I find it very hard to reduce this game to a single numerical rating, but at the same time I can with absolute confidence reduce this game to just two words:
Lacking direction.
I'd taken this game for a spin a while ago—version zero-twenty-something—and decided to hold off my review in case it could redeem its flaws. It did not (ver0.55). So here it goes.
The main issue is that this game absolutely lacks a story that ties any of the elements together. I have to disagree with metaphor choice in another review that this game has the skeleton of something great. The skeleton is exactly the thing this game doesn't have. It has some decent chunks of adult content that are not connected to each other or any global progression. This leads to pacing problems and exacerbation of grind. Don't get me wrong, the game is grindy enough, but it feels even more grindy than it objectively is because the pacing is godawful. Basically, if you have 50 mooks to slay and 10 events to show, you can either make the player slay all the mooks, then show all events back to back. Or you can have shorter progression spans. 5 mooks, an event, 5 more mooks, another event, etc, etc. Guess which way will feel at least somewhat acceptable and which one will be a source of pure misery? It's all about pacing.
Moving on. What writing there is, can be described as anemic. Utterly limp-dicked, if you will. Now, this is supposed to be a corruption game at its core, but because there is no written overarching corruption progress, Annabel's attitude toward sex is all over the place, and it makes no sense. Is she a slut, a prude, or simply ignorant in the ways of sex? She is all three, depending on scene chosen. This is a big failure of characterization.
There is one bright spot in all this doom and glum. Some parts of the story are delivered via comic panels/storyboards. These are actually good, and I would love to see more games using this technique. So yes, I get why people urge this dev to stick to making comics. It's because art and comic panels are the best positive points of this game by far.
All other functional parts serve no real purpose other than occupying players' time. There is a combat system with nominal deckbuilding. It lacks any depth, whatsoever, because you don't really build the deck. You just grind as many upgrades for any card you can, as it's always the best option. There is an overworld with different methods of travel. It has no real purpose. I could go on, but my point is that this game is choke full of features that are annoying because they are implemented without any tuning or consistency in sight. For example, your house has a coat hanger that you have to use every time you want to leave. Not only this mechanic is meaningless, but no other location has it, and you can leave some places literally naked (Annabel just automatically puts on the appropriate attire). WHYYYY.
Oh, and I almost forgot the forced losses. The game now has 3 of these (4 if you count the experimental powerup), despite the dev recieving tons of criticism for introducing the second one. Why devs do this? Forced losses are shit. Adding insult to injury the game gives no indication that the fight is unwinnable, you have to waste your precious time to verify this is working as intended and is not a bug. And then you have to suffer slowly losing all your HP bar while you skip turn after turn.
And yes, the game is buggy as hell.
In the end, the good and the bad doesn't average out to a neat simple number of X out of 5. However, since I have to do this for a review, I'm gonna say the overall experience is Poor, two stars. It's not too late to steer this ship to greatness theoretically, but chances are, this is just wishful thinking. The mythical "potential" isn't worth shit; I judge games based on what they offer right now. And in its present state The Lewd Knight is not worth your time (at the very least, use the cheat mod).