Wolf RPG - Completed - The Heart of Darkness [v1.01] [BigWednesday]

A generally mid rpg dark souls copy that is plagued by some genuinely awful mechanics. Teleporting from location to location is very clunky as you can only teleport to different areas in the dungeon with one bonfire which is not the bonfire which is by the only save point. Bonfires in the dungeon can only go to the base or save and the save can only bring you to the base so you end up ping ponging around any time you want to move somewhere. Level design starts off alright but quickly spirals into areas that are waaaaaay too big and confusing with nothing other than the occasional item to break up the chore of navigating. There are split paths and side areas but they add little to the whole experience and most areas boil down to find key find exit.

Overall 3.5/5. A turned based RPG heavily inspired by souls games. Set in a beautifully made world with a good premise. In my experience, it starts of very strong but ultimately just falls flats in many aspects. Also this game is depressing.

Gameplay 3/5. As a soulslike it really does capture the sense of danger, even as a turn based RPG. At the start you are weak making strategy important, be it picking your fights, turning a corner, exploring a room, or managing any resources, the threat is there to keep you on your toes. BUT all this is only present early on, as you go, even with minimal grind, you become so strong resulting in more boring gameplay

World and Exploration 4/5. The game world is beautiful in a dark messed up way. It is really fun and somewhat rewarding to check every room, walk every path, unlock secret passages, or even backtrack to previous areas.

Story 3/5. Kill the evil saintess in the bottom of the dungeon. Story starts of with a simple premise and you get more lore as you explore the world, giving the world more life. However I found that for the most part, the stories don't really have any satisfying conclusion or even a conclusion at all

Character 3.5/5. A cast of very interesting and eccentric characters with good stories. However, due to the very short time spent on each character I never got invested or attached to any of them by their story's conclusion. They leaned a lot on shock factor, personally didn't affect me since i never cared enough about the characters.

Art and Visual 4/5. The sprite and in game visuals are really well made, I found myself enjoying the environments all the while finding the monster vile and grotesque

H Scene 3/5. Involves a lot of rape and human to non human. It was fine.

Reviewing Version: 1.01

I came for the porn, yet I stayed for the story. As with any game that even dares to compare itself to a souls game, the lore is vast, interesting, and of course has its mysteries and an element of darkness to it. The gameplay itself is pretty alright, with most of the grinding (if any), when you first start out the game. Later on you can just rely on selling items meant to be sold, and fighting bosses for cash, while avoiding all normal enemies. I also just wanna say how great and sad some of the character's stories are, with my personal favorite (by which I mean most tragic to me) being the story of a certain Father in a Garden full of flowers.

An honestly fun game to spend a day or two on if you're looking for a porn game that doesn't have a "copy and paste" story.

Love the game! I was not expecting a lot but the story had me going. There will 100% be a second playthrough with a different build. A lot to discover and secrets to be missed. With the right strat it will be a breeze after midgame... or so I thought before dying a boss like 5 times and had to rethink my strategy. Actually had to think in a game like there for once, I like it!

As other have point out the weakness and strength of this game, I will briefly talk about what I like and dislike of this game.
Like:
+ The companion system is quite nice with the class system. The adventure is the best, since you can see hidden glyph which lead to hidden door. Combat-wise, the mage is quite good too, since you can have one tanks all the hit and spam spell. The acristocrat looked such tho, since his output is comically inferior to the mage
+ To be honest, I really enjoy the gameplay.
+ UNCENSORED baby
+ The baseline for H-scene is your dolls, Alma and Mel. They are cute.
Dislike:
+ Most of the H-scene can be missed very easily.
=> Advise: talk to everyone and exhaust their dialogue. Hilda does not show up. It's probably because you forgot to talk to the white mage in the tavern or Hilda and that's guy in the Garden of Pruner. And if you pass the Bastion of decay, her scene lost forever baby.
Kill the knight that don't attack you. Explore every corners to find all girls scene. Because one scene in an area lead to new scene in the next area
+ No auto-run.
+ The saving is a little wonky tho. I assume the developer don;t want the players to save scumming.

So, it took me around a day to actually beat this game, and it was... good, I suppose.
This game is very light on porn and extremely heavy on lore. What porn there is is also extremely heavy on rape. Not for people who don't like rape. Basically, it's kind of in the name, you should probably have some darker desires if you want to jack off to this game.

The lore is fucking tremendous. As expected of a Soulslike. Since the system would struggle to handle dodge-rolling or any of the mechanical difficulty of Dark Souls, the game is just hard and the lore is heavy. The lore occasionally leans towards being fetishy, but it's otherwise fairly solid. I remember my lightbulbs here and there. The game leaves a bunch of hooks. Nothing like sequel bait, just like, hooks that stick in your mind and don't come out.

There is the depressing aspect of your actions having very little impact on the story itself. Almost everyone you meet will meet a grisly fate. You can only really change where. Bummer, since it's nothing like the special endings in Dark Souls games where you do specific actions and get a brand new ending. Maybe v2 or something will have the rumored Ending 4? Who knows.

TLDR: Story good, Porn okay.

This is very much a gameplay > porn type of h-game. These are my favorite types of games.

That said, it is not exactly lacking in the h department either. Immediately before you even enter the dungeon, you have access to two girls with one scene each (and you get more). Never does this game really forget it is an h-game. Although, a good number of the scenes are voyeur, either through watching memories or you politely waiting for a girl to finish getting raped (most of the time).

Now you're probably wondering.. Is this like that one Souls h-game we all know about? The answer is no.

This game is not hard (sorry), you just need to be not-stupid. It is true, you can not level your own character until after the first boss, but you can level up your party members. You start with 2000 rubies, just level up both your starting party members once and you're good for the 1st boss. Doesn't matter what class you started as. There is no real purposeful 'stretching out' of the game. If you're familiar with the genre, then you'll be familiar with the system in this game because it doesn't stray far from it. Only things I don't like is that the bonfires inside the dungeon can only teleport you home (but the home teleporter can teleport you to any bonfire) and to get a heal you must teleport back home. Not sure what issues the developer was running into for it to be this way.

The art is pretty good.

The story is.. Well what you make of it. I won't pretend that I tried to get into it. It isn't reinventing the wheel here. Just expect the same doom and gloom.

What in the world did I just play? This game suffers from classic issue of being too much of a game and not enough of an h-game.

Story 4/10

There's something there. But it does that thing where the game tells you bits and pieces and expects you to fill in the rest of the story yourself. I extremely dislike that type of storytelling.

So, what's the story about? You're like this soul thing, which is never revisited, who goes into a human body and you're summoned by the king to kill the corrupted saintess in the deep dark abyss.

Whoever enters the big hole in the ground goes insane and loses their mind. But you're completely unaffected for unexplained reasons.

Each level in the abyss is a fever dream of the floor boss, who's always a girl, with weirder and weirder creatures the lower you go. One floor doesn't even have any combat. It's some desert city.

As this game is a tragedy of sorts, nobody has a good ending. Everybody you meet either dies, goes insane and dies, or is looking for a place to die which they find and subsequently die.

When you get to the bottom, you can either kill the saintess, the darkness takes over and game over, join the saintess kill the king, the darkness takes over and game over, or join the saintess, kill the king that's inside the deep dark hole, the darkness is dispelled and game over.

What the hell? I wanted to quit this game halfway through but I persisted because I wanted to see the ending and all I got for my effort was 20 lines.

And talking about unexplained, who is Alma? All she is is your fuck doll. Your weird creepy soul torturing sexdoll who's only purpose in this game is to be your weird creepy soul torturing sexdoll.

Gameplay 4/10

So. How do you get dark souls like difficulty in a turn based RPG? Obviously, you restrict saving, healing, and healing items. There's a single place in the entire game to save. And honestly? It kind of works. Each battle slightly drains you and you feel the sense of tension where you don't know if you'll be able to make it back to save or not.

The combat is pretty standard RPGM combat. The unique part is your allies. As you play the game, you get more and more allies (souls with zero personality). And you'll really only pick 2 because leveling up more than 2 is pointless.

However, the maps are utterly gigantic. I spent so much time lost because the maps are so huge. Some maps are non-linear and I have no idea if I explored everything or not. And really I get it. Large and confusing maps add to the ambiance and difficulty of the game. But on the other hand, they're large and difficult maps where you spend tons of time walking around and backtracking because you're lost. That's not fun.

Lastly, there is endgame content. Sorta. You re-fight old bosses and they're extremely difficult.

Art 4/10

What a let down. The art is what drew me to this game. Really, the art style looks sharp, unique, and nice.

But like what? The girl art and the art of the rest of the entire game is different. The grungy dark feeling is just like, not there for the girls/h-art.

The scenes are short and not that good. Not a lot of variation CGI. The scenarios aren't that great either.

Really, this game didn't need to have any h-art and it would have worked as a standalone.

As a standalone, the art's pretty great. Tons of custom art, pixel art, background art, and it's all dark themed. It works really well.

But where's the h-art? There's like 20 1 minute scenes in a 20 hour game.

Overall 4/10

This game took me like 20 hours to beat. Just, wow. That's a huge time commitment. But that's the problem, the h-density of the game is terrible. There's like 20 minutes of h for a 20 hour game. That's like a 1.67% h-density. That's pathetic.

The game... if it were just a regular ass game, it'd be alright. But as an h-game, it's terrible.

Last time I played this, it was purely in Japanese and I couldn't understand shit. But now it has been fully translated, I decided to give it a try and its far better than I remembered.

Lets start with the Art. Being basically an RPGM game with pumped up assets, things look painfully familiar, but at least it isn't copy paste content like 99% of all other RPGM games these days. The CG artworks for the hentai is also an acquired taste, but I like it very regardless. It gets bonus points for being uncensored, and there is actually a decent variety of it. The NPC designs are also pretty decent, and similarly to Souls games, each one has a short progressive questline/story that you can follow, usually ending up with some unlockable H-scenes.

The gameplay is actually pretty damn fun. Multiple classes you can pick from, and an extra one that you unlock once you beat the game once. You also get to pick two followers into battle and you can find their souls in hidden areas on your journey, while some are out in the open. This game was Elden Ring before Elden Ring was a thing in that aspect. It gives strong replay value, since you can beat the game in almost any order, as long as you have at least one tank to taunt opponents, since thankfully no enemy boss can seem to resist it. The enemy mob designs are pretty redundant, but I'm fine with it, since the bosses are great and some are even nightmare inducing. The game basically uses the same Soul level system, and bonfire fast travel system, so Soulsborne players should be very familiar with it.

The SFX for this game is actually fucking awesome. I sat around Crystal lake and the final Castle just listening to the BGM for an hour. Pretty surprising how well-made and suitable the music was designed for this game, and it even manages to emulate the Soul Series kinda feel. Great music, I loved it.

Overall, its a damn good game. A love letter to the Souls games, and having quite a few Easter eggs that make it obvious, which I wont spoil. Suffice to say, there is plenty to enjoy here even if it isnt a Hentai RPG game.

Oh, and screw the guy who rated 1 star. He has no clue how rare a game like this is.

v1.01 -
As an avid Souls fan, I really enjoyed this game. It's clear that this was a love letter to From Software. It's not perfect by any means, but I felt that it hit all of the right notes for my personal preferences. Unlike some other games that try this style, it's dark without being unpleasant.
The worldbuilding is layered and purposefully unclear. It feels like a place where very few people have all of the answers about why things are the way they are.
The NPC storylines are short, and can only be affected in small ways by the player, but that feels right on pace with the stories from Souls games.
The environments are very detailed compared to a lot of other Wolf/RPGM games I've played, and wrap back around on themselves to create shortcuts and alternate paths. I think this is a mostly successful attempt at the vertical level design and interconnectedness of DS1, but it can also be quite confusing or tedious at times.

It's funny, as I describe it, I realize that a lot of the things I like about this game are things I would complain about in a game that wasn't trying to emulate a Souls experience. I think the difference here is that it feels very deliberate in this game, rather than the result of a lack of skill or effort.

After months of mediocre games and half-proper-TL, half-edited-MTL jank from Kagura, my comment is "finally, some good fucking food". It's not a perfect game, but I enjoyed my time clearing it.

When you first play the game, you pick a character out of the 4 available choices with their own stats and skills, which change the role they play in the party. Explore the sanctuary to find "Shadow Souls" of past challengers and add up to 2 to your party at a time for a total of 3 combatants.

Combat has an acceptable amount of depth. There are multiple viable party comps which give the player some variety in how they want to tackle the game. I started off with a bread-and-butter setup with a dedicated tank, then transitioned into a DoT-based party after finding the relevant Shadow Souls. By the end of the game I was using a buff/debuff party and going full aggro on the boss, relying on dodges to avoid taking damage.

The bulk of the game is in its exploration. Maps contain hidden rooms, loot, and puzzles. It's not a straight shot to the bottom, and the player is expected to remember the places they've been to and places they have yet to explore if they want to find everything.

The story isn't winning any accolades, but it's good for what it is. You get some basic information about the world before you leave for the sanctuary, then in it you chat with various characters and find scraps of diary pages strewn about. It gives room for thought and theory, and gives the player enough info to figure out the truth behind the sanctuary.

The art is very good, and actually deserves its decensor. The genitals are actually properly drawn instead of being zero-effort and have impressive detail for a Japanese indie H-game. That said, the H-scene writing is pretty mediocre honestly, and overall I didn't find scenes very erotic despite the great art.

Reading the other reviews/posts, one thing I would like to mention was that I personally didn't feel the game was very grindy or time-wasting at all. I avoided most mook combat and could still get enough rubies to level my character + a small handful of Shadow Souls (carefully choosing the ones work best with your character is important), and also unlock features in the hub. I mainly got rubies from boss rewards, the jewel bugs, and finding clots in treasure chests. I finished the base game in around 9 hours and append content added 2 more hours to it.

However, I do agree that the game lacks any real incentive to do additional runs, even if I did miss out on certain sidequests and scenes like Ewan's 2nd scene, the alt Wise One scene, and the onion-cat-knight guy. You do get enough starting rewards to start with a lv10 overpowered character after you unlock levelling again, but the game is largely very linear and all the exploration I already did to get the most out of my first run just makes me not want to do more.

It's honestly not a bad adult dark fantasy rpg, the atmosphere is pretty well crafted.
Art is good
Quite a few voyeur sex scenes. Also i like the customizeable doll mechanic.
Combat is ok, need a bit more description on the types of attack (piercing, slashing...)
Lore and characters are pretty interesting
Only one single save location is a bit of a pain.

Overrall, while not at the level of something like Blacksouls or Pronant symphony, this is still of higher quality than the majority of translated rpgm/wolf rpg. Should be at 4 stars but i'll give it 5 since there's not many serious adult dark fantasy rpg around anyway...and because I like customisable, silent and badass male protagonist, a plus if he wear full armor with helmet or at least hide most of his face., Wouldn't mind seeing more adult games like this in the future instead of the typical pornfest.

This whole game is a huge disappointment...


- The story is boring and predictable.
- The hentai scenes are very boring and dull.
- Companions are just empty silent husks with no opinion or personality.
- "Souls like" type of games is not suitable for RPG maker turn-based mechanics.
- The whole gameplay is many tedious hours of farming weak enemies, so you have a chance to defeat the boss and then repeat the whole process X times.

[v1.01]

Not bad, but not the most amazing experience. It does certain things well, but leaves much to be desired on the porn side. The gameplay is done pretty well, but it wasn't something that really stood out to me as exceptional. I'd say this is a solid 3.5*.

The atmosphere is great. It's dark and foreboding. There is an aura of insanity that permeates the dungeon and you see the effects on everyone as you go through the game. That means rape and all that fun stuff. MC is immune to this aura, so don't expect him to go around raping everything. It happens between NPCs so if you are a pussy, don't play the game.

Other than that, there is your home base and your harem of living dolls. It's super vanilla. The art is pretty good, but vanilla is vanilla. You just get a bunch of "oohh darling~~ love me more~~" repeated ad nauseam. There are also some bedtime stories you can listen to which is dark and depressing. It's the backstories of the mini bosses you kill throughout the game. These stories and the NPCs getting progressively messed up as you meet them throughout the dungeon was the high point of the porn side. None of it is really fappable though, but they do add to the atmosphere.

The gameplay is above average, but nothing that really impressed me too much. It's fairly well balanced, but there is a lack of creativity when it comes to skills and character roles. All in all, it is fun enough to keep you playing. I clocked about ~15 hours to beat the game fully.

Finally it is finished, translated and distributed outside of Japan (meaning, it's also uncensored)!

Wow and what a game. The plot comes out as a pretty simple one: here's a dungeon to crawl, an evil overlord (overlady?) to defeat, go get'em champ! But instead we get a very well made RPG with really cool concepts used to build this grim world. All in the best traditions of good RPGs: you get to know what's around you not by being directly told by narrator, but by perceiving the world through the eyes of a hero. By finding pieces of folklore, by witnessing (or partaking) fabled and often times grim events occuring before yourself, by listening to the stories of other characters, et cetera. Sometimes developers fail to make a fictional world that is interesting to discover, but to me it definitely wasn't this one.

10/10 as an RPG, 8/10 as an HRPG (I can imagine the pace being rather slow even on a normal difficulty), perfect game as a hybrid.

First and foremost if you hate voyeurism stay the hell away since this game's CGs are mostly those so consider that a fair warning of the content this game has to offer. The gameplay itself isn't terrible for a generic JRPG but the moment you unlock the ability to inflict Poison or Bleed difficulty becomes trivial. Without a guide I can guarantee you will miss at least 50% of the CGs as some characters are in particularly strange places and require you to scour the maps multiple times even requiring you to do so long after you finish the map itself. The fact you can't save is mostly irrelevant by the fact that if you die you don't lose anything other than the items you spent during the fights since you can get your rubies from ANY collector on ANY of the maps meaning death is trivial. Honestly the mobs at about halfway through serve as nothing but an inconvenience since they drop so little rubies that you shouldn't grind them and honestly you can play the game till the Fortress without needing higher than level 7 which highlights the fact that balance is thrown everywhere in the game.

TLDR: The gameplay isn't the hardest but requires some though, collecting the CGs is a chore, but the story isn't the worst thing terrible.

A 23 hour game with style over substance. The visuals and sound design are nice, but everything else is subpar. The writing is literally bare bones with the setup that a priestess got corrupted by darkness and now you need to fight through a dungeon to kill her; and at the end of the game she says "Killing me would solve nothing tho", wow what a shocker (sarcasm).

There are no emotional stakes or characters to get attached to.
The gameplay is unremarkable and in no-way unique.
The developer STRETCHED your playtime with design decisions like
> You cannot save unless you walk back to a teleport spot and go back to home base and save in your basement
> You cannot level up until you wander the dungeon for 1-2 hours and find that dark knight boss on the bridge
Etcetera. Let's be honest people. The game could be 10 hours if the developer wanted to. But he's STRECHING things. And I don't believe that deserves five stars. I believe it deserves two stars.

The game thrives in creating a dark VIBE.
But when it comes to writing and gameplay, is MEDIOCRE AT BEST.

fun game, the lore are long and interesting. waiting for proper translation to get real understanding of the story.
combat are fun and interesting although my method of combat are underhanded.
scene are interesting and good graphic.
choices made .are well , really worth considering.
good games for people with lot of times to invest on to.
looking for similar game soon.

I walked in wanting something and I was not disappointed. The art style, the atmosphere, the dialogue, everything blends together so seamlessly. The inspirations are there but the game does everything in its power to stand on its own as something unique. Well worth the time.

However, if you don't like the dark, depressing fight against the horrors, I would advise caution when committing.