My review on TS Maho Shojou Nao
Here is my review on Crooked Navel’s Doujin game. I think this is their very first game and hope that they DO create more since overall I think they did create a pretty good game even if there were short comings in the game. There might be some spoiler in the review so if you want to play it first hand without any hint to the story, don’t read it ok.
Good part
1. The art
I’m not sure how the Crooked Navel circle is comprised but the character art for TS MahouShoujoNao feels and look different than previous Crooked Navel corruption doujin where to be blunt, looks a lot like loli or petanko (flat chested girl). To me, the Crooked Navel brand relies a lot on their beautifully crafted corruption story to draw me in while the art sort of turns me off a bit. This doesn’t seem to be the case here, I wonder if they hire a new artist or if their usual artist evolves his/her style. Whatever the case, I like it.
2. A very good corruption story
Crooked Navel crafts a pretty good corruption story in the Corruption mode where the gradual erosion of will/enslavement and then corruption of Arti Cheri is well shown. (This doesn’t apply to Knight Ignis who went and got corrupted in one go a little too quickly but what the hey, I’m not complaining) You can see Arti Cheri more or less struggling to fight but to no avail so that’s good. Most corruption story that I’ve played doesn’t do the gradual erosion all that well.
3. Constant Inner thoughts from the corrupted Magical girls
This is actually a little refreshing because MAIKA and the other more or less keep the focus on the main character corrupting the girls and we only get to see the corrupted girls new mindset only a couple of time and a lot of time, they don’t interact with each other after being corrupted all that much. This game is a little different in that because the viewpoint change to Ignis and Cheri’s inner thought ALL the time in the Corruption side (even more than the evil protagonist Kai) after being corrupted, you see how they love being corrupted/ being Kai’s slave, how they want to help corrupt others like Flare & Rain to being Kai’s slave and how friendly & supportive they are towards each other to please their master.
Shortcoming
That’s not to say that this game doesn’t have some faults or shortcoming, there’s a couple.
1. No skip button found by me
This is the biggest shortcoming, they didn’t include a dialogue skip function (or I couldn’t find one) and have to keep pushing the button to scroll through events. Now that isn’t a lot of problem in the Corruption side since the story is engaging enough that you won’t feel like skipping too much but it’s a pain beforehand on the other side, the Nao Side which leads to point 2.
2. A long& almost boring Nao side& not too good marketing of the game as a Corruption Game
The Nao side is of course a little TOO long for my taste being around 1 hour 30 minute since the concept (Male turn to female) isn’t THAT appealing to me and with no skip button, it feels very long and there was no hard sex, interesting sex scene or anything, it was very tame compared to the corruption side. It’s only redeeming factor is that if you focus on Nao’s interaction with Mai(Cheri), you can enjoy the Corruption side a lot more because the Nao side gives you the background,settings.
ALSO, the way that Crooked Navel advertise this game is that of only the Nao side and that of being a transgender heroine, I think Crooked Navel gambled that their circle’s reputation in corruption doujin would make people consider that there IS a corruption side somewhere but I don’t think I saw anything that hinted that this game has a corruption side until someone talked about it in this thread + I saw some pictures of the before/after corruption of the two magical girls in one of the corruption picture board that I frequented, it was then that I search for some review on Japanese site and find that the game has a hidden Corruption Side. If I didn’t know about it, I’d pass the game over.
3. Reuse of HCG
This is a problem that plagues both Nao side and corruption side, this being a doujin game, I realize that there wouldn’t be as much HCG as a normal game by say MAIKA but so many CG were reused or just variation of one another, i.e. Nao pleasuring herself in civilian form/student uniform, leotard, as Arti Flare, Ignis being fucked was the same HCG reused, Cheri sucking Kai’s cock both in normal form/evil form and are almost like the one she has in civilian form with Nao. I really wish they would put in more effort on this end.
4. Little save slot
This is a pet peeve of mine in that I save the scenes that I want to watch again later, I don’t really use the H-Scene recall in most Game because sometime they start at the beginning and what I want is only at the middle or at the end (i.e. when the girl submit or when the girl betrays their friends for you with glee,etc) so having only 40 slots to me is a little low, I’m more used to current Maika’s 70-80 slots.
5. That the story didn’t really end in the Corruption Side
Well, it’s an ending that definitely invites a sequel but I really wished that they’d finish the story in one go since any sequel from this game will have to recap the corruption side quite a bit and reestablish Nao’s story and why the now corrupted Arti Cheri is important to him/her but I do understand that it’s a Doujin game and that they may need to get some money back to recoup the investment they made in making the game.