V0.2.5 is available for tiers 3 & 4 supporters on Patreon and Subscribestar. The public release will be Tuesday, May 7th.
Content included:
Got time to finish the last two updates, V0.2.4 and V0.2.5, so reviewing time!
V0.2.4
- We are approaching the end of the line for Ayumi's corruptions, and it was fun while it lasted, haha. It's subtly amusing how the Dark Lord initially always starts off relatively polite and persuasive in lower levels of corruption but by the time it reaches level 3 or 4, he drops with the pretense and starts gaslighting them. He is like an insidious poison.
- The way Ayumi speaks to Fernsdin's mayor is borderline cult-ish, lol. I hope she and Yukako gets along well in building the Dark Lord's future church. It's almost a shame we can't use Yukako to start persuading nobles to join your cause once she is fully corrupted. Hopefully her mother can fill in that position.
- Like with the previous minigames, Ayumi by this point doesn't even care about the game anymore, just to feel good. Her reactions remind me of drug addicts, given how desperate she is to be good and feel good.
- I must say I like how the rebellion plot gets uncovered because the traitors have their own traitor, blabbering their real plan to save his own skin. I like this -- no plan survives first contact and one must always account the possibility of human error.
- The fact one of those Divines goes out of his way to meet your army and you in a skirmish is a pleasant surprise, and the following battle with him is an even more pleasant surprise. I enjoyed the battle because my party hasn't felt an actual challenge for a while by now. The war god lives up to his title, at least. This can be considered a boss battle preview to the fight against multiple gods in the capital.
- Honestly I am a little surprised seeing how Edar willingly listens to Majorius prepare for their planning. He doesn't quite feel like a god in that sense, more like a senior who respects a fellow warrior, even if it is younger. Also, seeing Erina's benevolence and compassion for the Dark Lord's slaves perfectly establish her as the first goddess you could get your hands on -- it is always fun to see how much you can taint purity, heheh.
V0.2.5
- Finally, I can cross off "get yourself a fallen princess" of my list. Ayumi turning to leave before she inevitably comes back to the Dark Lord is a nice dramatizer, and Yuma watching is a nice touch -- in some more updates, we will get our first demon, for sure.
- Can't help but notice how talkative Ayumi is when fully corrupted, more like Misaki than Yukako or Rina. Perhaps it is because she has more dialogues, considering it's her time to shine in this arc?
- Ah yes, wiping out mooks. Never gets old, and both my Dark Lord and Misaki get new skills for it too -- Dard Lord's Presense and Storm of Corruption, lol. I suspect the former is a typo, but that doesn't take away from how powerful it actually is. Lowering enemy Max HP? Not so useful on mobs, but will be devastating on bosses, especially if they can heal. Almost too much in fact, that I make a point to NOT use it.
- After wiping out squadrons of generic knights, I am quite happy to see Edar, Majorius and Erina be the boss fights of this arc. It is deeply entertaining seeing Erina's purification does absolutely nothing to the slaves, and it seems I have been doing right with reducing Romanos's willpower because even he is not affected, lol. Priceless, tis a shame no other Divine will try to purify the slaves again after this.
Also, the Divine duo and the human King give me my hardest fight so far. Majorius's battle sprite is really cool, by the way!
While I consciously make the choice not to use the Dark Lord's Presence, fighting the three of them is surprisingly difficult given how strong Erina's healing is and how often she uses Group Heal to easily regenerate 700+ HP per turn. I tried using Bind to paralyze her and neuter her healing, but for some reason no matter how many times I use Bind (either with the Dark Lord or Misaki), she cannot be bound. In the end, I concentrated all firepower to Erina so even if she uses heals every turn the total net damage would surpass her healing, and once she drops, the other two quickly follows.
- I don't think I found the "additional" endings for Romanos. Is it because he remains compliant with the Dark Lord in my play?
- Having sex with Ayumi in front of her unappreciative pricks of parents is quite satisfying, though I do have to say it probably isn't humiliating enough. Hopefully Hikari will have a particularly karmic corruption experience, heheh...
- I don't think I found the right person to talk with and start Hypatia capital compliance level, either. I spoke with most people I can find, be it in the Throne Room, Royal District and Religious District. Did I miss someone...?
- Another brazier lit up, this time by Ayumi. Good, we are getting closer to restoring what was lost. I have decided not to speculate on what is locked behind that door, and I am committing, haha.
Quite a few surprises in these two updates, and I am sure more to come. As usual, I will share free ideas as suggestions.
- Now that I think about it, Romanos is effectively useless when our opponents are Divines. Romanos did not surrender his free will to the Dark Lord, so any Divine can potentially restore him. This makes him a liability... if the purpose is combat, that is.
How about a quest to use him as a bait? If we dispatch him somewhere to do a task such as subjugation, with minimal forces so as to appear vulnerable but not too suspicious, a Divine might be tempted to send an angel or manifest in the hopes of reclaiming him, as he is a major asset against the Dark Lord.
Of course, Romanos has secretly been turning his current outpost into a much more simplified and scaled down version of the Dark Lord Castle, allowing the Dark Lord to transport to where Romanos is and ambush whichever angel or god who thought Romanos would be easy to reclaim. We get one more victim!
- Since I doubt the male Divines who descend would be corruptible, and killing them outright would be a waste, could they be used as sacrifices? As one of the masters of the physical realm and the holder of the concept corruption, the simple fact Divine blood is shed is a powerful idea of corruption.
If we sacrifice all three Divines (assuming we do beat them here in Zaratheon and they don't retreat back to their realms, anyway) then it might even be possible to create a pool of literal unholy force, which would be perfect to corrupt other powerful beings and for corruptive baptism. Yukako would get wet for those, heheh.
This has been quite a fun update, heheh. Lots of progression, promises of future victims. Naturally, I must give suggestions, and I will take care not to clash with my previous ones.
- Erina's purification ability has interesting potential. Since it can cleanse corruption and purify anybody with even the slightest discontent toward the Dark Lord's corruption, if we can reverse that it would be useful.
If the Dark Lord can learn from her how to "bless" individuals in a manner akin to the Divines, or if Erina is corrupted while retaining her purification powers, the potential is unimaginable: anyone with the slightest discontent toward the Divine, or toward the Supreme Goddess, or toward the Demon Queen, their minds can be infiltrated for a slow, gradual, and very enjoyable corruption experience, lol. Humans might not need mind infiltrations, but this is potentially useful to pave a standard for future non-human targets.
- Considering the Dark Lord was once a noble representative in the Hypatian Court, would it be reasonable to have a corruption target from the nobility?
Certainly a number of people would recognize who the Dark Lord is (or rather, was) and see his human identity as a factor to exploit. They might believe he became the Dark World for power and for women, so the nobles might send the most capable (and also the most manipulative) woman among them in an effort to charm and sway the Dark Lord, to keep the nobility in power. In other words, this will be a new type of corruption victim: someone who attempts to manipulate the Dark Lord, not realizing she has only danced in the palm of your hands the whole time, hahaha.
It helps that, in a fantasy medieval setting like this, nobilities usually need a number of factors which distinguish them from commoners/peasants, such as magical affinity (one of the reasons why most of modern world have moved on from nobility is because we don't have such tangible differences between nobles and normal people). So if this corruption target is also a human expert on magic (to contrast Yuma being an expert from the demon side), we can have more knowledge on our side.
As usual, feel free to ignore these, they are essentially free ideas. For now, that's all I have to say; this has been a great update, and I will faithfully wait for the next ones.