RPGM Completed Star Knightess Aura [v1.2.1] [aura-dev]

[Thokeus]

While to an extent, I get where you're coming from, realistically, Aura simply has hard limits to what she can actually do on Earth. Also, as said before, she doesn't believe that the stuff on Earth is important. There's no magic on Earth and there's no direct connection between the actions on Earth and the actions in Roya. Not to mention that, as established during the prologue, killing Richard on Earth would just ensure that he's the Demon Lord full time in Roya and solves absolutely nothing. The same applies to Luciela. Even if she absolutely proved somehow that Alicia was Luciela, it wouldn't really change much... at least in her mind.

It's also established from the get-go that Aura is... quite frankly... a bit of an arrogant idiot. Her subconscious self exemplifies this clearly when she meets Alicia. For all that she's book-smart, she's not actually all that smart in the people sense. The idea of gradual, seemingly insignificant changes to her mind feeding into major changes which then feed into the complete alteration of her self doesn't occur to her at all. Even though that's really the first thing that she should have thought of.

In general, Aura exhibits a tendency of being really stupid about some things...

I mean, I'd say the exact opposite there? Her subconscious self explicitely help Alicia understand how you can twist seemingly insignificant changes into major changes.

As in, she is arrogant enough to think that no matter how major the changes are, it wouldn't matter, because she'll always win, and she is... kind of right?

But said Arrogance should also means she tries to investigate both Alicia and Richard in real life. Anyway, I get why the game apparently didn't do it, just highly disappointed.

Which is... tbh... fairly consistent with a teenager. They're often dumber than they think they are and this definitely applies to Aura. If she was actually as smart as she thought she was, there would have been plenty of ways for her to foil various parts of Richard's plan from the prologue itself. I mean really... not even suspecting a trap and walking face-first into it was amazingly dumb... Accepting that split-up was also amazingly dumb. If she played things smart during the prologue, odds are that she could have saved at least George, leaving her with one full powered companion even if everything else went the same, which would have changed the equation completely.

If/when you do a corruption playthrough, or just add in corruption as you push towards murderizing Richard in Roya, you'll see that as the mental changes pile up, Aura gets confronted about said changes at certain points, and she completely dismisses the possibility that those changes are in any way related to the Curse. In her mind, the Curse and its changes are only linked to Roya, not Earth, and the idea that Luciela might be spending her time to turn her into a monster on Earth specifically, or where that might lead, just doesn't click.

As for her friends on Earth... I can get why Aura didn't involve Rose, after all, she didn't have anything to really prove her experiences in Roya. However, she DID have something for George, because George tells her something in the prologue that he never did on Earth, and talking to him about it would have been fairly solid proof that something fucked up happened. That said, she didn't want to worry him about it all when he was so busy with his family, and when he was powerless to do anything from Earth while she kept going to Roya every night. It's a reasonable impulse tbh... but obviously stupid given the circumstances.

As mentioned, all of this is imo kinda more ambiguous, as Aura immediately think there is going to be a trap, and takes it into account, she just values helping to save as many people as possible as fast as possible more than, well, taking care of the trap first.

Both Rose and George imo have very easy ways for Aura to involve them, and she very much knows how important talking to people and influencing them on earth can be to win on Royan too (she does think about it iirc). It just... never goes anywhere apparently.

Re: the brainwashing/curse, I thought people mentioned that there is a part of the curse that means her real self can't actually admit it works, probably a left over from Dolus stuff.

 

[Yellowie The Goldie]

Ooof.

The amusing thing is early Aura shows that none of this should really apply to her. She isn't the type to settle with "nothing can be done", and she immediately suspect Luciela is Aura within the first few days. I at the very least expected the corruption route to go down the "the reason Aura reconnects with Alica is to check whether she is Luciela" trope (and how she does that is coloured by the corruption), while I wanted "if Aura is uncorrupted, she also decides to investigate it, but differently."

Aura just... not connecting with her friends at all anymore if she is uncorrupted and not doing a two pronged assault is just such a missed opportunity, but I can see how that decision ended up being made.

If the core conceit of the show is "see how the corruption produces cascading changes" rather than "see how Aura deals with the corruption colouring her actions", well. It's very disappointing, but, once again there is no unlimited dev time, and it's important to keep close to a core if you ever want to finish a well done game.

There is imo such a ludonarrative dissonance between the Royan set up of Aura always needing to be careful about people constantly trying to catch her, her immediately noticing a lot of it, and trying to do the best she can about it, and "but for earth, huh, the gameplay is all about /not/ taking the Royan gameplay seriously", however.



This is impressive as heck, how long ingame day wise did it take you?

It follows the tropes of a porn subgenre bit too closely there yeah. The whole "if you are going to show the fall of a great woman, gotta make sure she falls for the absolutely most pathetic person" subgenre of porn.

Note that the talk can be read a bit differently though as it's between Alicia and Aura.

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I kid you not, it took me exactly 100 days to beat the game. Yes, EXACTLY 100 days. Not more, not less.

 

[Iexist]

I mean, I'd say the exact opposite there? Her subconscious self explicitely help Alicia understand how you can twist seemingly insignificant changes into major changes.

Subconscious Aura explicitly knows things that conscious Aura doesn't, and more importantly, subconscious Aura acts on basically all of Aura's impulses. She represents Aura's arrogance taken to extreme. Also, based on her speech(es), it seemed to me less like she believed that the mental changes couldn't stop her if enough piled on, but rather, that Alicia couldn't do enough changes in time to stop her from owning Richard.

Conscious Aura doesn't know any of that and in the lead-up to the Victory Ending, she gets a memory dump from Luciela and is actually kind of horrified to find out that her subconscious self actually actively helped Alicia.

Aura isn't truly conscious of her arrogance. Most people aren't particularly self-aware about their flaws after all.

That said, I still have no idea what you'd expect Aura to DO on Earth in regards to Richard and Alicia. She's just a normal girl there. She has no special abilities. She can't really stalk them around, and even if she does... what would it achieve? What would she learn and how would it help? The Earth side of things tries to be more realistic... and realistically, a normal person without any means or connections can do jack and shit about someone as rich as Richard or even Alicia.

It's why George was playing the long-game of studying and getting into Law. Because that was the key to being able to do anything at all, and even that's a long-shot.

As mentioned, all of this is imo kinda more ambiguous, as Aura immediately think there is going to be a trap, and takes it into account, she just values helping to save as many people as possible as fast as possible more than, well, taking care of the trap first.

No. It's not ambiguous at all. It's just stupid. She never stops to consider the question of "what happens if I fail?"... and what happened is that a lot more people suffered and died because she rushed into that trap. If she'd been more cautious and if she'd taken steps to break the trap without tripping it and so on, sure, more people would have died in the immediate battle, but many more lives would have been saved in the long-run.

Given that Richard was summoned with her, in a sense, by the Goddess, during the whole set-up in the prologue, it was rather obvious that she couldn't win under those circumstances. Her arrogance made her think that she could... but she ultimately just made things worse for herself in particular and the world in general. There's a rather long list of suffering that can be tracked back to that monumentally bad decision. Which includes most of an entire city dying btw.

Both Rose and George imo have very easy ways for Aura to involve them, and she very much knows how important talking to people and influencing them on earth can be to win on Royan too (she does think about it iirc). It just... never goes anywhere apparently.

You keep forgetting that neither Rose nor George have memories of the summoning after the Prologue. She only really has proof for George about what's going on, and even that's sketchy. I agree that she could have involved them more, but I disagree that it would have been easy.

The amount of things they could have done would have been limited too. I'm not sure what you're thinking that they could have done on Earth that would have significantly impacted things on Roya. Nothing on Earth, for example, impacted stuff like the Demon Generals or any other minions Richard has in Roya. Only Richard and Alicia are summoned. All the other Demon Generals and stuff? All fully from Roya.

Hurting or otherwise inconveniencing Alicia or Richard on Earth would have no impact on their Demon Selves aside from maybe making them be more annoyed or hasty with some of their decisions... but that's not guaranteed and it's also hard to do without risking other things. Like them getting the police involved for harassment or whatnot... which would ruin Aura's life and the lives of her friends far more than it'd inconvenience the bad guys... and it wouldn't change one lick of things in Roya.

Lastly, as mentioned before, killing Richard or Alicia on Earth would just make things worse, so that's not an option either. Hell. Even if Aura could, through some extremely convoluted means, get those two in prison or something, that'd STILL just give them more time to sleep which means more time being active in Roya, which means more problems for her.

So what exactly are you thinking that she could even DO...?

 

[Yellowie The Goldie]

Subconscious Aura explicitly knows things that conscious Aura doesn't, and more importantly, subconscious Aura acts on basically all of Aura's impulses. She represents Aura's arrogance taken to extreme. Also, based on her speech(es), it seemed to me less like she believed that the mental changes couldn't stop her if enough piled on, but rather, that Alicia couldn't do enough changes in time to stop her from owning Richard.

Conscious Aura doesn't know any of that and in the lead-up to the Victory Ending, she gets a memory dump from Luciela and is actually kind of horrified to find out that her subconscious self actually actively helped Alicia.

Aura isn't truly conscious of her arrogance. Most people aren't particularly self-aware about their flaws after all.

That said, I still have no idea what you'd expect Aura to DO on Earth in regards to Richard and Alicia. She's just a normal girl there. She has no special abilities. She can't really stalk them around, and even if she does... what would it achieve? What would she learn and how would it help? The Earth side of things tries to be more realistic... and realistically, a normal person without any means or connections can do jack and shit about someone as rich as Richard or even Alicia.

It's why George was playing the long-game of studying and getting into Law. Because that was the key to being able to do anything at all, and even that's a long-shot.



No. It's not ambiguous at all. It's just stupid. She never stops to consider the question of "what happens if I fail?"... and what happened is that a lot more people suffered and died because she rushed into that trap. If she'd been more cautious and if she'd taken steps to break the trap without tripping it and so on, sure, more people would have died in the immediate battle, but many more lives would have been saved in the long-run.

Given that Richard was summoned with her, in a sense, by the Goddess, during the whole set-up in the prologue, it was rather obvious that she couldn't win under those circumstances. Her arrogance made her think that she could... but she ultimately just made things worse for herself in particular and the world in general. There's a rather long list of suffering that can be tracked back to that monumentally bad decision. Which includes most of an entire city dying btw.



You keep forgetting that neither Rose nor George have memories of the summoning after the Prologue. She only really has proof for George about what's going on, and even that's sketchy. I agree that she could have involved them more, but I disagree that it would have been easy.

The amount of things they could have done would have been limited too. I'm not sure what you're thinking that they could have done on Earth that would have significantly impacted things on Roya. Nothing on Earth, for example, impacted stuff like the Demon Generals or any other minions Richard has in Roya. Only Richard and Alicia are summoned. All the other Demon Generals and stuff? All fully from Roya.

Hurting or otherwise inconveniencing Alicia or Richard on Earth would have no impact on their Demon Selves aside from maybe making them be more annoyed or hasty with some of their decisions... but that's not guaranteed and it's also hard to do without risking other things. Like them getting the police involved for harassment or whatnot... which would ruin Aura's life and the lives of her friends far more than it'd inconvenience the bad guys... and it wouldn't change one lick of things in Roya.

Lastly, as mentioned before, killing Richard or Alicia on Earth would just make things worse, so that's not an option either. Hell. Even if Aura could, through some extremely convoluted means, get those two in prison or something, that'd STILL just give them more time to sleep which means more time being active in Roya, which means more problems for her.

So what exactly are you thinking that she could even DO...?

There's potentially an even worse problem if Aura somehow actually *would* kill Richard or Alicia on Earth. They would become like Dolus: lose their mana and be permanently stuck on Roya. There would be weaknesses that come with it, but the cons far outweigh the pros. Such as Roya *being* their actual home now, and they can't go back to Earth in any way.

Honestly, out of all of the characters in the game...Alicia is the one that's screwed the most no matter what happens. It's really sad too, given what you see during the "reverse summoning" part in the game of the "real" Alicia

 

[Thokeus]

Subconscious Aura explicitly knows things that conscious Aura doesn't, and more importantly, subconscious Aura acts on basically all of Aura's impulses. She represents Aura's arrogance taken to extreme. Also, based on her speech(es), it seemed to me less like she believed that the mental changes couldn't stop her if enough piled on, but rather, that Alicia couldn't do enough changes in time to stop her from owning Richard.

Conscious Aura doesn't know any of that and in the lead-up to the Victory Ending, she gets a memory dump from Luciela and is actually kind of horrified to find out that her subconscious self actually actively helped Alicia.

Aura isn't truly conscious of her arrogance. Most people aren't particularly self-aware about their flaws after all.

We are in agreement there.

That said, I still have no idea what you'd expect Aura to DO on Earth in regards to Richard and Alicia. She's just a normal girl there. She has no special abilities. She can't really stalk them around, and even if she does... what would it achieve? What would she learn and how would it help? The Earth side of things tries to be more realistic... and realistically, a normal person without any means or connections can do jack and shit about someone as rich as Richard or even Alicia.

It's why George was playing the long-game of studying and getting into Law. Because that was the key to being able to do anything at all, and even that's a long-shot.

Aura has many abilities, not the least of which is how incredible she is at pushing people to be the best versions of themselves. Richard clearly cares about the real world given how his marks are still so high, and how Aura besting him is the core reason he targets her in the first place. He absolutely can't stand losing anything.

Alicia herself is incredibly vulnerable given how much she subcounsciously wants to be BFF with Aura.

Getting Richard in a downard spiral where everything he has built on earth is crashing on him wouldn't exactly be hard, and getting Alicia on Aura's side would be even easier - if Aura tried to actually put in the work.

Talking with George and Rose to not only stay grounded, but learn more about Alicia and Richard would be a good first step, as Aura would be looking into "what changed a year ago", under the logic that the demon lord was summoned a year ago and so things would have changed/etc, and then realised more and more things as times went on.

Like, clearly this isn't the game we have, and there are obvious reasons why, but damn that would have been fun.

 

[Raniket]

Is there enough star metal in the game to fully upgrade both workshops? If not, which one is better to max out?

I don't know about star metal, but after completing one of the expert ranked quests, clockwork forest, you get some materials which can be used instead of star metal at Verdeaux workshop with which you can max out at both workshops.
Note: The material is equivalent to 2 star metals and can only be used in Verdeaux workshop so maxx out Trademond workshop using the star metal.

 

[badluckss6]

I don't know about star metal, but after completing one of the expert ranked quests, clockwork forest, you get some materials which can be used instead of star metal at Verdeaux workshop with which you can max out at both workshops.
Note: The material is equivalent to 2 star metals and can only be used in Verdeaux workshop so maxx out Trademond workshop using the star metal.

Ooooh what material ? I havn't see that It will be usefull for my next run.

 

[Iexist]

Ooooh what material ? I havn't see that It will be usefull for my next run.

He's talking about Power Cores, which drop from some golem bosses in the Clockwork Forest. There's 3 of them? Maybe 4? I don't remember exactly.

That said, using those for the Artifact Workshop can be... iffy... For one, they grant a bunch of Def, MDef and 30 MP, and they have pretty good value too (which means good slime XP). For two, they can be used to recharge runes and the one artifact that can normally be used only once 21 days. So they're materials that really challenge you in terms of when/where to use them.

That said, upgrades to the Artifact place aren't that great... and one of the best artifacts you can get doesn't even depend on levels. The Adjustable Forcefield Artifact is a blue-print you can find in the Clockwork place.

 

[Stormen]

Thinking about playing this but i have a few questions. Pure ending, do i have to avoid absolutely everything lewd or is there wriggle room? Avoiding everything will probably be a nightmare. In case you CAN do stuff and still get the good ending, what is the limit i need to stay under corruption wise?

 

[Noon_Shadow]

Thinking about playing this but i have a few questions. Pure ending, do i have to avoid absolutely everything lewd or is there wriggle room? Avoiding everything will probably be a nightmare. In case you CAN do stuff and still get the good ending, what is the limit i need to stay under corruption wise?

There's variants on the victory ending, depending on how much lewd stuff you do. That's the spoiler-free answer. You can go quite far into the lewd stuff and still end up on the good ending pathway, though it won't give you all the best pure ending scenes.

Still, you can absolutely do some lewd decisions and make a few mental changes that won't push you away from the good ending. As far as Corruption, there's no hard number. Corruption itself is a resource that gets spent in the mental world, and you can lower corruption with items, though those items aren't infinite and they increase in cost every day that passes. If you're not spending any corruption, it lowers your willpower at the start of each day, and if your willpower is too low, it lowers all of Aura's combat stats, so there's a few techniques for managing that.

I can't give you a hard number in terms of lewd actions or mental changes that give you the pure version of the victory ending. Some types of lewd actions will have an impact on the ending (while others won't), and it's the same with the mental changes. You can make a decent amount of progress spending corruption in the first mental chamber before going too far. Some lewd actions are just strictly a benefit, aside from adding a corruption point. Trying to go 100% pure only matters if you're racking up points for the NG+ score.

 

[badluckss6]

He's talking about Power Cores, which drop from some golem bosses in the Clockwork Forest. There's 3 of them? Maybe 4? I don't remember exactly.

That said, using those for the Artifact Workshop can be... iffy... For one, they grant a bunch of Def, MDef and 30 MP, and they have pretty good value too (which means good slime XP). For two, they can be used to recharge runes and the one artifact that can normally be used only once 21 days. So they're materials that really challenge you in terms of when/where to use them.

That said, upgrades to the Artifact place aren't that great... and one of the best artifacts you can get doesn't even depend on levels. The Adjustable Forcefield Artifact is a blue-print you can find in the Clockwork place.

Oh yes this material, i used it in the forge. OP stats.
There is no really good artifacts when we lvl up the workshop ? It's sad

 

[Iexist]

Oh yes this material, i used it in the forge. OP stats.
There is no really good artifacts when we lvl up the workshop ? It's sad

To an extent, I suppose it depends on what you're looking for and how you're playing, but I checked them all out via save-scumming and there wasn't anything particularly impressive that I could remember. Especially when you account for the fact that you have to pay a bunch of mats and a pretty high money price to get any of these.

All of the artifacts in shop have a usability that depends on circumstances, and there's few of them that are really "amazing". I think that out of the leveling artifacts, aka the ones gotten from Workshop level, the only one everyone might want to get is the one that gives 30 Agi on the 1st Turn, which makes it easier to get 1st Turn advantage on various unfortunate fights where you can't backstab for whatever reason. I think that one was the "Reaction Booster" or something? Either way, even that's debatable if you're running Tailwind/Storm as your Auto-Spell, or using the Wind Slime with Storm as its Auto spell, etc.

Likewise, the "Orb of Light" Artifact can theoretically be amazing, especially if you bother getting Light 3, but its utility drops considerably if you've focused your Aura on Attack and you're doing a Lightning Sword + Drugs + Martials sort of build and basically set-up towards murderizing bosses with Rampage 3 and Normal encounters with Slash 2 or some other combinations out there. This Artifact is available by default anyway...

The Bomb+ Artifact is not really strong enough to justify its investment, if only because you can't really rely JUST on bombs because they're a limited resource and you're most likely to only have Fast Items Stance on Aura and MAYBE John if you somehow do John Rising AFTER the one quest that can give you Fast Item Stance 2 AND that you pick that one reward out of its options...

The M.Atck Artifact is also really pricey for 5 and then 10 M.Attack for the advanced version and you don't really get that much from it when only Aura, Charlotte and the elemental Slimes benefit from that stat consistently, and when Aura's built as a primarily a spell-slinger, that amount of M.Attack is debatable in terms of effort when you can potentially invest that money and mats in other sources of spell-slinging improvements. (Seriously, you have to spend something like 4500 Gold for both of these + the mats you needed to invest in 'em...)

Efficient Bomb Creation tools might be good, but by the time you CAN get those, you'll likely already have the improved bomb creation formula that already gives you 8 bombs per ingredient... and while MOAR bombs is likely useful in some ways, you'll still run into usability issues... and of course those bombs aren't free anyway. Which again, makes this artifact very debatable in usefulness.

So yeah... there's no Amazeballs Artifact from leveling that you can really say is a "Must Have" or anything of that sort. Which tbh makes sense, since depending on the playstyle you may not want to invest much in the Artifact Workshop.

 

[Deathstar1200]

Guys, apparently we don't need a good story in hentai games anymore. Just create another generic corruption game

 

[timdraco]

Guys, apparently we don't need a good story in hentai games anymore. Just create another generic corruption game

so your expecting a triple a title out of a rpg maker game?

 

[Thokeus]

OK, I couldn't play the last couple days, and before getting back to it I had a couple of questions (keeping in mind I'm still on my probably doomed purity run).

I think I heard somewhere that it was optimal to do festival of greed by d20. Does this mean finish it on d19, or d20? Also, what does it do?

Something else is that my current idea for my build was to kinda try to have some magic firepower. I was aiming to grab Thunderbolt as quickly as possible, but I'm now getting the impression the "just attack" builds are kinda much stronger? Anyone can give advice there?

so your expecting a triple a title out of a rpg maker game?

I think that was a comment on a review that blasted the game for being a slow burn actually fairly long game with a emphasis on gameplay. I do think it's important to have a proper tag system for hgame given how sometimes it can be hard to know if something is a 2hr game or a 50hr one, but I think SKA actually does tag that?

 

[timdraco]

i actually like this game, so it wasn't me on that comment blasting it. I was being sarcastic to previous poster not serious. As to how long a game is, i think the more you play the better the game is. I wouldn't have spent as many hours on this game trying for save games to share if i didn't like it. As to strong builds, it depends on what route your taking. If you're going straight corruption there's a few factors you have to consider. Like if you have the requisite skills and abilities to make a corrupt build. If you're going purity, then yes magic is a strong build.

 

[timdraco]

Continuing on builds, also enemies have a lot of strengths and weaknesses so finding something that's universal op build is hard. Some enemies are weak to magic, some to physical damage. So my strategy is to find something that works for how i play and stick to it.

 

[Noon_Shadow]

I think I heard somewhere that it was optimal to do festival of greed by d20. Does this mean finish it on d19, or d20? Also, what does it do?

That's for an optimized playthrough. I believe you're still working on your first playthrough, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you don't take a ton of optimized decisions leading up to it, you can get stuck during the Festival of Greed event by trying to tackle it too early. The benefits are that some of the NPCs you rescue will give you a few extra items.

Of course, don't wait too long. The story doesn't progress until you finish the event, so most of the world and quests are locked off, and you get a lot more opportunities to get better materials and such once the world opens up. If you're trying for an optimized playthrough, you might just want to follow a walkthrough.

Something else is that my current idea for my build was to kinda try to have some magic firepower. I was aiming to grab Thunderbolt as quickly as possible, but I'm now getting the impression the "just attack" builds are kinda much stronger? Anyone can give advice there?

Unless you're trying to min-max, you do want some of both. Some enemies later have insane physical defense but are weaker to magic, and vice versa. But in the early game, especially, physical attacks combined with using Light 1 to get tactical advantage are mostly going to cover it. The game seems designed around giving players lots of options, but you're not expected to learn every single spell and Martial in order to win. Thunderbolt is viable, but there's a spell you can fairly soon called "Lightning sword," which kind of makes it redundant. But there's also a few skills you can't get quite yet that make MAT builds much more viable, and Aura starts stronger with physical attack than magic.

There's also some spells which are just necessary to progress. Like Fire 1 to burn some plants to open paths, there are other places you won't be able to reach without certain spells.

 

[DitzyDanni]

Game needs an Aura-Alicia lesbian path.

 

[Yellowie The Goldie]

Game needs an Aura-Alicia lesbian path.

Or a Aura-Alicia path where they screw two guys at the same time. (Not Richard or anyone they know, just some random studs at a club or w/e)