VN - Others - Completed - HimeYoku: A Sacrifice of Lust and Grace [Final] [Escu:de]

Very solid. Weak endings and some basic characters here and there. The plot kind of goes off the rails a bit near the end but the general game is enjoyable. The H scenes are pretty well made and the girls are very cute. All in all glad I played although I am biased a bit because the slow mindbreak stuff appeals to me quite a bit which may boost the game from a three star to a four personally.

revenge is ultimately hollow.

for a revenge story, it is decent. art is also good. it will take a while to get to the good parts, because you just KNOW he will success in his revenge anyway so the early parts of the game will feel like a drag. so you may as well just read up. spoilers ahead.

this is a story of a kid that has nothing and lives in the streets. then picked up by the kingdom as a child soldier to fight for the country. the country summoned demons to uno-reverse the war and the children used as vessel for the demons to live in (mostly inside his head). at the end of the mission, he was then backstabbed. his usefulness has ended.

or so it should have been. but thanks to the demons he survived, and years later comes back to the kingdom plotting a revenge. since he's an unwilling victim, he decides that the princess, who is also innocent, to be his unwilling victim. yes the king is on this child soldier plot and thus the daughter should be punished.

later it was revealed that the summoning isn't complete. so as part of the deal, the demons will help with his revenge and he will help with the completion of summoning.

gameplay: it's honestly a joke. you are basically torturing the princess to farm dark essences which will power up the demons. on your first playthough it's almost impossible to get the revenge completed endings. so anyway the endings

you have two heroines, the princess and the meddling cardinal. i find the cardinal route good. i teared up a bit. she got defeated a few times, the difference in power is obvious, then an ace in the hole showed itself only to be crushed later. and yet she got real big guts to put everything in faith even though she's powerless to the mc. although the deux ex machina fight scene was laughable. in the end he is with the cardinal but she had to remove herself from the church (hello, he's a criminal!) and now they're on an otherwise aimless journey while spreading good works. oh and the demons are staying with him and all of them reconciled and got a closure. of all the endings this is the best of them all imo.

the princess ending, you fully powered the demons and they took over the princess's body. revenge complete, except you're now hollow. at this point i was wondering why didn't the demoness stayed with him when he's the most vulnerable? oh that's because the writers had to do a reverse-uno and betray her instead. you know, for drama.

oh and I did mentioned that in your first playthrough it's almost impossible to get the revenge fulfilled endings? yes, you have to go to another run to farm enough essences to see the other ending. this time he didn't go all empty and hollow inside. the difference is one additional h-scene and then.... it's over. yeah. its that bullshit. kinda wish i didn't bother at all.

This game is literally just a hidden gem, its a visual novel, but so unique from other ones thanks to the interesting "sex game" you can play to torture the princess. The art is great, it has great voice acting and the story isn't lacking either (for me at least).

I whole heartedly recommend playing the game.

My review is of course a bit biased, but the reason for it being biased is, obviously because I liked the game a lot and thats the whole message here anyway.

I found HimeYoku entertaining but not groundbreaking. If you like the idea of a decent slow-burn corruption arc and eventual mind break, it's worth checking this out. The traditional VN portion only has a couple of choices to make, but the gameplay loop of training the princess makes this stand out a little more than countless other VNs with similar themes.
The mechanics behind how to increase your stats and how to spend the points you accumulate are a little confusing at first. It's definitely not as complicated as it could be, but it did take me a couple of playthroughs to figure out the best way to corrupt the princess and get the more satisfying endings. The in-game tutorial is okay but if you want to unlock everything I would definitely suggest looking at the walkthrough and other tips that people have posted in this thread.

This VN was so-so.

I really liked the story and the characters, but the endings was soooo badly written and made.

in the first ending protag revives some super powerful evil witch by replacing the princess soul with the witch. This was my favourite ending.

the second ending he more or less do the same thing except instead of feeling fulfilled with his revenge, the protagonist instead goes "i feel so empty after getting my revenge boo-hoo" and then he goes and betrays the evil witch in order to get the princess's soul back. This ending was pure and utter garbage.

then the last ending; theres a cardinal that basically spouts naive ignorant nonsense to the protagonist and then he be like "Is revenge really the way?" or some shit like that and then he proceeds to become a goody-two-shoes and helps the cardinal make the citizens life easier or some bullshit like that. Needless to say this ending was really boring and unfulfilling.

Thought it would be a typical corruption game, but it's a surprisingly good game

Story is somewhat rushed near the end, but is overall good.

There are some nice character development throughout the story (in the good endings), altho it's mostly for the three main character. I'd like to see more from the five demons (esp the last two, they get so little screen time in the story)

The gameplay is simple to understand and a nice touch to the game.

Art is very nice and there is plentiful of H-Scene, 5/5 great fap.

The story is a really well done corruption game. There is a big lack of choices but I really enjoyed reading what was there and actually read most all the dialogue. You only get like 2-3 places in the game to make a choice that determines the route.

The main gameplay in this VN is where you corrupt the princess. You entice the crowd with "Normal" actions, where each action gives points into different crowd emotions (Greed, Fear, Hate, Anger). You then harvest those points with "Power" actions. There are also special "Summoning" actions which provide buffs. The points you harvest are then used to upgrade the 5 demon companions you have to unlock more abilities. Collecting points is what you need to progress by certain deadlines. These all seemed fairly easy to meet imo as long as you understood how the system works.

This system has a ton of h-scenes with it. There are around 10~ Normals, 15~ Powers, and 5~ Summonings. The princess has 4 corruption levels and each of these has a first view scene and a second view scene that renews each time you hit a new level. Also every time you unlock a major ability with a Demon companion you get a H-Scene with them. There are also a fair amount of random scenes sprinkled throughout the story. The corruption ranges from disliking the sex to a very thinly vieled reluctance where she starts to admit she is feeling good. She never goes full slut mode. The scenes are all very well drawn imo but are a bit too static/little variation within a scene which is a drawback.

Nice surprise !

Story: 5/5
I'm usually a skipper guy, especially for that kind of game. I tend to skip text to reach the h scene but not for this one. I was actually very interested with the story. It's well written.

Art: 5/5
Great art, that's some good quality

H-Scene: 4/5
They are pretty good but it would have been nice to have some animation, or more scene with the other characters

Music: 4/5
The music is actually pretty good, not too generic.

Gameplay: 4/5
That's where I was surprise, I was expecting a boring visual novel with not much interaction but there are those corrupting scene of the princess that are some kind of "mini game". You need to find a good balance to gather a maximum seed of darkness, which you will be able to use to improve your skills or unlock new powers.

I totally recommend this game