RPGM - Completed - The Last Sovereign [v1.0.0] [Sierra Lee]

This is a 'porn' game that I think genuinely changed my worldview for the better, and while it is a porn game, and would be a lesser game if you tried to remove the lewd from it, it is an amazing game outside of just trying to get fap material.

Amazing game. Very funny writing, deep worldbuilding, and the most "your choices have an impact on the world" of any game I've ever played. I almost gave up on it in the beginning because of the prologue, came back here to see why it was so popular, and ended up loving it after pushing past the fake out beginning.

There are some downsides, but almost all of them are because of the game engine (I keep fantasizing about trying to make a FFX style remake...). However, there are some hotkeys that overcome some of the issues that some people who have reviewed the game don't seem to know about:

F5: enters or leaves full screen mode
Alt+Enter: alternate full screen mode (F5 is advised)
F6: change size of windowed display

there are more listed in the readme included in the game as well, knowing those fixes the most frustrating RPG Maker usability issues.

I also came across an interesting in depth review from someone in the rational fiction community which I'll link in case anyone else would be interested in a non porn-first perspective on the game:

https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/miy5rc/rt_dc_nsfw_a_practical_guide_to_the_last_sovereign/

I started playing and insta quit at first because I assumed what I first got was what the game had to offer. If you end up doing that, play it again, and press on as I did. Without spoiling, it's deeper than it first appears.

I'll probably update this review later after I play more. I just want to tell anyone who is using reviews to decide whether or not to play this game, trust me, soldier on.

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Five stars. The plot is enthralling, the writing is excellent, the characters are deep, blahblahblah. Read any other five star rating and you'll find similar comments. I just want to highlight the part I love the most: the wars (and conflicts).

I've played some other rpgms before and the conflicts there are severely handwaved. "Bad boss with bad empire. Kill bad boss. Bad empire becomes good. The end." But TLS' wars is far more complex. I'd give an example from the Third Arclent War:
-Iris launches the magical equivalent of a protonuke at every single allied country, destabilizing them and slowing their mobilization. The IKD begins attack on Aram.
-Yhilin sends reinforcements to Aram. A task force is sent to stir discontent among the IKD's people and sabotage a teleportation beacon near the IK's castle. Stineford is barely saved after an initial attack.
-An attack is launched against Ardoheim. A skirmish for the control of key bridges occured. Aram and its allies make camp.
-Stineford is besieged and badly outnumbered. A divine wall temporarily negated this disadvantage and the allies counterattacked. The IK arrived with reinforcements. The DK arrived, thwarting the IK.
-Aram's counterattack fails. Yhilini forces rush to save what is left. A rebellion triggers in Yhilin. The teleportation beacon is sabotaged. A minor attack on Feroholm is repelled.
-The Ivalan Churched unleashed the magical equivalent of the Great Wall of China. The IK sent the Unsuccubi who are able to pierce said divine wall at the cost of severely weakening the morale of his troops. The IK's orcs are persuaded via diplomacy to defect.
-The Unsuccubi are routed. A massive invasion hit Aram, but was beaten back by holy magic and the combined armies of Yhilin, Aram, and the Church.
-The IK is killed. Foreign forces exploit the opportunity by raiding Zirantia. Aram does not wish for peace and a standoff between Aram and Yhilin is only barely averted due to the economic chokehold Yhilin had over Aram. Hardcore Church priestesses began turning on Yhilini allies via mercenaries, but were defeated.

See how complex the war is? It could legitimately be an entry on wikipedia. Another game I wouldn't name that I played had similar plot, and the solution to the antagonist isn't a wide war involving multiple nations, but a band of ragtag folks with a few artifacts killing the antagonist and that's it; happy end; never mind anything else.

So yeah, five stars.

-

This game is at the end of its development, so I feel I can give a rating now.

This is the very first adult game I played, almost SEVEN years ago. And during those seven years, in four of them I played almost everyday.
I could rate this game 5/5 even if it didn't had a single sex scene or CG, but even those are good so far, not even decent, just plain good, despite the sudden decision to add CGs to the game so late in development.

The gameplay is good, but RPG Maker has its limitations, but this game really pushed the depth of something simple as combat in this engine. But, the gameplay is also where most of the criticism of this game comes from: People either won't like the some really cryptic parts, ane some won't like the fact they will Alt+Tab in this game a lot, because we need to keep tabs in a lot of things. Also this game is hitting the 100-120 hour range by now.

The story: Ok I'll say straight up, it's one of the best stories in video games I played so far, including triple A ones, and in my opinion is the adult game with the best story, with some margin. Tbh, it's not really fair to other adult games, because it's not an adult game, it's an amazing game that happened to have an adult theme, and unfortunately deserved a better engine than RPG Maker.

Also this game is free, even on Steam. 5/5 can't wait for the ending.

This is in my opinion the single best game you can find on this website. The story starts off with us playing as a guy fighting a war against a demonic entity known as the Incubus King and it quickly evolves into something more.

What I liked about this game:

- The writing: I am a big fan of large, epic fantasy series and this game is just that. It is an interesting rpg story of epic proportions and the things you do have a real impact on the world.

- The scope: The scope of this game is unlike any other game I have played and this includes RPGs that are not focused on porn. The game has a lot of political scheming, kingdom management, large scale wars that makes it unlike any other adult game.

- The worldbuilding and immersion: The world is fleshed out. Different races/cities can feel different and have their own unique culture. After a major event in the game is done, you can go back to previous towns and you will see that the dialogue for basically every single NPC has changed to reflect the new state of the world.

- The complexity:This game does politics extremely well. Every character has their opinion on how things should be done and there is a lot going on. The consequences are hard to predict - this may or may not annoy some players but I personally liked this approach - just like the real world you have some information you know and other information that you dont know. There are situations where you need to work with what you have and hope for the best. If you find this is overwhelming, you can use walkthroughs that describe the consequences of certain choices.

What I disliked:

- The adult elements - This is a game you play for the story and not for the porn. It is the only game on this website that I have played where I think the porn/harem themes are unnecessary. Its not bad but I feel like this game would have been better off if it were like a more mainstream RPG game as opposed to a porn game.

- This is a more typical RpgMaker game and they can feel a bit clunky and dated. I personally do not mind them but I am adding this here just because this may be a dealbreaker for some.

Overall I would give this a 4.8 or a 4.9 out of 5. This is one of the best games (including non-porn games) that I have played. It makes me wish it did not have porn so I could recommend this game to people I know in real life.

I played most games from every genre there is. witcher 3 ,bioware ,the classic isometric RPGs .and this lewd game is my favorite. game both story and gameplay wise (gameplay for jrpg anyway ).

the story is really nuanced and mature far more than most games these days ,and the gameplay is very will balanced .only real issue I have with the game is the lack of art but that is not the developer's fault but for lack resources ,and that it is so complex that you need to follow a guide if you want not to miss things or get bad results .

The Last Sovereign [v0.60.3 Public] review

Man, this is so hard to review. What this game does well, it does so amazingly well that there really isn't anything to even compare it to, but there's also some really severe shortcomings.

Positives:
+ The best writing. And I mean the best. I've tried a lot of games here on f95 and I've reviewed over a hundred. Nobody writes like Sierra Lee. It's snappy, funny and has a coherent story throughout, which really draws you in. Oh and it's real sexy too. Sierra is a real force of nature when it comes to writing.
+ Extremely well balanced combat with the challenge level set exactly right.

Negatives:
- The engine is shit. This verion of RPGM with just a tiny window doesn't lend itself to anything that's even remotely visually pleasing.
- Combat is, well, RPGM combat and it gets boring after a while. There's honestly way too much of it and it takes up too much time. I played this before and I wanted to try it again to see where the story goes, but I just couldn't keep grinding through the massive amount of RPGM combat again. As amazing as the story is, reading it constitutes just a tiny percentage of the time spent in this game. The very large majority of a playthrough will consist of RPGM combat and well, I can't stomach it any longer.
- Very weak visuals. Plenty of low-effort drawings and 1-picture sex scenes. I'm sorry but I cant' fap to 1-picture scenes made by a mediocre visual artist. It really makes me sad to my core, because I'm thoroughly convinced that any game with modern (2022) HQ visuals written by Sierra would probably be the best lewd game ever. I just can't seem to find the full package anywhere.

This game could be the best thing ever if you love RPGM combat, or it could be something that you can't even stomach for 30 minutes, all depending on your preferences. I'm gonna leave an "average" rating because I feel that's fair.

I never leave reviews, but man.. this game. Never thought I'd say it, but this is the Dark Souls of all Porn games out there. And I love it. I don't have much to add that hasn't been already said by the past reviews, but I have to give this game a 5 star rating since I had a banger playing this for the past couple of months, yes, months. It has that much content. I don't even care about the porn element anymore.. This is something I played on a regular basis like any other game for it's complexity, hardcore combat, which some don't like, but I found it satisfying when you get to know all the mechanics around it. The story is also superb, characters, the loot/gearing up, and all the other little details just added so much into the experience for me. Beating pain in the ass bosses/sections has never been so satisfying, especially when you reap the rewards of your commitment. The same goes for the non-combat sections.

A word of advice for any new players, use a guide, but only when making investments, important decisions or when free-roaming so you don't miss content or to not make unintentional mistakes. Also, it's okay to not achieve your perfect end-goals to some sections. As long as it's not terrible, you'll be fine in most cases.

To conclude this review, any true RPG fan such as myself will easily fall in love with this game. Looking forward to the endgame.
Leaving this review right as I finished 0.59.3, which is also the version I started from.

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.