Let me start this review with (1) I never thought I’d be reviewing a titty game and (2) never thought it would be negative, but felt it was worth giving feedback.
It can’t be denied that there's been a lot of work put into creating Knightess Aura. Aura-dev and the team have clearly invested a lot to do so and should be praised for work. Additionally, I have a big praise for aura-dev who often replies and engages with players.
For me, the game falls short on story, gameplay, and to some arguably most important, NSFW fulfillment.
TL;DR is if you are an advanced corruption enjoyer, don’t mind simple characters with a lot of text, get your rocks off more on the changing of a person's brain than actual lewd content (example - you LOVE permanent and often darker hypnosis effects), and don't mind very slow-burn, sometimes irritatingly lengthy RPG gameplay and numbers/counters tracking, this game might work for you. Otherwise, stay away.
I gave Aura 14 hours and I think by around 7 hours I was feeling fatigue. For context, I've played plenty of H-games, plenty of which have exceeded 25 hours, so I don't bail on time.
Lewd Content and Themes
So we’re all here because we want to choke our chicken. I consider Aura to be “advanced” in the genre. The main (human) villains are one-note shitty (in personality) characters and Aura is essentially a two-note character with her secret sauce being hidden arrogance. Side characters are plain but appreciable, yet after the intro are awkward in consistency. The "smartness" some reviews allude to is text wall after text wall of (albeit, very consistent! If there are multiple writers, they did a good job keeping each character contained to their trope) information that could be condensed for a similar experience in my opinion. The corruption in Aura is the darker kind, and as other reviewers have pointed out, Aura is a generally appreciable character who will slowly get turned for the worse outside of her control.
Overall I think character designs are fine but nothing special (though I find Richard incredibly dull for a main villain; I think he'd be better as an entity or a voice in Aura's head and he's one of the reasons I don't care to see to the end).
The slow changes made to the personality of Aura will excite you if it’s what you’re into, but for me it doesn't. I found it mean-spirited at times and the RPG side isn't engaging enough. I'd also rather experience gameplay that indicates changes rather than the mind chamber method of removing/altering personality. The real world and RPG world have some inconsistencies with how they affect each other.
In the RPG world, lewd scenes are far apart with little art or action to compensate. You do get the H-game “build up and release” of lesser lewd events leading to something greater, but it’s very, very slow. In my hours I basically got three scenes maybe worthy of a fap depending on your preferences/fetishes. Didn't work for me. The art is decent but nothing to write home about. I was at times annoyed enough that by the time I even got to H-scenes I was just tired and wanted to get something better that never came.
I don't mind playing an H-game for a few hours without even touching my dick. But I would like to touch my dick at least once by like... 10 hours. If the gameplay can keep me engaged I've gone long periods without even acknowledging the H-portion of games, but Aura misses that for me.
There are a few moments where you think “here’s where it gets interesting!” and Aura has to do something lewd that would otherwise be outside of her comfort zone, but the distance between events of this kind are so far, it fades out fast. Then, when scenes are forced, it feels more like the player is actively hunting for them rather than them occurring naturally.
I know I only dipped my toes into the full story of Aura, but it really feels like choices for advancement are limited when corruption eventually ends your game outright. I'd much more appreciate branching options that give you a choice to how you want Aura to be; not have it left in a railroady story method. I could be totally missing the mark here if something was around the corner in playtime though -- additionally, you can lower corruption through other means, but they seem unmaintainable - at least through my 14 hours.
There are no lewd events or actions during battle and no lewd losses (however, I believe there are some lewd attacks you can do later on). Losses lead to simple "game over" screens. If all you saw was the battle content you would likely not know it's an H-game. Also, no menu quickload; you'll have to go back to the title to reload a save if you know you're fucked, so more time wasting. Technically you can get around this because there's a "load" function once text boxes show up.
RPG Content and Pacing
For an RPGM RPG, Aura has interesting battle and puzzle mechanics regarding difficulty. It’s very rock-paper-scissors; once you discover the trick of an enemy, the enemy becomes trivial. The problem is, there are loads of heavy enemy parties and you’ll end up stuck in a forever-loop of slow battle animations just trying to continue where the game is headed. If you're not ready for what Aura throws at you, you'll end up maxing your corruption early and wondering how you got to a true game over so fast. Additionally, because there's no H-content in battles, you’ll spend time in certain battles that don’t give XP, items, or a reason to play a lewd game.
I have played OFF. Helen Mysterious Castle. Skyborn. Omori. One Way Heroics. I have played a few JRPGs. I get where Aura is trying to be a more advanced RPG, but it seems like it only dips into basic RPGM systems yet sucks time away. I'd rather be playing something that battles better or something more lewd.
The battle content feels too prioritized compared to the lewd content, yet drags playtime unless you're on very low difficulty. No H-loss scenes, no enemies grabbing at Aura's gear, things you'd consider common for other H-games. As an example (and there are many more) Magical Girl Celesphonia is able to provide decently fun RPG gameplay, allow the player some level of expression and require some tactical thought, and keep the player horny. This game made me feel like I should just be playing a normal JRPG.
As mentioned in other reviews, Aura’s pacing is slooooooow. You’ll play for 6-8 hours before anything truly lewd happens. I don’t mind that I’ve spent a number of hours in Aura; I do mind that it feels as though what there is to look forward to isn't engaging for my preferences. Do note if you're on the easiest difficulty you may be able to race some more lewd scenes but it's still going to drain lots of time.
Let's shortly talk dialogue. I got tired of dialogue in general, but very tired of villains’ dialogue. Having to churn through 20-30 dialogue lines of “AURA!!!!!!!!!!!!” or “I WILL BEAT YOU!!!!!!!!” broke me. For Aura herself; if you're into the trope of "smartest and nicest girl slowly changes to be a dicko-sucko" you might like how passionate about saving others Aura is early and how long her planning goes on, but really to me it was text wall after text wall and didn't continue engagement. Once she does start changing it almost feels off-character and often a little too mean-spirited for my enjoyment. I do suggest you avoid what I did and just skip dialogue if you don't feel yourself clicking within the first hour or two.
Pacing on day-to-day activities actively harms the player. Do you want more lewd content? Sorry, that adds corruption… but you *have* to use that corruption, maybe in ways you don’t like, to not get a game over. Do you prefer to level yourself and grind some more? Plenty of options, all which... end the day. At some point I set the difficulty to explorer to just forget about the diminishing values to keep track of. Compare this with many other RPGM-H games that often give the player more freedom/expression regarding how they want to "cater" their game.
Let me add here -- I don't have ADHD coomerism; I enjoy longer H-games. But I need some level of interest in both gameplay or H content. This game often feels like it's not meant to be H and the gameplay eats a little too much time if the only goal is more H content.
Normally in corruption RPGM-H games there are options that can slightly "force" the player to a lewd choice. Aura has this, but often you'll find ways around it if you want. Your mileage may vary with if you enjoy that or dislike it. I feel like sometimes it's confusing whether an option is low or high, but the player almost always has a choice if you use saves/loads.
Bad repetition shows at times, and what broke me was at the end of the money realm, having to fight the same boss the same exact way multiple times, followed by a fun, but tiresome puzzley fighter-pick battle, followed by yet another boss battle where I lost interest and ended up getting suddenly one-shot, presumably by an attack I was meant to work around (another example of rock-paper-scissors that I missed due to exhaustion). Early on I was able to accept the anime yelling I mentioned four paragraphs ago, but let me tell you, this fight has nothing coming from the villain's point other than more and more "AURA!!!!!!!!!!". At that point I swapped the game to easy and started holding attack to get through fights, but after a while the enjoyment fully fizzled out so I bailed on the game.
Visual Novel Content and Pacing
I feel the real world stuff starts strong, with quips like the “a kiss is for true lovers” as you can see in the preview screenshots. However, I find it gets tiring fast and was soon happy to skip through dialogue scenes. If you've read a few basic stories/doujins you'll immediately recognize the tropes of each character; no need to read pages of dialogue to get to the point. There just isn’t much going on with the characters to warrant so much dialogue in most cases. To give credit, it's easy to appreciate the main characters and I've often found myself surprisingly emotionally connected to H-game characters at times, so I can at least see why others find them appreciable.
You can tell a lot of effort has been put into keeping consistency among characters in regards to what is slowly changed in Aura’s mind-chamber, but because they start rather one-note and I’m not as much of a fan of the mean-spirited changes, I didn’t really click with it. Again, if you like that sort of thing, this will be among the best H-games you've played. For me, it misses the mark.
I have made an RPGM game or two and I know how much of a bitch it is to script scenes, so there has to be praise for the movement, emotions, and changes of dialogue characters go through in cutscenes. But for what worth? To continually tell the player the same thing that's going on? Did you know that Aura is going to suck dicks in the future with passable but at times mediocre CGI?
I can't hold a boner, or attention, to a button being pressed that suddenly makes Aura change. Some might counter-argue with "well, what do you expect corruption to be?" To that, I could argue some generic anime girl going "oh no, tentacles got me, now I'm starting to... like it?!!?" has almost as much nuance as Aura going "hmm.... books are boring. I want to get shoes." Is it really all that different? But what I feel Aura mixes up is the pathway to that resolution. I do think Aura is close to being good in that regard but it's probably too late in development to cater it to someone like me.
Once again I have to point at Richard and Alicia being super one-note villains. The main characters can have their default tropes, but in H-games like this you would expect some more visually interesting or at least funny content from the villains. Some of the Alicia/Aura content can be an interesting read, but once you've gotten a conversation or two out of the villains, you've seen everything they're going to say/act for the rest of the game. It emphasizes my earlier comment on quickly being able to skip tons of dialogue and missing nothing worth reading. I was hoping for a memey early "good/bad" ending where Aura just straight up beats the shit out of them IRL.
As my last long train of thought -- if you do play and find yourself enjoying parts of it but feeling what I felt, consider lowering the difficulty all the way and racing through content. I did find in some testing that my serious complaints with the game were easier to navigate around if on the lowest difficulty -- but then again, maybe it's not really worth any time at that point and you should just unlock the gallery, whack it and leave. I like playing the game, so Aura fails for me.
Conclusion
Other RPGM-H games do the RPG part better and other VN-H games do the story better. I was shocked to see how much Aura-dev is making on Patreon when the quality of content feels rather time-wasting and upsetting for the player. The amount of work that’s been put into the game is impressive, and I’d never be able to replicate it myself, but I wasn't happy playing. I hope those that are paying are enjoying themselves.
For those of you fetishized to the advanced brain-only part of corruption, this may hit a low 4/5. For the rest of us, this is a 2/5.