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

Here to update my review after 1.0:

After playing through about half of the finished game, I will say that the harsh criticism I gave the early version has been somewhat addressed, and what's more, the project became one of the most unique heroine-games ever made in english.

There is now so much content in the game, that the central NTR is less of a dealbreaker. Nearly every type of MC and corruption-content is present. There is a lot more good writing that's readily apparent in the game, and over time it becomes clear that every major character has at least been thought out, given a chance to be interesting and given a purpose in the story.

There is less cringe here now, and a much more respectable effort to make a great game here... but it is still not good enough to recommend to most people. The theming here is used as a justification to feed the player slow, uninteresting and aggravating gameplay (so you have the motivation to skip it for corruption), making even a normal run one of the hardest RMPG-games I've played (for a less corrupted run)

There is a serious and competent attempt at a proper RPG-storyline here, but even if the amount of cringe is relatively smaller, it still isn't zero. It's hard for me to judge whether the author succeeded in tapping into the fetishes he wanted to depict, but what I can say is that this is a story that is trying to balance a lot of themes, and at some points trying to wrangle the porn- and anime-mindsets to function in a more "serious" long-form story kind of fails, and the story kind of fails to stay interesting at times, especially with the slow pacing of the overworld-gameplay. But if you liked Re-Zero, you will probably enjoy this.

Oh yeah, most important factor: This is one of the slowest hentai-games out there, it contributes uniquely to the theme, but also saps my will to keep playing most of the time. the game is also very punishing, and you can get your playthrough into a deathspiral fairly easily, which is a problem in a 20-hour game with a lot of filler. It's great when it works for the experience, but again, will be a huge turnoff if it's not what you're looking for.

The game stays a 8/10 for me, but I can see why it would be a 10 for many people who like these themes more.
___
[review of a very early version]
This is a lower score than I would normally give to a game with this much effort, but unfortunately this game just makes a few too many wrong turns for me to recommend it to anyone who isn't specifically looking for NTR-corruption.

Positives:

+ Good Art
+ Interesting, Unique themes of playing an isekai-protagonist, magical girl, and the "corruptor" at once.
+ A very intricate corruption-system that deals with representing changing a character's "inner world".
+ Plenty of gameplay that links to ->
+ A commitment to slow, progressing corruption

So all in all, this would be a foundation I would normally enjoy a lot.

But... the Negatives get in the way of this:

- Low-quality writing in most aspects, in the plot, pacing, dialogue and characterization of most characters that get screentime.
- Using the default RPG-battle system is a pain, not to mention that the combat is mostly used padding. This type of combat is already outdated, and does very little to add to the game, and the game puts no good twists to it.
- NTR as a central trope, which makes it hard to stomach in you don't like NTR.
- Heavy reliance on multiple sets to premade assets, that very often get left underdeveloped, leading to a very bland and forgettable setting.
- The setup of playing as the MC, while also being in the position of inflicting the Mind Control presents problems.

You can argue about whether it's icky or not, but most importantly It Makes The RPG-Gameplay Portions of The Game Feel Obsolete, as one half of the gameplay is working against the other half. So anything Aura "wants to do" is like a "waste of time", since the only incentives for gameplay are to corrupt her more. The game would only be enjoyable this way, if you were specifically just aiming for getting to see the scenes, rather than trying to roleplay or do a specific run.

...So in practise, the negatives of this game kind of counteract all the positives of it.
The art may be pretty, but the dull and flat scene/dialogue writing gets in the way of it.
Even if you enjoy the story-setup, the actual pacing and padding of the story-beats will turn you off.
Even if you think the scenes look good, and the gameplay is bearable, you might get turned off by the prospect of NTR and "self-corruption" theming.
And you might not be able to get past the cringy parts of the dialogue, which is most of it.

So, there are a lot of problems with this game, that are kind of fundamental to it.

It's one of the best games I've played on this site. The game has a lot of content and the creator adds it every Friday, most games take months to update so this is a good point.
The story is interesting and good to follow, the English is well written but you have to be patient if you just want to fap this game may not be for you
Corruption unfolds in a very interesting way, I haven't seen it in any other game I've played.
I recommend playing in easy mode because then you can play at your own pace and do whatever you want without worrying.
It has a good amount of lewnd scenes and has good art.

Slow burn (newest patreon build JUST added a vaginal sex scene) but if you're into slow corruption/mind control with a great story and actual gameplay, this game is amazing and getting better every month.

Hmmm this game is in a weird spot at the moment.

It feels like it should be the ultima ratio a la Corruption game, with its own mechanics and impacts in the real world for your stuff in the fantasy world. And I think that part is nicely done, although it is mostly so far non-sexual, so i dont really see the appeal for me at the moment there.

But my major gripe is how SLOW this game is. Theres very little repeatable/quick fap scenes out there, and if there are, they are locked behind several quests you gotta do first, and then you get maybe one, max. two scenes per hour? Plus this game also has a weird one-way path it seems, triggering events only if all prerequisites are done.

Additionally, for being a total corruption-focused game, the MC surely agrees very quickly to sexual stuff in the fantasy world? I mean, I know its a fantasy world and all, but she literally flashes her tits on day one if you so desire. Maybe due to a lack of non-nude sexual scenes, but this feels VERY jarring going into this game.

Overall, this is in its current state too slow and too sparse, while also defying its internal logic, for it to be enjoyable. Maybe Im overly negative, but yah.

This is one of the games I've found with incredible potential. Be warned though; it's extremely slow burn, so if you're not in to that it's not going to be for you. Also, notice I said it's got great potential - the game is not close to complete yet (though progressing nicely), so if you want hardcore corruption I'd suggest coming back in maybe 6 months.

Too much grind and not enough lewd content, you have to play for hours before you can see any. Also it focuses on stupid cliche characters that are mostly annoying. The art is good, but I'm not ready to waste several hours on a RPG Maker game before I get to see anything lewd-related.

The graphics of this game are great, and the gameplay is for the most part fine (if a bit overly difficult and almost downright impossible in some places even at a reasonable level for the content)
Unfortunately however the story itself is completely nonsensical, with all major good characters being unable to have any influence (in the real world, at least, and this is a problem I find entirely too common in these NTR style games in order to justify what's happening) while the main character, who seems reasonable at first is actually incredibly badly written. Her inner self somehow letting corruption even to the point where it actually hurts her chances of winning because it will help her win somehow? Both villains are incredibly cartoonish and uninteresting and really just make me want to kill them. Would be a genuinely fantastic game if more care was taken to make the corruption reasonable or at least enjoyable for people who aren't literal cartoonish villains.

As an rpgm game its great as a porn game its awful .

if you wondering why this has such a good rating compare the early reviews to the later reviews. The majority of positive reviews are from early on and talk of the potential of the game, even the newer positive reviews talk about the potential of the game. There is a ton of content and 99% of it is just boring quests with no H. If the game hasn't delivered when there is 12+ hours of content its difficult to use the word 'potential' . There is a reason why newer reviews are mostly negative.

According to my save file I've put 12 hours into this game and that's with skipping most of the text, playing on easy and cheating my save to remove grind. I can't have seen more than 20 minutes of H in that time. That's 35 mins of boring quests to 1 min of porn.

The final straw for me came after the first big battle and I could visit the next town. The first 2 H scenes I got to were starting to move away from softcore and what did i get .. 2 scenes with just black screen and text but no pictures.

This game is very close to being great but its just boring from a H perspective.

CG - 4
Game design - 4
writing -4
Porn - 1
UX -2

I'm not giving this an even lower rating because the artstyle is good and the negatives I'll point out can be fixed, but this game made me waste 6 hours of my life.

It seems the dev remembers this is a porn game only some times given the very scarce amount of situations we get something erotic to happen, and even so, it's extremely mild AND non repeatable.

The game is an absolute grind fest with a combat much harder than a porn game should be and the amount of exposition you get with walls upon walls of text is mind numbing (I came to fap, godammit!) and even though my finger hurts from pressing CTRL to skip everything and I probably would have needed 20 hours to get to where I am had I bothered reading everything, still nothing happens. Do a bunch of quests, get more quests, and try to make something happen in the MC's brain... to no avail, really.

Honestly, I had been keeping an eye on this one since 0.8 or something, waiting for it to be more developed to try it out, but as of 0.19, this game stands to me as the best example I've seen so far of a porn game trying as hard as humanly possible to be an average non-porn RPG.

Has a lot of potential to be a great corruption and mind control game. Has a lot of content so far too. Intro's a bit long but was fun (for me at least). Story and characters are pretty interesting and enjoyable so far. I really hope it continues development.

The high rating the game has so far must be due to the potential some see here. But for me personally this game is one great grind-fest, with far too few sexual scenes inbetween.

Pros:

• great art (CGs and pixel art)
• great and unique gameplay ideas, with a good technical implementation but coming with a huge BUT... (look further down)
• good and promising build up, BUT...
• generally original story and a good foundation for an interesting NTR/corruption game

BUT or Cons:

• gameplay ideas have almost no effects. What does it help if you finally manage to spent points to make a mental change but you get NO rewards or effects apart from some dialog. Very disappointing
• Build up promises a nice corruption heavy game, but there are almost NO LEWD SCENES compared to the time you are actually playing. No groping, no harassment, really almost nothing. Again VERY disappointing
• NTR premise isnt used. The antagonist doesnt appear in the first 6 hours of the game

Summary:

All in all this game promises a lot, but delivers almost nothing. Maybe, if the intro wouldnt have hooked me that much, then I wouldnt have been this disappointed. And the biggest problem is: The dev could use the next ten updates for implementing only lewd stuff (which the dev wont do) and the lewd scenes would still be sparse.

• grinding hell
• Role-playing game not a porn game
• huge time effort
• very low rewards
• almost no lewd content

Sorry guys, really tried to see this one positive . But the rating of this game definitely is much too high for what it has to deliver atm.

Still I wish this game all the best for the future and I might come back and update this review, when the game should become more wholesome one day. Good luck!

Edit: Whats with the NTR? I want to see scenes with the main antagonist, who harasses and gropes the MC and starts corrupting here. He barely even shows up after the prologue. What really gets me excited are relationships. And the prologue promises a NTR story between the villain and the star knightess, but there are absolutely no scenes between the villain and Aurora yet.... :/

While the game is still a bit early in its development I've got to give credit where it's due.

This game is surprisingly well written and I like how the corruption aspect of it was implemented, with the protagonist slowly being corrupted and brainwashed without her having the slightest idea, the scenes that occur between classes where these, at first little, changes are being noted by other characters surrounding the MC.

Now this game doesn't come without its cons, but being that it's still in development some of them can be ignored, such as the lack of art which can be a bit of a turn off if I'm being honest.

The combat and grind may feel a bit annoying at times, which is something I won't deny, but it's not completely pointless as the corruption of the MC isn't instantaneous, you see the MC go through it as the time passes so while it does tend to act a bit like a filler it's not completely pointless.

I'm looking forward to the development of this game and I'm planning to buy it in the near future although the slow development does annoy me quite a bit and also the part I'll try waiting for a full release, if it comes, before playing it again, I sincerely hope the game isn't abandoned as it has a lot of potential... Also, the protagonist's taste in entertainment is pure trash... Having read a lot of novels I've got to say the devs do know how most of those generic novels' names are made up...

This game honestly could be great, however it isn't.
I'm honestly surprised by how high this game is rated. My guess is what people rate this game high for its potential. Right now there is no better word to describe this game than "tedium".
Most monster encounters are pointless, there is literally no reward (exp/money) so you are actually encouraged to just dodge them. However because there is no "escape from combat" if they do touch you, you need to reload (or engage in pointless fighting, loosing some MP/HP). Who thought of that? You have a choice between fighting generic RPGM enemies (for no gains) or quitting the game to reload (ruining emersion).
Action system is also dumb. You have 1 action per day and it quickly becomes very annoying. You want to upgrade your stats or learn a new spell? Well each upgrade cost 1 action. So if you have items to upgrade yourself 3 times you need to waste 3 days doing it (wake up in isekai -> go to blacksmith -> choose upgrade -> watch same "normal" school day of MC -> repeat x3).
The amount of pointless dialog is ridiculous. At some points i was able to hold "skip" for like a minute strait without missing anything but flavor text.
Porn part is also surprisingly weak. Art is good, but there is almost none of it. During the MC's school day there is also (to my knowledge) no ecchi events. Don't get me wrong, there are events, during the school, but unless you are into reading pointless worldbuilding they aren't arousing.
MC's corruption is surprisingly nonexistent, upon entering the first city on the first day i was already able to flash my tits for money.

Overall this game is too boring to be an RPG and lucks actual porn to be good adult game. I really hope this game improves and i would have a reason to rewrite this review.

In my opinion one of the best h-games this site has to offer. I like corruption games but usually avoid hypnose games, since in most hypnose games it's like the heroine becomes like a soulless puppet. But it doesn't feel like that in this game.

There are a lot of different ways to play the game depending on what you choose to corrupt aura with first. Having different difficulties and new game+ is great for a game that gets constant updates too.

Art is great but sadly there isn't that much cg in the game yet.

Writing is excellent and the game has to offer a lot of different kinks.

Anyways, amazing game. Can't wait for future updates. 5 stars.

I don't have much to say. I just enjoy this game. However, I am required to write why: It's creative. It's original. The dev isn't afraid to explore new mechanics and do his own thing.

The corruption mechanic is very interesting, and is enjoyable to explore.

The separation between irl and in-game is interesting, and allows you to see the impact of some of your actions.

I actually quite like the art, though some people complain about it. It seems to fit the game imo.

Review as of 0.14.3


What stands out the most about the game is the complex but fun gameplay mechanics using what the rpgm engine has to offer. Along with it, however, are questionable and unnecessary features which might ruin the game in the long run.


Story/Writing

It starts off as a geek, naive girl getting isekai'd in a world of fantasy, although the isekai part is more of a digimon isekai than the one you mostly see on today's animes. The mc both lives the life of a student during the day, and the chosen hero when she sleeps at night. It has humour and doesn't take itself too seriously, and the overall mood is light-hearted and not too intense. As it stands now, it seems like the game has barely covered a quarter of the overall story.
Not much errors on the grammar side too, which is nice. 5/5


Art

I've read somewhere that the dev has trouble financially, so the lack of CG is quite understandable. With the few that exists, however, the art is below than average. You could argue that it depends on the player's taste, but I can't really tell if that's the case. They are as generic as can be and lack the appeal to make me interested. If you played games like nymphomania priestess or karryn's prison, you will surely know what I mean. Even cartoonish style like bone tales manor has its own unique charm. Among all these 2d drawn art style games in the market, I expect the game will up its standards very soon. 2/5


(Also, fix the awkward position of standing CGs during dialogues. Aura holding her skirt upward while her other arm is on the side looks really unnatural. Her crying CG is also on another level of abnormality.)


Gameplay(divided into three)

I'm not claiming to be a rpg veteran, but I have my fair share of experience playing rpgm games because I prefer them most than the ren'py ones. It is obvious the dev has put alot of work on these mechanics and it was interesting enough to keep me playing more. Excluding the saitama power of collar, I enjoyed the gameplay overall.


5+2+5+5-1 ÷ 5 = 3.2 overall

Aside from the aforementioned issues, it looks the game is on the right track. There is no doubt the game will only get better in the future.
(No guides/walkthrough used)

Amazing game this far!
Updates come regularly, and contain quite a lot of content each time.
Following the 'MAX LEWD' guide has proven a little difficult, at times, but it sounds like the developer will make this a little less tedious in the future.

i've first played the version version 8.** and the current one (14.2) there is a main play-game issue i don't know if it is on purpose or not.. there is no consistency in scenes and in quest.and with that i mean that the lewd scenes is not clear how to see the content if not go throught a guide and even so it is so compecated that u must track days quests etc. let me post some hints from the lewd guide
*Complete all the things for (Impostor Refugees) and as this is a major thing people get stuck on Liliana is where you talked to the Demon Worshiper on **Day 15 **then return to Desmond.
*In the next room talk to one of the “Dead Merchants” and give him a Vitality Potion this will not only give you a reward later but this is also for the new Corruption Stat you’ll get on **day 50**
and there are so many similar things like world bosses,materials,slime feeding etc.
There might be hidden formula that game calculates for ending purposes that i don't have knowledge of BUT from player perspective is so chaotic that he has no clue.. if someone tries to follow quest clues it is almost certain that he will see alomost no scenes
*The idea fro the game 10/10
*the world the characters exept Richard until now he seems to blunt for "main villain" 10/10
* scenes creativity 10/10
it also has the for multiple endings likeAura end Richard end Alicia end
easily one of the most awesome games out there
i want to put my feedback of the game so it can be more clear what i like and what not in this game

The writing kind of save the game but overall it'snot a good rpg.

It's not a good rpg 'cause there is no replayability, there is not in depth combat system, thereis no interesting grindable events like side job, fishing, those kind of things that are not part of the main story but that you enjoy to do...

At this point it's just a visual novel in which you control the Main character movement.

Graphism are ok, there is little nude/porn events.

The story isn't extremely mature but at least it's well written.

In Video game there is the word "game". To make a video game you first need to create a solid gameplay. Having a good script is always appreciated, but it's not the priority.

It's not bad as a one shot linear story, but it doesn't do the job as a rpg.

The dev. seems more focused on the combat mechanics than the lewd and that's cool and all but there just seems too many different unfinished mechanics at this point. At this point there is minimal lewdness and minimal artwork. The potential is there but let's hold off on the award ceremony. This is a review based on V 14.2