Tl;Dr: Bolded
A game with great visuals and decent plot, but pretty poor gameplay for a very gameplay-oriented title.
Essentially, I love the art, and think the theme is interesting, but have some issues with the gameplay-loop and the minor details of the story.
First off, props to the dev for making this kind of sex-positive version of corruption. The theming here is handled uniquely enough that it bumps my score up just for that variety. Both the theme and the writing are intriguing, and the overall quality is above average for the genre.
...However, there is the kind of awkward flaw of the supposed main character's lack of characterization. As a way to illustrate this, I had to look up her name for writing this as opposed to the second protagonist "IO" the AI, and the tertiary character of "Amanda". I don't think there's anything wrong with IO getting the most screentime, dialogue, plot-relevance and character-developement during the game, but it does kind of raise the question of... should I be playing as IO? At the moment, the nominal MC's input to the plot is much smaller than IO's, and the blank-slate angle to her character in not as much weird as it is just kinda flat. I guess it's a vehicle to introduce the player to the world, and to have a character that can move around in the overworld, but those are actually her biggest contributions to the experience. Being very weakly characterized kind of compromises the "corruption"-aspect of the game, because there is a weaker impression of the starting-point of the character's mindset and personality, and how that changes throughout the game, and thus a weaker impact to the Mind Control/Corruption. In a single heroine-game it's one of the most important aspects of the story, so it's weird that it's the main weakness of the story.
But as I alluded to in the beginning, the biggest problem I have with the game is the gameplay, and even more specifically the bar-minigame.
I don't think there's enough 'game' there.
The turn-based RPG-battle system is already a weak starting point, full stop. It works just about as a way to stucture a story, but it is very difficult to make it interesting, especially with a single protagonist-combatant. I think a game like this requires some sort of puzzle-like element to it's combat in order to create some variety and randomness. Even if you were to develop the current Alpha-build of the combat by adding enemy-types, targetting etc., I don't think it would be enough without also adding some kind of extra-layer of complexity on top of that. This is kind of important to the game, because it is part of the core-gameplay loop that is supposed to be the game's main way of getting resources.
I'm not saying you need a full Karryn's Prison-experience of modular fights etc, just that you need the bar-minigame to be more random, less repetitive, and probably a little bit more decoupled from the standard RPG-battle system. I suppose different customer-types and priorities per-battle would probably be a starting point.
It might sound like I'm complaining, and I kind of am, but it's mostly because I dislike pure VNs. At the moment, the gameplay is kind of weak, so the game plays more like a pure VN for me, and as a VN I'mn less lenient on story-weaknesses. If the game had good gameplay to back up it's story, then I would be more comfortable praising only the good parts of the worldbuilding and characterization as additions to a enjoyable gameplay-experience.
A game with great visuals and decent plot, but pretty poor gameplay for a very gameplay-oriented title.
Essentially, I love the art, and think the theme is interesting, but have some issues with the gameplay-loop and the minor details of the story.
First off, props to the dev for making this kind of sex-positive version of corruption. The theming here is handled uniquely enough that it bumps my score up just for that variety. Both the theme and the writing are intriguing, and the overall quality is above average for the genre.
...However, there is the kind of awkward flaw of the supposed main character's lack of characterization. As a way to illustrate this, I had to look up her name for writing this as opposed to the second protagonist "IO" the AI, and the tertiary character of "Amanda". I don't think there's anything wrong with IO getting the most screentime, dialogue, plot-relevance and character-developement during the game, but it does kind of raise the question of... should I be playing as IO? At the moment, the nominal MC's input to the plot is much smaller than IO's, and the blank-slate angle to her character in not as much weird as it is just kinda flat. I guess it's a vehicle to introduce the player to the world, and to have a character that can move around in the overworld, but those are actually her biggest contributions to the experience. Being very weakly characterized kind of compromises the "corruption"-aspect of the game, because there is a weaker impression of the starting-point of the character's mindset and personality, and how that changes throughout the game, and thus a weaker impact to the Mind Control/Corruption. In a single heroine-game it's one of the most important aspects of the story, so it's weird that it's the main weakness of the story.
But as I alluded to in the beginning, the biggest problem I have with the game is the gameplay, and even more specifically the bar-minigame.
I don't think there's enough 'game' there.
The turn-based RPG-battle system is already a weak starting point, full stop. It works just about as a way to stucture a story, but it is very difficult to make it interesting, especially with a single protagonist-combatant. I think a game like this requires some sort of puzzle-like element to it's combat in order to create some variety and randomness. Even if you were to develop the current Alpha-build of the combat by adding enemy-types, targetting etc., I don't think it would be enough without also adding some kind of extra-layer of complexity on top of that. This is kind of important to the game, because it is part of the core-gameplay loop that is supposed to be the game's main way of getting resources.
I'm not saying you need a full Karryn's Prison-experience of modular fights etc, just that you need the bar-minigame to be more random, less repetitive, and probably a little bit more decoupled from the standard RPG-battle system. I suppose different customer-types and priorities per-battle would probably be a starting point.
It might sound like I'm complaining, and I kind of am, but it's mostly because I dislike pure VNs. At the moment, the gameplay is kind of weak, so the game plays more like a pure VN for me, and as a VN I'mn less lenient on story-weaknesses. If the game had good gameplay to back up it's story, then I would be more comfortable praising only the good parts of the worldbuilding and characterization as additions to a enjoyable gameplay-experience.
