It's honestly great; I feel bad about overlooking it for so long. Plus it's actually COMPLETED, which is practically a miracle. I previously ignored it due to the 3.5 star average and the title pic here, but now that I gave it a shot I've gone and backed their Patreon as it (and the other two from them) impressed me so much. I think this is actually the best of their three games so far.
Let's get the caveats out of the way first:
1. If you don't read text, you'll get a lot less out of it. Big lol at the reviewer below claiming "Without cheating you will always lose the entire game" as they obviously didn't read the instructions in the beginning. I've used no cheats and am handily dominating the game, but you have to play very differently at the start and the game tells you that. Also the sex scenes are each one pic (with great art btw) and lots of text. So if you're just spacebarring through the text you're missing out on most of the good stuff.
2. Similarly, if you don't like gameplay and just want to visual-novel-style click-to-next-scene, you'll also get a lot less out of it. The scenes are great, but so is the gameplay and the way they interact.
3. It requires a patch to select resolutions other than the tiny default of 1200x600, or complete full screen (which is a bad stretch, as the game is 2x1 aspect not 16x9). Those patches are linked on the main page and easy to install (just pick the one named for the resolution you want, rename it back down to Assembly-CSharp.dll, and replace the file in the game's Data/Managed folder) but if you skipped them and just fired up the game, you may be annoyed that it's small res and not resizable.
Alright, now getting into the details.
Gameplay: It's great!
There's actual gameplay here, which already puts it way ahead of many other "games" on this site. Even the ones that aren't labeled as Visual Novels, the "gameplay" is frequently "choose which place to go so you can play the next scene, repeat scenes X number of times", but this has an actual card game that interacts with six separate resources.
There's a lot to like about the card game. There's a large number of cards, each upgradeable to 3 different versions. There's a couple different viable strategies/decks to lead you to victory. The card art is simple but fun, and they're themed well to match the story. But it does two really standout things:
One is that it starts you off at a real disadvantage, forcing you to play a completely different strategy. For the early game, your focus will not be on winning, but rather on minimizing how much Work/Glory she earns in each battle and conserving your resources to build up your strength to a point where you can start winning. This teaches you to really engage with the various resource mechanics (her Work is what converts to Glory when she wins, your Work can convert into the resources you need when you lose) and creates a real sense of progress as you improve - not just "I do +10% damage" but "I can actually play the game differently now"
The other is that progress you make in the corruption/sex/story path actually interacts directly with the mechanics of the card battles. As you make progress corrupting your rival, it actually weakens the cards that she plays. It also opens up Allies for you to recruit and new card options. However as you gain Glory and near victory, it forces her to step up her game and compete, preventing a complete steamroll to victory as soon as you start to win a little. This sort of interaction between the sex content and the gameplay mechanics is so rare that it made me want to call it out and write this review.
Sex/Story Content: Also great!
Of course that's subjective. As I alluded at the beginning, they're each a single static image and lots of text. So if you came in expecting animations or little text and lots of pics, this is not that. There's three main characters you have sex scenes with, two of which are redheads with green eyes and C/D cups, the third has brown hair and A cups. So if those don't do it for you, don't keep playing expecting Asian MILF with GGs to suddenly emerge later in the story.
YMMV, but I think the writing is excellent. Many of the other games here seem like they were shoddily translated from other languages, or written by 14 year-olds. I understand this is made by a husband-and-wife team, and the writing quality shows and is much appreciated. The corruption story (and this seems to be a theme in all three of their games) is between you and a vicious rival, not some helpless victim. It feels a bit like Valmont and Merteuil in Dangerous Liasons, engaged in a sexual competition with occasional cruelty, which helps make some of the domination feel more like "all's fair in love and war" rather than "am I the baddie?"
Several of the scenes include the women interacting with other men or women as part of the corruption path, so this is where a lot of readers just screeched "NTR, reeeeeeee!" and closed the tab. That said, those paths are clearly labeled, so you can avoid playing the "Contacts" or "Shared" paths.
Lastly there's a lot of it. A lot. If we exclude the small text-only encounters found exploring the map, each main "scene" is a really nice handmade 2D art shot (no Daz or Honey Select here) and a sizable text description. There are NINETY ONE of those scenes, plus the endings. I counted.
Anyway, if none of the caveats have driven you off by now, please give it a shot. I was very pleasantly surprised.
![[Enslave_The_Waifu]](/data/avatars/s/529/529126.jpg?1522668138){kind=avatar}
