RPGM - Completed - Sonia and the Hypnotic City [v1.03] [StudioNAZE/Kagura Games]

It's an easy game and pure repetition. If you like walking galleries, this is your game. There's nothing new, but the scenes are good and the art is cool, but there's no real story... basically walk from point A to point B and repeat the same actions.

Nice, relatively short and easy game. Classic RPGM h-game. Art style is good. There is only 1 decision whch matters (bad or good end) and you are forced to play linear.

Great game for various hypnosis lovers (me), but I think it's nothing special for anyone else.

Also, bad ending is very dissapointing compared to some arousing H-scenes from previous events. 3,5/5 but because of bad end i give 3 stars.

Walking gallery unlocker but a really good one. Art is great, game is short, some battles (iirc 3 or 4) that after failing few times can be skipped. Rather easy battles though. No need to lose to get bad ends, if you win at certain moments, bad ends are ulocked in gallery. Fisrt scenes get unlocked rather fast and you can keep pressing Ctrl through everything.
All in all, great fap material.

Sonia and the Hypnotic City is a relative rarity in that my criticisms of it are few. It knows what it is, and it plays to it well.

Starting with that, I'd like to say what I do feel is the primary negative of the game: Sonia is stupid. Really, impressively stupid. Realistically, she shouldn't be a knight, because I sincerely doubt someone at her level of intelligence would know which way to hold her sword.

Her naivete is clearly intended to be her charm, that corruption of innocence, and it works - but it requires a substantial suspension of disbelief to get there. Stupid characters tend to work poorly in "corruption" because there's just not all that much up there to to corrupt. I would argue, however, that it's less impactful here, as the mind control genre is about involuntary submission, rather than the willing submission you typically find in corruption. Even then, the game does manage to hit that mark with the eventual loss of her virginity.

Aside from that, however, there's a lot I can praise here.

The necessary exposition is given elegantly, told somewhat visually through an encounter in the village square. It's not complex, it doesn't need to be, it knows what it is.

Scenes are rapid fire, with clear setup and delivery. How Sonia arrives from scene to scene is logical enough to maintain the facade, which again, is all it needs to be.

The scenes themselves are largely varied, hitting a good amount of different content. While not all may be to your personal liking, they all play into the central theme of dehumanizing Sonia, the core goal of the corruption genre, so even then they manage to be enjoyable so long as you're engaged in that aspect and not the simple porn on the screen.

I do see some criticisms of the game's lack of choice, and while I generally do agree choice is important for an immersive experience, here I find that lack of choice to be vital to the theme: You, as Sonia, are no longer yourself, you should not be making choices. The inability to choose, to be forced down a path, is conceptually what forceful corruption is, and in that lack of choice, the game manages to immerse you as the victim. Even moreso as a mind control game where Sonia does not realize this.

The game is, then, almost entirely linear with the exception of one choice which steers you to one of the two endings. I think that linearity goes a very long way towards playing the victim given the genre.

And so everything Sonia and Hypnotic City aims to do it really does very well. It could be improved, I don't think it's perfect, but I think it's very good.

As usual, nobody knows how to draw pussies, and they are always out of place, it doesn't matter if it is 3d or 2d, so thats is for the quality of the art.

You go to the church and in a very predictable twist the girl gets hypnotized by the church dude. One of the particular instructions is " you can not ask for help, you will do it with your own power" well, for me the hypnosis thing is basically turning a chracter into a fetish container and send it anywhere the plot needs it to be, so from a narrative point of view is basically turning the character into an object, obviously lacking any agency. Anyway, its bad, and when its done poorly, even more.

You leave the church and if you go to the brothel there is a message saying that another girl from the group is already taking care of that aprt of the investigation and the first thing it comes to my mind is "PREMISE BROKEN" right there. The are wasn't that good to keep me invested, the predictability didnt help, but the lack of consistency did it for me.
After putting the collar and receiving instructions nothing changed, it would be a nice starting point to build up something, cause these "corruption" games usually fail to corrupt the player and just force you more than once to make a couple of choices under the threat of locking you out of the game.

And the more stupid is the first scene in the bath where 3 guys hypnotize a girl and bath with her and she leaves the room a virgin. What are the odds that in a fantasy setting men are actually more civilized than in the reality?

Well, plot sometimes has to do stupid things, but that scene is 2 renders or 3, the art is the usual bad, adn suspension of disbelief is muredered. I can't recommend this

Originality - 50%
Renders - 75%
Playability - 100%
Performance - 100%
Bugs free - 100%
Animations - 0%
Amount of content - 40 %

Total - 66%

Sweet RPG maker game, artwork is solid, although it's not animated. There isn't much content overall, as the game is pretty straight forward - that's not necessarily a bad thing, if you just want to fap.

Sonia and the Hypnotic City is not an easy game to review. On one side, I can't even call it a game. Player is completely ripped of the ability to choose and walk to where they want to. On the other, this is definitely a good porn experience. In order to review it properly I have designed some kind of my rating system. That way I will make sure that the overall rating will be justified.
Rating is divided into four categories: Gameplay, Story, Porn and Miscellaneous. Each has four sub-caterogies, for each I will give a separate rating from 0 (abomination) to 4 (great). Therefore, each section will have a rating from 0 to 16. In the end, all sections score will be combined into one and divided by 12.8 (64/5) in order to fit into standard F95 rating system. Lets go!
Gameplay:
Performance [How the game plays?]
Despite being made in RPGM, this game almost completely lack of any gameplay aside from "walk there, talk with X, repeat". It's more of a visual novel at this point - but no. Because you don't have any choices (aside from one which determines the ending) in dialogues. This game would've been a lot better if the player had an option to choose where to go. Bar? Inn's baths? Mansion? Brothel?
There is also a little bit of turn-based combat for the bosses. Since they are all lame I wouldn't bother to describe it and simply move to the rating: 1/4
Variability [What else player can do in the game?]
You can't do anything. You may talk with some NPCs but there's nothing you will learn from them. There are no items lying around and there are no side-quest activities - just follow the route the game has already lied in front of you. Rating - 0/4
Immersiveness [How well gameplay mechanics are implemented into the game?]
There is a thing in the menu called "hypnosis list" which shows all of the hypnotic traits Sonia's brain has been affected by - which is nice. There is also a weird list of, I dunno, some sort of everything that happens to Sonia in the form of text commands, like in some text RPGs - however, since there are no RPG stats, I find it rather useless. Rating - 2/4
Balance [How well the game is balanced in terms of difficulty in order to keep the gameplay interesting?]
There is no gameplay (in my opinion) so there's nothing to balance out. 0/4
Total: 3/16
Story:
Main plot [What drives the characters (and player) further into the story?]
The story is about Sonia - a Holy Knight which has a task to investigate the rumors about hypnotic powers in a small town. During investigation, Sonia will be hypnotized multiple times, but still will be able to defeat the four evil guys and return back (if we're talking about good ending).
If you ask me, I find it rather unrealistic that somebody which was affected by hypnosis so many times could defeat anybody more than once. And since this game lacks of any choices, I would rather to just enjoy how a well trained holy knight gets mentally destroyed and dissolves in lust without any chance to resist. Thankfully, the game provides me this turn of events. But if you like the good endings - you probably will be disappointed by the fact that you can't do anything in order to prevent Sonia from being brainwashed at least once.
Villains are all chiches. Wanting to revive some sort of a demon about which we don't know anything at all. The pope gives us a collar, which is a hint for other men in the town that Sonia is somewhat special for the four evil guys - but it isn't developing during the game. In conclusion, this game is a gift for people to prove that plot in porn games is not needed. Rating - 1/4
Characters [Are they interesting? Have unique personalities? Developing during the game?]
Sonia is actually nice! Despite the fact that we can't controll her actions, she's still proving herself an interesting character. I would even say that she's acting reasonable during the whole game (which, on practice, still wouldn't be enough to remain sane) and it is a great entertainment watching her "developing" from a holy knight into a born slut gradually. Could it be better? - probably yes, if we also had some personalities instead of blank villains, but we have what we have. Rating - 3/4
Lore [What the story tells about the game's world and people that live in there?]
The only things we may learn about this world is that there's a church and there's some evil devil which some guys want to revive. That's all, folks!
Justified rating - 0/4
Branching [Does various dialogues, choices, etc appear based on player's walkthrough?]
And now we're coming to reason why this game also can't be called a visual novel, although I've said that previously multiple times already. We don't have any choices in game, player can't do anything. And there is no NG+ which would've change at least something during the second walkthrough.
Truly disappointing. Rating - 0/4
Total: 4/16
Porn:
Quality [Are H-scenes in the game good in terms of art and action?]
Great art and believable hypnosis is what makes me change my opinion on this game. If anything, you should play this game just because it has some really nice porn in it which you, probably, won't find elsewhere. Watching how slowly Sonia is changing her behavior under the hypnosis and how clevel that hypnosis is actually implemented into game is (like, "Sonia, you're a Holy Knight and you shouldn't afraid about being hypnotised since it won't affect you at all" - this is actually very great!). Rating - 4/4
Quantity [How many of H-scenes are presented in the game?]
And there's also everything fine with quality. I completed the game in about 1,5 hours and I got around ~30 H-scenes - which is quite a lot for that amount of time. But there's no such thing as a lot porn, right? Rating - 4/4
Diversity [Are H-scenes presented for various characters, situations, kinks?]
Dicks sniffing, raw vaginal sex, peeing, voyeurism, pregnation, prostitution, exhibitionism - pretty good list of kinks for me even if we're not including the most important one, hypnosis. Sadly, it all could've been better if the game would've allowed us to explore it freely and engage in various activities - but this is still pretty nice. Rating - 3/4
Achievement [Is it hard to get the H-scenes? Does it feel justified?]
All you have to do is to follow the damn train, CJ. Which, actually, can be harder than you would've expect: people are meant to play porn games. But it is not hard to get all H-scenes. They all will be unlocked in one walkthrough and it is pretty justified. Rating - 4/4
Total: 15/16
Miscellaneous:
Design [How good the interface of the game looks like?]
I would say it looks bad. Weird zoom with which you barely see anything on screen, that 'virgin' window which you can't remove anywhere, spamming of the text commands which doesn't brings anything to the game itself...
Aside from that, this is a standard RPGM menu layout. Nothing unique. Rating - 1/4
Music [How does the game sound?]
It sounds nice. BGM is not annoying, sound effects are in place. Nothing extraordinary but also nothing annoying. Rating - 2/4
Mapping [How well locations for the game were made?]
Honestly, with this zoom I barely payed attention to anything on game map. I needed to launch it once again just in order to glance at it.
It is actually decent. Detailed, but not too much. Sadly, you have no reason to explore it so mapping completely loses all it's purpose for the player. Rating - 2/4
Optimisation [Are there any issues with the game's performance? Lags? Bugs?]
The version I've played has a bug in recollection room. It is not critical, but still unpleasant.
Aside that, I think that this game is pretty optimised. No lags, no freezes, no sudden quits. Rating - 3/4
Total: 8/16
Time for a final remark. Despite the low rating for the game I still would recommend to play it, as this is one of the best hypnosis kink you can experience in porn games. Just for the sake of porn, spend a few hours.
But if you came for the gaming experience - better not. There are many other games of same kind that provides a better gameplay and story.
Overall: 30/64 - or 2/5

Sonia and the Hypnotic City [v1.03] [StudioNAZE/Kagura Games]
Premise: I have not completed the game, in fact, I dropped it after a while.
I don't recommend the game only for a simple but annoying flaw, the sub menu that says "virgin" and the heroine's body is always present and it's one of the most annoying things I've ever seen in a game.
I tried in the options, but it is not possible to disable it, tried to click all the keys on the keyboard but nothing.
In short, I think it's impossible to play it like this (or at least I can't, it's too annoying), so I don't recommend it.

It's a VN LARPing as a game, if you have a kink for playing as a cum bucket with no agency this is your 'game'. If you want an actual RPG where you get to play and it's a real game, then keep moving.

As I can't post a brief review here's a few words to fill up the word count. Art is at least good but god damn does it piss me off to have zero agency while my character gets rail roaded into doing whatever the game wants with literally almost no agency. There's only a handful of choices which likely dictate the ending you receive, other than that I have no clue why the devs pretend this is a game, they could've just made this in renpy

[Review of Completed version on 11/10/2022]

Have you ever played D&D with a Dungeon Master who wishes they were playing your character instead of you? You know, a DM who just railroads you from scene to scene without any respect for your own intentions as a player?

That's this game in a nutshell.

Almost none of the admittedly many scenes are optional, so you have to sit through them even if they don't do anything for you, rubbing the dialogue SKIP button harder than you're rubbing yourself. The only control you really have is whether to move Sonia from one scene to the next, or to instead turn the "game" off. It's almost two hours of this drudgery.

I think there's also roughly 4 or 5 actual combat encounters, but because of the weird and poorly implemented combat system, you get handheld through those as well. I like that the developer tried something different, but this attempt at changing things up was just an abject failure.

The one thing I can give to this game is that the scenes were to my taste, and the art itself was good. It's a shame I had to "play" this to get to them. I would have rather read a doujinshi or watched something -- at least videos have a playback bar so I can skip around to what I like.

I usually give a 3-star rating minimum to games that make me cum, but this is just too bad for even that.

Is it fair to rate a game based purely on expectation and potential? When one masquerades as an RPG but is actually a VN using RPGM and only providing the illusion of choice to lure RPG seekers in, I would say so.

There are some neat concepts here, particularly regarding the stacking and specific hypnoses that if employed in an actual game would would've had had great potential, but sadly, the developer lacked such ambition and instead only presents a completely on-rails adventure.

i think it has a really good premise but the execution was really bad. the drawing is nice, but it doesn't update with the scenes/writing. so you basically have 1 picture and bunch of writing, quite boring.

so scenes are bad and execution falls flat... i couldn't even give it a 3star because i didn't find it fappable despite liking these types of games. honestly it just gets boring, lots of wasted potential.

the only reason i could give it 3 because some people might like it because it's pretty and good base story but it just falls so flat for me that i can't bring myself to rate it higher despite the quality of still images.

TL;DR: 1 point for the hypnosis gimmick and 1 point for the art, everything else falls flat.

This is made in RPGM, but it is hardly an RPG, it's more akin to a VN where you simply guide the protag from one point to another so you can watch her be your typical hentai game protag who is just about as intelligent as a goldfish.

The game throws a bunch of meaningless choices at you such as whether or not you want to enter certain rooms or buildings, I suppose the dev thought that this would make the game appear interesting and full of choices?

As for the hentai content, the art is good, the protag herself is a miss for me, not a big fan. And even if I was, I'd be disappointed since it feels like a big chunk of content revolves around her pissing herself, which gets pretty fucking boring after a while, I must admit.

The hypnosis gimmick is interesting, and would have actually made for a fantastic open game where certain choices has your character stuck with certain 'suggestions' that affect the gameplay loop and perhaps some elements of corruption, but this is not an open game, it's a VN with a bit of flair.

the only good thing i can say about this game is that it has good art. Other than that, It's just as interactive as a kinetic novel. I stopped caring about the story after the 2nd ingame day. Afterwards i just held down on the ctrl key and went where the game told me to go. I guess the combat system unique, but you get the same freedom in that as the rest of the game... PLUS KINETIC NOVELS! Insight succeeds? cool now counter whatever has the highest number. failed? defend... Why this game was made with RPGM i guess is for the develper(s) to be as lazy as they please when making backrounds. Don't touch this game... the only saving grace from me giving it a 1 star rating was the art. Atleast THAT had some effort put into it i guess...

Quite a simple game that doesn't bother with pointless combat like many other RPGM games.

The game pretty much takes you from one event to the next without having to do much, although the game was a bit short one can appreciate the fact that the game didn't make you walk all around the place grinding monsters or doing mostly pointless quests just for the sake of it.

The art is fairly decent and while the story wasn't great or overly complicated it served its purpose well and didn't feel off at any point.

My only complaint was that the game was a bit too short but you can also take it as how much I actually liked it.

It's more of a Visual Novel really than a game because your decisions don't really matter. You get railroaded through the story. But the story is excellent. The artwork is great and it's actually funny. Played it two times already and will play it again.

There are some games where you wonder why the developers even bothered to make a video game instead of just releasing a doujinshi/comic involving the characters. And this is definitely among the top of the list. The "game" plays out like a visual novel without virtually any input from the player. You're either teleported to the next location or told to go to X and not allowed to go anywhere but X. RPGM is a terrible engine for this kind of game as you have to walk to the location mentioned. If you weren't going to allow me to do anything else, why even bother letting me walk for certain portions of it?

The story isn't much. I'm a fan of the corruption genre but hypnotism and lack of player agency severely cheapens the experience. The combat is pointlessly inserted. You seldom have any chance of actually engaging in combat with anyone. And the couple of times you do engage are annoying. There was a novel take on the combat but it wasn't explored at all.

The only remotely redeeming factor to this game is the art. It's cute. Although even there the translucent men of the hentai universe emerge and they have never failed to annoy me. Aggravating.

If you're thinking about picking this up with the expectation that it's a game of some sort with any sort of player agence, you'll be sorely disappointed. My advice would be to either look up the CGs or actually watch hentai that doesn't make you suffer the travails of RPGM whilst delivering the same experience, or even worse. The flavour text is all there is to playing this game and it isn't even that great.

This is a linear visual novel where you are told or transported where to go next. The story is great from a hypnosis and corruption aspect slowly wearing away at our female protagonist defenses. So from that aspect it is somewhat arousing from a hypno-fetish perspective.

1. There does not appear to be a menu system with controls over music, sounds, and saving.
2. The gameplay (if you can call it that) is turn based and a bit clunky.
3. Translation of the dialog is good but does not include attack scene menus.
4. The graphics for movement are archaic and remind me of a N64 game.
5. The cut scene graphics are mediocre being that they show mannequins for guys, no animation and fully censored.

I strongly recommend the developer rework the entire game using an expanded story having multiple endings, but using modern menus, free range map movement, expanded 3D graphics, life like characters, and highly animated cut scenes showing hypnosis process and the sex that follows.

Ok this game is way to over rated, story is ok, gameplay there is barely any except for the fights and some special events. This is a VN you have no influence on the story it teleports you to the next scene, you see the next scene, then it teleports you to the next one etc. etc. very boring.

Very good. Great Mind Control story with dips into urination, exhibitionism, and a couple other fetishes. The lack of awareness of the effects really does it for me.

Gameplay-wise, the battles are simple. Counter your enemies attack. Some RNG, but I never lost a single battle. It's required to progress, but it's easy and not a main draw. I think there are only 4-5 battles in the game.

Story and events are rather linear, but the game communicates well what you are need to do next, so you'll never be lost.

I found myself asking why this needed to be in RPGMaker partway through. The battles are not a draw and don't add much. The only section that benefited from the engine was the streaking scenes (avoiding NPCs line of sight).

I still rate the game highly, though, because it delivers what it needs to, and well, the scenes with hypnosis are plentiful and explore different aspects/scenarios. It gives you a list of different triggers and alterations your character has accumulated. The only thing I could wish for was more.