Others - Completed - Netoria Tactics: Revolution [Carwyn Triumphant Update] [Apollo Seven]

Reviewing Ch. 1-3C

Stop reading this review if you can't get past NTR. For real, this ain't your game. But for the cultured ones,

Delve into the depths of an endless dungeon with your waifu and a cadre of lecherous men who try to grope, romance, blackmail, and mind control her. The gameplay loop works much like the older Fire Emblem games of yore, tile-based unit to unit combat.

Each of your units has unique skills; your main character is a lone wolf and works better away from the pack, while your waifu proteccs those around her and should really be surrounded by other men for maximum efficiency. Surely they wouldn't do anything to her in the middle of combat, though...

In between these battles are your more typical VN aspects where the characters share dialogue or bang. Here you get to witness the corruption of the waifu (if you choose to do so; there's a mystery mode as well). The pacing of her descent seems adequate; I'd like a few more stages of corruption myself before she's a full-blown nympho, but beggars can't be choosers.

As an unabashed NTR lover who enjoyed the Fire Emblem games in the past, this game was an easy 5* for me. All in all such a novel concept; but what else do we expect from the man who came up with TF Card Battle?

Well written game with some actual game to it. Bit like Fire emblem but with corruption mechanics. The interface is a bit clunky, especially with a mouse as the mouse jumps around the screen when doing certain actions.

I really enjoyed this game. It makes me want to check out Fire Emblem. It took a little while to get used to the controls, but I got there in the end. This is the best type of NTR/Transformation game for me since I prefer when you are using skill to avoid it, though this game is enjoyable enough that I'll try every route. Normally flashbacks annoy me, but they were funny enough and short enough I didn't mind them. Looking forward to future versions!

I don't usually like NTR, so I tend to stay away from those games. This one though really stands out from the crowd. I would rate 8.5/10, considering my predispositions.

Good:
Art
Writing (grammar and consistency)
Characters
Concepts
Scenes
Corruption design (advancements with each character is novel)
The MC can also be torn away from crush (Gwen) by another girl and not just the Gwen from him
NTR is entirely avoidable but makes the game harder
Story mode option (skips all gameplay, only scenes and decisions)

Bad:
Gameplay design (not intuitive to learn)
Not play-tested thoroughly (bugs)
Gameplay feels long and even repetitive

Again, overall it is a great game that I found really interesting. I encourage you to check it out. I will update this when new updates come out if warranted.

Lot of good ideas, but some poor implementation.

Pros

The mechanic for corrupting the love interest is well thought out and makes sense.

The male "protagonist" (there aren't any protags in this game, just main characters) is pretty unlikeable so it makes NTR'ing him pretty easy. The flipside is that the bad character is very bad so it's easy to root for him to take Gwen.

Dig the artwork.

Very few grammatical errors (just remember, i before e except after c).

There are great layout set-pieces that play into specific corruption-based scenarios; tight corridors where everyone has to be grouped together.

Neutral / Subjective

There are no animations.

I could do without the flashback scenes. I'm not super concerned about how anyone got here but what they're doing now that they are here. It's at least amusing how Gwen doesn't care for them either, but to me it's just pointless dialogue skipping.

I want to corrupt Vivian now and yet cannot.

Cons

It's pretty clear that the game did not undergo an appropriate amount of playtesting. You can easily break it. For example by achieving a certain class far earlier than you were expected to you'll get a scene that includes characters you haven't even been introduced to yet.

If you've played a normal RPG you'd know that leveling your character has diminishing returns, or at least the amount to increase to the next level is raised. Not the case here. You can easily spam the same things every turn to gain levels (and break the game).

It is possible to gain the Whore class before you've done anything that sexual with other characters so you can give blowjobs during the middle of battle before you've actually done that with anyone in their relationship progression. Not to mention that you can't actually do this because, while you'll get the artwork, there's no way to actually input it and you'll have to back out of the action.

Some gameplay mechanics are not explained. Class, for instance, unless you hover over the class badges you wouldn't know that once you hit level 10 you can upgrade your character's class. There's also something in the camp that you can easily miss if you don't do specific things. Also, what is the point of Eroticism, what is the point of Lust, why would we need Aphrodisiacs?! AFAIK these things aren't explained in game. I would assume that they would have a multiplier for the relationship gains from groping, but who knows, since it isn't explained.

I dislike how the artwork for the groping scenes appears to be from an entirely different game as they depict characters dressed in the style of modern times and are wearing different clothing than what the character is actually wearing. The scenes themselves are great, but I loathe how narratively jarring it is.

Summation

There are enough positives to make me excited about the game. The cons are things that one would think are easily correctable. To me the biggest problem is the anachronistic artwork, which, in the grand scheme of things, isn't too bad of a complaint. I look forward to future updates, for sure. Hopefully the dev can either balance out the gameplay mechanics or prevent you from getting to certain levels too soon.

This was a very enjoyable game. The combat, especially in combination with the ntr is super fun. The dialogues are pretty decent with some good jokes. I think the lewd stuff is developing at a optimal speed, although I just wish there were more content.

UI takes a bit to get used to, but my only problem with it was the "Configuration" and "End turn" buttons, because I kept missclicking them.

What is interesting is the 3 routes it's going through at the same time. You have the classic NTR one, the transformation+corruption one and then the other female character "love interest". They mostly compliment each other, but the transformation+corruption and the new female character route seem like they could clash with each other in the future, there isn't enough content to tell now.

I really hope this will get a lot more content in the future, because rarely does the lewd work so well with the mechanics and create an actual fun game with interesting combat and story.

I am tempted to give it a five star rating on the account of tying game mechanics with lewds and plot progression. But I can't.

As neither a hater nor a fan of NTR, I can say that this genre (fetish?) almost always falls short for me because of the devs' tendency to make it unavoidable therefore making their games glorified kinetic novels at best, and kinetic novels with terribly clichéd stories at worst. I can see the reasoning behind that, but it's bad reasoning. NTR fans don't want games without NTR, duh, so let's make games where not having it is impossible. That's like, gamers in general like winning and don't like losing, duh, let's make games where not winning is impossible. Yeah, that will end well.

Anyways, unlike many others, this game builds the foundation perfectly. It's a tactical RPG, a game where unit placement matters. And the stroke of genius is that placing male and female units adjacent to each other triggers bonus lewd action, that drives the relationship sub-plot further. Therefore you, the player, can control what characters progress their story and what don't. You can have your "virgin run", you can "give away" the girl to one out of three secondary male characters, you can feminize the MC, you can let another female character seduce the MC, and you do all that in combat. There's a lot of freedom here, but it requires thoughtful in-combat management, because aiming for each of these strategies puts some restrictions on actual combat tactics.

This is what every good porn game should strive to do. It adds another dimension to the base strategy layer, therefore making it better. It also drives the plot way more organically than a VN-type choice menu.

So why not 5 stars? Let's start with lesser problems and go in an ascending order.

• Typos. Surprisingly basic and plentiful, which is not like the other game by this dev. Come on, we have evidence you can do better.
• Low amount of lewds, and not because the plot hasn't progressed enough. The dev admitted that this is a side project with a very limited budget, so art and scenes won't be plentiful. Such a shame.
• Still some very generic, horribly clichéd character archetypes (although there are some good ones as well). You can write a story of infidelity without the man —and the girl in this instance— being absolutely harebrained. So why not?
• And finally... My god, the UX. For fucks sake why is it so bad? Honestly this is probably my first encounter with this game engine, and it better fucking sure be the last. It's... I don't even know where to begin. Every single screen, every single menu is flawed. Managing inventories is very likely THE WORST I've seen in my entire life, and I've played a lot of old, archaic games. Why do I have to say yes I want to start the stage for every god damn flashback? Why are there so much of those anyway and why can't I skip them?? Why do I need to...

Deep breaths. Deep breaths...

Anyway. Okayish story and art, some VA also present, but not much of either. UX is like pulling teeth, would not recommend. Good core mechanic, grafting the lewd and plot-driving layer on the in-combat unit movements. My positive rating hinges solely on this strength.

[Rev @ Netoria Tactics: Revolution Chp.3]

A very nice foundation~

Art's nice.

Writing is done well, scenario isn't the most novel but this iteration is done well, voice is great and characterization is done well.

Porn's fine, if slim. Need more lewds.

My missing stars are mostly systemic: I've always hated this engine, but this game doesn't make it too awful. There's a timed mission that doesn't inform the player that it's timed and even though the character was at 100% full health and standing three feet from the goal they gave up and died.

TLDR: Yay useful NTR that I don't have to swim through moonrunes or AI interpretation of moonrunes to get~

This review is for the 1-13-2023 'Chapter 3' version of the game.

I'm usually not a huge fan of NTR stuff. I like the fetish itself but 9 times out of 10 it's usually done in the most boring, bland, generic way possible - "super chad persuades/coerces heroine to cheat on her boyfriend, with her quickly coming to like it." While Netoria Tactics has some of that in it the game also takes a more mechanical approach to NTR that helps put it way above most NTR games, plus there're other males after the heroine beyond the coercive thief. All that said, there are definitely a couple of problems that really hold this game back.

To get it out of the way, the combat is essentially a very basic, rudementry Fire Emblem clone, with this game having been created in SRPG Studio. The only thing that really stuck out to me is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of special abilities, so most of combat is just standard physical attacks. Balance seems fine. I'm not really here for a deep tactical gameplay experience, so none of this really bothered me. It all works and it works well, which is enough for me. The game does offer a 'story mode' that allows you to skip combat but I'd recommend against using that -- a good chunk of the game's sexual content comes in the form of the female party members getting harassed by the male party members (plus some sexual abilities later on) during combat which you won't get to see in story mode.

On battle maps there's a NTR mechanic. It works like this: if the hero (Carwyn) is away from the heroine (Gwenivier) but one of the other male party members (Owain the thief, Emrys the knight, and Mordrid the mage) is near her then there's a chance at the start of a turn that they'll grope her. This is a brilliant way of incorporating NTR into a game and is the main reason why I stuck with the game -- it ultimately leaves it up to the player to decide if they want Gwen to be NTR'd but Gwen also has a buff that raises the stats of adjacent characters, so you may sometimes find it better to allow her to be groped even if you don't want it, which makes it less binary. Gwenivier also has a purity stat that goes down as she's groped and once it goes down enough the groping can progress, which is also tied to relationship scenes between Gwen and one of those three males that'll happen in between battles once they've groped her enough. Eventually Carwyn will get the option to transform into a female and be subjected to the same mechanics. If you get Gwenivier's purity low enough you can change her class to something more lewd (first erotic dancer, then whore) that'll give her sexual abilities during battles.

All that said, while I love the battle NTR mechanic in concept its execution leaves a lot to be desired. The biggest problem for me is how woefully underwritten the groping events are (one is just Gwen going "Mnm"). Adding a small description of the action (i.e. the guy's fingers sinking into the girl's large breasts, or maybe a bit about the girl grinding against the guy as she's groped when she's lewder), the female's reaction, and the guy's reaction would greatly improve these events. Likewise, Gwen's sexual abilities are also disappointingly tiny (and include no cumshot/climax). I also have some issues with the art but I'll get to that later. Lastly for this topic, how much exactly (or even how in general) the groping events improve the girl's relationship with the guy beyond her purity stat seems entirely opaque. I might've just forgot but I don't think the game explains how many times a guy has to grope Gwen to get their next relationship scene. It also seems like you get locked into a route after a guy gropes Gwen enough, which means a lot of people will probably get locked into Owain's content since you get him first and don't get the next guy until a handful of battles.

In between battles there's a camp map that you move around as Carwyn on and can talk to characters. If Gwen's fallen far enough then she and a guy will be missing from it and you'll hear some dialogue of her being NTR'd. My problem with this is that there's an option to see events from Gwen's perspective... but you can't see these ones. I don't know if that's a bug, if it's working as intended, or if it'll be added in a later update, but I definitely feel like if you have that option on you should be seeing these events in full. Beyond that, I also feel like this area is ripe for potential optional lewd events but so far there's really nothing to do. Being able to switch control between Gwenivier and female Carwyn and 'service' the other male members of the party (possibly giving them a buff or maybe even removing some sort of 'unfocused' debuff) would greatly add to the game. Controlling Gwen and getting to check on her relationship with one of the guys (and maybe repeat past events) would also be an improvement.

As for the writing, it's good. No Engrish or MTL crap here. The dialogue is written well and every character has a clear, consistent personality. In terms of the NTR, you have the thief Owain who'll coerce Gwen (essentially he'll threaten to leave the party unless he can play with her body), the knight Emrys who seems to genuinely care for Gwen and wants to get closer to her, and the shady mage Mordrid who uses hypno magic on Gwenivier. For me, Owain falls a bit too much into the 'sex god chad' NTR trope that I find trite, I'd've preferred him being a bit uglier and more repulsive, but that's personal preference. For female Carwyn, she doesn't get individual routes, instead all three guys gang up on her and basically threaten to rape Gwenivier unless they can instead play with Carwyn's female body. The genderbend stuff is handled pretty well, Carwyn doesn't become a slut when transformed but instead still thinks of himself as a male, finding the groping gross and only going along with it for Gwen's sake. Near the end of the current content another female character (Vivian) joins the party who is very interested in Carwyn; she doesn't have much content now but will in later updates, including NTR events. So far I'd say my only real problem with the writing is that the NTR lacks bite because while Gwenivier is clearly in love with Carwyn, Carwyn seems to have no interest in Gwenivier. If you complete the game's current final battle you can go to a recollection map that has spaces saved for Gwen & Carwyn events, so maybe this gets remedied in the future. Group events for Gwen would also be great.

Finally, there's the art. I think it's well made and in general looks great. There's no animations but I don't care about that at all (in fact, I think the expectation that every amateur porn game must have animations for every scene is ridiculous). My only problems with the art is that there isn't much of it and it's reused somewhat poorly. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather have a ton of events with reused art than few events all with unique art. No, the issue here is that the generic groping art is reused for both Gwenivier and female Carwyn... yet it doesn't even really match either of them (look at the clothes the female is wearing in the groping pictures -- it's definitely not what Gwen's wearing and it doesn't really match Carwyn's clothes either). Given that the recollection room map seems to have spaces for all future events already in place I'm guessing the developer had the art made beforehand and is just using what they have. It's not really a huge problem for me but I can definitely see others finding it lazy. Having unique groping art for both females would be a definite improvement (and it wouldn't even have to be fully unique - re-use the same body but have different clothes layers for Gwen & Carwyn to put on top of the base body layer).

Overall, despite my gripes and the areas I think could be improved, I really like the game. It's still in development so hopefully some of the problems I've pointed out can be worked on. If you like NTR, genderbend stuff, and like games with actual mechanics then you should definitely try out Netoria Tactics. I'll probably update my review once the final version is released.

I played what I understand is most of the current build (first 12 levels or so). Overall, it's a very good start for a player-driven NTR game.

+ 3 different types of male stealer (rogue/blackmail, knight/gentleman, mage/hypnosis).

+ Optional gender-bender for the MC so he can get sexed-up too (reluctantly at first).

+ Well-written, for the genre.

+ The levels are decently balanced, all things considered, on Normal difficulty.

+ Class specializations, including lewd ones for the love interest.


- My biggest complaint is it's not really clear on what advances the corruption/stealing progress. There is an in-combat system that wears down the character's Purity, but getting it to 0 does not mean she becomes fully corrupted, and clearly some of the NTR progression is tied to main-story progress. It also wasn't clear whether all the lewd stuff in combat allows you to choose what "stealer" to focus on. I got a bunch of non-combat scenes with the rogue character, but couldn't tell if they could be avoided or replaced with one of the other two. So if this stuff is gameplay-driven, I'd like more information ingame of how to get scenes I want and avoid ones I don't want. Edit: There is actually a document in the game files that does just that.

- Occasional typos.

- Unintuitive, somewhat archaic SRPG interface.

- Hit chances and crits. I'd rather have deterministic mechanics, at least for basic attacks.


= The game becomes easier if you allow the lewd stuff to happen. The mechanics are blatantly designed so that you play more effectively if you allow the heroine to be next to the "stealers" because she can buff them and tank for them. At the same time, the MC's self-buff doesn't work if he's close to anyone. The female form is more powerful, but allows for sexual harassment of the MC. I dunno, if you play a game like this that's clearly NTR-focused, you're probably trying to facilitate this stuff anyway. So I'm not sure who would play the game in hardmode to not see sex stuff in a sex game. The hardmode should probably be there to unlock extra sex scenes. Edit: Apparently there will be a vanilla route with sex later, it's not something I would aim for though.

Really great game all around especially for the average NTR enjoyer, it's not often that there is so much content available in a first release. The characters are well-written, the gameplay is solid and the art is an 8.5/10.

Definitely keen to see what the dev gets up to with future updates. If it follows this same pace I'm sure at the game's full release ill bump this up to 5 stars. Best of luck to the dev!

TLDR: If you are a fan or NTR then this game is a must-play.

THE GOOD
Characters
Story
Setting
Interactions
Mechanics
Humour
Art
THE BAD
Controls that make me want to off myself with how unintuitive they are and with how often they make me do stuff by accident
THE UGLY
Me

9.5/10

Despite the game not flooding with arts and illustrations, the gameplay with NTR elements make it a very pleasant experience. For once I actually cared about gameplay in a NTR game and it is really, amazingly implemented in here. I especially liked heroine's class change and overall battle system, how it makes MC seperate from his lover without getting into too much absurdity. Definitely try and support this if you can, because its worth it.
Looking forward to future updates

Edit: Some folks said game follows fire emblem gameplay but for me it was Battle for Wesnoth. Maybe because of the nostalgia it brought to me, I especially liked the gameplay

Not really my that type of gameplay, but because of art gave it a try. And you know? It's good one! Sound effects are quite loud tho, but everything else is nice.

Here wehave some tactits mixed with rpgm mechanics, which is at least playable) Story is good, scenes are well made. Will follow that game 100%

ive been looking for ntr games for a little bit but i think this is one of the better games. the only thing i dont like is that its not finished lol. my favorite mechanic is the groping during battle. i also enjoyed that you get transformed

Good gameplay (I'm a sucker for FE games, sue me), good writing overall even if the story seems exceedingly silly at times; the HScenes are a bit repetitive and admittedly lack quite a bit of flavor/variance + the "cut-in" art and the "full hcg" art are markedly different for reasons unknown (perhaps to make the cut-in art more reusable for the two characters that get harassed, since it already happens in game some times?). The game can range from quite difficult to plain simple (definitely don't do a nonsensical run).

Overall I quite liked it, but I'm deducting one star for both the repetitive cut-ins and because of the sheer timesink that it is to raise relationship points/lower purity. Wasting turns and waiting for a randomized variable to grant me the grope I need to keep raising/lowering the stats is thoroughly boring. Perhaps a timer or a counter would feel better. It is however the first release, there's already plenty of content for you to sink your teeth in, and I'm sure it'll get better and better over time, so definitely recommended.

I enjoyed the characters and the NTR a lot. Whiteout spoiling to much, there are some new spins on the NTR genre that I haven't seen before that are pretty fun! And the wider plot is interesting, with good pacing and humor.

Its not perfect though, the interface is a bit clunky, and the art is repetitive.

Over all its a great first release! Looking forward to more!

well i wanted to give this higher rating but the H-scenes are a bit repetitive and they are still pictures with only dialogue. the art is very good though. at its current form i expect some scenes to be remade but im pretty sure they won't be.

my issue with it is there are couple of repetitive pictures for kissing/groping etc which is the same across different characters even different protagonists. so that's a bit "too" repetitive.

the game is fun though, it's a fire emblem type of game, if you are not used to it then it will feel very clunky, but you have to get used to the leftclick/rightclick map controls which are really unintuitive, but that's the engine.

game is fun just in itself, but tbh if we are playing a porn game i expect more quality on the porn front not on the game front. the game is surprisingly good quality even among this type.

there are some bugs though and balance issues, but there is story mode for people who don't want to play any tactics.

i just feel in its current form you don't get as much of a reward as you should after winning all these tactical battles.

but having said that, the game is only halfway ready, the better H-scenes are supposedly implemented in the next patches so i might change my rating.. hopefully for the better.

Great little sexy fire emblem clone. Creative combination of NTR and male-to-female protagonist transformation integrated into the unit mechanics. The normally quite dark subject matter is leavened by cute art and clever writing.