Star Knightess Aura

Unironically one of the best games I've played in recent memory. The devs COOKED on this one.
PSA: This is a censored version of the game, but it can be patched.
TL;DR
Great:
- Very engaging story with several great twists throughout
- Parallel narratives of the real world and the fantasy world, Roya, work together very well
- Well-written characters with believable values, goals, and motivations
- Challenging but enjoyable combat and resource management
- Very well-done weaving of the corruption mechanics into the gameplay and the story in meaningful ways
- Playing as both the hero and a major antagonist is a fun twist on the typical corruption storyline
- There's a lot of content here. Completing one playthrough took me 60+ hours
Neutral:
- NTR. It's in neutral because it's well-done, and that's coming from someone who usually isn't a fan of it but will tolerate it if the rest of the media is good enough to justify it. If you hate NTR, avoid the corruption route at all costs. It gets brutal especially if you empathize with Aura's boyfriend George like I did :')
- It's very difficult to do a pure run your first go-around. In games like these I usually prefer the pure route first, but that was extremely difficult here and I gave up
Not Great:
- There isn't a ton of H-content, and what's there is mostly just alright. There's a lot of repeated art and scenes, and there are no real animations either
- Achievements are very difficult to unlock without spending an obscene number of hours doing multiple runs or doing some very tight planning
If you need more convincing...
With this being an RPG Maker game, it might be easy to sell it short. There are so many low-effort RPG Maker games out there, especially H-games, and on top of it, this has what seems like a pretty standard corruption narrative at first glance. More often than not, corruption is slapped on just to be a counter of how many times your character did the nasty, and then oops, you did the nasty too much. Bad end for you :) Star Knightess Aura's corruption system is far more interesting, and it blew away all of my expectations. I originally played it through 'alternative' means but enjoyed it so much that I bought it on Steam to support the devs, hence the low hours despite the 60+ hours to finish my playthrough.
The gameplay itself is mostly pretty standard RPG stuff, and the story starts off seeming like a pretty typical isekai. Even Aura, a huge isekai nerd herself, is very excited to be the main character in one and get to experience all her favorite tropes, including her mega-overpowered Star Knightess transformation. Things don't go so well for her. Without going into too many spoilers, her transformation becomes locked behind a curse, and you can only use it in limited intervals at a great cost of rapidly increasing her corruption. Otherwise, she's incredibly weak and struggles to kill even the most basic enemies at the start of the game. Resource management, especially your gold, is incredibly important, since so many things are stupidly expensive. If you go the lewd route, it becomes quite a bit easier to make money, but that doesn't really start paying off until later in the game when you unlock repeatable lewd jobs.
That leads me to the actual corruption system. Corruption is not simply a measure of how much Aura has done lewd things. Transforming into the Star Knightess, defeating certain enemies and bosses, and taking Vice actions, which unlock in Chapter 2, also add to it. There're also drugs and various items you can take to make her stronger at the cost of higher corruption and other negative side effects. This corruption serves two primary purposes. One is that it takes away from her willpower stat, which is her ability to resist the influence of the curse in various ways, and it also ensures she is able to make decisions on her own rather than being forced into one by the curse. The second, more significant one, is that it is used like a currency by the secondary antagonist/protagonist Alicia to corrupt Aura's mental world and cause changes that affect her not only in Roya but on Earth as well. This can be something as simple as making her uncomfortable with wearing glasses all the way up to fundamentally shifting major aspects of her core beliefs, values, and even memories. The visual and mechanical representations of the aspects of Aura's psyche that you can change are pretty cool too. You control Aura at night while she's in Roya, and you control Alicia in Aura's mind after Aura's time in Roya ends for the day, which leads to an interesting dynamic of trying to act as both characters. Some changes Alicia can make are actually helpful for Aura as well, so everything is a balancing act. Aura performing lewd favors can benefit her in the short term but hurt her corruption in the long run, while Alicia taking advantage of that corruption can sometimes make Aura stronger. Alicia also can't let Aura's corruption pile on too much or Aura's soul will break and lead to her death, which believe it or not is also bad for the villains.
While lewd things do ultimately contribute to Aura's corruption, it's really because Aura is highly principled and idealistic at the start of the game. She believes that doing those things would be betraying her boyfriend George even though it's a fantasy world and it isn't her real body she'd be offering up, whereas most other corruption mechanics I've seen are simply "sex = corruption." She will refuse to engage in any lewd acts at first until her willpower starts to waver and Alicia is able to take advantage of her curse and waning willpower to convince her to do these things anyway. Aura starts viewing these acts as exchanges that allow her to acquire valuable resources or skills despite her reservations, and while she is highly principled, she is also pragmatic and can be convinced into accepting such offers for the greater good. The lewd scenes themselves are of varying quality. There are no animations or voices, some sex sounds, and scenes are more like image slideshows. Some of the art is very good, and some of it is mediocre at best. The writing usually helps bolster the scenes though which is something I don't see very often in H-games.
Aura's brainwashing takes place slowly over the course of many in-game days, and the Earth story plays out largely in line with how much Alicia is able to corrupt Aura over time. For example, she won't suddenly hate her best friend Rose or George overnight, but the combination of many subtle shifts can eventually lead to fractured relationships and much, much worse. As the corruption progresses and Aura begins making more morally grey to outright evil decisions, what the game does so well is making her rationalizations believable while she ultimately slides down a slippery slope that gradually becomes harder to come back from. Her brainwashing playing out in the real world is similarly very well written with believable, mostly gradual transitions into new ways of thinking or viewing herself and others. Aura is highly intelligent and will often make very keen observations about her situations and the people around her, and more importantly, this is also what allows her to perform some of the mental gymnastics to justify her actions to herself and keep going despite her discomfort. This is the greatest strength of this game in my opinion; the writers really knew what they were doing.
Thank you if you read this far! I could honestly go on and on about the game, its characters, and what it ultimately has to say about human nature and the lines between what you would consider good versus evil not being as clear-cut as they might first seem, but I hit the character limit. This game is absolutely worth your time and money!

I'm not a fan of NTR and the moral degeneration plot goes very far into the MC becoming a sociopath, but the game's just so well written that I ended up playing quite a lot. Two main warnings about things that may not be to your personal tastes: The H content is very slow burn compared to most RPG maker eroge and it took me until my second IRL day of playing to get into scenes I consider in depth enough to be "satisfying". Also to really be the target audience for the H content available you have to REALLY like hardcore NTR like, a lot.

PROS: well written story with characters that are tragic and interesting, inventive mechanics for the moral degeneration side of things, challenging gameplay loop with score-based bonuses that carry into NG+

CONS: Some dialogue is a bit rough or dated in places and at points the corruption storyline can stall or drag as it waits for time to pass and for you to trigger certain event flags in the right order

As is true for most of these, grab the patch from the game's official site before playing.

A surprisingly tough tactical JRPG.
The game is about resource management, beating up bad guys, and managing lewd events with practical game play. it is very well made.
So, why is it resource management?
Because every time you rest, your character looses a piece of herself.
When a new day passes, your character looses relationships, core motivations, her boyfriend, like everything is on the table in this game of strip poker. It is like choosing "Can i loose an arm, or do i need to loose a leg today" Except it's slowly turning her into a bimbo. And there are a lot of good scenes peppered throughout the game.
Also, it does not pull punches. The bad guys are actual human traffickers, drug dealers, killers, and horrible people. And giving your hero the will to fight as this curse slowly destroys her is a very rewarding experience.
Game balance is rewarding, the fights are well made, and you can choose to loose things in an order that benefits her instead of kills her. (Her boyfriend might enjoy you loosening her up a little) It is an extremely well made game, but it is slow, there is a lot of talking, and it requires your full attention.
If you like JRPG's, this game is for you. 10/10
If you want a quick nut, eh, not so much. 7/10

Pure, unadulterated cinema.
Star Knightess Aura is a corruption h-game about a classic conundrum: do you solve your problems the easy way, or the right way? Picture this: you bump into your mother's favorite vase, smashing it to pieces. She's not going to be happy. It's not the only one of its kind, though. After some online sleuthing, turns out it's available for same-day order. Do you meticulously glue it back together, or just buy the new one? The glue is a lot cheaper, and if you really try your best, she won't be able to tell. But is it worth the hours of effort? This is a game about that choice, Aura's corruption dictated by how many shortcuts she's willing to take in her quest.
Aura is not your typical student. She's smarter than you, for one. What really sets her apart though, are her dreams. At night, Aura finds herself in a fantastical land of Heroes and Demon Kings, goblins and magic, sword-wielding warriors and spellcasting priests. In this land, Aura is in fact THE Hero, the titular Star Knightess. It's an isekai-style story, something I personally am incredibly exhausted of. However its spin, while not unique, is interesting: Aura is able to freely pass between Earth and this fantasy world, bound only by the clock.
To speak further of the plot would do a disservice of its twists and turns. The demo is sufficient to get a feel for the story. The writing, while occasionally long-winded, I found perfect. A lot of the prose, particularly the back-and-forth screaming between opposing characters, felt reminiscent of Umineko (and if you think THAT story has bad writing, you're beyond help). Emubi's art is fine, middling at worst.
The CGs and h-scenes are at times unrewarding given the amount of effort required to access them, and the script could have used a spellchecker. Both of these things are being addressed in game updates, with more h-content to balance the scales and copious amounts of typo correction. I reported an obscure combat bug and it was fixed it within a day. I really can't find much to complain about.
In all my time playing, I've only finished one route. I intend to continue.
In conclusion, John is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cool, my GOD.

I bought this game on itch.io and Steam to support the dev because I think the passion and effort spent on SKA deserves the recognition. I probably have another 100+ hours on the itch.io version.
Star Knightess Aura is an H-game with a heavy focus on slow burn corruption and excels at this bar none. By slow burn, expect dozens and dozens of hours in a single playthrough. Especially considering RPGMaker's limitations, this game is a must play for anyone who likes mental changes and corruption.
Since it's made in RPGMaker, this game has the turn-based RPG framework. The dev made an entire new UI for everything to help it stand out from the typical RPGM slop.
The combat itself is fine but it won't really click with you unless you understand and abuse the many little mechanics built into it. Critical strikes, tactical advantage, surprise attacks and how you spend your limited money and time on which skills you acquire are all vital to your success and you will need to actively explore the world, talk to every NPC and make note of the small details and hints to truly understand the mechanics. Often an NPC will hint at a monster's weakness or special ability, which is vital. For example, casting a fire spell at a monster weak to it will give you one turn of improved dodge and a guaranteed crit for your next physical attack. Or knowing how a boss' special ability works ahead of time will let you prepare for it better. Not everything is spelled out for you in advance but this game heavily encourages exploration.
Nothing respawns, your progress is tangible and theoretically you can make a lot of progress in a single day and clear entire areas if you're good enough, but you can spend extra days to recover, learn skills or gain stats. You are rewarded for being quick, as each day you spend the world of Roya falls further into chaos. People you could save could end up dead if you're too slow, but during your first playthrough you will most likely not be able to do that.
Because of this, I would describe the game as more of a puzzle. You can't farm money, XP or items endlessly to outstat bosses and beat the game easily. Every resource is either limited in its availability or costs time in the form of days. This again encourages exploration as scavenging levels for hidden items and supplies can make or break your success. Each day that goes by, you accrue some passive Corruption that makes the game more difficult if you don't spend it on mental changes for the protagonist Aura, but those in turn will also eventually affect her, starting with very minor negatives or nothing at all but soon spiraling into debilitating effects that make it that much harder to resist falling further into corruption and depravity.
The plot is slow and starts out as a self-aware and on the nose parody of fantasy games, sometimes to the point of eye-rolling. Despite of this, a lot of thought went into the twin worlds and its characters. As the story progressed I often clutched my head in disbelief or cried out, not because it was so dumb or stupid but because the pieces fell into place and characters are portrayed in an entirely new light. Especially Aura, the protagonist, has a journey that made me feel really uncomfortable in a good way. I don't want to spoil too much but initially she starts to lose parts of her personality - hobbies, likes, etc, getting into minor conflicts with friends that makes you feel uneasy, partially because you as the player are somewhat responsible for changing her in these ways.
As time progresses however she will change to the point where she starts to be genuinely awful, and whenever you think it can't get worse, it absolutely does. It's despair inducing and makes you feel utterly horrible in the best, gut-wrenching way. It is what corruption should be.
Critiques are that the art isn't amazing, particularly the H scenes, but the character sprites are cute. The music is also generic and taken from public libraries I think. My friend described the music that plays during H scenes as "clowncore" and now I can't unhear it.
H scenes in general aren't amazing for me personally and usually very vanilla with some NTR, but I don't care much for that. It's not so much the acts themselves as the context surrounding them that makes them good, but honestly I don't play this game to jerk off.
TL;DR came for the corruption, stayed for the honestly well thought out gameplay, and ended up in despair over the plot

EDIT: CHANGING this to positive because its an actual good game, but its still ungodly frustrating sometimes.
How do I get 100MP to learn the dark opening 2 thing? Who knows
How do I get enough trust without wasting 10000 days at the bar? Who knows...I know theres a secret path, but good luck finding it, the wiki is super vague about it.
I just wanted a fun game where I do some exploration, kill bad guys, maybe lewd stuff and corruption, not have to have PhD in the game just to progress the story(even the IRL stuff is difficult to progress unless you know the exact triggers) even with the wiki.

Super game with plenty of "Sexual Corruption" elements to, REMEMBER, this games sole purpose is corruption, sexual elements, NSFW, and there is combat too.

I love the characters in the game, there is one character I feel bad for for a short while, but I wont spoile the storyline.

It is a very long game, in my opinion, and I have fiin finished one pathway, and now working on another path, one of the things I liked about the ending, is the game a nice game ending in the sense of thiose who like material to do whatg you what you will.

So, yes the game is worth it, be prepared for the time you will invest in it.