Hello friends. I’d like to preface what I’m about to say with the fact that I love CoC 2 (and of course CoC 1 and TiTS) and I’ve been playing and enjoying these games for many years. I understand that there is an incredible amount of hard work and talent that goes into developing this game. By bringing up some of my problems with this game, I do not mean to belittle or discourage; I am merely giving my opinions because like everyone else here I realize the true potential of this game. Also, I’m sure that a few of the things I’m about to say will have already been brought up in this very thread, but unfortunately I do not have the time to read over one-hundred pages to make certain.
I think that in some ways, CoC 2 is suffering from its success. And what do I mean by that exactly? Only that because the characters are so well-written, the narrative is so cohesive, and the game systems are (arguably) superior to ones that have come before that it’s easier to notice when things don’t make sense, or they’ve “fallen through the cracks.” In short: We’ve been spoiled by a more unified and cohesive vision for this game, making certain things that aren’t as unified or cohesive stand out in comparison.
So I’m going to go through my problems with the game in no particular order. Warning! Spoilers below, read at your own risk!
Context is For Queens.
Although I understand that it’s been written to be as big of a “blank slate” as possible for writers to use as a “playground” to fill out - right now the world of Savarra doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because it hasn’t been filled out and given enough context.
Let’s talk about the races. There are so many sentient races/species in Savarra more or less living in harmony. Which is great from a gameplay perspective, but it doesn’t make much sense. Think about it: We humans have killed off other sentient species on our world like Neanderthals because we are intolerant of the other. In the real world, we still deal with problems of racism and fear because of people’s skin color, and you’re telling me that in Savarra humans are peacefully coexisting with beast-people, elves, and sentient mushrooms?
Why? How?
Even if the other sentient races were somehow more tolerant than humans, humans are still human. If you’re going to show all of these races coexisting (and in relative close proximity too!) There needs to be context given as to why and how they’re coexisting. You can hand-wave it away in CoC 1 because that world is on the brink of literal collapse with the advent of multidimensional threats and demons destroying the very fabric of reality. You can hand-wave it away in TiTS because the scope is much, much bigger (the entire galaxy) and you could say that we humans have grown to become more understanding and tolerant.
“Now Pursang,” you suddenly chirp. “What about games like Dungeons and Dragons and The Elder Scrolls? They don’t provide much if any context as to why there are so many sentient races living in harmony.” This is true, and it’s even less excusable! But I feel like I’d be shouting at the Moon for all the worth complaining about those games would do.
So let me give an example as to how multiple sentient races in the same world could work. I’m sure that most people here have read or watched The Lord of the Rings - the grandfather of modern fantasy. There are many races in LOTR: Divine beings, humans, elves, orcs, etc. Just like CoC 2. But the key difference here is equilibrium: The races in LOTR aren’t on equal footing. There’s only really one race in primacy at any given time. During the events of LOTR we see that the dwarves are keeping to themselves in their mountains, the orcs are in hiding, the elves are about to leave Middle-Earth, and only the humans are maintaining and building nations. Given the nature of humans, this makes sense. There is a lot of hostility between these peoples, a lot of shared history… and a good amount of racism (racism is bad but when Gimli says disparaging remarks towards Legolas, it makes sense given the context.) Critically, in LOTR there isn’t a snow elf kingdom beside a vesparan kingdom, beside a human kingdom doing the dark age equivalent of Netflix and chill.
On the subject of kingdoms - where are the kings? Oh don’t get me wrong; I love MILFs, royalty, amazons, and royal Amazonian MILFs. But isn’t it a bit strange that all of these kingdoms, cities, tribes, etc that have been encountered by The Champion in The Frost Marches have been more or less ruled by large-breasted and thunderously-thighed women? Even the few male chieftains that we encounter like Taldahs and Argoth can be supplanted by Amazonian women. It makes sense for the vesparans to have a queen (they are big sentient hornets after all) but most everyone else too? Why? Is Savarra a world where matriarchies have supplanted patriarchies somehow? If so, that’s a big enough change that it should require some more context. And even if this world is matriarchal-leaning, having nearly every ruler you meet be able to fulfill your dommy-mommy fantasies does a disservice to them all - as the relatively large number of these Amazonian royals dilutes their effect and makes each new one introduced that much less special.
Acceptance of Champions.
If I were to ask you - dear reader - who the main antagonist/villain was, your likely knee-jerk reaction would be: “Kasyrra, duh!”
I’m not so sure of that, at least I’m not so sure that she should be the antagonist. Not in the way she’s been written so far.
She’s ostensibly this beautifully be-winged demon from another world. And because CoC 1 and 2 are in the same universe, we (the player) know demons to be cruel and malevolent super-beings who care about nothing but fulfilling their desires. See: Ceraph, Vapula, and Lethice.
But the first time we meet Kas she admits that she’s incredibly horny, but she doesn’t kill or rape the player. Instead she gives you the choice to have sex with her. She even allows you to dictate how the two of you copulate. And then the next time you encounter her, she gives you the choice again. We soon find out that despite her imposing continence, she’s a romantic of all things! Her primary desire is to have a baby! The player can even choose to go out on a lovely date with her!
Why is this soulless demon well… not acting like a demon?
And more importantly, why is the player opposing her at all?
Think about it: You’re Joe Average-Adventurer living in Savarra. And you live in a world where you’re likely to die in your 30s due to dysentery or some other pox or disease. Your dwellings are dirty, people have sex because it’s the only fun thing to do, and there’s no such thing as a toilet. Things aren’t great, even for nobility or the educated.
And then this big, beautiful, beast of a crimson-skinned woman shows up in your life. She allows you to have mind-blowing sex with her when you want it and how you want it. She’s ambitious and incredibly powerful, but she can also be kind and considerate. You learn that she has a soft side to her; she very much has romantic feelings and all she really wants is to have a real, honest-to-goodness child. Ostensibly with someone that she loves. She even wants you to be her equal.
This must be incredible to the average person, so why would anyone say: “Nah you know what I’m good with slumming it out in dirt and squalor, that barmaid with the peg-leg gave me a wink the other day.” Unless you’re roleplaying as a puritanical paladin who unironically shouts “Deus Vault!” at every opportunity. And if you’re doing that, then why even play this game? By not having sex, or only pursuing chaste relationships, you’re cutting out a huge portion of the game.
And even if you’re not attracted to her in any way, you aren’t given much reason to oppose her. Every person she has sex with, or “corrupts” seem to either have a high opinion of Kas or simply love their corruption/bimbofication. There are little to no stakes at play. She isn’t terrorizing the countryside, she isn’t unleashing hordes of minions to rape and plunder. She isn’t doing any horrific experiments.
No, she’s just going from place-to-place making people feel better and empowering them while looking for a way to make babies. “Ah!” But you exclaim. “She said that she’s going to steal your soul!”
So what? What does that even mean, really? Kas herself is ostensibly soulless, yet she’s one of the most powerful, independent, and sexiest people on Savarra. She’s basically a demigod. What are the negatives to lacking a soul? The player seems to have been given every reason to be romantically involved with Kas, and almost no reason to oppose her. Even if she were to decide to rule over the whole world, would that be a terrible thing? Savarra isn’t depicted as a paradise to begin with.
It’d be one thing if Kas worked to slowly corrupt the Champion over time until they completely and wilfully devote themselves to her or dominate her. But instead, our choice is to either have her be your girlfriend or kill her. The romance or rivalry paths. Two extremes without much flexibility.
So in my eyes, Kasyrra is only technically an antagonist because the game doesn’t give you an option to side with her but it doesn’t give you any compelling reasons to oppose her either. She’s an antagonist because the game decides that she is one. If it isn’t obvious, I really do like Kas. I think she’s an interesting character and I can understand that she’s been written to have a lot of depth. And that’s why I think that she should either act “more like a demon” (read: Act more like a merciless bitch) or Master Tolus or someone else should be developed as the “true antagonist” of the game so we don’t feel like we’re constantly opposing a character that our own characters may or may not be in love with.
And The Kitchen Sink, Too!
And now, on to some more minor but no-less important things.
1) Futanari is great. Trans women are awesome. But why are there so many be-dicked women in Savarra? Either naturally or through some accident, there seems to be a preponderance of women with penises. Again, this isn’t so much a complaint about them being in the world, as it is a complaint about their sheer numbers not being explained properly. A couple of dog-girl sisters? One of them has a penis. Unexplained. Dryad sisters? You bet one of them has a huge horse-knob. A couple of lesbian hairdressers? Dick. Some centaur prostitutes? Oh yes, at least one penis please. Some of them are explained, like Eryka and Evelyn, but the majority aren’t. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to who gets a dick, only that they’re written to have one. Keep in mind that trans women are actually very rare in the real world. So why are they less rare in Savarra? Context is needed.
2) Kassyra: An all-powerful demon with the ability to corrupt and dominate anything she comes in contact with suddenly appears in Savarra and immediately starts causing havoc. She doesn’t even bother to hide herself or her intentions - she doesn’t need to. And what do the enlightened denizens of The Frost Marches do? “Well, we’ll send someone who’s keen to check things out. We’ll give them a fancy title like CHAMPION and wish them good luck. That should do the trick. It’s not like we had a problem with soul-sucking Wraiths who threatened our world only a few centuries prior. It’s perfectly acceptable and reasonable to under-prepare here and do little to combat this existential threat. This'll be fine!” Spoiler alert: It wasn’t fine.
Or it might be. Maybe the threat is easily countered by one person and their retainers. In which case, this isn’t much of a threat to begin with.
3) For a game that calls itself Corruption of Champions, there isn’t a whole lot of corruption going on. Sure, Kas is going around and corrupting national leaders (and a random knight?), but that’s usually being done offscreen. I think that one of the main draws of the first game is that it empowered the player to act saintly by supporting your lovers and friends, or completely rotten by brutally raping them and enslaving them by taking their souls. The closest The Champion has gotten to corrupting their companion in CoC 2 is by allowing the rune-inscribed armor to change Brint into Brienne. But that wasn’t so much corruption as it was making Brint feminine. This is further reinforced when The Champion has a dream of a fully-corrupted demon Brienne. I’d like to enslave and turn my companions into fully-fledged demons please!
4) Why is everyone so damned attractive? I know this sounds a bit nit-picky, but this is the thread for it! The artists do such a good job of making the characters come to life, but I think that they’re let down because they feel forced to draw everyone as attractive. And I know this is a byproduct of having limited resources, but the fact that whenever you see a portrait, it’s going to depict an attractive individual and that kind of takes me out of the game because I’m always left thinking: If everything I see is attractive, then is everything I don’t see attractive too? How can that be? Showing little-to-no average-looking or unattractive people skews things a bit. Because if everyone’s attractive… if everyone’s got G-cup breasts, wide hips, and heart-shaped faces then that becomes the average and nobody looks attractive because they don’t stand out.
5) While I do like having consequences to my actions, I really don’t like forced transformations. It’s annoying to me to make my perfect character and then suddenly have it ruined because I accidentally clicked on the wrong choice while I was trying to dick-down a hot racoon lady. It’d be nice if we had the option to disable forced TFs in the options menu. Also, while we’re talking about options, an option to replay scenes without having to restart the game would be nice too.
6) The game feels… uneven at times. And what I mean by that is that some parts of the game have gotten a lot more attention and effort than others, making some of the game really good and fleshed-out while other parts are half-done and unfulfilled ideas. To be clear, I realize that this was also a problem with the first game. And I realize this is because some contributors are more willing and/or able to put more time and effort into their creations. But it makes the game feel lopsided when more effort is being put into one thing and not others. I one-hundred percent understand that motivation is hard to come by, and people want to write and draw what they want to write and draw, but I think it’s a bit of a waste if entire civilizations and important characters are being introduced but not fully fledged-out as they deserve to be.
Anyway, I hope that this post doesn’t come off as overtly-negative. This post wasn’t made as a critique of the people involved in the game, but merely some of my ideas to improve an already great game. I really do like the game, and I’m incredibly impressed with how tight and cohesive it is. I think that by and large the writers, programmers, artists, and everyone else who has worked on this game should pat themselves on the back - because it isn’t easy to do this kind of thing.
New patch just dropped and I need to play it!
