Others - Completed - Kurovadis [V1] [Kyrieru]

I wanted to love this game, but it did not want to love me back.
To be fair, I did play it on Normal difficulty, the highest of the three, but still, I don't think "Normal" should imply this level of torture, should have a different name.
This is one of the most brutally difficult games I've played in my fucking life, H or not, and I've played some hard shit, most of it 2D like this game. Both the combat and the platforming in this game is ridiculously unforgiving, and while the movement and attacking isn't bad by any means, I don't think it's buttery smooth enough to make these torture chambers that are the levels in this game fun. Out of all the super difficult games I've played this is definitely the least enjoyable one, so don't just think I hate hard games, it is the complete opposite.
Honestly, I do think most of this is on purpose, the game does feel like it wants to have an oppressive atmosphere, and it complements that with some absolutely diabolical level design that is made specifically to make the player suffer. That part where I have to get the laser weapon and then go back the whole way I came through without a checkpoint, with every enemy respawning, is EVIL.

That said, I vastly prefer all of this to the H games that are way too easy for their own good and just aren't fun as a result.
In fact, all of this I would not only forgive, but say it makes the game amazing, if it wasn't for one crucial flaw: The scarcity of game over CGs. The game complements its super oppressive atmosphere and the suffering of everything killing you all the time with the fact that almost every enemy rapes you on death. This is the perfect direction to go, the problem is that these animations are a very small bundle of pixels and while I would've been all for them when I was a younger teen and horny for everything, I am not so easily turned on now. This is where the CGs come in, they may not be animated but they're high definition. I don't LOVE the artstyle but it's good enough. The BIG problem with these is that only a handful of enemies have them, the rest don't trigger them. Literally only like one or two enemies per major area have one. Just... why? I get that this wasn't made by some big company or anything but given the amount of enemies, the dev only would've had to draw like 10 images or something. It's the most random ass enemies that have them too. At least the bosses all have one... Oh yeah, the bosses. I did not particularly like any of them. Boss 1 is boring, boss 2 is one of the worst designed, most frustrating and luck based bosses I've played in a video game, and boss 3 is... fine, I guess, it's just not super interesting and can feel a bit unfair at times due to the random nature of its attacks.

After all this torture, you'd think the game would give you a big reward and REALLY make you feel good about beating it, I would've really appreciated that... And to the game's credit, the ending is seemingly happy, showing the protagonist walking around in what seems like a safe place, but... I just wished it was longer, something just a bit bigger, something that made it all almost feel worth it. It wasn't that, it was a 5 second cutscene.

Some of these issues seem like they might've been planned to receive solutions in the game's new version that was being made for Steam in 2021, but sadly the dev has completely vanished from the internet with no signs of life for almost three years now (to the point that some people are even speculating that they might be dead), so we'll never see neither that nor any of their promising looking upcoming games. Honestly this isn't bad at all for a dev's first game (I assume it kinda was their first game?), it lays a great foundation for the dev to learn and grow from and make much better and more polished games in the future, so it's a shame they only got to finish 2 games before vanishing and one of them isn't really to my taste at all (Eroico)

After all this, why is it still 3 stars? Well, I'm rating it by action H-game standards, and by those abysmally low standards, it's not terrible, just kinda mid leaning towards okay, I guess. As I said before I VASTLY prefer this level of difficulty to the detrimentally low difficulty of most other action H games, so that definitely helps this game's enjoyment and rating A LOT. It can be fun at times, it has a few fun aspects and sections, its pixel art and overall atmosphere are done pretty decently, the music is decent too ig, and I got a couple quite nice faps out of it. It just tortured me way too much for how little H value I got in return, relative to that suffering. 6.5/10 I guess.

Extra note: I literally can't mention this game since it would break the reviewing rules, but Kurovadis does have an extremely obvious spiritual successor made by another dev. It's not perfect and it doesn't carry over the brutal level of difficulty at all, but I generally vastly prefer it in every aspect. It came out recently.

I thought that the impression that this game gave me in an extremely brief period of time was worth a review. I turned this game on and it prompted me for firewall access. Suspicious, I declined, and was about to delete the game directory. Before I could, the game launched.

"Well, I suppose it's open, I'll give it a shot," I said. I hit 'new game' and the screen faded to black. Cut: fade in, an X-COMesque world map is displayed. There are areas on the map that contain small blinking circles - something is, perhaps, wrong? On the left, pods are visible. Are they stasis pods? Who can say. A pause for the viewer to take in the scene. Then, a pod cracks. Our heroine appears. She exits the pod. A beat - there are no on-screen prompts - and I realize I am in control. I go right, cross into the next room, and there is a pit. I leap over it, and the controls are silky smooth. It is at this point that I realize that we are dealing with something very different from the typical h-game schlock.

Unfortunately, then, the game crashes - my attempt to delete it was in progress when it launched, causing some kind of an error. Despite my misgivings, I undo the deletion. I launch the game and play again.

This game is worth a shot. The quality of the controls, animation, music, and structure are comparable to some of the better indie games out there. I can't say if there's true mechanical depth, a la Celeste or similar, but there was care put into the controls, such that there is a polish that is immediately apparent. I knew from the moment I jumped across a chasm in the second room that this was, in contrast to the typical h-game, a "real" game. There's something about h-games where, because we're not here solely for the game, we tolerate bad design, gameplay, controls, and what have you. You will have no such disappointment here.

For what it's worth, having played briefly, I think anyone who happens upon this title should check it out.

i really liked it alot back in the days its worth playing. the game could be a bit difficult but tbh with a bit of practise its alright the animations are alright gameplay is nice and its a lot of fun

Kurovadis is quite honestly impressive. For some of Kyrieru's earlier work, this is an amazing game. It lacks a lot of thing for an H-game but I think that's ok, since the game itself gives me lots of fun too.

=+Art and animation: It's not the most detailed pixel art game you've ever play but I really like it this way. It feels like a classic arcade/early PC game's pixel art. The enemy design, your character's design, the environment,... and especially the effects like your blaster, sub-weapons, etc. looks very well-made.

=+Sound and music: The sounds are very satisfying, hitting opponents with your attacks feels very good. Other stuff like getting hit, or some of enemy's attacks also sounds really good. Just very good sound design overall. And music is fricking spectacular. Each area has their own very nice theme, and boss's music, though I wish each boss has their own theme, is tense for the battle. If I remember correctly, Kyrieru also made the music, so music + pixel art being good? That's pretty impressive!

=+Gameplay: I find the game to be very smooth and awesome. There are some flaws of course, but I think the pros really outshines the cons.

-Movement: is really fun to mess around. One of the first thing you'll get is "Roll", which is where most of the movement depth comes from. There's up roll and down roll, both can be cancelled into anything like jump, shoot, melee, etc. Down roll can be spammed with shoot to do advanced movement, speeding up the game quite a lot, and up roll gives you a bit more distance to your jump if you use it right. It's this feeling of "I'm doing crazy stuff and doing what speedrunners also do" is what I love about games with advanced movement like this. There's also wall jump, which continues to add depth to the game's movement and really plays into its hardcore parkour.

-Enemy: Each feels very unique from each other, and that's very good. Most of them are well-designed, and are fun to encounter. But there's one that I don't like a lot and that is the skeletons in Succubus Castle, they're the worst type of enemy: Off-screen projectile throwing enemy. Other than that, I think the cast of foes you encounter are very good.

-Offense: This game features a hefty amount of mechanics regarding attack. You have up to 4 types of regular blaster attack that you get throughout the game, 5 sub-weapons that randomly drops from enemies, some noticeably stronger than others. You also have melee, with higher damage to reward you for getting close to the enemy. Melee have a 3-hit combo and a ground pound midair. There's also charge attack, blaster will automatically charge when you're not attacking and melee which requires manual charging.

-Difficulty: Kurovadis is BRUTAL. It's one of the hardest H-games I've ever played, and not because it takes a long time to 100%, or the game is too RNG-based, or because of unfairness. No the game is just honest difficult. This game has 3 difficulty choice: Normal; Easy; Very Easy. I hopped straight into normal even when I know it's the hardest one, and it was unforgiving as hell. Even if you played on the easiest difficulty, there's still lots of challenges. The parkour, for example, requires precise inputs in order to pass them. Some can kill you or cause disadvantages to the next enemy encounters, others just straight up don't let you continue the game without being able to pass it. There are also areas with enemy synergies that you need to smartly approach and not bash your head through it in order to not die.
And of course the mechanics of the game are also worth mentioning. Your roll will avoid "melee" attack and (most of the time) lets you roll through enemies. But it's not invulnerable to projectile, which is unfortunately 90% of the attacks in the game. You'll have to manually move around those by jumping and rolling away and all of that stuff, so you can't exploit your awesome move to your advantage, which I think is a pretty good design choice, even if I wish they'll let you roll through projectiles and make the invulnerability window small or something. What about your sub-weapon? Well you'll lose them when you're hit by an enemy, which means that it'll be super hard to hold on to a sub-weapon you like that'll help you during its duration of use. This game is not suitable for the laid-back H-game player. No, this is some mad hardcore for gamers with lots of skills.
Does it make the game less fun? I don't know. Personally I played the entirety of the game in normal mode in my first playthrough, and I had a great time with its difficulty. It all comes down to who you are and how you'd like to play it. Find the right difficulty for you, and if it's still hard, I probably won't recommend you this game for its difficulty.

=-H-content: This game is serious lacking in this department. Obviously there are H-scenes and CGs on lose, but the problem is that there's barely any mechanics that ties it to the gameplay. There's only a knockdown state (luckily you can trigger on command via pressing H), where some enemies will trigger H-scenes that deal damage to you during it. There's no pleasure gauge, no debuffs from being fucked, no advantage that you can get, nothing "gameplay" related to H-scenes other than taking damage. It also lacks a gallery mode. Yeah, I know, H-game without a gallery mode? If you wanna fap to something, you gotta have to manually walk around to the areas with enemies you haven't fapped to ->intentionally get hit or press H -> gets knockdown -> see your character lose the game -> restart -> rinse and repeat.

=-Quality of life: In the gameplay, there's no map, which is unusual for a metroidvania. Meanwhile, everything else lacks some sort of quality of life. The main menu only has new game, continue, and quit. There's no settings so no resolution or volume change or anything. You can however, toggle between fullscreen and windowed by pressing F4 and changing window size by pressing F5. This game is also one of those pixel art game, where the sprites doesn't scale with the screen size, so you ended up looking at very blurry art throughout the game if you play big screen size. Full screen of this game is also pretty bad, it stretches out instead of adding black bars to the side. Another annoying thing is how every time I boot up the game, its default to New Game instead of Continue, so I sometimes accidently hit New Game and has to press F1 to reboot it or escape the game and boot it up again.

-=+Conclusion: Kurovadis has some the most amazing gameplay and difficulty I've seen. But even so, the gameplay cannot save it from... basically everything else. No settings, no gallery mode,... But still, I think it's worth it if you ever want to give yourself a challenge. 8.25/10

The problem with this game is that they don't tell you about leveling up and stats points. At first, i was struggling like hell. I thought this was a "Rolling Simulator" where you have to avoid every enemies. After 30 mins of gameplay, i finally realized that you could level up. But even if you grind like crazy, this game is hard as sht on normal. I hate playing games on easy but in Kurovadis, normal feels like very hard. I gave up a bit after the first boss because there is a bug in this game where sometimes, your character gets stuck and you have to reset the game. Happened to me 3 times in about 2 hours of gameplay. Also, enemies are always placed in blind spots and there were too many bullsht sections with horrendous wall jump areas. This game is frustrating on normal and extremely grindy to win. I won't recommend it on this difficulty.

Nice 2d side-scroller metroidvania like game, with good controls, oldschool graphics and souns. A bit frustrating, that I can't find a map in this game, so, you need a good memory and patience, if you want to play this game.
Also, nobody will tell you, that you can kick enemies with V button.
And the most important thing, DON'T YOU DARE TO TOUCH ESC BUTTON, or game will be instantly closed.

Played back in the day, wow now I sound like a veteran porn guy...ah well...it basically is a 2d scroller with all sorts of baddies and different locations that can knock you down and then force-ably [give lots of affectionate cuddles].

Music is the first thing I liked about it and indeed the near the end music has that epic 'going for the gold' or 'let's finish this' vibe. not many games can draw you in atmospherically like that. If you just want to whack it to some pixels...albeit sexy pixels there is a button you can press to knock yourself down, because what girl DOESN'T fancy having a train of assorted horny monster ran on her? That would be ABSURD wouldn't it?

Meh....you play, you splooge...life goes on. Download, unzip and enjoy. (I meant unzip the game folder! Bit eager aren't you?)

Quite enjoyable old-school fast-paced platforming action. The mapping and discovery method of the controls could be better, but apart from that it's a very solid game.

The art is pixel-perfect, with interesting and varied colour palettes for the different environments. It keeps visual interest going and also serves a practical purpose to help with navigation (since, typical to the genre, there is no map).

The sound is perfect. The music fits the theme and doesn't get old even after hours of listening to it. The weapon and monster noises add just the right amount of auditory interest, and the sex sounds are pleasingly low-fi while still feeling thematically consistent.

Speaking of which, the hentai is nicely worked in. Content-wise it's a bit on the light side, but one lovely thing the game allows is that many enemies don't deal damage during sex, and there's a button for causing the player character to fall down. Rape is definitely a consequence of taking damage - but you can also just choose to fuck the enemies before (or instead of) killing them if you prefer.

The main flaw of the game is the user interface. Controls aren't listed anywhere, find them by just pressing keys, there's a whole character menu where you can spend skill points that I didn't find until hours into the game (enter, for those curious) and the game is *really hard* without that. Also saving is on a checkpoint system, which makes it really quite unfortunate that pressing escape instantly quits the game, discarding progress with no confirmation.

Despite its quirks though, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys fast-paced platformers.

First, if you don't have much experience in the metroidvania genre then you are going to struggle with this game. It is not easy, it is not designed for newcomers to the genre. You will be frustrated if you are not experienced. That said, if you ARE a metroidvania veteran, this game is rather well-designed and plays quite well, with only one or two ridiculous parts.

As for the sex scenes: They're not half bad. The art is reasonably well done. Many of the sex scenes come in the form of rape once you've been knocked down. Fortunately, these rape scenes rarely cause damage and there is a designated button for "falling down" if you want to experience the scene.

Overall, not half bad. Much more emphasis on the game than the sex.