Awesome game. I no longer need to play TFT because I have this now.
Adding items at some point would be cool.
I have 3 fully chaste good ending runs (including event characters all powered down):
1) 5 Knight 6 Terran. Very fun, lengthen the fight so Julia can spread gigantic shields to Anno and Dahl. Anno becomes unkillable, so long as you don't let her get bursted down in the beginning. Take the scroll for 20% damage reduction when Confidence is 100. Be surprised at how Iris quietly does a good amount of work doing damage.
2) 5 Mage 6 Elf. This comp is the complete opposite, as there's hardly any frontline so you blast everything away as fast as possible. It's fun watching Crystal lasering the whole mob of enemies, Anabelle's damage suddenly skyrocketing when she hits 2* (because her ability targets all), and 3* Angel suddenly shredding through the enemy team and contending for the top spot on the damage charts after feeling super weak and useless at 1* early on. Do this with the scroll with the quest yielding bonus damage for Mages in the first 8 seconds of combat.
3) Full lust Shooters + Anabelle & Sana. Surprisingly, this might be the most fun (or funny) comp of them all. Take the scroll that gives Shooters 1% spell vamp for every point of lust over 90 that you have, and all of the lust scrolls. Put Sherry in the farthest back and watch as she cleans up the fight shooting faster than Legolas. Amazingly, Rose is the solo tank, completely alone at the top center, with everyone else in the back two rows. At 3* and lust pushing 200, she has enough dodge and vamp to survive the majority of most fights. Hilarious thinking about these monsters all chasing just her while her friends shoot them all up.
I spent several hours afterwaed trying to make 5 Warrior 6 Orc work with their relevant quest scroll (lose 8 battles and have only 1 wall durability lef5) but kept making boneheaded mistakes and failing. A major problem is that Sana stops attacking in order to cast, meaning she stops lifestealing, and therefore can't solo a group of enemies. Whether this is changed would make her make-or-break 1v9 or decent carry.
Ahern is OP, seriously. He outperforms pretty much every other 100 cost. Getting 2* Ahern early is basically a free ride through the first 8-10 waves, and even after that 2* Ahern can be a crucial mid-game lone tank for all those other comps that don't even synergize with him.
Celine really is special. I love her. It certainly looks like she draws inspiration from Jean in Genshin Impact. But Celine definitely hits a distinct sort of character. The dialogue and internal monologues are very detailed and deliberate, which is nice if you really connect with psychological aspects of situational sex. The overall conversation between Beth and Celine does make you think a bit, and the Good Ending contains some interesting info that hints at perhaps this world getting much more development.
Celine teaches me how to be a better man. Falling to temptations, especially lust, is a glaring weakness for me. But the time I've spent with Celine, experiencing her larger-than-life nobility and fortitude fighting the weaponization of her own body against her.
I have to say it's affected me in a profound way. The story makes a point to juxtapose the clean and dirty, the pure and impure. Choosing Chastity *increases* your lust gain. It's the complete opposite of the usual in h-games: "do horny stuff, get hornier".
The extraordinary nobility and purity of Celine (and Anno too) is precisely what makes the curse so incredibly potent on her. Yet, she's not a quitter. Even in the Indulgent endings, she is still consciously fighting, even when her body has already been conquered. I love the purity of heart that Ahern has too, with a devoted and reverent servant love.
If only I could be a man as kind and strong as Ahern. To devote my entire life to serving a noble lady, rushing to comfort her when Dahl forcefully kisses her, and even attempting to stop her from defiling herself by having sex with me, even if I want it myself more than anything else.
Celine reminds me of one of my all-time favorite heroines: Himekishi Lilia.
The multiple endings really helped paint a motif of virtuousness triumphing through actively fighting and struggling. She could have yielded at any point, but she kept fighting even when it felt futile. Even when Beth exposed all her deepest insecurities, Celine drew wisdom upon accepting her role and her responsibility.
The beauty of the conversation is, Beth is right.
She's correct about Celine's true nature. The rogues' true nature. Humanity's true nature. Her purpose was exposing Celine to herself.
However, she did not anticipate what followed: self-acceptance and love.
Celine learned to accept the truth - yes, underneath she is depraved, has insatiable desires, and doesn't deserve what she's been given. However, those don't define her. Humans are much more than their basest desires.
As Beth questioned in the last conversation, why fight so hard and risk lives to protect and defend people who are just depraved and unappreciative? Who, as we see in another ending, are capable of torturing and raping their lord Celine and taking out their bitterness on her?
She has the compassion to understand that those vile urges within those men stem from their own weakness, their powerlessness and defenselessness in a cruel world. And so they are to be protected. Not because they deserve it, but because they need it.
If noble lords like Celine can go through being raped by demons and tentacles but still come out of it having retained their purity, their character, and their hope, then perhaps I can go through being a despicable loser who jerks off to rape and ntr hentai and vr porn as a man renewed and made clean, who protects women and treats them with respect. And doesn't savage his own mind and body, freed of objectifying real or fictional people.
Thank you, Celine. Your struggles will be with me, as I claim them for myself. I strive to live just a little bit more like you.