RPGM - The Last Sovereign [v0.76.3] [Sierra Lee]

i wish i could give it 5 stars, i really do, but the game has some flaws that are a bit jarring and permeate a bit the entire experience. Everything feels "good enough" with design choices making it a bit weird all over

The narrative is interesting, is probably the strongest point of the game, the protagonist is very likable despite his situation and "dark" power, cares deeply about his partners and about consent in a way that really adds to the story and the characters arcs.....

And sometimes you get to whore people or let them be raped, when and how seems really arbitrary and out of character for the MC. And while talking about rape, despite the background as dark and mature, rape (not by the MC) is absurdly common and treated as a mild inconvenience at worst, with several members of the harem having been raped -adding very little to the story- and its brushed off very casually (and it tends to boil down to the characters enjoying it at the end,even if they're not succubi).

Oh, and while few in numbers, the unavoidable NTR also hits you in the face about how little control you have the actual plot. And while it says your choice matter, is mostly "your choices determine your success/failure" aka gathering stats (for characters or the economic system) rather than actually shaping the plot or the MC.

Combat is good enough, choices of weaknesses and strengths seem arbitrary as fuck in some cases (why the fuck are overgrown wasps weak to "sex" element .....) but it does its job of keeping you entertained

I basically got really, really into it for a few hours and then my interest dwindled and died as I realized how little input i actually had, up to a few ntr scenes in which I felt that yeah, i cant actually influence this at all. Even the "will have consequences later" decisions actually boil down to "success/failure" states, rather than actually influencing the plot in alternative ways

Most games here is porn using a story medium. This is a story told using a porn medium. If you came here to spank your meat, this is not the game for you. The sex scenes progress far too slowly and the story is far too deep. It's a wonderful game that draws you in with it's characters but don't come in here intending to masturbate.

This is not just one of the best adult game I've played, but also one of the 2 best RPG Maker games I've played. The writing, world building, characterisation and humour are top notch, with some remarkably well written sex scenes. The art and character style is also really good. Some might grumble on the emphasis on the writing in the sex scenes, but they are generally so well done that trying to translate them fully to a graphical sequence would probably be a disappointment.

Also it really uses the capabilities of the RPG Maker engine, more so than most of the games. Combat is challenging but generally feels more rewarding than in your average RPG Maker game for some reason, possibly because of the limited XP pool. There is good reason to grind too, as the more you grind, the less difficult compromises you are forced to make. And the limited amount of XP from mobs feels a good decision generally, even though this is normally something I would strong disagree with.

And I think it uses custom tiles as well as using the default tile set better than most games. The dungeons, cities and NPC encounters just feel better thought out than many RPG Maker games

One thing I would suggest, although I'm not sure its possible in this engine is because this game is so strongly story oriented, is to have XP rewards for completing quests. Of course if it were possible it would probably require rebalancing XP from combat, which is unlikely to happen at this late stage. Something to think of for a future project, maybe?

Version reviewed 0.59.3

ED: More thoughts

Review for v0.59.3

I could write an essay about this game. The Last Sovereign isn't just my favorite "porn game", it's one of my favorite games period. For me, it's the very definition of come for the porn, stay for the plot. I have sunk about 200 hours across multiple playthroughs, and will probably put in 100 more once the game is completely finished (Yes this game is long, my last playthrough was about 80 hours covering 4 of the 5 chapters before I stopped).

You start the game as a young chosen hero set on taking down the incubus king along with some old dude named Simon and a hot elf mage. You attempt to take back a tower filled with evil forces.

You fail.
You get captured.
You die.

Surprise! This story isn't about you.

It's about Simon, the last sovereign.

You take the role of a war veteran suddenly given power with enough potential to end a threat that has been plaguing the continent all his life: the Incubus King. Have you heard this one before? Well trust me, it's more complex than it seems.

Before I really get into it, let me say I use an amazingly well written walkthrough located on the wiki. It's written in a way as to not spoil you as much as possible while still giving clear directions (just don't look too far ahead). There is special segments for many of the more complex parts of the game and things that outline the consequences of your decisions, for which there are MANY. I feel like the wiki enhanced my enjoyment a lot, and I can't really comment on playing the game without it.

Now, what I love most about the game is without a doubt the writing. The story, the dialogue, the characters, the written out sex scenes, the list goes on. It's compelling and has managed to keep me engaged across multiple playthroughs even. It feels like I'm reading the work of a professional. This is one of those games where I literally talk to every NPC to see whatever little snip of dialogue I might get. I love that the game has this effect on me.

You hear a lot of games use the phrase "your choices have consequences!" or that they "shape the world around you!" Never have I played a game that truly does that to this degree. For once, a large majority of the choices you make actually matter. Actions you can take in the first segments of the game have real affects lasting until the last chapter of the game and become apparent at many points in between that. A lot of the plot and mechanics effectively involves situations that are shaping the world in the first place. I could go more in depth on this, but it would be a crime to spoil this game if you know nothing about it.

If you're like me, you might grow bored of the bog standard RPGM you see so often and want to skip it all. Who wants to encounter 5 random battles trying to walk to the next area? Thankfully, this game doesn't do that. First, XP is finite. There are no random battles to farm. Every combat encounter is effectively meaningful because of that, and you are going to want all the XP you can get as even your level has an effect on events in the story. Second, combat is very well balanced. It provides a challenge without being super frustrating (besides a few purposely difficult encounters). Every combatant harem member in your party will also see their use, which is a nice touch.

This game is much more in depth and complex than what it might seem and I cannot stress that enough. It's a big part of the reason why I love it. If you're looking for something to simply get off to, this is not it. There are well over 100 scenes, but there is a mountain of a game along with those scenes. This entire review is me being brief about it.

TLDR - I would call this game a masterpiece. If you like RPGs and want something you can truly get invested in and sink A LOT of time into, do yourself a favor and play this game. To me, it can stand along with many big AAA RPGs in terms of plot and writing.

TL / DR. Best in its genre on two levels. This is the best RPGM game. It is also the best harem game. It is highly complex with excellent writing and enjoyable combat.

Pros:
~Great harem scenes
~Main Character has incredible powers without ever feeling narratively overpowered.
~Main character is distinctly a character - and I love his general vibe / attitude about romance, love, and his value-system.
~It is a harem game- but ALL of the characters have meaningful plot and and are distinctly unique.
~Characters are written with realistic motivations.
~Economic system is $$$
~Kingdom building is complex and interesting
~Combat is relatively enjoyable
~Art is an acceptable quality- though not really next level.
~Sex scenes are written in an incredibly hot way- the main character often focuses on giving his partners pleasure and is generally very caring towards his partners.

Cons:
~A handful of unavoidable (maybe 4 or 5) sharing scenes- wish the Dev had given us alternative routes in those arcs.
~The satirical elements take me out of the immersion a bit.

Neutral:
~Would be cool to have some monsters-girl or more short-stacks as harem members! Most of them are human / Succubus.

My favourite game. Tried it first I didnt read anything just went through dialogs looking for content and I was very disappointed coz I didnt found what I expected there. But then some time later I decided to actually play it and read dialogs and I couldnt stop until I finished all the story that was in that version of game. It was 0.2x-something.
Once playing it I caught myself on the thought: "Oh no, sex scene. It distracts me from story and gameplay. Im playing this game not for it".

TLS is a pretty good game that has excellent writeing, world building and characters. I enjoyed most of the game through the choices in the game, which have an impact on the overall narative although usually minor and only really matter towards the latter few chapters. But the game has major problems that can defintely turn people off from playing it. The first major flaw would be the combat which covers a large portion of the game, combat felt grindy and repetitive, and the game punishes you for not grinding since some important events depend on character levels. The second major flaw would be the lack of directions when trying to do some quests/secrets, which usually involves them giving you vague advice and having to wander around for 5-30 minutes on every map depending on the advice, and their are a lot of quest and secrets that you need to have or will be heavily punished in the game. The last major flaw would be having to rely on the guide to not be punished playing the game, since their are a lot of secrets with convuluted conditions and investments that will impact your overall experience playing the game and you will be at a massive handicap if you don't use a guide. Overall this game is great if your playing for the story, It just has a lot poor quality of life standards, for a game which can be a turn off. I reccomend using a guide to get the full experience along with a mod that skips combat.

very interesting story. wouldn't be possible to play without the walkthrough though. but can see a lot of work has gone into trying to balance out the choices. also like the art. would be great to have some more of Esthera

I've never liked RPG Maker games. Or at least i've never played any good ones before The Last Sovereign, which has quickly become one of my favourite games of any type. It makes me sad that so many people will pass over this game at first glance, because i'm so very lucky I decided to give it a chance. It's completely free and i've sunk something like 80 hours into it in the span of a month and have loved every moment.

It has incredible world-building, character interaction and general plot. It goes beyond the simple "be hero, beat baddie, save world" and deals with a multitude of interesting issues with a maturity that I see very rarely in gaming, which is perhaps surprising given its adult content. And there is adult content - which may make some people uncomfortable - but it's included with the same maturity as the rest of the real world issues I mentioned earlier. The Last Sovereign asks what a world in which sexual magic and succubi (among other races) would realistically look like and uses that to tell a long, deep and compelling story (no innuendo intended).

While the combat consists of a competent variation of the turn-based setup seen in many RPG Maker games, the real gameplay focuses on the decisions you make while progressing the story - economic investments you make early on in the piece will affect your ability to lead armies and fight wars chapters later, and your interactions with the people of Arclent and your companions influence a massive variety of things.

If you're going to give the game a go (and I highly recommend you do) please note that the opening scenes are not representative of the full game. The real magic comes later.

It can't be certain if Sierra Lee first intended to make an RPG or an adult game but what one can be sure of is that they have made a very good overall game. If anything it feels like they accidently made an excellent RPG worthy of games like Lunar or the earliest Final Fantasy games with some limitations. What TLS is only lacking is polish.

This game hides a bit behind the intro, where it dupes you into thinking it is yet again another silly JRPG Mary Sue simulator. That couldn't be further from the truth as one quickly realized upon the surprise beginning of Chapter 1. Without giving too much away, this game is masterfully written. It surprises in the best way and presents us with a pragmatic main character who is hard not to respect. Honestly I really enjoy the writing in this game and only wish that the rest of the assets were not holding it back from the true greatness it deserves.

I'm not a fan of RPG maker games, simply for that the engine is extremely limited and lends itself to grinding. Hard.
This game is no exception. If you want to make it to through the story, you have to work and gain those levels. The game itself is aware of this and considers it part of the plot... personally I really dislike this and think it distracts from both the story and the adult content...
I can't be sure if this is normal for RPGM but the resolution of this game is extremely small. So much to the point that it would feel more at home with Windows 95. The graphics overall are simply very poor with level design at times suffering due to the limitations of the engine. Unlike some early RPGs from the 90s, this game uses pretty out of the box square tile placement instead of grooming their level design with hand drawn graphics.

One thing that really drew me into this game were the excellent avatars for the characters. Seriously, they are on par with games like Lunar and are extremely beautifully designed and rendered. Whomever drew these, please hire this person to do ALL the art. This art harkens back to the best elements of 90s RPGs, and that is character design which oozes sexiness and "cool"

This brings me to one of the shortcomings of this game. The sex scene CGs are very simple and are not up to par with the avatars for the characters. It comes as much of a let down, to the point where I'm not sure if it is the same artist or they just decided to say "fuck it" and do a rush job. Honestly, the CGs just do not do this game justice in anyway. Ultimately they just don't do it for me and I wish that in general the scenes of the game were given a decent visual representation which could truly shine the way this game deserves.

The other issue seems to be with the game's quest log and quest system in general. The journal only gives a very broad idea of what you're doing, instead the game relies on the reader figuring it out based on dialogue from the characters. This would be fine except sometimes exactly what you're supposed to do is unclear and if you go a few days without playing the game, there is a good chance you will forget you were expected to go find a certain person or thing with no way to remind yourself. Other than that, several instances of the game expect you to talk to the same NPC several times in a row with no clue that the second time you will get a different reaction which will move your adventure forward. This is generally a flaw in game design.

Forgoing that, most of the adult scenes in this game are handled by text, which is well written and enjoyable if you are into that kind of thing... "imagination" if you will. It is just a shame that the art and overall graphic quality brings this game down a notch. With additional writing, this game could easily have been an excellent adult romance novel but I found the adult scenes to be somehow lacking and didn't find any of them to be particularly enticing.

Overall, this is an excellent game and what I would say could be a masterfully done release if not for these shortcomings. I can't really wrap my head around the severely limited resolution of this game which pinched the exploration of the world into a tiny square, the exhaustive battles and grinding, and the mediocre renders for the adult scenes. If these were fixed, this game would easily by a contender for a top JRPG Fantasy game of all time. As it stands however, it is just "good" bordering on "great". Do yourself a favor and check it out if you are a fan of these types of games. You won't be disappointed.

This is such a frustrating game to review. High quality writing and content marred by good intentions that led to a terrible game experience. This review will parrot what many others have already said.

The world building, characters and dialogue are intelligent, interesting and high quality. You are easily sucked in.

The game's biggest failing is the convoluted handling of much of its content. Things you do or do not do can screw you over severely - often much later in the game, leaving you with a bitter taste and feeling miserable that you've overwritten all saves a dozen times over and thus don't even have the chance to load an earlier save without throwing away a huge time investment.

Secondly, the game is intended to be tightly balanced all the way through. There is no way to grind for levels or gear and thus no way to trade your time grinding for levels instead instead of struggling with combat encounters you might find difficult.

These two design decisions drive the player to keep a walkthrough open at all times to make sure content isn't missed, you aren't screwing yourself over by not collecting any of the limited xp or similar. The walkthrough becomes a script that you as a player merely act out in RPGM, and the game becomes, in effect, a kinetic novel with a buttload of superfluous clicks.

First thing that should be cleared up before anyone decides to try the game out: The Last Sovereign isn't a porn game, it's a game with porn. Meaning that unlike a lot of other games here, it focuses more on the game elements and isn't a walk in the park. The existing porn in the game is primarily written with a few still images, which I don't mind as I'd rather have that than hours of teasing. The big plus to this game, and why I believe it deserves 5 stars, is that it has hours of gameplay, honestly probably more than any other game on this site. It's got a rich story with interesting mechanics, but you'll need to be careful of the decisions you make, as they will have an effect on the story later on. If you're looking for pure porn this may not be the game for you, however if you're looking for a game with adult features, this is it.

Good:
Exceptional characters, some of the best I have seen really. Amazing world building. Interesting plot.

Bad:
1. The game takes ~150 hours to complete which is full of punishing grinding and unfun RPGM combat.
2. You will be forced to choose between:
a. restart the game many times while mapping the choices you must perform raising your hours invested to the thousands due to the many snowballing hidden fail-states
b. read 100+ pages of wiki to thread the needle. which spoils the story and completely ruins the gameplay by just making you adhere to the guides like a robot
3. No gallery
4. RPGM shit.
5. anti-cheat bullshit hidden in the game where if you cheat it detects it and fucks you over 100 hours later. haha! gotcha player! should not have used cheats.

I am sorry, as much as I love the (non-MC) characters and want to see what happens next I just can not do this.
There are simply too many bad choices by the dev that simply ruin what could have otherwise been an amazing game. 2 stars, could have been a 5.

Okay, I have played around 70hours of it, it is as great as others say , the story , the gameplay, the details , everything.

BUT , the porn part is somewhat lacking, I can't get off on texts so it may work differently for you but it certainly is not for a quick fap. I spent like 4-5 days to get to current level, it was very much worth it, but not for porn reasons.

Edit : 130 hours, I'm not in it for porn anymore, story is too great i will be big sad when it ends, looking forward to more!

As others have said, this game has perhaps some of the best writing I've seen - the MC is a likable person, the characters are interesting and varied, the worldbuilding is pretty deep. And I've never seen a game that got so deep into managing political resources or having to manage various factions. If you want a porn game that is also a medieval kingdom management game, this one's probably pretty good. I did actually play this game once a while back but gave up early on, but I did miss out by not pushing through the early part.

For the game mechanics portion, I should note that I generally dislike RPGM games for getting lost in RPG bullshit. This game started off much better than most in that regard - the very difficult fights were optional, and while you could follow a wiki to try and make the most optimal decisions, it didn't seem required.

Unfortunately, as I got deeper and deeper into the game that became less true. I did eventually hit a mandatory fight towards the end of Chap 4 that I could only beat by cheating, and from there I found myself relying on cheat programs to get me through more often. I got into the game for the story, not to try and min-max the perfect builds but it begins to feel more required. Likewise, because decisions continue to have effects throughout the course of the entire game and just keep stacking and stacking, making non-optimal choices starts to hurt you more and more. Even with following the wiki guides pretty closely I've found it harder to even get 'decent' results from the various political manipulations, and I actually got locked out of recruiting a harem member despite my best efforts otherwise. Things I passed up or missed like...80 damn hours ago are still haunting me. To actually enjoy this game in the long term I think you have to follow the guides and that costs this review a star at least.

Also, RPGM games should just not ever have timed sections. Never ever ever ever. Any time a guide section starts with 'okay, to get through this, go to settings and turn off the animations and text' something's messed up.

Pornwise, RPGM is just a miserable delivery system for porn. The art is decent, but it's damn tiny, even if you play in fullscreen it's still just a tiny image blown up. Nor is there any sort of gallery system until something like halfway through the game, and it's only accessible at certain times in the game so you have to remember to keep saves in the porn-accessible points. The game does what it can within RPGM limitations but the fact remains, RPGM is a bad engine for porn.

All in all I think I'm invested to see the game through to the end, but I feel like this is maybe as good as an RPGM game can get and it still feels massively weighted down by the end with all of the typical RPG problems. Call me a bad gamer if you want, but a built-in 'story' or cheat mode that allowed you to focus on the really good part of the game, the story, would make this far less stressful to play.

Writing is as good as it gets. The only games I've ever played that is even in the same league are Out of Touch and possibly Lessons in Love (but LiL suffers a little bit from a pretentious developer).

The worldbuilding is first class. Not, like, "first class for a porn game", I mean seriously first class. Economics, geography, history-- it all fits. This is a game that you can think hard about and not worry that you're going deeper than the author did.

The art is good, but sparse-- there is actually a lot of it, but the game is so *huge* that there are some significant stretches without CGs.

The RPG aspect is solid. It's well balanced, and actually fun. This is one of the very few adult RPGM games where the combat and equipment management stuff doesn't bore me. It's actually a game that would NOT be better if it was moved to another engine, if you can imagine that. The game makes clever use of a "projections" gimick that give you many of the QoL conveniences of a menu-driven VN game but within the RPGM world.

The writer (and I say writer, even though she's a good developer-- Sierra Lee is first and foremost a fantasy writer) delivers professionally and is appropriately engaging to the community, although there is no Discord that I am aware of so you have to use the Patreon platform.

Set aside some time and dive in, this game is incredible.

Edit: there is, in fact, a discord now. (And a fairly lively one at at that.)

Easily the best writing in any smutty game I've played. Lots of content, and a pretty solid JRPG / management sim game as well. I have no complaints about this game. The art is pretty good too.

Really though, can't emphasize the quality of writing enough.

Game Version: v0.57.3
The game has one of the best stories I've seen on the F95zone. MC is very well written. Not only the main character but also some of the characters are very well written, e.g Yarra, Aka and my favorite Qum. If I played the game well, there are about 30 harem characters and each has its own characteristics and story. The character development is absolutely very good. The main focus of the game is definitely not porn, you need to know that. The game has only two downsides for me. The first is definitely porn scenes (as I said in the previous sentence, this is because the game does not focus on porn) and the second is combat. Combat is very simple, nothing to talk about. But other features of the game destroy these two. There's a lot I haven't mentioned yet because I can give spoilers. Have fun!

I played this game a lot and as far as chapter 3 i've enjoided it.

I will not talk about the RPG and the fighting system because the most important part of the game is the story and the investment fase.

The story is well written and actions have consequence. That is at the same time the strong and weak point of TLS.
There are a lot, and i mean a LOT of choises to be made with a tons of consequences but the more the game goes on the more complex it became and you are overwhelmed.
Withouth the help of the wiki and therefore following the walkthought you start missing more and more content as you go on (both sex scenes and news characters) and thus you have to read pages and follow to the letter what to do.

Like the wiki says
" I can't take this anymore! I used to have a certainty inside me, but it's gone! Just tell me what to do! "

Sadly this is why i can give only 3 star.

So, funny story, when the game was still in very early development, probably around 2015, I played it for the first time.

And stopped after 15 minutes, because I absolutely despised the opening characters, and was not in the mood for yet another "choose between good and evil route"-type game.
Boy, do I regret that.

The Last Sovereign is the Hentai game with the best story. Period.

You should play it. Now.