RPGM - Star Knightess Aura [v0.43.0] [aura-dev]

Just the best. Lots of games are balanced pretty easily; if you just play safe and slow you'll never encounter TF or sexual content. Star Knightess Aura is balanced in a way where if you want to succeed you need to put yourself in the hero's shoes. Outsmart enemies, find the best combo, the counters and weaknesses.

Aura is cursed, and the game treats it that way. If you want to brute force through the story, you're penalized by accumulating corruption. This also gives you the option to roleplay as one of the game's antagonists, which gives the story even greater depth; two main characters, and you're playing against yourself.

These things make Star Knightess Aura unique. Corruption / TF is often very binary, win or lose 100%. The scenario this game gives you implies that it's a 1 in a million chance that Aura would make it out of this scenario unchanged. It does this not just through the story, but also thematically through gameplay.

This is my review after playing this game for more than 30 hours.

I will start from positive 1st then negative one

Positive

+It has time system where you can do only 1 or 2 per each skill/upgrading depending on condition of you have

+It has story between herself in Fantasy World and Real World which is good point since you can see her in 2 different perspective

+It has alteration system where certain actions will affect her in certain ways

Negative
-Characters are really bad in term of personality and the way they talk, especially on MC which is very ANNOYING and ARROGANT to see her talk like she KNOW EVERYTHING but in fact she is TOO DUMB to understand how to be objective and be rational. At least make her toned down and be more rational when talking to others, she just hated others when she was being objected and always called other TRASH and LOSER when she being full of herself. I dont understand what author making this or why making her like this. It just make others hate her completely.

-Extremely lack of grinding and everything was being too limited when you finish everything, you cant do anything at all since all resources are 1 TIME ONLY, you screwed up and restart from beginning again. Make them regain resources after several days passed like 2-3 days to make them farmable especially on harder difficulty.

-Time system also become huge burden especially when you are racing against time when you need to progress faster, you need to wait few days to make it avaiable

-Every action in her memory chamber need Corruption points to pay and it was VERY TEDIOUS to repeat again and again just for unlocking one and the easiest way to do it is use your SK and you gain 4 Corruption BUT limited to 1 PER DAY which again is TEDIOUS, just remove this system and we good to go

-Experience for lvling up characters are EXTREMELY LIMITED to Quests only, every single monster encounter DID NOT GIVE EXP at all and it wasting your own time just killing them, make them have EXP and we can progress faster and further. LVL 4 after progressing 20 days is EXTREMELY STUPID since no exp from monsters at all.

-Learning skills are also limited by time since you cant gain them instanly, instead wait for days and you can gain it, this is another tedious and boring implementation where you eventually had enough of this game and quit it since it was not worth waiting it while you meet requirement yet blocked by another unneccesary system.

-Lewd scenes are just lame and boring where your MC are being too full of herself and not even tried to acknowleged herself when she actually have no choice but tried to make that herself are worthy. There is no PRIDE when doing lewd stuff like that and BOYFRIEND things are not applied in FANTASY WORLD, she just being too DELUSIONAL about boyfriend and tried to protect herself while in reality she is massive HYPOCRITE

Negatives are outweighing than positives due points that I said and if devs are not tried to change requirement especially on learning skills and resource avaiability, I am afraid that when it released in mutiple platforms, this will gone badly and nobody tried to buying this game.

Interesting to play, very slow, but with a lot of history and decisions, excellent work.
Pros:
-Excellent mechanics
-Long Game
-Good narrative/Plot (very entertaining)
-Good CG Art
-Very intuitive

Cons:
-Very slow progress
-Very few "action" scenes (understandable for a WIP/DEMO)
-A bit challenging in some situations (better play on easy mode)

10/10 (I will definitely buy it when the game comes out)

It's a very slow burn corruption title, backed by inoffensive, if generic, RPGmaker combat and the like. That in and of itself wouldn't be an issue, and it largely isn't.

What is an issue is the writing, the thing that needs to be perfect and spotless for this kind of game. It isn't! While it isn't a harrowing mess like some MTL game, given it's written in native English and all, nor is it typos and grammar mistakes galore (although there's some, but I didn't notice enough to take me out of it) the real issue is the actual writing itself. In short, it reads like a shounen anime. Lengthy shouting, both sides yelling each other's name, etc. Which isn't necessarily bad, but it repeats itself a fair bit and is backed up by generic RPGmaker stuff, so maybe a few facial animations while two sprites look at each other and go "AURAAAAAAAA" "RICHAAAAAAAAAAAARD I'LL KILL YOOOOOOOU" etc. It doesn't really work, it has no gravitas. The more down-to-earth scenes hit a similar vibe, too.

It fails as a basic RPG as well simply because the two antagonists' whole characterization revolves around "I'm an unfeeling sociopath." It all reads like a ProZD sketch, as the protagonist/writing-team has the absolute gall to call them out on being so flat while not actually doing anything about it.

I have very specific tastes and SKA is the game I've been searching after for years. It is an undeniably slow burn and I would do it all again in a heartbeat. If this game seems like your kind of thing, try it right now because it probably is. If it doesn't seem like you'd love it, you probably won't even like it.

As stated earlier in previous reviews, the high rating is more due to the high potential of the game, rather than what it is at the moment.

I must admit, the author puts a lot of effort into this game and it is really noticeable, however, the game has a number of serious shortcomings, which unfortunately can hardly be fixed in any way. So let's go straight to them.

Negatives

The main basis of the plot is the corruption of the protagonist and her confrontation with the demon king and his right-hand Alicia, who directly brainwashes the protagonist. This is where the main problem lies. Alicia as well as the demon king Richard are the standard of cartoon villains. Their motivation is simple as hell, they do evil just because they can. And everyone else is just trash, unworthy as they see it. And while Richard gets the least attention in the story (which is odd, knowing that he is the archenemy here), his right-hand Alicia not only gets half of the playtime, but is also given the opportunity to play on her behalf and perform brainwashing manipulations. Based on my time with her, I can say that this is probably the worst antagonist I've ever seen. The author tries to show us that she is cunning and is able to calculate a lot beforehand, but from her worldview and all her monologues, she gives the opposite impression. She is essentially a teenage nihilist with an extremely primitive, if not moronic, view on the reality around her. In such stories, where there is a confrontation of several personalities and their views, the figure of the villain plays as much a crucial role as the figure of the protagonist. Take the Star Wars universe, which character comes to mind first? I can guess that it is very likely that you will name the Darth Vader. So if the villain figures are just pathetic, the work loses a lot of its value. Honestly, I had a hard time making myself keep reading Alicia's monologues, I wanted to grab my head and yell, "what the fuck are you talking about?" and then quit the game. Nevertheless, I made it to the second city and did a fair amount of brainwashing manipulation on the heroine to see where it goes. This is where the second significant problem comes in.

Manipulation of the heroine's mind, oddly enough, only affects the real world and has almost no effect in the fantasy world. Maybe this will change in the future, but it seems to me, that the changes that are already in the game should have their effect not only in the real world. Now about the nature of these changes. It may seem like matter of taste, but essentially we're turning the main character into a glamorous bimbo who can spend hours choosing a shitty pair of shoes, spending all her money on looks and gossiping about celebrity’s life. Honestly, this is not the kind of depravity you expect from a game of this genre, not to mention the fact that this kind of behavior is not give you sympathy to say the least. Nevertheless, if you start brainwashing her, be prepared to spend a good hour reading about shoes, fashion magazines, and other crap. Well, it's also notable that we turn the main character into a second Alicia, as she essentially rewrites her to suit herself. Here, it seems to me, the author has taken the wrong path for what the audience was expecting. The genres also include NTR, which suggests that the heroine will be cheating on her boyfriend. And here I think the game could have benefit from it, if focus of the game was set on heroine's sexual discoveries about herself, opening some dark desires such as cheating on her boyfriend. These things would have been much more interesting to look at. There could also have been an emphasis on rewriting heroine’s noble values into selfishness, desire for gain, mercilessness, which could have been reflected immediately in the fantasy world. Not only would it have turned the character from protagonist to villain more quickly, but it might have made her try much harder to prevent these changes. It would also reflect the protagonist's struggle with herself. The game already has willpower, but it has little effect on anything, but you could make thresholds at which the heroine could no longer make decisions as her old self, which would make it necessary to monitor this parameter more, otherwise people would start noticing that the hero does not behave as befitting a hero. And the funny part in it would be if at some point she will find it easier to achieve her goals if she use these foul methods. However, this is purely my vision. What we have now could also work, if the villain who makes this brainwashing would not be so disgusting.

The real world vs. the fantasy world. Here I have mixed feelings about the author's decisions. The main character, despite being intelligent, somehow fails to notice that the voice in her head in the fantasy world uses the same speech patterns (Phrases with 1000% as an example) as Alicia does in the real world. You could argue that if she revealed her true nature right away there would be no corruption, but I don't agree with that. She can't get rid of her influence anyway, and the changes that being made in her mind is hard to prevent. The main drawback here, in my opinion, is that there is no confrontation in the real world. The main character makes almost no attempts to figure out who stand behind this voice, there is no attempt to fight Richard in the real world, although we know that some powers from the fantasy world work in the real world as well. And the fact that, both sides essentially go to the same school and know about each other, but neither of them tries to use the powers for their own purposes raises questions. I realize this may sound cruel, but Richard and Alicia, could simply assemble a gang of thugs and kidnap Aura's friends to blackmail her or threaten to kill her boyfriend and then break her psyche as they wanted. But none of this happens and Aura, who pretending to be an ordinary schoolgirl doing nothing to keep herself and her friends safe.

Last but not least is the visual component of the game. It should be noted that this is my second playthrough of the game. The first time I ran the game over a year ago and encountered a huge amount of placeholders where art was supposed to be. I liked the intro and decided to give the game time to grow with visuals. Unfortunately, even now you can see that there is very little of it in the game. In fact, even the static figures of the main characters are always in the same pose, especially the figure of the protagonist, who always, under all conditions, holds her straightened palm at her hip, which after a while begins to seriously bore and hurt the immersion. As for the quality of the art and scenes themselves, there's one thing to say, it's not bad, but it's not good either. It doesn't have any flavor, it is quite simple in appearance and the problem more or less might not have been serious, considering the size of the game, if number of picture was at least 3 times more than what we have now. But alas it isn't, so I can't think of a reason why I'd want to wait another year to see the rest of the scenes in the game, which are currently without any visuals.

Positives.

As we are done with the flaws, now we can talk about the pros. The combat system and the rpg component. Despite there are people here who scolding the standard rpgm battle system, I have to disagree with them. It’s not that bad, and many devs, as well as this one, quite heavy modifying it. So If people don't like this system that much, they should block the tag combat in rpgm games and simply do not play them. So here, I will voice my opinion as a person who likes combat in games. The combat system in this game is not quite standard, it has a number of big changes and if you don’t grind money for upgrading your characteristics, you have to approach each battle with a certain tactic in mind. Also, everything is not just so simple, we get experience only for completing quests, rats don’t carry gold (Oh no!) and enemies do not respawn. Here I will say my opinion, which may be very unpopular, but for me personally, this is what I always lacked in such games. I just love to wipe the entire location, so you can enjoy the work that you've done and don’t encounter them again to find that all your efforts were in vain and the enemies miraculously for no reason, revived to start bugging you again. It also opens up a wonderful thing like resource management. Enemies are limited, as are the loot on the map, which makes you plan your actions and how to spend your money. In addition, every 2 days your corruption is rising by 1 point and willpower falls, which negatively affects the stats of the heroine, so you have to think about your strategy. You can earase this effects, though, but keep in mind that resourses are limited, there is great demon invasion after all. So all these is very cool in my opinion. As for those who don’t like difficulties in such games there is a story mode, which you can choose at any time. I haven't tried it myself, but I think it's quite a solution of the problem.

The main character and the other characters except villains. I have to say that the main character and the villains who confront her are heaven and earth in comparison. Aura is written in dozens of times better than all the villains, she is much less suffer from clichés that we’ve seen so many times and generally has a lively mind, which allows her to well navigate in unfamiliar situations and find her way out of trouble. Despite that the heroine is not open to the world of sex, she is not clueless, as is usually the case in such games. Overall, she is not mentally retarded, but rather very intelligent, which is rare for games like this one. And only for that, I would give this game a bold plus. Overall almost all of the positive characters in this game are well written, they are interesting to watch. The main character's companions are also quite interesting, especially John, despite that he's an odd guy, but honestly, I'd rather watch him corrupt Aura in his own way than watch how the villains do it. Moreover, if it was one of the main corruption routes, it would have been much more original.

In conclusion, it is worth saying that this could have been a pretty good isekai, which, has good humor and mocking the genre's typical clichés, but many of the flaws I have listed become for me the stumbling block, which is why I probably will not wait for the next updates of this game. Lastly, I'll say for whom this game is for. If you came for the porn, you are likely leave disappointed. This game is first and foremost about the story and porn is secondary.

This is a lower score than I would normally give to a game with this much effort, but unfortunately this game just makes a few too many wrong turns for me to recommend it to anyone who isn't specifically looking for NTR-corruption.

Positives:

+ Good Art
+ Interesting, Unique themes of playing an isekai-protagonist, magical girl, and the "corruptor" at once.
+ A very intricate corruption-system that deals with representing changing a character's "inner world".
+ Plenty of gameplay that links to ->
+ A commitment to slow, proggressing corruption

So all in all, this would be a foundation I would normally enjoy a lot.

But... the Negatives get in the way of this:

- Low-quality writing in most aspects, in the plot, pacing, dialogue and characterization of most characters that get screentime.
- Using the default RPG-battle system is a pain, not to mention that the combat is mostly used padding. This type of combat is already outdated, and does very little to add to the game, and the game puts no good twists to it.
- NTR as a central trope, which makes it hard to stomach in you don't like NTR.
- Heavy reliance on multiple sets to premade assets, that very often get left underdeveloped, leading to a very bland and forgettable setting.
- The setup of playing as the MC, while also being in the position of inflicting the Mind Control presents problems.

You can argue about whether it's icky or not, but most importantly It Makes The RPG-Gameplay Portions of The Game Feel Obsolete, as one half of the gameplay is working against the other half. So anything Aura "wants to do" is like a "waste of time", since the only incentives for gameplay are to corrupt her more. The game would only be enjoyable this way, if you were specifically just aiming for getting to see the scenes, rather than trying to roleplay or do a specific run.

...So in practise, the negatives of this game kind of counteract all the positives of it.
The art may be pretty, but the dull and flat scene/dialogue writing gets in the way of it.
Even if you enjoy the story-setup, the actual pacing and padding of the story-beats will turn you off.
Even if you think the scenes look good, and the gameplay is bearable, you might get turned off by the prospect of NTR and "self-corruption" theming.
And you might not be able to get past the cringy parts of the dialogue, which is most of it.

So, there are a lot of problems with this game, that are kind of fundemental to it.

It's one of the best games I've played on this site. The game has a lot of content and the creator adds it every Friday, most games take months to update so this is a good point.
The story is interesting and good to follow, the English is well written but you have to be patient if you just want to fap this game may not be for you
Corruption unfolds in a very interesting way, I haven't seen it in any other game I've played.
I recommend playing in easy mode because then you can play at your own pace and do whatever you want without worrying.
It has a good amount of lewnd scenes and has good art.

Slow burn (newest patreon build JUST added a vaginal sex scene) but if you're into slow corruption/mind control with a great story and actual gameplay, this game is amazing and getting better every month.

Hmmm this game is in a weird spot at the moment.

It feels like it should be the ultima ratio a la Corruption game, with its own mechanics and impacts in the real world for your stuff in the fantasy world. And I think that part is nicely done, although it is mostly so far non-sexual, so i dont really see the appeal for me at the moment there.

But my major gripe is how SLOW this game is. Theres very little repeatable/quick fap scenes out there, and if there are, they are locked behind several quests you gotta do first, and then you get maybe one, max. two scenes per hour? Plus this game also has a weird one-way path it seems, triggering events only if all prerequisites are done.

Additionally, for being a total corruption-focused game, the MC surely agrees very quickly to sexual stuff in the fantasy world? I mean, I know its a fantasy world and all, but she literally flashes her tits on day one if you so desire. Maybe due to a lack of non-nude sexual scenes, but this feels VERY jarring going into this game.

Overall, this is in its current state too slow and too sparse, while also defying its internal logic, for it to be enjoyable. Maybe Im overly negative, but yah.

This is one of the games I've found with incredible potential. Be warned though; it's extremely slow burn, so if you're not in to that it's not going to be for you. Also, notice I said it's got great potential - the game is not close to complete yet (though progressing nicely), so if you want hardcore corruption I'd suggest coming back in maybe 6 months.

Too much grind and not enough lewd content, you have to play for hours before you can see any. Also it focuses on stupid cliche characters that are mostly annoying. The art is good, but I'm not ready to waste several hours on a RPG Maker game before I get to see anything lewd-related.

The graphics of this game are great, and the gameplay is for the most part fine (if a bit overly difficult and almost downright impossible in some places even at a reasonable level for the content)
Unfortunately however the story itself is completely nonsensical, with all major good characters being unable to have any influence (in the real world, at least, and this is a problem I find entirely too common in these NTR style games in order to justify what's happening) while the main character, who seems reasonable at first is actually incredibly badly written. Her inner self somehow letting corruption even to the point where it actually hurts her chances of winning because it will help her win somehow? Both villains are incredibly cartoonish and uninteresting and really just make me want to kill them. Would be a genuinely fantastic game if more care was taken to make the corruption reasonable or at least enjoyable for people who aren't literal cartoonish villains.

As an rpgm game its great as a porn game its awful .

if you wondering why this has such a good rating compare the early reviews to the later reviews. The majority of positive reviews are from early on and talk of the potential of the game, even the newer positive reviews talk about the potential of the game. There is a ton of content and 99% of it is just boring quests with no H. If the game hasn't delivered when there is 12+ hours of content its difficult to use the word 'potential' . There is a reason why newer reviews are mostly negative.

According to my save file I've put 12 hours into this game and that's with skipping most of the text, playing on easy and cheating my save to remove grind. I can't have seen more than 20 minutes of H in that time. That's 35 mins of boring quests to 1 min of porn.

The final straw for me came after the first big battle and I could visit the next town. The first 2 H scenes I got to were starting to move away from softcore and what did i get .. 2 scenes with just black screen and text but no pictures.

This game is very close to being great but its just boring from a H perspective.

CG - 4
Game design - 4
writing -4
Porn - 1
UX -2

I'm not giving this an even lower rating because the artstyle is good and the negatives I'll point out can be fixed, but this game made me waste 6 hours of my life.

It seems the dev remembers this is a porn game only some times given the very scarce amount of situations we get something erotic to happen, and even so, it's extremely mild AND non repeatable.

The game is an absolute grind fest with a combat much harder than a porn game should be and the amount of exposition you get with walls upon walls of text is mind numbing (I came to fap, godammit!) and even though my finger hurts from pressing CTRL to skip everything and I probably would have needed 20 hours to get to where I am had I bothered reading everything, still nothing happens. Do a bunch of quests, get more quests, and try to make something happen in the MC's brain... to no avail, really.

Honestly, I had been keeping an eye on this one since 0.8 or something, waiting for it to be more developed to try it out, but as of 0.19, this game stands to me as the best example I've seen so far of a porn game trying as hard as humanly possible to be an average non-porn RPG.

Has a lot of potential to be a great corruption and mind control game. Has a lot of content so far too. Intro's a bit long but was fun (for me at least). Story and characters are pretty interesting and enjoyable so far. I really hope it continues development.

The high rating the game has so far must be due to the potential some see here. But for me personally this game is one great grind-fest, with far too few sexual scenes inbetween.

Pros:

• great art (CGs and pixel art)
• great and unique gameplay ideas, with a good technical implementation but coming with a huge BUT... (look further down)
• good and promising build up, BUT...
• generally original story and a good foundation for an interesting NTR/corruption game

BUT or Cons:

• gameplay ideas have almost no effects. What does it help if you finally manage to spent points to make a mental change but you get NO rewards or effects apart from some dialog. Very disappointing
• Build up promises a nice corruption heavy game, but there are almost NO LEWD SCENES compared to the time you are actually playing. No groping, no harassment, really almost nothing. Again VERY disappointing
• NTR premise isnt used. The antagonist doesnt appear in the first 6 hours of the game

Summary:

All in all this game promises a lot, but delivers almost nothing. Maybe, if the intro wouldnt have hooked me that much, then I wouldnt have been this disappointed. And the biggest problem is: The dev could use the next ten updates for implementing only lewd stuff (which the dev wont do) and the lewd scenes would still be sparse.

• grinding hell
• Role-playing game not a porn game
• huge time effort
• very low rewards
• almost no lewd content

Sorry guys, really tried to see this one positive . But the rating of this game definitely is much too high for what it has to deliver atm.

Still I wish this game all the best for the future and I might come back and update this review, when the game should become more wholesome one day. Good luck!

Edit: Whats with the NTR? I want to see scenes with the main antagonist, who harasses and gropes the MC and starts corrupting here. He barely even shows up after the prologue. What really gets me excited are relationships. And the prologue promises a NTR story between the villain and the star knightess, but there are absolutely no scenes between the villain and Aurora yet.... :/

While the game is still a bit early in its development I've got to give credit where it's due.

This game is surprisingly well written and I like how the corruption aspect of it was implemented, with the protagonist slowly being corrupted and brainwashed without her having the slightest idea, the scenes that occur between classes where these, at first little, changes are being noted by other characters surrounding the MC.

Now this game doesn't come without its cons, but being that it's still in development some of them can be ignored, such as the lack of art which can be a bit of a turn off if I'm being honest.

The combat and grind may feel a bit annoying at times, which is something I won't deny, but it's not completely pointless as the corruption of the MC isn't instantaneous, you see the MC go through it as the time passes so while it does tend to act a bit like a filler it's not completely pointless.

I'm looking forward to the development of this game and I'm planning to buy it in the near future although the slow development does annoy me quite a bit and also the part I'll try waiting for a full release, if it comes, before playing it again, I sincerely hope the game isn't abandoned as it has a lot of potential... Also, the protagonist's taste in entertainment is pure trash... Having read a lot of novels I've got to say the devs do know how most of those generic novels' names are made up...

This game honestly could be great, however it isn't.
I'm honestly surprised by how high this game is rated. My guess is what people rate this game high for its potential. Right now there is no better word to describe this game than "tedium".
Most monster encounters are pointless, there is literally no reward (exp/money) so you are actually encouraged to just dodge them. However because there is no "escape from combat" if they do touch you, you need to reload (or engage in pointless fighting, loosing some MP/HP). Who thought of that? You have a choice between fighting generic RPGM enemies (for no gains) or quitting the game to reload (ruining emersion).
Action system is also dumb. You have 1 action per day and it quickly becomes very annoying. You want to upgrade your stats or learn a new spell? Well each upgrade cost 1 action. So if you have items to upgrade yourself 3 times you need to waste 3 days doing it (wake up in isekai -> go to blacksmith -> choose upgrade -> watch same "normal" school day of MC -> repeat x3).
The amount of pointless dialog is ridiculous. At some points i was able to hold "skip" for like a minute strait without missing anything but flavor text.
Porn part is also surprisingly weak. Art is good, but there is almost none of it. During the MC's school day there is also (to my knowledge) no ecchi events. Don't get me wrong, there are events, during the school, but unless you are into reading pointless worldbuilding they aren't arousing.
MC's corruption is surprisingly nonexistent, upon entering the first city on the first day i was already able to flash my tits for money.

Overall this game is too boring to be an RPG and lucks actual porn to be good adult game. I really hope this game improves and i would have a reason to rewrite this review.

In my opinion one of the best h-games this site has to offer. I like corruption games but usually avoid hypnose games, since in most hypnose games it's like the heroine becomes like a soulless puppet. But it doesn't feel like that in this game.

There are a lot of different ways to play the game depending on what you choose to corrupt aura with first. Having different difficulties and new game+ is great for a game that gets constant updates too.

Art is great but sadly there isn't that much cg in the game yet.

Writing is excellent and the game has to offer a lot of different kinks.

Anyways, amazing game. Can't wait for future updates. 5 stars.