RPGM - Completed - Saki and the Crucible of Debauchery [Final] [Ofuro Works]

many of the other reviews say that this is a poor game with terrible mechanics. honestly? fair enough. so why the hell am i still giving it 4 stars?

because the hentai part is really really hot. that's it. i'm a really simple man. the cgs are hot. the art style is good. the situations are so god damn erotic especially with the amount of variation per scenario and how it gets more and more extreme the more you get fucked. if the gameplay is 1/5, then the hentai is 7/5 so it evens out to a 4/5 for me.

I can only give it a 3. Hell actually I'll give it a 2.

The cgs are pretty good, the battle scenes are alright, sound is fine.

but like.. it's just an excuse to slideshow a bunch of cgs and animations. And not even a good excuse either. The gameplay is straight up mediocre.

And they're not even that great or have that much variation. Unlock gallery, pick out the ones you like, move on. It honestly just felt like a more annoying e-hentai game cg gallery.

It runs at ~5 FPS. How am I supposed to rate this higher? Even if I load a save and open the gallery I still get absurdly bad performance. This was not the case with the revious games made by the same devs. Something clearly went wrong here.

Good art. Gameplay is fun when active and still fast when on auto. Multiple costumes to appeal to many people.
It could be useful to have something to skip / end early when you know a run is done instead of being forced to sit through it. I think there was an option in game but I never tested it.

Please check the spoiler directly below this disclaimer to understand the review.
AMOUNT OF EXPERIENCE: I've completed the game in normal mode (which is the base game mode and will be used to rate difficulty), completed the extra dungeon and looked at most scenes.

STORY:

Spoiler: yap+spoilers for the plot

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All I need to say is that the plot is REALLY shallow and is only to give you context on who the protag is and why they're exploring a cavern. Nothing else. 0.05/0.75 stars. Better than nothing, I guess.
ORIGINALITY: It's quite common seeing games where an exorcist (or shrine maiden in this case) venture into a dungeon to exorcise monsters for the sake of protecting the people. Thats why I feel it deserves 0.1/0.25 stars. It's common but I don't feel like its as used as a magical girl protag trope. It's unique enough.

DIFFICULTY: On normal difficulty, the game is actually good in difficulty. It's not complete suffering to play but it's not like spamming skills or attack equals instant win. If you're not cheating, the bosses and enemies can actually get somewhat difficult. You actually have to manage your skills, and their cooldown which is somethine unique you don't really see in hrpgs. The cooldowns are also somewhat punishing, and you can only really chain skills after reaching really high levels. You also have different forms to play with which give different buffs and debuffs. You also have to find synergies with certain skills, for example: ATK buff skill+high damage skill=OP instead of using one op skill. This is something appreciated and rare for hrpgs, because usually combat would consist of: grind weak enemies by spamming skills, sleep/use items if you run out of hp/mp, kill the boss, repeat. Ofcourse, there are ways to trivialise the game without cheating. For example, equipping the rice ball (remembering to upgrade to it's better variants) and the treasure chest (same with the rice ball) gives you not only an insane amount of xp which megabuffs your character, but you also get a lot of soul gems after each enemy which can be used to basically gacha roll for better items. You can obtain a semen-sucking chalice from the roll which lets you grind exp by continually losing. I'm honestly not sure why you would do this, because if you do have to resort to this you might as well play easy mode. Still, the difficulty is well-balanced and I think it deserves a 0.25/0.25 stars.
ENGAGEMENT: The way the game engages you is quite unique compared to other RPGs. There is no overworld dungeon. All you can do is move forward and explore the lair. It's nice because you'll never know what's coming next. You could stumble onto a trap, an enemy, treasure or nothing. This forces the player to always be expecting an enemy or trap which makes the game automatically better than an overworld dungeon, where even though there is more exploration you'll always see what's coming, such as traps, enemies and treasure. 0.25/0.25 stars.
OVERWORLD: There is no overworld. It's just one fight to another. The issue with the engagement is that it sacrifices a potentially good overworld dungeon. And since there is no area other than the dungeons in this game the only place you can freely explore is the extras area, which is basically just the recollection room. I would've maybe preferred a typical RPGM overworld except you can't see enemies or traps and you encounter them in specific areas in a map, similar to Pokemon. Anyways... All that talking before is useless because this game is a dungeon crawler. 0.12/0.25 stars.
LENGTH: On normal mode, you can expect to be playing the game from 2-3 hours depending on luck and pace. Compared to the potential amount of scenes you can get (which is all battlefuck/defeat scenes) it's 5-9 minutes until you meet a new enemy, lose to them or get bound, get raped and then beat the enemy, then you meet the next enemy and you can see the cycle. The average player would probably lose to a couple of enemies or bosses, but not really much else which is around 40 mins per scene obtained. The amount of scenes you can obtain really fluctuated but I feel most players will have that speed of obtaining scenes. It's not that bad, I guess. 0.1/0.25 stars.
PERFORMANCE: For the length of the game, and content it provides, the game is bloated. 2 gigabytes is already large, but for this game it's massive in comparison to content. It also struggles to perform during rape scenes, constantly lagging in FPS. the only redeeming quality here is that there's no gamebreaking bugs, probably only because the game is easy to playtest (since there is no overworld). 0.05/0.25 stars.

ART QUALITY: I think the quality of the art is great. It's well above average and fits into the modern anime artstyle. Nothing else really to say about it. Though I should mention this game has no censorship. 0.6/0.75 stars.
SCENE QUALITY: The scene quality is very nice. The game uses only unique scenes, with no recycled poses or anything like that, which is great to see. There are a LOT of scenes for the game length, with 13 defeat scenes, and one battlefuck scene for each enemy, which there are a lot of in this game. I think around 70 enemies. The scenes are partially animated (not fluid movement and not everything is animated) but that's still better than the stiff non-moving images we typically see in HRPGs. There are also sound effects and I should mention the scenes are VERY customisable, especially in the extras room. 0.5/0.5 stars.
VARIETY: This game has really good variety and is probably the most impressive game I've seen so far when representing it's tags. It has a relatively large amount of tags, and yet all of them are in at least a couple of scenes. I wouldn't play this game for corruption though, the mechanic is useless and only increases pleasure for the protag. 0.5/0.5stars.

DIALOGUE: No dialogue, and narration is only really utilised as saying the obvious. 0/0.25 stars.
TRANSLATION: Publisher translation, all images are translated and the UI isn't squished. Really good and understandable overall, 0.25/0.25 stars.
VOICE ACTING: Character has full Japanese voice acting in Hscenes and battles, also in other insignificant things as well. 0.5/0.5 stars

Played on final version, hard mode

Easily some of the best turn based combat there is in the market
- cooldowns on skills over an MP bar means you can't spam an ideal option, you have to use all your skills at the correct times, find the synergies with them
- some equipment goes beyond stat increases, gives you a lot to play around with
- the buff n spam gameplay you usually end up gravitating to in rpgm is very minimized here because of above, so gameplay feels very fresh
- exploration is removed so you can focus on battles, instead you advance a progress bar of 0-100%, you have to pause adventuring to full heal, buy items, manage equipment for the cost of slower advancement
- Being restrained is a key component of battling (a pure non-penetration virgin run is near impossible, low corruption is tracked another way), and probably has the second best range of options and metagame out of this scenario in a hentai game I've ever seen
- Enemies are actually threatening! Starting on hard mode is highly recommended so you can get the full experience of losing - there's a good chance you may
The gameplay is this game is incredible compared to it's RPGM peers, game is playable for that alone.

Sex content is unreal in quantity and quality. All scenes voiced and animation, with progressing levels the longer a scene goes on. The only text is narration from the game status bar, no vn-like scenes. I haven't gone through all the content yet, but it seems like every enemy has their own special scene nothing is reused, which is baffling. The girl has four different hair/clothes palettes for you to choose from. A lot of options to customize how scenes look, like how comic bubbles and sfx text looks for example.

Game has some small downsides like no progression with clothes tearing, no way to manually skip after a defeat scene, they never tell you the exact percentage of succeeding on a restraint break (i want to make more informed decisions), items felt underrepresented.

This is probably my h-game of the year I feel compelled to go back and complete a run on the hardest difficulty, definitely worth your time and faps

Incredible art, good animations, plenty of variations.
The problem is that the "game" is shit.
An awful forced RNG path forward.

Do nothing slowly as the game auto-plays.
No way to get stronger on your own IN AN RPG GAME, must go forth, even meaning losing.
RNG paths, RNG grabs, RNG escapes, RNG item drops, RNG item GACHA.
There's plenty of equipment, but with 2 accessory slots its just tedious.
Menu navigation is often bad- nested menus, full backing out of menus.

You could easily bust a nut to this, bet whether its out of horniness or frustration is another problem.

It is better than their former titles. I was skeptic about entering it, having played their prior games on here.

Like their other games, it is still simple dungeon crawling and then gacha item collecting. If you played the other two released on here(or others that haven't been,) you would know what to expect here.

Scenes
Except this one got an update with more content. Large enemy variety, various animated sexual scenes. Each enemy has its own scene and with 59 or so enemies(may be more) then you get that many scenes, plus some misc additional ones within a scene.

Combat
Umm, it is more or less similar to prior games. The only difference you get some transformations that change how the girl looks and some of those forms have their own ability to use while in that form. I think they played differently as well. Also, at later levels, you can stun lock/grapple evade enemies. (Not sure about higher difficulties, I haven't tested all modes, yet. Only did normal run/filthy casual)

Story
More or less nonexistent. I don't know, I vaguely remember what was going on.

Exploration
...It is Ofuro Work game. I don't even know if they do anything other than dungeon crawlers.

Final Thoughts
Visually it is appealing. It has a boss rush mode as well on completion along with an extra dungeon and a few enemies there as a bonus. Scenes are again varied with all enemies having their own. Honestly, I feel it should be between a 4 and 5. Also, I will admit I am not that big on dungeon divers, so if you are a fan of that genre you will probably love this game as my view of it may be a bit skewed/biased there.

Completed the game on lewdicrous difficulty, which forces you into combat with negative status effects since the items to cure them are rare. The RPG combat is fairly nicely balanced, except for hypnosis which sometimes stunlocks you into a loss with nothing you can do about it. The large amount of skills at your disposal wouldn't be a problem were it not for the RPG Maker UI, which makes scrolling through them kind of a chore.

H-scene wise, the game is probably as close as you can get to high quality without having actual animation. Each scene is highly detailed, and there are a good number of them. Unfortunately, it looks like they do not change as Saki's corruption level rises.

So full disclosure: I love this guys games. Akari and the Abyss got me into binding H-Games, so the chance to go through that as a shapeshifting shrine maiden? If I could pay him, I would.

Saki and the Crucible of Debauchery is a straightforward game, designwise. There's several levels, during which you will advance through them automatically; most of your encounters are going to be battles, but there's also traps and treasures occasionally. The battle system, in and of itself, isn't terribly special for an RPGMaker game; you have several skills with varying cooldowns, though this one does add in a twist by having skills you can only use (or get a benefit from) in certain forms.

The H-Game aspect of it comes in binding attacks; the enemies will first try to strip you, and once your clothes are fully torn, they'll try and catch you. Midway through the game you'll get a skill that makes it impossible to be held while it's active, meaning you'll only have a narrow window where you can be caught, but why would you play an H-Game and not see the H-Scenes?

Saki uses a system I usually only see in MSub Games: Sexual energy. Every time you climax, you lose one energy point. Lose all of them, and it's game over; you're back to the start. Also, most enemies will advance their hold if either of you climax, and some have as many as five layers of binding. Struggling free (something not terribly hard, with the exception of the cooldown) breaks all layers, but if you're caught again you're plunged all the way back down.

There's also some status effects that will increase lust damage taken, and make it harder to struggle, but they don't seem to have a terribly large effect on gameplay.

It also includes several anti-frustration features; one of the items you can get fairly easily are potions that increase your abilities (and all of them can be used together), all bad statuses are restored when resting (though you get items early on to reapply them as desired), and should you fall in battle, you won't be forced to go all the way back to the start again; in fact, bosses don't heal when you're defeated, meaning you won't wall on a boss you can reach and damage.

If I had a complaint (and I do have a couple), it's that it's still not clear what the lust crest does as it advances (it increases lust damage you take when it's active), which feeds into my main complaint.

The story is fairly passable (Saki is a shrine maiden fighting demons), but Saki herself (much like Akari) is pretty flat as a character. The voice acting is very much appreciated, but it would have been really fun to see her reacting to various status effects, or have them come into play in the text during H-Attacks.

All and all, like his other games, this is a well-designed game, the images are top-notch (You get extra points in my book for avoiding the use of AI images), and it balances difficulty well; it just would have been nice to see more on the story side. I'm still giving it five stars, it's an amazing game and...does exactly what it's supposed to, fill out a gallery of sexy poses, but there's still room for improvement.

the best iteration of this game format, the cg is great and highly customizable and gameplay is ok.
no exploration or story just a gauntlet of enemies and bosses until you reach the end.
Edit: this version has the extra area

Pros
Very simple battle system
Variety of CGs though some are similar on previous games of Ofuro
Can be played with one hand (Yes I mean it)
Cute protagonist with transformations

Cons
No exploration at all as usual from Ofuro Games
I played the game MTLed and not a single time any enemies tried to do apply any status change apart from clothe break and mucus, not a single one tried to put Saki on trance or give the curse crest

version final

this game has absolutely 0 story. and when i say 0 story i mean that. the only story is 2lines. you are a nun and want to kill demons so you went into this cave. that's it. no npcs in game, no shop, just battling monsters.

i normally hate these kinds of games but surprisingly it's not low effort. there are around 50unique monsters with all unique battlefuck animations. and some variations to them (blindfold, +blowjob + anal etc).

corruption as a stat exist but i dont think it has any use whatsoever.

the animation doesn't move that much, but it moves a little so it can barely be called "animated".

i find multiple battle fuck scenarios sexy and surprisingly the game kept my attention and i wasn't bored despite the lack of story. you have a lot of skills and transformations you dont use mana just cooldowns, it was a bit more fresh to the usual rpgm battle system with that many skills (and you have to use most of them due to cooldowns) most skills have some different effects. so fights are not boring at all.

so as fun+H-scenes i give it a 4/5. it has tentacles/humanlike/slimelike creatures as well.

but even gameplaywise, there is no backlash for resting (full hp + debuff reset) and you can turn on autobattler so it just does everything by itself.

strange game. with a basic story it could easily be 5/5 imo but like this it feels like a demo, although with the amount of unique monsters+art it's clearly not a demo but it was worked on for a long time.


you can finish it in like 3-4hours on normal difficulty. gallery is unlocked in the end. ppl uploaded completed saves already.

(edit: after you finish the game, you can unlock arena where you can fight monsters one after another without rest. 59 monsters altogether. for some reason i played all the level so it's addicting, probably due to good fight system)