RPGM - Star Knightess Aura [v0.46.0] [aura-dev]

v0.29
- Cliche story with good writing.
- Writing is good but there is so much text, you'll be skipping most. Characters just talk too much.
- Towards the end of the current version, there are lots of scenes without any visuals and just text.
- - Game is way too hard and strict, it's really hard to play on normal difficulty without depending on the walkthrough(which I didn't and ended up switching to story difficulty.
- Scenes are not great, but the strong character writing makes up for that mostly. - Everything is limited, including your time. It was good until I come to point where I couldn't go forward no matter what I do. Shops having limited amount of everything doesn't make sense, earning money is useless if I can't buy anything.
- Corrupt route is hardest thing I guess, since there is so much debuff on you, you either switch to story difficulty or start a new game.
- After you are more or less done with the first parts of the game, it starts to feel empty. Your actions are way too limited, which balances the part which limits your time, but I would like to enjoy freedom and be a try hard if I wanted to commit myself, rather than being forced to commit myself and a huge amount of time.

All things considered, besides high quality writing and decent visuals(though I think lack of scenes is a huge flaw in that aspect), this game is hard to enjoy. It takes too much time and porn part feels like an extra, rather than the main focus. At some point, this game feels like it's not sure if it's trying to be a corruption game or not, having a strong willed main character and feels like a cheesy way to do it. It feels forced into the story.

This isn't a game for you if you are here for a quick fun, this is long, grindy, tedious kind of fun(if you can enjoy that). While story is decent and writing is good, h-scenes definitely fall short(especially towards the end). While I enjoyed my time at the beginning, after I'm done it doesn't feel like it was worth putting so much time into this.

Too much text. I get it was a slow pace corruption but having to read too much is too boring. There is no freedom in this game, you have to either unlock new location by having to complete quest, which there is no indicator to which quest, no clue where to go find the quest. If people just want to get to H-scene I don't recommend it, you won't get quick fap.

When the game need a guide so you can unlock all the lewd scene might as well make it a linear story telling instead of needing to follow the guide from this front page of the game. Make it linear make us follow the story instead of searching for it, even when you search for it if you don't follow proper step you will miss some story/scene. Following a guide need to be precise otherwise you will get confuse and lost couple of scene.

It is one of the best games I've played.
It has a very interesting and engaging corruption mechanism.
The dailogues are good and also the art is very erotic.
I've been following the Max Lewdness playthrough, and it feels awesome.
There is a lot of quests and lewd content in this game, and the update cycle is after every 2 weeks so I'll definitely recommend this.
This game is for people who are interested in a good story and want to have a good fap while enjoying it.
So definitely a W for me!

(written on v0.28.2)
tldr
this game is a 4 or 5 star for ppl who like the genre and 1 or 2 star for ppl who just want a quick fap. I also strongly recommend playing on Story Mode unless you enjoy challenging games and have a lot of free time to spend on this game.

this game is:
- slow burn corruption of a proud (arrogant), (self) righteous high school magic girl.
- challenging RPG with some hentai/nsfw elements. (hidden alternative methods to solve quests, puzzles, mazes and difficult tactical battles)

this game is NOT:
- quick fap (NSFW scenes are scarce and come at mid late game)
- easy game which you just intentionally lose fight for Hscenes, say yes to all the degrading humiliating requests for no reasons but hscenes.

============================================

now to the actual pros and cons of this game
Pros:

- great story, one of the best corruption progress
- MC is actually prompted or seduced to solve quests/fights with unethical or other corruptive methods. (Corruption = the easy way to go, Pure = very difficult path)

- great art
P.S. fairly frequent updates although this should not be related to a review as this could change anytime, only existing content can be properly reviewed

Cons:
- grindy. While you don't get any exp from fights, fights are difficult. Puzzles and mazes/dungeon requires some times to solve and can get tedious sometimes. Also, there seem to be some balancing issue towards the end of chapter 1 and the game is significantly harder suddenly. However you can choose "Story Mode" at the beginning of the game and fights will be easier.

- the corruption system could lead to game over when corruption is too high. (the game over is removed in Story Mode) While there are ways to reduce corruption, it is also continuously increased by debuffs and by different events throughout the game. For some people they might feel stressed they don't have enough time to explore the game freely.

- not that much of a "con" but
Conclusion:
Personally I would give it a 5-star, but I must say this is a slow burn and time consuming game. Once again I strongly recommend playing the game on Story Mode for most players unless they really really enjoy challenging games and have enough time to spend on this.

I've never actually left a review before but I had to for this game. Easily the best game I've played. The art and story in the game are great and the way corruption/mind control is implemented in this game is outstanding. 10/10

Great game for people who enjoy Fem Protag, Corruption, Multiple-Ending (Virgin Pure / Corrupt) Story Routing.

Engaging and challenging RPGM combat.
Detailed and populated unique maps with clear and conscientious design choices (obstacles, enemy positioning and patrolling, etc).
Unique enemy art, with tons of unique moves.
NPCs where choices matter, quests connecting, callbacks to previous actions.
Plot is really entertaining, with a great ticking clock that's fun to lose to.

Perhaps the perfect example of an RPGM H-game with combat. It's literally almost fun enough to just play as a game in its own right without any H-concepts at all. Aura-Dev has a great future ahead of them.
Looking forward to all future versions and the completion of the story!

One thing it's missing might be scenes for losing combat. Losing combat ends your day and gives you +1 corruption, but it would be great, and in line with the genre, if there were a little something extra with it.

One of the best games i ever played.
Ticks all my boxes, good artwork, good story an i love the mechanic of how the corruption works and how you can see it impacting the MC in her life.

This review is for ver. 0.27.2. It is very obvious as you play that the game is far, far from finished. For one, when it comes to the standard JRPG elements, you run out of quests to do and everything comes to an abrupt halt. When it comes to the porn and mind-control aspect of the game, it is also very obvious that tons of content is yet to be finished, but you can still spend hours grinding to unlock new mind-control scenes because, frankly, calling this porn game a slow-burn is an understatement.

Okay, so I'll first consider the slow-burn part of the RPG elements. Most quests involve several parts you have to conplete, and if you don't want to spam the corruption-gain super-form of Aura you'll have to go buy bombs to explode rocks to unlock new areas, learn new spells and skills to explode bushes, deal AOE damage, and beat enemies. There are also hidden rooms, some ways to complete quests that re not so obvious (e.g., collecting pieces of a magic formula that are hard to distinquish from background objects on the map), etc. While there is some complexity and momentary fun in the RPG-part, it far overstays its welcome and becomes tedious and boring.

The porn is sadly either quite limited right now (flash panties, tiny bit of kissing, etc) or so damn slow to unlock it doesn't feel worth it. Due to how the story is told and how awful Alicia/Luciela is I personally also didn't feel very motivated to help her corrupt Aura.

In the end, I think this game has some good concepts but bad execution of them. It also isn't hot right now, failing as a porn game.

Not to myself and others:
Play ti for the RPG, avoid it if you re itnerested in lewds cause they are not good enouh and take some time. Nice menus and nice system and all that, but thats just it, not worth.
The art is barely holding it, and the scenes are very simple.

This game requires a large time investment- it is as slow burn as they come.

However, it is well worth it. Although the premise is slightly shaky, the writing is otherwise superb. The characterisation, plot, and world building is absolutely excellent. It is so well written, that it is a corruption game which does persuade you to not corrupt.

The art is fairly well done, although the content is not super advanced just yet. In any case, I am eagerly awaiting future updates.

I think this game is underrated. It's a game with an actually fleshed-out story, and also works on an actual RPG level. It is long, but I think that will either appeal to you or it just won't, depending on personality.

To be honest, I think if the dev had the right tags (read: incest) he would get 5/5 instantly. I'm also confused by the hordes of people saying this game is too hard, despite it being literally impossible to lose on story mode, and having a walkthrough for those who want it. Then again, I once saw a guy on this site post that he got stuck following a game's walkthrough.

I think the message is not to take scores too literally. Many of the games that get 4 and higher are cookie cutter or bland as fuck or just straight up dogshit which only get played for the fact they give you a cock longer than your spine and let you fuck your sister and your mother and your friend's mother and beat up your dad and have 3 girlfriends before the dev disappears at 0.2, while others that get rated 3.x are actually good (like this one).

I am really enjoying the game!
I am a big rpg and lewd fan and this has it both and they blend well together!
Usually this kind of game the lewd stuff is tacked on but the developer has worked hard to integrate it as part of the plot/driver.
I checked my hours played and was surprised i have played this game longer then the last bunch of real rpg games i bought on steam!
Its huge and well crafted and you can tell the developer is passionate about hand crafting it all.
I love it! thank you for hard work! I will go look now how to support you as i feel after 20+ hours now i should probably be paying you for the game!

I rarely review games here and THERE IS ALOT OF GOOD IN THIS AS OF 1/5/23! Let me make that clear. First of all, the character writing makes me not want to corrupt Aura. Why would I want to hurt someone like her thats genuinely a good person trying to do her best with villians with motivations that are extremely petty to put it lightly. The motivation to play a corruption game is the protag is either too stupid to get she is being corrupted or flawed in a way where you want to see her fall OR in a deadend marriage and its just funny to ruin the protags life because she needs a change and you are her catalyst. Aura is NONE of the three. She's the "protag that could" in a world thats wild as hell, her isekai world and her school life that tries to mess with her. Her boyfriend is a kind, but plain dude. She goes out of her way to prove she is kind and decent, her flaw being? What exactly? Am I supposed to hate her and want her fall to two creeps because she is "too perfect"? I dont think this works. The art is great, music fits like a glove, the effort is clear but between the antagonists and the cliche RPGM battles, I dont think I would say this is a top tier game. Maybe some dont feel as strong as me about Aura, maybe she isnt a non-clumsy Maple from Bofuri that doesnt stumble into her power though I think she is. But for me, I see a lovable isekai protag that makes the world better with a fitting title. I cant break that. I dont feel it SHOULD be broken. She is a kind soul and she only deserves an ending with George and to send those needlessly bitter antagonists to humility where they belong over lost lunch money or an awkwardly timed fart or whatever the petty nonsense reason was and last but not least
Have a good night and good luck to Aura-dev. This may SEEM negative, but you are early in this I think and there is ALOT of good in this. You can still turn this around. Fixing the battle system and allowing more actions per day would help alot. Making the antagonists less vapid would help too.

Straight up baffled by the raving praise this game get ngl, like holy hell are we playing the same thing my guys?

I get it, slow corruption is nice, there's no fun in some prim and proper schoolgirl riding hobo dick within the week but there's slow and there's whatever the fuck this game is. In any other corruption game you probably have something along the lines of going from flashing, groping, handie, blowie, puss puss, anal over the course of an in game month. Here however it takes a real life month to convince this bitch to unbraid her fucking hair.

For context this game has an arbitrary "one action" per day in her "mind realm" where any corruption of her irl body (we'll get to this later) takes place. Not too bad in theory but then you realize how interconnected everything is and it quickly becomes a nightmare of a grind. Brace yourself for a read, or don't.

My rant about braids for example goes something like this, you have to unlock the room for interests first (1 point of corruption/ day's over), you have to remove a book she's currently interested in (1 point of corruption/ day's over), you have to replace a that book with one about fashion (1 point of corruption/ day's over), wait fashion book? oh yeah in order to do that you have to be her tutor buddy so let's go back a bit for some steps I missed you have to unlock her social interaction room(1 point of corruption/ day's over), you have to get your relation to her to a certain threshold by pulling a lever(1 point of corruption/ day's over X4), now you can insert yourself in her social circle for her to tutor you(1 point of corruption/ day's over), you then unlock the room about personal appearance (1 point of corruption/ day's over), owo what's this? the hair option requires "socialization 1" so now you have to unlock her happiness room (1 point of corruption/ day's over) you now have to turn on a lever for her to gain happiness from socializing (1 point of corruption/ day's over), now you can go back to the personal apperance room to...unlock the option to unbraid her hair (1 point of corruption/ day's over), and now finally you can actually unbraid her hair (1 point of corruption/ day's over). Believe it or not I actually streamlined this process a bit because there's also waiting for the required day time events to happen and I lied about the corruption costs because it frequently costs more than 1. Did you actually read all of that or did you look at the massive fucking wall of text about the walkthrough to UNBRAID HER FUCKING HAIR and say "tl'dr"?

You know what's going on during this irl counterpart corruption? Your fantasy body counterpart is doing things like letting dudes grope her, flashing them her pussy and tits, and giving them handies. I swear I started off avoiding corruption actions at first for that "slow burn" experience this game promises before giving up because holy fuck the IRL part is just a fucking dead end of content. They throw some haphazard explanation of "but's it not ur real body so it's okay dokie" as if doing all these sexual acts would still have no impact on her psyche whatsoever. Now I hope I didn't make the fantasy part sound like smooth sailing because it also has a ONE ACTION PER DAY rule tacked on it simply to stretch out this game more, not to mention every single bit of information Aura comes along sends her on a fucking essay rant. Oh but that's the point of her character, making fun of overly complex story telling/plans but you can only parody something so many times before you're just as guilty of it.

Art's pretty decent, would love to see something done with it

I've typed too much for this fucking game, the dev might insert it in the game for more reading instead of having H scenes in their H game

Gameplay: 1/5 (either fucking boring or impossible and leveling is a fucking joke never happens)
Sound: 3/5
Art: 4/5
Story: 2/5 (sucks. you know who is responsible in real life you even figure out the girl but too fucking stupid to just beat the shit out of them in the real world)

When I first played the game it was easier I was able to kill about 3 mobs in the forest with normal difficulty and made level 2 also could complete the first mission for Inn the 3 Hydrangea. Now the latest release killed over 6 damn mobs and the damn exp bar has not moved more than 10%. The Hydrangea been increased to requiring 4 which is not possible if your trying to play without removing the damn collar.

Game Balance has been made impossible for those that don't want to get corrupted or you play the very very boring story mode that it is so easy to kill that the game is ruined.

A true masterpiece in the making. I'm in love with both the combat/RGP elements of the game as well as what is possibly the best corruption-type game available.

Personally, I'm not really into the whole corruption genre, but if you're like me then don't worry; this game has lots for people like us as the purity route was very satisfying to play. Fighting and strategizing to keep Aura from falling into degeneracy was a lot of fun and the MC's personality of never giving up and always believing she could win made me also never want to give up keeping her as pure as I could.

Lewd content aside, the semi-linear structure of the game (enemies don't respawn, upgrading your stats progresses to the next day, and prices rise as time goes on) kept the pressure up and stopped me from slacking off. If you don't want to worry about the time deadline, then just play on Story difficulty and have fun with it.

tl;dr

• actual content
• great overall design for an RPGM title
• not forced to go full smut if you don't want to
• (subjectively) funny dialogue tidbits
• an actual role-playing game
• 420/69 stars, so like 6/5

Full review:
So, this is an actual game, as in quests, combat, and all.
I absolutely hate RPGM games, but the artwork is great and so is the UI. The game has tons of character interactions (many of them lewd, of course), so really, when it comes to the story and the content, there is much to see and do.

I also like all the random light novel references in aura's mindspace and the general corny, but relevant humor. It's good that a lewd game isn't taking itself very seriously, yet seriously delivers on content, so it actually puts the RP in the RPGM quite well, because the player ultimately has control over Aura.

I see this game as having essentially two playstyles - star knightess path where you try to save the world true to Aura's original intent, and the corruption you pick up you spend to minimally alter Aura. The alternative is to go full slut, which is arguably the more fun path. But this is where you come in, and decide which mix of fun and indulgence you want to allow for Aura, and whether your control of Aura leads to meaningful interactions for you.

I also want to say that I appreciate not making a shitty sim game where we would have to go put on clothes, go to class, yada yada until night comes. This focus on only meaningful interactions IRL and the actual gameplay in the otherworld is a great way to showcase the mental changes and Aura's preferences without over-encumbering the player to slog through mindless interactions.

Best of luck in the development and thank you for a fun and memorable game!

Really solid slow corruption game, definitly a time sink but only due to it being a good exsperiance that leaves you wanting to play more 5/5 easy, also the brand of corruption is very unique, as its normaly just turning a girl into a slut but with this you have the whole 'popular girl' trope played out and it's very entertaining, (there is still some classic fantasy world slutting to get ahead tho)

A great corruption RPG so far! Surprisingly fresh feeling for such a saturated genre. In the game you play as Aura, an intelligent, headstrong and justice loving girl but who gets corrupted over the course of the game, slowly, like really quite slowly which is the part of the game I enjoy the most. How gradually Aura's changes occur and how the game spends time for all involved characters to react to these changes is really well done. On the art front the game is okay to good, not incredible but definitely not a turn-off. The writing is strong, its anime style dialogue is clear and charming (and in fluent english). Combat is decently challenging and requires forethought. At the time of writing this, the game is about 50% to 1.0 according the the developer and I'm excited to see where the game ends up.

I don't understand how this game is getting 5 star reviews, especially from the people listing all the flaws in the game. Some are even giving it 5 stars because they anticipate it getting better. That's ludicrous.

I'll rate this game as it is NOW. Maybe I'll update this later. This game needs a LOT of work. It's mindnumbingly slow. I've play Visual Novels that have gotten to the hentai aspect faster. And when it finally gets there, it doesn't build upon it.

Also for a hentai game, it spends way too much effort in creating frustration in the non-hentai aspects. Some players may be sticking with this game because they feel they've devoted so much time into this aspect, that they need to see the game through. This is sunk cost fallacy. What separates hentai games from other games is the hentai. That's where the focus should be, and it shouldn't require arduous effort to get there. Having mini games and puzzles is fine, but when players have to rely on a guide to make progress (and just look at the number of posts asking for a guide), then something went wrong with the design.

The art is fine, but that's really the only real saving grace for the game. Perhaps if it receives an overhaul in the future to make the gameplay more fluid with better paced plot progression, it will earn a higher rating.