RPGM - Completed - Stigma-ARIA [1.06] [Isikorodou]

Do you like to grind? This is your game. If not, stay away. Do you like gacha? Then this is your game. Do you like stories without a story? Do you like sex scenes, where the protagonist accepts everything just because it's part of her job? And of course, do you like watching the same 6 scenes over and over again? Well, if you like that kind of thing, then this is your game.

So I completed this game aside from a couple of delivery quests, and I don't know if I recommend this or not.

If you're here for the sex content, it's not great. The scenes kind of just happen apropos of nothing. Your role is to have sex at every holy spot and then see the pope so you just kinda accept every proposition.

Homeless guy? Sure. Sex in the bathhouse? Yeah okay. It's just part of your job!

I think they would be more interesting if the scenes developed at all. No matter how many times you go pole-dancing, or work the brothel it's the exact same. You can go to Memory in the Menu to see what you need to do to see the sex scenes, and see that there's basically no repeat events. Also the machine translation is, uh, questionable: "Pew pew pew! Chirp! Holy mother's breasts are so delicious!" Y-yeah....

If you're here for combat, well it's a little linear. It feels like the game's main story is balanced for having zero equipment (on 'Normal', the hardest difficult). After you get past the bridge the game starts offering more challenging enemies, but for the most part you can two-shot them all with attack, and occasionally heal yourself.

At the mid-point of the game you get access to ~post-game-ish content? 14 more challenging monsters pop up in different levels, and you can go to alternate non-story areas in order to get special equipment.



About the equipment. If you're like me and you know to wait to use gacha cash until you can roll with the best odds (after you unlock the special stages), you'd have about 30k slutbucks, which is enough to likely earn a full SSR set or if you're super lucky a full LR set. You probably won't get super lucky, and I'm pretty sure your luck is seeded somewhere so reloading a save won't change anything.

Anyway, it's like I said, the game feels balanced without equipment, so when you start putting on SSR and LR stuff, suddenly the game goes back to beginner mode. Even the special side stages I was cruising through, playing on my phone before getting to the boss. (I was on the phone the entire game, combat is very dull.)

So why bother recommending a game that I spent 70% of the time looking at my phone?

There's something here. If you look at the dungeon layouts, they're really interesting despite how basic they are. I know, it's a weird thing to be fixated on for a fairly standard RPG Maker game. The dungeons don't have a lot of personality with props and objects or detailed text descriptions, but the actual layout is really well thought out.

There's a swamp you get to, and as you get deeper there's more bridges, and they break, and you go on a twisted path through it. A demon's mansion that's well organized to start, but slowly twisted and collapses as you near the demon (who is also themed around destruction as a concept). Basically every single stage felt like it was well thought out layout-wise.

I feel like if there were more things or stuff added to the dungeons, they would be incredible. Like monstrous hands crawling out of the swamp to grab you, or the demon's mansion twisting into itself like silent hill.

There are a couple dungeons that do have neat little gimmicks. Smaller vision radius, or using keys to unlock a door. But it's just the two. And there's lots of stages to go through.

And that's a good and bad thing. Because again with the combat. It's so dull for 90% of the game and there are so many monsters. The first few stages you collect maybe ~15 of the monster-specific drops. After I got to the mid-point I was collecting 30-40 monster-specific drops. It gets really bad! And I'm just sitting here, looking at my phone, holding enter, spamming attack, and click-walking through every stage.

Aside from the stage layout, I also fee like there's something here with the story. It's oddly compelling in that it offers one mystery, solves it, and that's it. There's one other character aside from Aria, and you really only get to know about her at the end. It's very simple and straightforward.


But if you're here just for a simple, straightforward, press and hold attack, get your little good girl gacha bux and roll for a full set of LR gear (I spent hundreds of thousands and only completed 2 of the 3 LR sets, don't get upset if you're unlucky, ducky), then I think you'd have a good time with this mindless little game. I had an okay time, I turned my brain off for most of it, it was okay?

Two stars is okay!

Tricked by the art and CG count, this is actually pretty mediocre... The "H-battles" Aren't what you think, an enemy bumps into you, you watch a little animation and that's it, 0 interactivity. otherwise static scenes are also few and boring, skip this one.

Having a game not about the usual NTR mind break/rape mind break and just a heroine whos just dutifully fucking to save people and isnt mind broken seems rare despite so the game play is alright with the machanics of purifying via sex asa battle system