Unity - The Restoration of Aphrodisia [v0.1.4 Alpha] [Blue Fairy Media Games]

A really ambitious project with refreshing gameplay but also plagued by some fundamental problems. The biggest issues are the lack of player agency and the frustration of combat.

This is an RPG game with no player choice. The world does not react to player customization, and since transformations happen so frequently in this game, you never become attached to your character. There are some despicable characters that will do despicable things to your character if you lose (lots of combat defeats lead to game overs), but if you win, you don't get the satisfaction of killing them. You can only play this goody-two-shoes adventurer that for whatever reason is seeking to solve other people's problems without any tangible rewards. I don't think the plot is salvageable and I can't relate to this kind of character.

Combat is interesting but also very frustrating. There's a large number of enemies that can instantly transform your followers (+you and your companions) and make them betray your party with no counter play. You need to enter each battle with at least 5 followers and there is high attrition rate for them. Healing them is very expensive and I don't have any money left to do so because the shop where I can pawn off trade goods takes 3 days to restock their money. Transformations happen without much fan-fair during combat, and you will end up save-scumming frequently.

Many builds are also not viable because you need to stack 1 damage type (lust or HP), and many enemies are resistant to lust. Your best bet is to ignore lust all together and focus on HP damage. I don't see any incentive for going for lust.

This is a game before a porn game and there is clear passion from the authors. The delivery of porn may not be for some people since it's mostly a text-based corruption game. Unfortunately, I think it's a fundamentally flawed game and porn game.

A great porn with plot game, to the point that if they removed the sex aspects and made it a normal game I would still definitely play it. (In fact they allow you to disable NSFW images. The text still remains the same though)

Characters are well written and the story allows you some freedom of choice. The turn based system is something similar to Fire Emblem or The Battle for Wesnoth: your big priority when fighting is not to trade hits but to beat the enemy while keeping as many veterans alive for the next battle. You also need to manage your fund since you have to pay your soldiers everyday. It's a little tough to manage at first so don't recruit too many from the statt but once you get enough money it becomes far less of an issue. I recommend getting around 3 guys for your early game.
For the kinks, it's mostly:
-Male to Female transformation
-Monster girls
-Corruption
-Bimbofication (togglable)
-Transforming into inanimate objects (toggable)

Overall good game. Sex is not the focus but rather something in the background to add flavor to the world. Play it if you like strategy games.

I've actually been following these guys for awhile, and had the chance to play this last night. If you've played Exile from Aphrodisia, you pretty much know how this game is going to go. It's that but as an RPG. If not?

Restoration of Aphrodisia takes place in a world with very few humans, largely because the ruling demons truly love to enslave and transform humans. You take on the role of a ship captain, and it's this role that you'll learn the essentials of the game, which is broken into three types of maps.

The first, exploration maps, is where you'll spend most of your time, since both dungeons and towns use it, and involves moving around and investigating various things. The second is world maps, where you move great distances and investigate things, as well as run into troops. These lead you into the third map, combat, which has been described as "Fire Emblem like". It's not.

The mapping is the first real thorn in the side of this game. It's clear it's built on the back of Exile, which was designed as an Oregon Trail style game. It still uses the passage of time mechanic, and frankly...there's a lot of work to be done here. The maps are excessively large, to the point that you'll be fully scrolled out and using 8x speed most of the time. The system does give you some options to make it easier, but it would be nice to see the maps a little tighter.

The combat maps are thankfully smaller, but there's a few issues in the combat as well. First off, you can't move units over other units. In fact, the unit movement seems to have a hard time pathfinding around obstacles at all. In addition to that, the combat goes incredibly fast, which is a mixed blessing. You won't be spending an hour watching the enemy phase, but the result is frequently one of your units taking several attacks, and the only context is in the battle log. Combat difficulty isn't too bad if you're used to turn-based strategy games, but it may take some getting used to the controls.

The difficulty in general I think leans a little on the harder side for an RPG, especially one with such large maps. The first real 'dungeon' you usually do has a very specific win condition that's going to involve checking some areas again, and it can be hard to think to do that. I haven't run into any encounters I can't handle at all, but it's harder than you may be used to.

But what about the real reason we're here, the plot/porn potential?

Frankly, like so many of these things, it's going to come down to your kinks. Restoration features male to female transformation heavily, followed afterwards by species transformation, and inanimate as a distant third with female to male as a suggestion. All three of these are heavily baked into the plot itself; these transformations are considered normal for the world, which explains why there's so many women here.

Most of the game really is in the text, which is generally well-written. It is certainly lengthy-if you can't handle games like Corruption of Champions and Trials in Tainted Space, you're going to have similar issues with Blue Fairy Media's games-and there's clearly been a lot of work put into developing this world. One of my least favorite aspects of the game is how followers (essentially NPCs that you can hire to fill out your battle party/watch get transformed) often get written as being lust-addled and stupid, but I do have to admit they even write being lust-addled and stupid well.

Which is why the battle system is even more frustrating; very frequently you'll see characters transformed, or even switch sides, in battle with just a line of text explaining why. The transformation I can kind of understand, since the game system and plot rely so heavily on it you'll likely find yourself moving through forms fairly quickly (in my play session, my player character had six separate forms), but it would be nice to see, at least the first time allies switched sides, a little popup with some fluff of what happened.

Something else important to note is Restoration is in early Alpha; this is the first time anything of the game has been shown to anyone outside of Patreons, and the devs know there's a lot of work ahead of them. Right now I'm rating on what we have rather than what we should have/could have, so my rating could go up or down. Blue Fairy is a pedigreed developer in the TF space; not the fastest, but I trust them to put out good work after Exile and Transformation Tycoon.

If MtF transformation isn't your jam, or if you needed animated sex to get off, this game isn't going to be for you. But if you like text-based games, like MtF Transformation, and are looking for a involved plot with your porn, Blue Fairy Media has consistantly delivered on these areas, and Restoration promises to be their greatest (and most ambitious) work yet.