RPGM - Completed - Star Knightess Aura [v1.0.6] [aura-dev]

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.

Opinions are subjective, we can all agree to that, right? With that being said, Star Knightess Aura is objectively no less than a 4 star and pretty darn close to a 5.

It does almost everything right in what it sets out to do, the art is nice, characters well written, dialogue is fun, the plot enjoyable to follow and there are actual genuine consequences for your actions to the point where you can essentially get entire towns or villages obliterated. It's quite brutal.

The game is very much a slow slow burn, if that's your jig, it's fucking brilliant, you are seriously rewarded for putting the time into corrupting the FMC and the systems based around it are extremely unique, I loved Alice's involvement in the story. But understandably some people enjoy faster gratification so I can definitely see it not being for everyone, however I do not believe this should change the rating of the game.

I was originally considering giving the game a 4 due to certain repetitive tasks by proxy of the game being in the RPGM engine, and thinking the game could do with an in-game walkthrough but I honestly think it's one of the best games in it's niche, the devs have done an amazing job here and considering the amount of absolute shite we get fed by various devs in the adult genre I believe games with this much work deserve to be rewarded.

I honestly don't understand HOW this game is almost 4*. Yeah, the concept centered around the slow corruption is cool, but EVERYTHING else about it is so poorly designed it's hilarious. Cringe inducing characters, braindead bloated dialogues (the dev has some weird-ass kink for 'BWAHAHA' I fucking swear), tons of shitty RPGM combat coupled with clunky interface (who the hell uses mouse when they play RPGM games, like for real?) and awful mob balancing. On any difficulty higher than 'story' playing the game becomes a chore. Leveling-up is a chore( only through quests, yep), finding shit and grinding cash to infuse stats into your gear is a chore, finding said shit to infuse is a chore. No, really, you'd have a better time watching paint dry as you jerk off using sand paper. It's THAT bad.

It's criminal this is anything below 4 stars. This game is one of the greatest corruption games I have ever played, if not the greatest.

The amount of effort put into this game is immense. Its culminated into the most beautiful slow-burn corruption. I can't get over how much love was poured into this. It's so well made. You get to see a pure heroine slowly get corrupted step by step. Truly, not an opportunity missed or glossed over.

Not only that. It's a full RPG with corruption elements in the gameplay. I love every bit of this. It plays a lot like The Persona series, yet it's about brainwashing a heroine. There is a day/night . During the , VN segments on Earth happen here. Then there is an alternate world the heroine plays in at night. This is the RPG dungeon crawling part of the game with all the gameplay. You accumulate corruption points to brainwash her over these days. Then every day you can spend the points in her mind 'palace' which is just a physical representation of her mind. You get to pick it apart and replace her thoughts with lewd ones and slowly over time you see the results and its lovely.

Even something as small as making her like the color pink and liking cute outfits is shown in the game, as she struggles to resist putting on cute and slutty outfits, parading her body to the citizens of this other world. You see her degrade her morals in bigger changes, like removing her dislike for injustice makes her empathy for victims of bullying disintegrate, until she because a heartless bitch without realizing anything is wrong with her.

People who wanted a quick, instant defeat game will not like this. This is for true corruption fans who want to see a heroine degrade and fall slowly as she struggles every step of the way to stay true to herself. I've never seen such a perfect example of an ideal corruption game. This is it for me. I wish I could give it more than 5 stars, It's perfection.

the best western game of its type, a slow start but totally worthwhile once you get into it. i am very glad i pushed ahead past the initial parts which gave me pause, this game proved to be incredible

I'm going to rate this higher then I like or feel as foolish stuff like that aside there is a good system here that deserves recognition. There is not much I can say that has not already been covered. RPGM is a shit engine that has to be propped up via art, story and possible mechanics and such things. What is clear here is that the selling point is corruption. I am for that and like it when it works and is done well. I have not got to the end but from what I have seen, and stuff I've read here the game kinda does not qualify. A corrupted person is stuff there under the drugs/alcohol/religion/trauma etc... or at least the dregs are there. A person is their interests, muscle memory, hobbies, passions, mannerism and so forth, this is factual and philosophical. This game comes off as a far less attractive, slow murder. Once you take away all that of what defines Aura as the person she is, then that is no longer Aura and she is dead. A very simple example is a car or even more better a remade world war 2 tank/vehicle >-> it ain't that same thing it was when the only original thing left is the frame. A new pc in the same pc case is also a good example.

Overall at time of this review there are not enough scenes to justify putting a lot of time into this unless you are fine with wasting the time needed to get to the scenes

There's really only two, potentially three games of this kind that I'd rate 5-stars. This is definitely one of them. The start will be slow for most people, but the plot and scenes are generally excellent.

some little spoilers ahead.

average but I think it's a shame since some ideas here are great. I've stopped at the start of ch2 with 10 hours put in and I feel like I've rushed some things to get to this point.
I can understand the length since it has so many things to do, but I just feel like some could have been cut out. and it's missing some things from japanese games that make the fantasy part feel a little lacking.

getting super extremely addicted, or worse, in ultra withdrawal, should probably have some kind of effect in how aura goes around and fights. clothes should be more important and rumors too, I mean hell you let Aura give plenty of hand/blow jobs and to the eyes of most (until there is probably an hard coded change due to the story progressing later on) you're still the Hero full stop.

this is also a personal preference, but I find some conversations a little cringe and characters somewhat bland. eg. aura when she talks about "lv.sqrt(2) prostitute lost in toad world!!!!!" and all her enthusiastic shouting with dozens of !!, all the shake effects etc.
despite being a supposed genius also leaving no room for bullies etc she's still dumb enough to categorically rule out alicia
rose which is more or less the same shouty bookworm but w no guts, alicia which is little more than the average rich bimbo with childhood issues. george is ok, richard is too kind of.

the fantasy world doesn't really feel grand.
nobody there talks a lot so I... just can't really judge? I mean, the party is ok but you just talk so little with them. no camp at night, no slip up on a question indicating that she could actually be from an another world, aspiring hero almost only hits on aura when you click on teach me something at the guild. no talk on formally entering, nothing. they are just a friendly bunch that join you sometimes.

I pretty much know that Paul is the big bro with a somewhat edgy side when his friends are in danger, charlotte is a funny small girl with a love for alcohol and gambling (this is actually rarely seen so it's good, so why not even 1 night out with her?? what adventurer doesnt say hey it's 7PM we have worked 10 hours how about dinner and a beer or 20) and john is the cringy guy with a sense of selfless heroism deep down and hates bringing innocents from another world to wage war for them royans. the end.

you can actually find a demon general nearly immediately as a novice, in the starting city, and even kill him even if you have almost no powers. boom you're already the hero sung by everyone. richard is pretty much on your side and doesnt tell anyone that aura can destroy them. and the resistance there are 5 guys. the supposed trading city filled with opportunities and a ton of corruption is pretty much 15 houses with no outskirts at all... the underground in the seaside city is cool but kind of repetitive isn't it? you can just grind to 70 trust boom done. and the slave trade vice is a 1 click investment done as if it was BTC in Robinhood which even if realistic is just not exciting at all

a funny thing that has happened I think twice in different settings but I dont remember the specifics:
"heya!~ I want to meet your boss/do whatever thing would be considered suspicious out of the blue even if you dont know who I am bwahaha~".
"you cant yet."
"mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I shouldn't ask or it'd be suspicious"
girl you already have :cryingemoji x2

some nice ideas but meh execution, H aside I don't agree with those that praise the story this much.

This GAME is awesome if you expect a GAME. The STORY is great if you want a STORY. If you want to get to the hardcore stuff really fast SKIP this title or look for a gallery unlocked save post.

This is not a VN, it is a true game with multiple choices, paths, corruption options and a ton of characters. You're choices matter they will affect the outcome of the game in major ways.

The worse part of this title is the first 30 minutes or so when you have to complete the story setup, even when you complete the story setup you then have to go about corrupting the MC or trying to save her from lewd choices. If you skip a lewd choice the game will let you and not just change the dialogue and play the scene anyway.

Their are a TON of Hardcore scenes but it takes time and corruption top get to them. If you like a Story and can get into this one then you will probably love this title. If you want to quickly jump in and jack off you will be disappointed.

This title to me is top notch and a hell of a lot of fun.