I played through several times not really avoiding corruption and in the mind room I implemented whatever was available. I had fun with those playthroughs and you get a ton of subsequent content in the real life portion of the game. I made it quite far into the story and combat was very difficult at times but for the boss fights I removed Aura's collar.
I thought I'd try the purer route and just let me say, it is soooooo much harder. I understand this is a corruption game where it is more or less expected that players will choose to corrupt the protagonist, but I do wish the creator would ease up on the difficulty spike for "less corrupt" playthroughs. I'm playing on Explorer mode (which is supposed to be "easy"!), and many fights are still impossible without removing the collar. I started out in Normal, but it just wasn't any fun dying in every fight that wasn't against minor enemies. Companions often die in one hit and do very little damage. While I am by no means a expert on combat, I think this is just too unbalanced to be fun. Challenging is fine, but the number of overpowered enemies just causes frustration. Why not nerf the enemy power a bit so the game can be enjoyable no matter how you choose to play? I'm not at all suggesting that it become a cake walk, just make it a bit more doable for any style.
