Exstia Review
Well, I got to play the game yesterday in full and here’s my review. Note that I can be a bit biased and I’ll comment on the reason so here we go.
The game….it’s a good eroge game with a magical girl containing corruption but did it meet expectation? No, because I had a pretty high expectation for this game which wasn’t fair for it and I had to do some thinking about it.
The reason for the high expectation is
1. Inoino’s involvement as the artist
2. It was by Lusterise who isn’t a stranger to corruption game and had done Prism Saber in 2011 that I liked
3. The lack of super heroine corruption game in 2015 after Maika withdrawing from the genre to be a mobile game producer (I still haven’t seen hide nor hair of any new Maikaesque game advertised in 2chan like with Liquid or whatever)
So to summarize, I was expecting something along the line of an 11/10 like TS MahoShojouNao but I’d put Exstia at a 8/10 instead. It’s a good game and I’d recommend it to all corruption fan game but it lacks a certain….oomph that would made it one of the REALLY great game and there are other factors weighting it down.
The good/ What I liked
1. The art and design by InoIno especially Exstia’s evil succubus form.
2. The internal dialogue/ process during Marina/Exstia’s descent into corruption where she begins to resent the doctor and the childhood friend for not understanding her emerging sexual desire that was beginning to change her physically & mentally (half due to tinkering by the bad guys)is very good. It kept me interested and wondering when she’s going to snap/turn evil or submit to the bad guy.
3. Some of the other route (Assimilated and turn into female plant monster, brainwashed to serve the bad guy)are done pretty well
The bad/ What I disliked/ What might have been improved
1. The so-called “battle system” Now this might be just the copy on my computer but outside the first battle, I think the damn thing is rigged to just have you lose, the enemy grid moves too fast and I always died before I could even get the enemy close to death and I tried 20 times and got frustrated with it. Thank god that they included a skip function after you go through with it once and can choose between win or lose.
I don’t understand why they put in this system, it’s not a fair fight at all and if I play something like this, I play to win but with it rigged like this, they might as well have changed it to multiple choices that will lead to win or lose route. At least that way it won’t waste too much time. A 0/10 for this part which drags the game down.
2. While I like InoIno’s design for Exstia’s evil succubus form, I really wish that they would have made a chara art of her plant monster form, her brainwashed costume and made a scenario of it instead of just having it in an HCG scene,it’s a waste of the separate design tha InoIno designs for them with only the succubus evil form gets a character art to act in a scenario. This also plays into my feeling that there are too little characters involved and there should be more, maybe some of Exstia/ Marina’s friend fleshed out since the corruption story requires there only be ONE magical girl.
3. This doesn’t apply if it’s someone’s first or second corruption game since it’ll still be new for them but for me,due to having played a lot of corruption game by Maika, while the corruption scene/ descent process is top-notch in that it keeps you guessing at which moment Exstia will snap/ or turn evil or give in to the bad guy, after she DOES that, the scenario played out (while extremely erotic)seems very standard for a post corruption scenario. (She swears loyalty to the bad guy and kills her “boy friend” and then goes on a rampage and have rampant sex with men she enslaved from a crowd) I sort of want something innovative or a fresh take though I’m not sure what you CAN do since there’s just ONE heroine to corrupt.
4. That you’re not exactly playing as the bad guy, heck you’re not even playing as the good guy, the game more or less tries to have you identify with the childhood male friend but he doesn’t make any choice in the game at all and the male bad guy feels a bit one-dimensionally evil even compared to other Lusterise’s male bad guy. The mook evil monsters also doesn’t have any gimmick to them other than the one that in one route assimilate Exstia or the one with addictive cum, the rest looks like just plain brute who rapes, and that’s it. I guess if there’s a POV character, it’s Exstia herself but since we’re male , a part of us gravitates to the nearest male character, either good or evil to act as our proxy which doesn’t happen in this game. Not that it’s something rare in eroge game but I still want to be the evil main character.
Still overall, being one of the only two definite corruption game available in 2015, Exstia does fulfill the basic want for a corruption game enough that I’ll still recommend it and it’ll join the A-B List corruption game like Divine Heart & Crusade Heart Karen, Patreisser, etc that I may replay once in a while but not the S list like Tossen 3, Sailor Knight, Justice Blade, TS Maho Shojou Nao that I’ll boot up if I’m in the mood to look/play a quick corruption scenario. Next up for 2015 is Heat Soft’s Oshieko which I’m REALLY hoping to be a spiritual successor to Tossen 3 in corruption scenario/ betrayal and more.
