RPGM - Completed - Star Knightess Aura [v1.0.2] [aura-dev]

This is a very cool game. Unlike other games, the gameplay is very catchy and would work even without NSFW scenes. The music choice is absolutely incredible. Now I am at 26 hours and was doing mostly a corrupt run, I wanted to have some vice options, but it seems that I have to basically pick all the corruptions before I can advance further to unlock vice, I am not sure how is it possible from a developer perspective, but I would prefer to just pick what I wanted and go the way I prefer most games and that is like "paragade mass effect", major decisions do the good way, but the ones that don't really matter the bad, way. I am not sure (maybe I will find out later in the story) why it is necessary to completely tarnish my relationship with Rose in order to extort a little bit from the Farmer or steal the mana thing from the hermit. Or even mess up my school grades. Richard has great grades, and he is evil. Why can't Aura have great grades and be a little bit evil also? These things are not mutually exclusive. Also, Jacob's farm should be moved a little bit to the left/down. I ended up there way too many times by accident. Otherwise perfect game. The bossfights are interesting and there are always different ways to solve them. I especially like that some enemies will lose armor when you light up the fires because they hate light. Very cool mechanic.

This game without walkthrough is unplayable. A lot of content can be missed very easily, mechanics and progression are not clear and sudden difficulty spikes are too many. I dont understand why quests and enemies do not have recommended levels.

On the other hand the story is good, the corruption is excellent and presented in many subtle ways. I like how many themes are over the top in cartoonish ways.

What completely tanked the score from solid 3 to poor 2 is repetition and little quantity of CGs. What we got is good but its a tragedy that the main villain got 4 cgs and some of them get repeated like 3 times. Its simply unacceptable that we get so little art for so much grind.

This game is heavily marred by gating your progress through having enemies levelled in ways you cannot see. You find out by dying. You level up by walking from the shrine to the smithy to spend - one by one, and they then reset the day - items you find that raise your stats. Fights are regular and tedious. They are either easy because you meet the arbitrary level requirements, or they are not, and you do not know beforehand which is which. So you walk to the blacksmith, spend one thing, wake up in the real world, go to sleep in the real world, wake up back in the shrine, and repeat. Just unbelievably tedious.

I really enjoyed the story and h scenes a lot. The corruption was a nice slow burn. Combat was satisfying though it was crazy hard at times. I did not encounter much hscenes in my vanilla route though the conclusion is solid. For ntr, it is peak.

This is a great example of a game with a corruption fetish. SKA is a combination of two games: one is a full-fledged RPG, another - an erotic game. It’s up to you how you will play it.

Pros:

- Excellent plot, well-developed lore and game universe. Interesting mechanics (if you are prepared for the fact that battles are an integral part of the game).

- Diverse choices: quests can be completed in different ways with different dialogues. A huge amount of text - more than in some VNs. Writing is very good.

- Nice graphics and beautiful, catchy CGs. Not too many animations though.

- The main character, it’s difficult to remain indifferent to her. Other characters are pretty well-developed too.

- Pleasant music. My special thanks for the Winterfall’s theme.

Cons:

- At a certain point you get bored from battles and want to skip them as quickly as possible.

- The plot is presented unevenly. If we talk about events in the real world, the first half is just exposition and sluggish changes in MC. But in the second half the plot suddenly accelerates.

- Changes of the MC in the real world and in fantasy world of Roya are not synchronized. At some point, you begin to perceive these two MCs as different people.

- In general, the system of personality changes seems somewhat simplified: sometimes it lacks smoothness, and there is no possibility of resisting changes (for example, through choices in dialogues).

- Sometimes the narrative logic was violated. In particular, it concerns storylines in one of the epilogues.

Also, I personally don’t like extreme corruption with nasty events. The corruption path in this game has plenty of those. At some point it was really hard to endure MCs decisions and actions. Be ready for this (or get all scenes unlock and play the pure path).

Overall: 4,25/5 (but five stars, because why not). It’s a great game, and I hope that developers won’t leave SKA’s universe. It would be great to see a sequel with known characters.

To the developers

This game is a waste of my life.

Too little use of animations, even though the program used to create it is newer than other games.

The price is not worth the experience, not fun, only words, no care for the illustrations that make the player feel like they are really there.

Not fun. They pay to play the game for entertainment, not a game that instills bad things in the real world like people in the real world do, such as drug dealing, getting rich quick, etc. They come to play the game, they do not come to fight against bad things like in the real world. They want to be comfortable, to relax from the chaotic and stressful real world.

It took a lot of patience to learn many systems, but it makes the player feel more and more pressured by the rules of this game.

You go back to play the legendary game that uses RPG Maker 2000, created by the Japanese first. Hint: Red-haired girl with a ponytail, wearing a cheongsam.

It feels weird to give Star knightess Aura 4 stars when I played it so much and completed it but maybe that's part of the issue right there. This game's strengths are its commitment to its heavily corruption focused premise and how it weaves that into the story that takes place in both the real and the fantasy world. SKA pushes the theme of corruption to its limits by transforming the hero into more than a mindless slut, as is far too often the case, and instead twists her into someone truly evil. It is not afraid to lean into the over-the-top parts of the setting and that works really well for making the game's MC come across as likeable and earnest and the antagonist(s) as cartoonishly evil in a good way. I was surprised by how much care and effort went into the story of the fantasy world part of the game, expecting it to be a paint-by-numbers female hero gets raped into being a whore for cock but there is enough attention paid to the corruption parts of the game and to the characters that Aura spends time with to keep these parts of the game fresh and engaging. The dynamic between Aura and Luciela also makes the erotic parts of the game more enjoyable and picks up the slack for what could otherwise be fairly bland unanimated CGs.



What holds SKA back from being 5 stars is that the game is very overwhelming at the beginning and it is not intuitive at all if you are looking for the best items and gear. Without a walkthrough, there is no way for players to know which sex scenes will give them major stat debuffs, what skills they should be prioritising in the early game and this makes it worryingly easy for players to feel underpowered without knowing where they went wrong. Thankfully, there is an official wiki as well as fan-made walkthroughs to help first-time players but ideally these resources should be a lot more optional than they feel. The other big drawback is that many scenes lack imagination or just re-use CGs from previous scenes but as I mentioned already the writing is able to do most of the heavy lifting when this happens. My other nitpick would be that lengthy parts of the game discuss the MCs growing fascination with high heels but we never get to see her wear them, even though you would think that these sections would be ripe for feet and heels erotic content.



TLDR: SKA boasts surprisingly engaging story that combines well with interesting (albeit largely one-dimensional) characters and a detailed corruption system but is held back by an RPG system that probably takes up too much of the player's time and is not easily picked up by new players. Sex scenes could also do with more production value to really push the game to new heights.

Good gameplay, and nice distribution between the smut and the gameplay, not to much grind, a story that seems creative and inovative, this one is really good.
The game have few bugs compared to other games, it's well polished and I think the balancing of the player and the npcs in the fights are quite good.

v1.0.2
"Grind is not a bug. It's a feature!"-the game. Probably.

You know, the concept itself was really interesting: a slow but detailed corruption mechanic half and another half with your quality RPG Maker affair.
But god damn, the second part drags this game down so so much. And the worst thing: Both parts are intertwined. At the halfway mark corruption progress stops until you've caught up in the RPG half. If you've been playing like me, said "F RPGs I had my share. Give me corruption only!" then congratulations! You've basically build yourself into a wall and might as well start over doing both halves of the game simultaneously.

There is no progression here without also grinding the god-awful RPG elements of this game. And they are god-awful. Holy hell. This is a prime example of walkthroughitis where the dev never even realized that the way they've grown used to play (that is to say optimally with all the knowledge about when and what skills to prioritize, where to get the good loot and how to set themselves up) is an asinine expectation to have of your average player.
Wanna figure out where to go? Unsure if you can take an encounter? Unsure if you're even supposed to be here? This game's solution: Run into a wall, see if it sticks. It doesn't? Tough luck, run back where you died last time, brute force your way through by removing your collar - rinse and repeat. All this back and forth of dying 3 steps further down this stupid forest is just terrible game design.

I'm sure more advanced players that have adapted to this game's, let's call them idiosyncracies, will tell you otherwise with loads and loads of hints and a suggestion for a potential build. Like "Buy 3 ropes, learn flame and keep 6 MP handy. You'll need them to progress here". Yeah, good luck finding that one out by yourself.

You can play on the easiest difficulty and still have to engage your brain constantly just to survive encounters. So what you do is clear the map bit by bit while having to retrace your steps again and again. And the game is clearly designed to be this way. You'd think all those optional paths and possibilities of brute forcing encounters were a good thing. But no; this game lacks all the necessary convenience features and progression hints that could make such a system work. It just doesn't. You either spend a lot of time gathering all the items you MIGHT need whenever you enter a new area and prey to god that the encounter is survivable, or you bash your head against the wall until you're done.

The game also commits the cardinal sin of having a terrible leveling system. As in, there is none - at least not really. After hours of grind I had reached level 4. My party members were at level 3 and one at four.
What you're supposed to do to level is to battle monsters, collect random stuff and grind gold to then go to the local blacksmith and fuse that stuff into your equipment. On the way you'll check every nook and cranny - talk to each and every NPC in the hopes of finding someone that teaches you magic or skills. Which, of course, usually cost time bringing your entire gameflow to a grinding halt. Nevermind spawning in the middle of nowhere and having to run back to wherever you were interrupted last - but I think I've covered that enough by now.
You can get EXP through one-time quests or a laughably measly amount through certain day actions. But like so much in this game - it's tied to skipping to the next day. Like seriously - was wasting the player's time a requirement for this game? Is grind a feature, not a bug?

Some of the map design is just bad. It might look nice, but it plays terrible as it confounds the aforementioned issues of constant resets. There are so many corners and bottlenecks in a lot of these maps that movement never felt fluid. Places you want to go to do stuff are across half the map.
There is no indication of completed quest markers.
The game has a compendium of people, but if you're like me and at some point you just skip through the text, it is utterly useless. I gotta talk to John? Sure, I totally know who that is. And thanks for the picture! It's generic RPGMaker Dude #14! Thanks for telling me where to find him game!

I threw in the towel at the festival boss fight running straight into a wall a dozen times ON THE EASIEST DIFFICULTY WITH MYSELF IN SWEATY RPG HARDCORE GAMER MODE! And reloading the save I made an hour ago going through the same bearable RPG Maker gameplay just wasn't that appealing. To be fair about the area: The idea and concept behind the area was nice. But holy hell does it drag. And god forbid you're not prepared for what is to come - or know the perfect setup while also not having progressed so far into the corruption aspect that you've basically permanently debuffed yourself. Back to your save you made an hour ago. Isn't this fun?

There is story or worldbuilding here - be prepared to read novels worth of text. I couldn't be bothered at some point. At least the writing is good - there's just far too much of it. And it gets too wordy at some point. Well, basically everywhere. And just for the record - I hate the heroine. Smug self-righteous Mary Sue nerd. So at least corruption feels good. Just a shame that the villains are not much more likeable either. Or memorable.

This really hurts to say cuz the passion of the dev is clearly there, but they don't seem to understand the first thing about balancing, hassle free RPGMaker mechanics or how to implement QoL features. I'd advise anyone that respects their time to stay away.
I gave a very subjective 2 Star for how much this game let me down after having invested hours of thankless grind hoping to get on with the part I was interested in: the slow corruption. At least with games that are advertised to be without a soul you know what you get. Here, all you get after hours of grind is the creeping realization that you've built yourself into a corner 2 hours ago and might as well restart the game again. Easy mode certainly isn't going to help you.

One of the most overhype and shittiest hentai games in this website, barely any content early on and takes a lot of work to unlock the scenes, the art is nice but the game is so boring, is just text after text after text is more like reading a novel than anything substantial, there are better games like Karryn prison to name one.

what about the gameplay then? is any good? nope and to make matter worse you don't gain exp from monsters, I played for 3 hours and got a gameover and had to NEW GAME PLUS but nothing carries over unless you use your score points to give you some items or gold early on but since my score was slo low that didn't matter at all, is just terrible

All the 4 stars or 5 reviews must be trolling, if you want a good story othen play something else, why is the writing so important all of the sudden in a fucking Hentai game? like seriously hentai games the most important thing is the Hentai and this game does not deliver like at all, 4 HOURS 4 HOURS and I got nothing

FUCKING ABSOLUTE CINEMA , 10/10, MASTER PIECE!!!
Serious this game and plot bring me more hype than any episode of one piece, and more plot twists that madoka magika, i'm a little annoy by the way that aura is corrupted to futility (i mean to become a frivolous girl), but more i understand the story more interesting it gets, and now i know some truths it got to its apex. Also I love the dialogues and personality of the characters. Very well written.

Lets just say this is an actually amazing game as well as the best slow corruption ever. Great CG's and writing with genuinely good RPG mechanics. The interplay between the realms and the playing chess against yourself style of play I also found really interesting

i've been a fan for about 2 years, great shit, not for everyone though. art is a tiiny bit weak, but it's super forgivable considering the rest of the game is awesome, from the story to the gameplay, everything is great

My main problem with SKA is how long it goes on for. The world is fantastic, the writing is fantastic, and the developer of this game is certainly to be congratulated for the game that he/she has completed, because it is certainly a great showing. However, it drags on for an incredible amount of time. How anyone is supposed to play through this without becoming acquainted with the skip text button is beyond me, as this game easily seems to run into the 60 hour mark, or even more if you carefully read everything.

It is also an incredibly hard game. Even on normal difficulty, the game is unrelenting in its difficulty, and you'll die repeatedly trying to figure out how to best approach combat. There is also no handholding as to where you should go, and what you should do, often leading to situations where you wander into an area and get your ass absolutely handed to you, with no real idea where you are supposed to go otherwise.

I often found myself at a loss for what to do next, and the game outright punished me for this, making the bosses harder because I wasn't being efficient with my time. I thought this was somewhat disrespectful to me as a player, because I want to explore and experiment in a big open world, and yet the game seemed uninterested in this play style.

I can't say I actually completed the game fully, I spent about 4 days in 4 different play sessions trying to advance, and got about half-way, before I tapped out. At this point in my game, the difficulty had become so intense that I was just dying repeatedly, and the only solution really offered was to restart the game with improved stats, and I had absolutely no interest in replaying 30 hours of the exact same content just to come back and continue again.

As to the heroine, I really like the "corrupted out of necessity" trope, and I think the developer really nailed this aspect. I wish the game had been more economic with its and my time, so that I could have experienced more of it, but alas I don't think I will be finishing this game, or seeing the ending, as I simply can't see myself spending another maybe 40 hours trying to get through it on newgame+ or spending many hours just being frustrated with the interaction between difficulty and progression.

This game is the very standard boring RPGM gameplay loop, but made extremely tedious with insanely slow progression. I played for around 2 hours and practically nothing happened. honestly one of the least enjoyable things I've seen.

This may be the slowest corruption game I've ever played without dropping it. Story is great, sex scenes... less so. It's hard to describe this as a sex game because of this. There are conventional video games (far cry, cyberpunk) that contain sexual content, but no one would say you should play those games with the sole purpose of watching it. In the same way, SKA's sexual content is so intersped and (to be honest) low quality, I can't recommend playing the game for the sex scenes. I can 100% recommend playing the game because it's game mechanics and story are 10/10.

It's really neat, different and interesting.
I love that it's more of a game as it keeps me invested however that makes it worse from an erotic perspective.
I mostly happily played for 20 hours regardless, got passed the greed festival and then ended up losing because I apparently suck at combat, so I use the tools provided to get stronger, but that leads to me getting a game over because I ran out of things the game decided I was allowed to spend my corruption on.
great, well I guess I can replay those 20 hours again but thanks to New game plus I get a whole *2* extra stats to make it easier.

Getting stronger shouldn't progress a bad end, and the bad end definitely shouldn't just *happen* with little warning when the mistakes leading to it happened hours ago

Also is every time the dev updates the game on steam you have to reinstall the lewd patch

Sorry but no, this is not enjoyable. My only option for corruption and to see as many lewd events is to lock the heroine into an ending where she doesn't end up like a free use/slutty hero, but actually a slave of Richard, who is a child murderer? Those are my only options, pure girl or being the queen of an evil child murdering subhuman? No giving herself and her body to the people as a hero? Fucking garbage decision and another western H game failing where devs like Shimobashira, Lovely Ultra Pretty Loving You, Clymenia, etc. shine. Idk what it is about western devs taking their game so fucking seriously and thinking they are god tier isekai light novelists, forgetting their primary goal is to provide a good experience to the players while encouraging you to seek out all the lewd content in the game.

Call me crazy, but I fucking hate Richard as a character, and I'm not encouraged to seek out the lewd content because I and don't want Aura to be a pet to a child murderer despite how much this game seems to push him as some great mastermind. I want Aura to kill Richard and have her experience with being corrupted change her into a slutty hero who just sleeps with the whole Kingdom but retains her personality. If the only options this game gives me to enjoy the H is to fawn over a character you hate then fuck this game, I'll just replay Celesphonia or something until his new game comes out.

I have been following this games forever and I still haven't really found anything like it.

If you are into corruption + mental changes you should 100% try this out (although how haven't you already!)

I can't believe this games actually was completed. So rare to see.

Great job developers!

Star Knightess Aura (henceforth SKA) is probably the best erotic game I've ever played. Its not for everyone, but for those its for, there is basically nothing else that scratches the itch.

SKA has two primary things as its draw
1) Slow-burn brainwashing where the protagonist goes from a frumpy nerdy heroic girl to a horny evil basic bitch.
2) A deep and difficult RPG where resources are limited and finite.

Virtually all of the negative reviews of this come from people who don't want 1 or 2. Which is fine, this game isn't for everyone, but if you aren't the target audience, you should give this game a pass, rather than think that the game is bad.

On the first front, the game is a real slow-burn. Not slow-burn in the kind of low-standards that people have of H-games, but in the sense of "it will likely be 10-20 hours of game time before you see a sex scene." There will be lewd scenes before that, but its meant to be slow brainwashing and that needs proper set up with smaller sexual actions first. So again, expect to wait quite a while on the protagonist to be doing more wild stuff.

Similarly, some people get upset because they feel bad making the protagonist evil. Its certainly fine if this isn't your thing, and it may be a reason to skip this game. But this doesn't reflect poorly on the game.

Mechanically, the game is very difficult, at least for a pure run (no corruption) on normal difficulty. If you want to play the game pure, you will need several runs where you learn and try out different builds and try to get things to work. This is a primary draw to the game. Of course, corruption allows you to bypass a lot of the difficulty. Story difficulty also trivializes things, if you personally don't want a challenge.

The game is, well, part of the game. I've seen other reviewers get annoyed by all of the "grinding" (which you literally can't do, resources are finite). I think what they are getting at is they don't like that they have to play the actual RPG. You are supposed to read the dialogue and see where to go next. Sometimes you will need to explore or use your mind to figure it out. You might need to try a different approach to a boss, maybe with a new skill. You can basically turn off the difficulty with story mode, but you are still expected to, well, play SKA. Again, this isn't a quick fap, and if that is what you are after, there are thousands of other games on this website for you.

But yeah, for anyone who finds either of my 1 or 2 to be up your alley, then I highly recommend trying the game out.