RPGM - Completed - Mutation! [v1.11] [Mutation]

Oh...oh my god...my god...it's my dream game...

Ahem.

Mutation! is an RPGMaker game that centers around binding and bad status...if you've followed my reviews for awhile, you know that I'm having the time of my life here. You control a protagonist named Mute with amnesia as she explores an Ero Trap Dungeon in search of her memories.

The story is actually quite shameless in what it is (the ENG translation is an MTL, which...as far as MTLs go, it's relatively inoffensive); from the very beginning, your closest ally openly states she's involved because she likes, ah, testing out dungeon traps and monsters for herself. The rest of the town, and the story enemies, do a better job of hiding how lewd things are, to varying successes. Honestly, I expect the biggest problem people might have, storywise, is the cutesy art style that may put off some people. It's not Ibsen but really, this is an H-Game, and what you do get is actually pretty touching; Mute is a sweetie, and the conclusion of her search for her identity is pretty satisfying.

The combat is actually pretty good; with a handful of exceptions in the shape of story bosses, you're never in danger of losing HP, so it serves more to demonstrate how much resistance you can put up against bindings. Unless you specifically chose not to, (or you're inflicted with certain statuses) Mute will automatically struggle at the end of every turn, leaving you free to keep on battling. The bosses are fairly tough, and the game obviously expects some level of grinding to beat them, but it never gets to the point of feeling tedious. The magic system, too, is actually fairly interesting in that you have a handful of basic spells that can be improved by items you can either find or craft, and each spell has a special version that comes from using the right item on it. There is a cooldown associated with it, but like many mages in H-Games, Mute has pretty good physical strength, and you're capable of dealing good damage even without magic.

The H-Combat largely comes from the binding fetish. There's three levels of binding, and should you reach the third level of binding, that's when the harassment starts~ There's a handful of bad statuses, too, to make your life difficult; a couple that can be found in pretty much every area, and each area has a couple of it's own (and each boss fight has one of it's own, as well.) If you're watching HP and being careful, Mute can generally keep herself out of trouble, but again, the game gives you an option to keep her in trouble if you see fit.

Remember how I said you don't have to worry about HP? Well, your "HP" in Ero-Combat is how many times you've climaxed. Cum three times and you lose. It's a classic for a reason! Also like other such games, cumming temporarily weakens you, but unlike other such games, it's not long enough that you get trapped in a loop of cumming over and over. Honestly, most of the frustration comes in "brainwashing", something a handful of enemies can do, which essentially stunlocks you until you rest. Fortunately, checkpoints abound, and you have an item that allows you to return home at anytime (and there's an item that usually gets you out of non-event battles), so as long as you're cautious you can stay out of that loop.

Mutation doesn't really shake up the genre. It's a binding H-Game with enough work put into the engine that it's not a naked RPGMaker game. The protagonist is naked, not the skeleton of the engine. The story is barebones, and while there's more depth to the world than some other games, it's still pretty basic tropes. For what it is, though, it's a lot of fun, and if the occasional frustration and the art style doesn't bother you, this is a game you can easily come back to time and again.

Great art, well polished all around, and has lots of content. You need to enjoy this type of art tho and the scenes are not very animated. Nice to see a turn-based combat game that does not give you the ero scenes only upon losing, but rather this is all the enemies try to do and you lose upon orgasming thrice.

I love the art style but that's about it. The h-scenes were really light fare, more teasing than anything else. The ones that presumably were supposed to be hardcore (by the text) really didn't seem like it. It was more of a "compromising positions" game than anything else. Combat felt slow and plodding.

At least combat was pretty interesting.

This is a short and neat little bondage themed game, about 5-8 hours long if you play without cheats and do some grinding (not really necessary) .

Translation 4/5: Very solid MTL. Nothing that really put me off, though there are some issues with skill names and some strange wording choices in dialogs. But overall very good.

Story 3/5: The game has a very lighthearted story. No dark twists. Even the final boss is more of a joke than anything. That being said, aside from the main character, we really didn't get much charactarization from the other NPCs. They're just token characters and only have a total of 3 scenes between them.

H-Content 3/5: I am biased, I love bondage games. Unfortunantly this title didn't have much variety at all and the main focus lies on teasing. The bondage is also more on the light side, no bdsm.
Considering how short the game is, I'd have expected more enemy types, or at least some "GoR" from normal enemies. Also every enemy, even the bosses, only have one H-move.
On the plus side, your clothes can be completely broken and the art style is lovely. Also, again, BONDAGE!!!

Gameplay 4/5: Very simple, but solid, RPG-Maker combat. The gameplay blends in very nicely with the H-Content and is not grindy or a chore to get through. However, aside from getting mor H-Scenes, there really is little joy in fighting. No equipment management or strategy really. The spell enhancing mechanic was really neat though.

Overall 4/5:
I would have really liked a game with more depth and longer play time. The art style is very good and I love bondage afterall. I recommend playing it.

TL : DR - As someone who has played a few H-RPGM games, this one just feels like I've been there and done that, and this RPGM game isn't even that good irrelevant of any other game that has come before it. I'd only recommend this if you never played a Bad Status styled game and aren't sure you are ready for the more difficult bad status games.

You play as Mute, a girl who doesn't remember anything about herself but agrees to help the village take on the lewd dungeon. There is only the village and the dungeon, nothing else, so thankfully you will not be spending a lot of time running around all over the place which is a problem other RPGM games have.

The combat is mainly 1-3 monsters (that are always the same, no mixing enemies together other than boss fights) and you try to kill them while they try to progressively restrain you and rip your clothes off to the point of doing lewd actions. At the end of every turn, you automatically try to move the progression bar back by one point. The problem here is that if you are grappled and that progression moves up by one, then your attack sharply drops, and your attack sharply drops the more restrained you are. Each monster will try to restrain you on their turn, so in practice, if you face 2-3 enemies, you will be restrained by at least one point, or two if you fail to move the progression back, which will put you in an almost unrecoverable position. This makes you just want to over level to the point where you aren't engaging with the mechanics anymore, you are beating their speed and killing them before they can even interact with you.

When you do become restrained enough to be attacked by lewd status, various kinds of enemies will either give you a status that will make fighting harder or fill your lewd bar from 0 to 100, if it hits 100, you orgasm. Three orgasms and you lose the fight, being the monster's victim for another couple rounds before be teleported home. The scenes themselves aren't all that satisfying if you ask me. If you look at the 2nd image in the OP, that is roughly how far all of the scenes go, the MC completely restrained and being played with by the monster, when the MC orgasms, you just get sound effects, facial changes, and some screen shaking, no zoom in, no internal views, no cum shots.

So what about the bad status? Well, what are bad status in other games? Effects that will make you do things outside or in combat that will force your character to do actions that put them in a more vulnerable position like submissively walking into the enemy, taking lewd damage from attacks instead of just hp damage, forcing them to wear clothes that are humiliating or even progress the MC closer to a bad end, changing the MC's clothes to default into lewder clothes. You can also create new scenes out of having bad status, you can get the girl's opinions about how she has changed, and so much more.

So what does this game do with bad status? Slightly more lewd damage every time she is hit with lewd damage. Automatic lewd damage as a turn is ending. Slower move speed in combat. Another status that makes you take more lewd damage. How about cursed equipment? Well there is a collar that makes you do less damage... To be fair, this game has a couple spots where having a bad status starts you off in a battle already restrained, but that feels like the bare bones of bad status. It would be like seeing a triangular combat system in a turn based combat game when you've played other games that have done that so much better than this game. Oh, and the worst part about the bad status, you can just get rid of them quickly and for free with the copious teleport crystals. What's. The. Point. Bad statuses are meant to be hard to get rid of as now you have something you will need to work around that will make your MC more likely to do lewd things, that might spiral her into getting more bad statuses. If you can just wipe them away at no cost and whenever you want, then why bother.

I feel like this could of been a good game if the dev chose to focus on any given thing and put his personal touch on it to make this game feel unique, but instead this feels like if someone had to make lewd games for their 9-5 and this is what they made just meeting the bare minimum requirements. I don't think it deserves 1 star because this is a complete game that is the basics of a H-RPGM bad status game, but that is all it is.

For me, this is a 3.5 out of 5 stars.

The game design follows a concept I like, namely that of stacking erotic debuffs. But the dev shot themself in the foot by having warp points so frequently, and allowing debuffs to be removed quite easily at the home base.

It would have been okay if warps were more spaced out, like having one at the start of a zone and one before the boss. Which would have forced you to either tough out the debuffs while pushing forward, or backtracking to get them removed and start over from the checkpoint.

Instead, it trivialises the system. And you rarely get into trouble unless you actively play badly.

That and the fact that penetration is fairly scarce are my main gripes about this game. Ah, also the sound design is too cutesy, so it doesn't allow me to *feel* her pleasure.

With that said... The game is above average, the battle system has a nice amount of depth, and on the early stages had me thinking with a bit more strategy to quickly dispatch enemies. I liked the materia system that allows you upgrade your base magic into better versions, that was a nice touch.

But still, it is no diamond. A fair amount of fun, and good enough to kill time on. Yet it's not enough to have me come back to it in the future.

Still, I'd recommend you get it if you like this type of game. It's decent enough to be enjoyable.

I enjoyed it. The story is very slow paced but many people in the village have something helpful to say or trade depending on story progression.
Some encounter take "preparation" or you will loose, guaranteed. Beeing prepared makes them easy peasy. This is a feature I like much and figuring out how to approach some fights to win is neat.

I only gave 4 stars because somewhere in the last or prior to the last floor it started to feel a bit stale/grindy to progress.

I get what they were trying to do here, but there really isn't much of a game here at all.
1. Gameplay loop sucked. I made it through one dungeon and the fighting/enemy diversity and h-content all felt really lacking.
2. Graphics are pretty middling.
3. No real story at all.
4. The protagonist is cute, but eh.
5. Erotic scenes were boring and the combat was too easy so you had to just guard or lose on purpose to see anything.
6. Restraint mechanic is auto. So you didn't really have much to do once the primary loop of the game started.
7. Good enough for a few minutes of fun, but might as well just download a completed save file to view the scenes.

This game is overall a bit of a disappointment. There is not a good way to really express my time playing this aside from feeling this needed some more effort put into it.

The restraint system is what it is, but there is no way to deal with it. After enemies get to the third stage you become little more than a passenger along for the ride with no way (outside a limited item) to interact with the "game".

The music was okay but the battle system is atrocious. The battle system is the core of the game and the system is flawed to a point that the game becomes unplayable. Long story short, I think I have been spoiled by better games that try to achieve a similar place in the genre.

There is better out there and one can pass on this game without much regret.