10/10
Celesphonia is a crown jewel of the corruption h-game genre. The corruption genre is about following a protagonist’s journey as they slowly go from (generally) innocent to absolute sex-crazed nymphomaniac. Understanding this is key to understanding how and why Celesphonia is as good as it is.
Story/Writing/Voicing:
The overarching story is fine. It’s basic, but also just good enough to pull you in. The writing in general I find to be quite good for an h-game. Amane in particular is written very well and is able to sell you the incredulous situation of being forced to be a magical girl; and of course she also sells the idea of slowly being corrupted very well going from a pure girl that’s hesitant to even masturbate, to a complete turbo slut if you so choose. There’s a bit of voice-acting as well, which is nice for the h-scenes.
Gameplay:
The gameplay is a fairly traditional turn-based, very rpgm-esque combat. While fairly easy, the difficulty curve requires you to at least pay attention to the mechanics of the combat for most of the game. Celesphonia does a very good job at navigation via teleportation and many exits. This is a problem for a lot of rpgm games where simply walking around and navigating to places is an absolute chore so I’m glad they at least thought about this.
Art/H-Scenes:
The artwork is incredible. The fact that Amane has two forms, both of which are very cute is a great way to give variety to the scenes. Even more impressive is that for a lot of scenes, you are able to change outfits and that is reflected in the scene as well which gives you incredible variety and ability to cater to your tastes.
There’s a metric ton of CG and of course an equal number of scenes. Just about every possible degenerate fetish you could imagine is included in Celesphonia from tentacles to exhibitionism to sensory deprivation play (no yuri tho, goddamn it). There’s gonna be something there for you.
However, this does come with a side-effect. The massive variety of scenes are not always thoroughly explored. Some scenes are one-offs, many scenes are two-piece. The absolute best part about corruption is the development. Watching as a character slowly becomes more accepting, more degenerate, and more lustful towards a certain act is what pushes certain threads from good/great into being incredible. For instance, the thread with the PE teacher goes for upwards of 8+ scenes, and the escalation of it is what makes it so good.
Conclusion:
I could go for much longer, but overall Celepshonia is a near perfect h-game. It’s not a perfect game. Sure the actual gameplay could use work, there’s no autoplay function, and quite a number of scenes don’t develop much.
However, what this game does best is that it sells you on the fact that Amane is getting corrupted, which is the absolute most important thing for this genre. She’s being exposed to so much degeneracy, while being thrown into a ridiculous situation, but the story and the combat and the variety of scenes all support the setting. Everything is working together juuuuust enough to pull you in. Celesphonia sells you the situation she’s in, why it’s happening, why it has to be her, and why she can (potentially) turn into a turbo slut.
Celesphonia is a masterclass of an h-game, and any fan of corruption would be remiss to skip this one.
I’ll be writing a review on Anthesis and Ambrosia soon, Shirobashira Workshops previous games. And let me tell you, this circle is the undisputed king of the corruption genre.