RPGM - Completed - Black Souls II [v1.13 Official translation] [Eeny, meeny, miny, moe?]

This review comes with a heavy hand and a heavier heart. Black Souls 2 is one of those games you're tormented by. You can't ever play it for the first time again. It's the second time I've felt like this, ever since completing MGS3. But as good as MGS3 was, it wasn't this. I have never been so utterly absorbed, attached, adoring and intensely inspired. I love everything about this game, even the things I hate.

The crowning achievement is the story, which will never really feel complete until you comb over its content way too many times, or discuss it with a group of people. Even then, there are so many competing theories and justified interpretations that you can't ever truly know. Not until BS3. Any questions you have about BS1 will be answered. BS2's entire plot is a jigsaw puzzle spread across the entire game world, sometimes across several timelines, and sometimes in the Lovecraftian madness that is the Sen0 perspective.

The story's opening is the best in history, especially since you know that Black Souls doesn't give a fuck. It gives you an ultra-defined goal in saving your Alice, and every step will make you feel like it's impossible no matter how many times you push yourself just far enough to overcome what it throws at you.
The opening also inspires questions that you know you're going to have to dig deep for. Like, wait a minute, could I just choose three different versions of Alice? Which one is real? Are any of them? Wait, is that the Cheshire Cat? I'm in Wonderland!? What happened to Red Hood and the others!? WTF!?

From there you're interrogating random mad lads on the whereabouts of a certain Alice (get used to that), and of course, they send you all over the place. Like a Chapel that houses a deity which you should NEVER, EVER, EVER piss off. Or a castle with a lit theme tune, strewn with the heads of those that dared slightly annoy the world's most adorable tyrant. Or a university that, fittingly, have you leaving with a fucktonne of questions.

I will share one moment in the game that had me dumbfounded in its profundity. Black Souls 1 was the best Hrpg I'd played before it, but that wasn't saying much. So when I wandered around as a sen-0 lunatic for a bit and saw one of those flickering flames... Well, let's say it wasn't long after that I came to the mind-melting realization that this game would become my obsession. It had gone from above average to potential GOAT. The dev had upgraded far beyond what most people do in a couple of games.

Questions, riddles you become mad with. Intriguing, puzzling lines of dialogue you can't figure out. Little things you didn't notice the first time. Things you find that, in a post-game context, chill you to the bone. It's a ride you won't forget. As I sit here, I just learned of an optional event in Beach of Grief that radically changes the map, and progresses a storyline I didn't even know existed. My backlog is about to get cucked again.

The plot's obscurity becomes defined when it counts, during the endings. The game gives you answers to a lot of your questions, but far from all of them. But you know they are there. You keep finding little fragments that have you piecing events and timelines together, over and over again.

And then it's over. You look at your playtime and it's over fifty hours, but... where did the time go? ...It's really over?

My childhood love of fairy tales and adult love of blondes had perfectly intersected. The music has you jumping up and down like that kid watching shounen you used to be. The maps are well done (mostly), and the aesthetics of each area are vastly different to one another, just like a good adventure game is. The game's basic progression is fantastic. It has a Metroidvania design as far as key items unlocking previous areas, and a very classic open-world design of enemies not scaling to your level. Sometimes you'll have to shelve an area when you realize it's way too tough for you (slaughterhouse says wattup). And the tension is sky high when you come back and realize you can tackle it now.

Then you get to the endings. Fuck. If you played Black Souls 1, you have some idea of what you're in for. But don't expect the same.

Now, I'm a blind fanboy of this game. But not completely blind. There are definitely problems. The gameplay isn't the absolute best. It can be a pain in the ass to play. I was too in love for it to be anything close to a roadblock for me, but man, the UI can test you. Not having any indication at all of what type of attack the enemy is even doing for you to build a defence is trying. The bullshit meter goes all the way up when you finally get around to the DLCs. So I will admit that much, the gameplay could be fucked.

But I don't care. This game changed me. It taught me what I valued in games, in plots, and even in life. I'm less of a slob now. I'm learning Japanese in my spare time so I won't have to wait for a translation of the creator's new games. I'm poking at the gym during my lunch hour and enjoying it. And I'm writing again, but I'm not going to stop this time.

Of course, I'll also be starting a search for an Alice of my own.

This game is a valid thesis on "Why it's not okay to lock people in your own personal prison* without their consent**"
* whether physical, metaphysical, or theatrical
** exception could be made when the involved parties are undeads with lack of sentience, homicidal/genocidal bitches and/or there's no alternative solution without bloodshed

10/10, Wonderland is wonderful land to visit, definitely need therapy.

This game raises some questions though :

- Are LSD a real life cheat item for instant creatively disturbing imagery? Lewis Carrol legally mandated to answer this, posthumously
- Why loli is never okay, and how to circumvent that law?
- Does imprison an innocent kind girl an acceptable course of action when the alternative is certain death* for her?
*For references, the aforementioned event happened after a certain huge chest and two xenophobic racist bitches of leader are coincidentally imprisoned in the same place together in sucession.
- Is Blackwell legally eligible as a waifu?
- Why no love for Lion?
- Is jealousy a valid justification for first degree murder? I'm talking to you, Prince of Hell
- Why incorporeal horror still manage to hurt you even though you're capable of coup d'etat on God? level5herewego
- Is locking armed, obsessive, dangerous, and deranged individual you, in particular in definitely disturbing and clearly haunted mental asylum an ethical, proper, and acceptable solution to spare the rest of the world from your holy jihad against the world itself?
- Are "Lindamea is the best waifu in the whole series, after Red Hood, of course" a de jure or de facto statement?
- Where is Alice?

I'm not sure what can be said here that hasn't already been said but.... Do you like challenge? Do you like multiple replay options with a different ending each time? Do you like being able to build and power up your MC in a way that you see fit instead of set numbers on a level up? Do you like a great story with some absolutely knife-twisting twists? You've come to the right series. EMMM's work with both Black Souls 1 & 2 as well as what I like to consider a small side story, Red Riding Woods are all great in their own ways. If you haven't played the other two the order I recommend is BS1 > RRW for some backstory to this world's Red Riding Hood > BS2. Overall a fantastic series rife with action, good story and a favorite girl for everybody. What more could you ask for??

While not bad, it is a let-down compared to Black Souls I

Black Souls 2 begins good. Challenging and with many new more features. However, this game is the polar opposite of it's predecessor: It's so unfair that it's not fun.

The world building, characters, and music choice are still top-tier. However, the rest is much, much inferior than BS1. Before I keep going, I will let clear that it is impossible for me to not compare this game with Black Souls 1 because BS2 is supposed to be the sequel. If BS1 didn't exist, then my opinion of BS2 may be slightly more positive.

Combat:

• BS2 combat is great at first. It's challenging but not hard enough to think it's impossible. However, after about 3-5 hours of gameplay, it's just retarded. Enemies will kill you in one hit. Just like BS1, there are no builds, which means that you will die in one hit and there is nothing you can do about it.
  • This issue extends so much that there is a magic spell that makes you immortal for 3 turns. That spell is necessary. It's just dumb, that's not fun.

Questlines:

• This game questlines are also retarded. To be more precise, if you don't know what you're doing (and it may take multiple runs to figure this out), all of your NPC's will die. Making you fail all questlines. Like, what? Let's ignore this one questline that "curses" you by giving you a jumpscare every minute for the whole playthrough. Like fuck, I'm actually gonna die from a heart attack.
  • This issue results in one of two things:
    • Either beat this game 4-5 times until you realize what you're supposed to do.
    • You follow a guide closely. This will take away the whole "exploring" aspect of the game (one of its strongest points).

New features:

• Some of the features are good. But the rest are garbage. This game wants the player to really commit into playing multiple runs. In order to do this, they added the "Sen" system. To keep it short and spoiler-free, the world and the enemies will change depending your "Sen". This means that you would need to beat this game a minimun of 2 times before you're able to see most of its content. This feature is really cool if you want to spend the following month playing the same H-game.

Overall, BS2 feels like an ambitious game that really wanted to be better than it's predecessor but failed miserably. I will say tho, the music was on-point.

You don't find a Soul's like porn game everyday, not to mention a good one with it's own style, can't wait for 3 come out one day...
expect playing this game like a normal game, sex is just dessert after all the fight and...stuff you learn from the story, you don't need to play the previous game to enjoy this one, nor the very old one for one of the main female charater origin which I think you can find in F95 somewhere... just like Dark soul 2,but no fans hate it, from what i heard at least...
Overall, good game. best girl Azathoth( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

This game is THE gold standard for story and general setting in any porn game I have ever played, and it deserves five stars even without taking into account everything else it does right (and it does a lot of other things much better than just "right"). The gameplay is fun and satisfying, the music is great, the characters are AMAZING, and the sheer amount of content blows most other games out of the water. The only negative is the art style, and even then I'd argue it fits the theme and is still plenty good enough to fap to. But this is as much an actual game as it is a porn game, and it's stellar in both respects.

One of, if not the deepest games on indie stage that has adult content. Absolutely recommended to ruin your plans on total fap-planned game, and still fap in the process.
Other games in the series, that I find necessary to play prior BS2:
Red Riding Hood
Black Souls 1

How can this game can't be excellent ?
The bestiary is large. The battle are difficult but not too much if you think and use the right skill
THe ost fit to each map and monster.
There are many secrets

Amazing sequel to first Black Souls. It's not strictly necessary to play the first one but it's recommended. The first game was a bit barebones in places and this game really fleshes everything out. Story is even more disjointed than in the first one but again in the end comes to really satisfying conclusion. The combat got a ton more options and the enemies are much more diverse too. In the endgame it gets really crazy and pushes the RPG mechanics to the absolute limit. Absolute must play.

I will start off by quoting my review the first game...


Now take the first game and then make everything one notch better or more. That is the sequel. The story is told wonderfully in the Dark Souls style of ONLY showing and RARELY IF EVER telling, and it's pretty darn immersive.

I will add the caveat of saying that the game's high praise hinge highly on the fact this is the first game I've seen that has actually done everything right for once in the RPGmaker setting for me. I think the story and setting is great standalone though and probably the best I've seen just for a hgame... Besides maybe MGQ.

... Oh and the h scenes themselves while generally well written aren't depicted conventionally very well graphically, so if you're here for that, keep that in mind... Though I and many others think the art style fits very well with the game's tone and story.

On a writing and game level it's solid, if you don't care much about the fap level of the art definitely add a star or two. That said, the art style only works a bit then you also censor it, you end up with erotic images that... how to put delicately... definitely require a certain eye to fully appreciate. So, I give the game good ratings in most categories but when you combined censored, which alone means no 5 star IMO, with art that's already blurry, it was an average experience for me. Again though, if censored art and this art style work for you, YMMV. The rest is solid.

Now that the final DLC has dropped, the game is complete and the story has concluded.

Black Souls 2 is a direct sequel to Black Souls 1. For many people asking, yes, DO NOT SKIP THE FIRST GAME.

Black Souls 2 is a pretty solid HRPGMaker game. Quite a surprise actually considering it uses a lot of free/preset/bought assets. The developer makes use of these premade assets really well and does make the game very enjoyable even though I've seen the exact same sprites and tiles many times already. The artstyle, as well, isn't really anything to right about (except I'm pretty sure many fans actually ended up liking the artstyle, myself included). What Black Souls 1/2 offer is its very interesting story, backed up with incredible amounts of lore and references that makes the whole BS world feel alive and engaging.

The gameplay is pretty straight forward. Turn-based RPG battle mechanics. I have issues with how fast the text in battle goes but I got used to it as I continued playing.

The porn content can be a hit-or-miss for many people because of the artstyle, as I've previously mentioned before. Nevertheless the scenes are plenty and they tackle a surprising amount of fetishes.

All in all, this has to be one of my favorite series to date. And I do hope that many more people can experience and appreciate the games.

Cheers to the dev, Eeny, meeny, miny, moe (EMMM)

Excellent atmosphere, unique gorgeous artstyle, a must-play even ignoring its H aspects.

This sequel to Black Souls 1 has improved in any aspect including welcomed Quality of Life additions; while it may still feel dated, I'd heavily recommend playing the first game first before diving into this.

Among the best H-games I've ever played.

At first glance, it might seem to lack originality as it bases items and mechanics off of From Software's Souls series, but fear not, it is simply the foundation of what was built. There is plenty of originality and it adopts key elements from the series in its story telling and metroidvania-esque open world.

Story
It's interesting and can get very confusing, especially depending on what way you progress. You will not have a good picture of what's going on without replaying and/or looking through the discussion of this thread, among other things. The story is a jigsaw puzzle you must piece together, but it's far more interesting than your run-of-the-mill h-game.

Art
For some it might be a turnoff as it's not exactly clean nor 'standard' to how 2D girls are usually drawn, anime styled or not. However, I feel the art adds to the dark aesthetic of the game and have come to appreciate it as much if not more than that 'standard'. In other words, it grows on you and it's not exactly bad looking in my opinion.

Audio
Of course, there is a lot of the stock RPG Maker sounds, but the selection of music is pretty nice and I sometimes like to come back to it. It helps the atmosphere of the game.

Gameplay, Length, and Replayability
If you played the first Black Souls, you'll notice mechanics have changed a bit. I can't say on whether it's better or worse but I do feel I act less tactically compared to its predecessor. You're free to explore into certain areas although some are harder than others, but you're not hard-locked from them, similar to how a typical Souls game operates. I will say though that if you're going for certain endings, the requirements are..... fragile. I don't like how one misstep can lead to you having to redo the run. If you're going in blind, there is practically a 0% chance you'll get the true ending. It's actually fairly annoying and necessitates the usage of a guide.
The game took me about 30 hours to beat, but it should take anyone a bit less than that depending on how much you want to faff about. I find it fairly replayable to go through the many paths you could've taken.

The Best H-Game i've ever played hands down, the story, characters, plot, gameplay, the world-building, the art. everything is perfect, it has the feel of the old prequel but more immersive stories and character.

P.s Miranda and Red Hood are best girls

A great sequel to the previous game with improvements in gameplay. A very interesting continuation of the story with plot twists and drama. A ton of new girls and 7 different endings. A big world to explore and make choices.

Heh, now that was one hell of an experience. A bloody good successor, and just like the first game: the story is the cake, with porn as the icing. Thoroughly recommend this game and the prequel. Not every day one gets to find hidden gems such as these.

This isn't a porn game, it is the GAME with some porn in it. I have a lot to say about BLACKSOULSII, but there already so many detailed reviews that it would be more or less meaningless... so I'll say only one thing:
Better than any Dark Souls game.

TLDR at bottom, but this game is great, please play it.

The combat for the first Black Souls game is easily the best RPGM combat I've ever played and even is straight up great, even for non H-game standards. This game's combat is better in essentially every facet and is a true expansion on the ideas from the original. While you can definitely make the yourself OP if you know what you're doing, it's rather difficult on a first playthrough and there are still bosses that stats don't really matter on and will still require a strategy.

While the combat is great, story and H-scenes are honestly the meat of this game (in my humble opinion) and they both deliver fantastically. The story, while confusing, has an actual, well-defined plot you can follow along with and just so much lore. Learning and piecing together the underlying happenings going on and seeing hidden sides of characters is phenomenal. There is also a great deal of reference to the Cuthulu mythos and various fairy tales (primarily those of the Brothers Grimm) that when you dig into give a new appreciation for the game and how it uses/references them.

H-scenes are pretty darn good. They aren't the pinnacle of porn writing or anything, but they're solid. The characters are likeable and you feel attachment to them, enhancing the these scenes a great deal. The two biggest positives about them are that they're a decent length (not too long or short) and there is a very good variety in both characters and types of scenes.

The only slightly negative thing I could say about it comes down to pure personal preference though I feel I should mention it anyway. In the original Black Souls, you slowly built up a group that you fought and shared you home base with, making you really care about those character. You had to go out of your way to get most of them, and all party members except one were technically optional, so when you did actually add a party member you felt a lot closer. That personal connection was my favorite part of Black Souls I, but it's missing in this game. This isn't necessarily a negative, as a big theme of this game is in how isolated and alone you feel. You're supposed to feel like the very world doesn't welcome you and find said world uncomfortable as well, with the Pledges/H-scenes being short reprieves from this isolation. The game does this extremely well, and again, that's the whole point, but it's definitely harder to be emotionally connected with the characters due to that.

TLDR: Fantastic game, improves upon everything Black Souls I did except for maybe atmosphere, which mainly comes down to personal preference.

I didn't expect much from RPGM, but man, this game lit! More-than-surface-level Cthulhu Mythos, madness, tragedy, and tons of badassery, this is a must-play if you are not fat leftwing Westerners who will be offended because they see beautifully proportioned bishoujos on the screen.
Also Leaf is best girl!