First of all, I would like to say that I think CoC2 is a huge improvement over CoC1 as a game in many significant ways. The character portraits, the general aesthetics of the GUI, the exploration, the questing, the combat, etc etc are all significantly improved in meaningful ways. Pretty much every aspect of the game on a technical and presentation side are better. Second of all, I haven't found all the content in the game, and there seem to be enough branching paths in quests that it's likely I'm missing some key details, which not even double-checking on the wiki will help me discover. So it's possibly my complaint here is actually unfounded, though it doesn't feel like it. Third of all, I replayed CoC1 for the sake of this post, but it's impossible to deny the possibility that I was nevertheless looking at it with enough bias that I was giving it too much credit.
Okay. With that preamble out of the way, my gripe with CoC2: I think the "Corruption" in the title is entirely vestigial and no longer reflects the content of the game. CoC2 feels less like the Corruption of Champions, and much more like Horndog Champions.
For context, the kind of character I like to play is a girl who gets corrupted from pure to slutty. I also like to see other girls get corrupted from pure to slutty. Men going from pure to slutty I appreciate on an intellectual level. In general I like H content that leans towards non-consensual, and I think corruption really needs this tone of non-consensuality to feel like corruption - there needs to be at least *some* internal conflict, or the character isn't being corrupted at all, they're just embracing their already slutty nature. It would follow that a game called "Corruption of Champions" would be my exact kind of shit: start out as a pure champion, get corrupted into a slutty champion. And in CoC1 this was indeed the case. I think CoC1 really captrued the vibe of a world corrupted by demons well, with cities like Tel'Adre existing specifically to fight off sexual corruption, and "party members" like Jojo who are pure-hearted and have to be quite forcibly corrupted before they fall to sexual depravity. There's characters like Kent early on, who wear the player down into being submissive. There's Marae the goddess who is fighting against the corruption. etc etc. The game really does feel like a pure champion facing a corrupted world, and risking corruption themselves. Pure being turned into corrupted beings. Etc.
CoC2, I feel, does not capture this feeling at all. I've been playing for about 20 hours and my character (thicc, pure female) is still a virgin because I haven't encountered a single scenario that felt like corruption to me. It feels like the tone of the game has completely abandoned the concept of corruption, despite the plot of the game being a demon from CoC1 land corrupting a previously untainted world. It seems much, much, much more to me that the "intended" way to play the game is entirely in opposition of how I want to play, and the kind of content I want to see. I could be misreading the situation, but it feels like the developers/writers (no offense intended btw) are much more into consensual sex and everyone being excitedly slutty from the start. It feels like the intended way to play is to just play as a chad (or chadette) and go on a murder path while fucking everything that moves, no corruption involved whatsoever. Everyone is willing from the start and everyone has deeply embraced sex in their lives.
Let me explain. Your first companion in CoC2 is Cait. Let me say that I like Cait, she's a nice character and she's very attractive. However, she worships a sex god, and she is basically itching to have sex at all times. The second companion you meet is Brint, a minotaur who is always ready to have sex. They're so into sex that they start fucking behind your back unprompted, and sex is so normalized that it's not even something they mention unless you ask. I haven't fullcomped every companion tree but so far it seems this is a trend that continues for every companion - they already love sex, they have sex with little to no prompting, and basically, they're horndogs. It doesn't feel at all like you're in a world fighting against an invasion of sexed up demons, resisting getting corrupting. It feels like you're in a world that had embraced rampant free love from the start. It feels like there's just a binary option presented to the player which is "engage in the sexual debauchery that literally everyone already is" or "don't". CoC1 had Tel'Adre, a city forced to hide itself with magic in a desert to avoid all the sexed-up horndogs outside it. In CoC2, that idea would be ridiculous, because every single person is already a sexed-up horndog. The corrupted enemies like the bees in the forest just feel like standard affair, not out of the norm for this world at all.
I don't mean to phrase this as an objectively bad thing or a flaw. I think the writers/developers are writing what they like, and I think a lot of people like what they like, so it's fine. I just felt increasingly sad as I played CoC2. Like I said, I've played 20 hours and my character is still a virgin. I've experimentally saved/loaded to check out some H-scenes, and they're all uber consensual without a trace of corruption or anything. It feels like the game is meant to be played as a male or futa, winning every battle and then claiming your spoils by fucking them. Companions aren't pure beings you can corrupt for fun, they're just horndogs who are always up for casual sex with nothing more to it than that. The Champion is not getting corrupted in CoC2. The world isn't even getting corrupted in CoC2. It's just a horndog going on a horndog quest to fuck a lot of bitches. That's fine. Everyone likes fucking hot bitches. If there's a problem, it's just that the word corruption is still in the title, and people who played CoC1 like me might be disappointed.
~fin
As an aside, I would like to briefly discuss gender disparity. The fact that the vast majority of NPCs are girls/futas instead of men show the implicit bias the authors have for male-orientated sex (that is, sex involving the banging of girls). It seems to me that the dream world of the developers is every single person in the world being a big-titted futa engaging in a massive orgy with no gender barriers whatsoever. This is not a problem, and I support their dreams. However, in terms of CoC2's content being balanced for various genders, and in terms of comparing to CoC1, I don't necessarily think it's a universally good thing. Like I said, I like female characters being corrupted by male characters the most, so there's almost nothing in this game that I can truly bring myself to love. I have to settle for futas, and the vast majority of men in the game (that I encountered, to be clear!) only engage in consensual sex. No corruption. Like sure, Brint and Garret are alright dudes, I've got no intention of saying there's no FxM content out there. But it really does not fit the theme of corruption whatsoever. You just have to go to the bar/camp and ask for casual sex. So the little FxM content available is pretty unremarkable in my opinion. It's fine that the devs like futas so much more than men, but it's a little overwhelming at times. I can't believe that there's a character like Hirrud, basically this game's Kent, and there's no H with him at all (did I just miss it in the quest somehow??). Maybe this is a problem(?) that will be solved with time, but the preferences of the developers seem pretty clear, so I expect this trend to continue. Which won't be a problem for everyone, but it certainly makes me disappointed, on top of already being disappointed by the lack of corruption.
Also, as one *final* aside, I will certainly play the complete game of CoC2. I think the lore is genuinely well-written and the quests have enough roleplaying to be satisfying. However, I will almost certainly remain a virgin until the end of the game, not due to intentionally trying to do a virgin run, but just because I expect to encounter zero content I find sexually appealing. It's a good game outside of that. (Er, well, I guess you can trivialize most encounters in the game by opening up with double cleave, but 99% of JRPGs have trivially easy combat systems so I can't really hold it against CoC2).