlevelled. I always enjoy crafting and outfit changes and Celesphonia does a decent job at both. You need lots of money to buy and unlock everything but it isn't particularly hard to come by.

There's tonnes of variety in H-Content as well. You have your regular scenes on defeat. You have traps in dungeons. You have battle-fuck in the middle. You also have overworld events. Losing to bosses results in some lewd debuffs which make it easier to be lewder. You get titles once you've accumulated enough defeats or suffered enough from traps or teasing. There are many routes through which to experience the content. You get chikan on trains, scenes at the beaches, hypnotism. There's a cornucopia of content out there that should take at least two playthroughs to get since some of it diverges (low reputation vs high reputation).

Nonetheless, despite this eulogizing, the game does have its drawbacks. The biggest one is that you have to farm corruption. You only get the option to wear no underwear after farming exposure which can only be done through two or three repeatable things daily. You also have no particular reason to do those things apart from farming exposure/shame experience so it feels very grindy in terms of corruption. You don't need to take the train apart from the opening so the groping area is locked away. Miasma is never high enough to warrant a trip to the playboy masseuse. You can ignore the teacher who's blackmailing you. I understand this leaves the choice of content at the player's discretion but it takes away the idea of "reluctance" on the part of the the heroine. You can easily finish the game on the highest difficulty without engaging with most of its content. Which is a shame since there's a massive amount of it covering several bases.
Enemies are also a chore to battle at higher difficulties. You know you'll win if you don't set out to lose but it always takes a while. There are things you can craft which result in instant victories but they require a bit of grind as well. And finally, I'm not the biggest fan of transparent men and they feature fairly often in the H-Content here.

Nonetheless, it is very difficult to find a game that absolutely perfects my ideal type of H-Game. And Shimobashira haven't disappointed in both of their games. Whether it's the content, the gameplay, the means of achieving H and the slowburn corruption, this game has it all. Topping it off is a pretty stellar soundtrack which was a surprise in an H-Game. Some of the music I recognize from other games but it was nice listening to different tracks for every location and during battles and boss-fights. In summary, if you're out for a slow-burn corruption with a cornucopia of content, you can't get much better than Magical Girl Celesphonia.