EXTRA 2 — Alchemical Corruption 7: A Retrospective Review

This is an apology chapter for the mess yesterday with Subscribestar.  More details are below.

Hello fellow perverts!

If you are not a pervert, then leave now.  This blog is only for perverts of a legal age to enjoy their perverted-ness.

If you don’t know who I am, I am Hentai Sentai Sentry, expert reviewer of weird porn games from the land of the sun.

If you’re still here after that terribly corny opening, then it’s time to begin.

This is entry seven of my Alchemical Corruption retrospective reviews, where I replay every game in order, and see how they shape up when compared to my original reviews.  In my earlier review of Alchemical Corruption 7:  Atlantean Sexbot Rebellion, I gave it a rating of C-.  It was my second time playing a game in the series, and I played it immediately after enjoying the well-known Alchemical Corruption 11.  I wanted to see why AC7 was considered the ‘best game of the series’ at the time, and was thoroughly disappointed.

Of course, we all know that the best game in the series is obviously the recently-released Alchemical Corruption 12, but let’s see if I was correct and AC7 was over hyped, or if I was wrong, and AC7 is the second best game in the series.

Previous, my review for my four categories was as follows:

Art:  BSex:  C-Game:  C+Lore:  D-Average:  C-

I thought the mechanics were overdone, the lore was bizarre, the sex was mundane and only the art was worth any comment.

Let’s see what I feel now!

The Art:  B-

There’s nothing really to say here.  Just that the art and images aren’t quite as good as I remember them to be.

Mind, the Alchemical Corruption series always has excellent images for their porn, but Atlantean Sexbot Rebellion was spreading its fingers a bit too wide.  I can see now that they took some shortcuts in their art gallery.  There are less overall images, there are only four separate backgrounds in the entire game, and there is a pretty big problem with reusing assets from 5 and 6.

That said, their art has always been good, so this is more me being picky that the cake had only ten strawberries instead of twelve.

Thus, B-.

The Sex:  B+

Oh boy oh boy, was I completely wrong here.

I didn’t realize at the time that Alchemical Corruption has a ‘thing’ about embracing kinks to different degrees in their various games.  In Atlantean Sexbot Rebellion, the ‘thing’ is ‘teaching machines the pleasure of sex’ and ‘literally breaking their programing by making them feel so good’.

When I first played the game, I was frustrated and let down.  It was less about breaking the will of enemy commanders, who all had their unique weaknesses and foibles, and more what I felt was the ‘same thing every time’.

I can tell you now that it was not.

Long-time readers will remember when my blog was having trouble a few years ago, due to somebody thinking that attempting to hack me was a clever idea.  I’m no coder… really, I’m not, I still have nightmares about missing commas and periods… but I did learn a lot from the people I ended up hiring to help fix the problem.

And with that new knowledge, and looking back, I can confirm that the robo-breaking sex is just as intricate as what was done with enemy commanders in AC11.  There are stack overflows due to the pleasure counter, segfaults due to too many pleasure processes running, and in one memorable case a missing period results in an exploitable crash that you can use to gradually figure out how to make a broken sexbot addicted to your cock.

I wanted to give this an A-, but a lot of the sex scenes require some coding knowledge to actually fully understand.  Sure, you can ignore that if you want to, the writing is well done like that, but actually understanding the scenes makes them a lot hotter.  So I had to reduce it down to B+, instead.

The Game:  A

I was wrong here, too!  As many commenters noted.

Many… many… commenters noted.

I really felt the love that week.  It burned a hole right through me.

For those who don’t know, Alchemical Corruption 7 is all about fixing the sunken city of Atlantis, while dealing with raids from an increasingly competent force of rogue divinely-powered sexbots.  I initially complained that the actual gameplay mechanics, while better than what’s in visual novels and their ‘select an option, maybe’ gameplay, had nothing to do with the actual sex.  It was all ‘fix this, build that, hack the sexbot factory’.  There wasn’t even any combat, despite the constant raids of holy gynoids.  Things were determined based on what you have and haven’t fixed.

But, see, here’s what I missed:

The gameplay?

It’s so fun!

I’m aware that I shouldn’t say this in a review of a porn game, but screw the sex scenes!  I wanted to just fiddle with my Atlantis!  Fix the buildings, work up the tech trees, figure out weird little hacks to make things work for just one more turn.  I actually started skipping the sex to get back to the gameplay once I got into it, which is one of the strangest compliments and/or insults one can give a porn game.

Here’s a quick example of how the gameplay works:

The first problem you have is that the last working dynamo has stopped working, and thus, power is draining from the city.  Its endless passage across the ocean floor is slowing to a halt, and you need to fix it before the terrors under the water can get to you.

So, you can spend a round fixing it.  And it’s fixed!

…Until it breaks two turns later.

See, the dynamo needs lubricant in order to keep functioning.  Sure, you can spend every other round just fixing it, but then you’ll rather promptly end up overrun by sexbots and lose the game.

Or win it, if you like that ending.

But assuming you don’t want to be stuck in an endless robo-orgy with no hope of escaping their insatiable, mechanical lusts, you need to keep it running.  Which means you need to fix the lubrication factory.

Problem:  The lubrication factory requires the Material Generator to be turned on every three rounds, along with the Automated Maidbot Factory to be back under your control.

…But the Material Generator drains power that you don’t have because the dynamo isn’t working!  And the Automated Maidbot Factory is under control from the rebelling Sexbots, and you need to get it back under control before they can ensure that your facilities are all working properly!

The solution, that the game actually leads you to in a very clever fashion, is to start by fixing an Energy Storage Cell.  Only one still works, but you need two.  Fix that, and turn off the motors in the city.  Then, fix the Dynamo.

In your third round, fix the lubrication factory.  Now, it’ll break next round, but that’s fine -- you just want it to stop the dynamo from breaking.  Now you’re in your fourth round.  The dynamo has lubricant, so it will be good for another round, but the Lubricant Factory has broken down, and you still don’t have enough power for the Material Generator.

So you fix a second dynamo.  Then the lubricant factory again.  Then drain power to forcibly reset the Maidbot Factory.  Then, one last time, the lubricant factory.

By fixing the lubricant factory every other round, you ensure that the dynamos keep on working, as it provides lubricant to both of them.  And now, despite using a full energy cell's worth of power to reset the Maidbot Factory, you have just enough power left that the Material Generator will produce what’s needed for your Lubricant Factory.

And that’s just the first problem you need to solve.  There are broken loops like that everywhere, because Atlantis is an ancient, incredibly advanced city.  You don’t have access to lower-tech solutions.  You have to start at the top end, the most advanced, and work your way down.  Which means fixing things that immediately break because you don’t have the tools to make the tools to keep them functioning.

It’s fascinating to play through, and frankly, I kind of wish they’d make an entire game based just on this.

Unfortunately, it’s too limited, and too static.

Once you’ve solved the problems once, only the very rare sexbot raids can mess up your build, and those can be fairly easily accounted for.  Play through the game twice and you’ll probably have enough memorized that those ‘fascinating problems’ are more just ‘obvious solutions’.

The problem I had when playing the game the first time was that I used a guide, and following it made the game feel obvious and rote.  It’s been long enough that I’ve forgotten most of it, and figuring things out on my own was such a fun time that I regret ever trying to do it with help.

If you haven’t played this game, then you need to do so for the gameplay -- but only once.

So, it is stuck at a rating of A.

The Lore:  SSS

Yes, that’s right.

This is my fourth ever ‘triple S’ rating for any category, for any game.

If you haven’t seen it before, then know that I reserve ‘triple S’ for games that are beyond perfect.  Games that have traits in them that I couldn’t even imagine being as good as they are until I have it in front of my face.

I fully accept all the hate I got for my initial rating D-.

That was deserved, and I was a bad person for being that wrong.

My first time playing the game left me… very confused, regarding the lore.  I had only played Alchemical Corruption 11, and in that game, you are a holy crusader for the Goddess of Rape, Modesty, (Moedesty best waifu, fight me), attempting to end all wars in the Tribal Lands to prepare for a holy crusade.  Other gods are mentioned with… varying degrees of either ‘cautious acceptance’ or ‘I really don’t like them but I don’t want to be smote’, but overall the impression of the divines is rather positive.  Sometimes rather odd, but usually positive.

And I went from there to AC7, where things are very different.

The gods are spoken of with either contempt or, bizarrely, like they don’t matter at all.  There are entire discussions on the merits of some members of the pantheon versus others, and which ones are best to annoy or aggravate.  There are over forty pages of text in the in-game library describing, in detail, how many of the game mechanics that I was used to were utter trash and only there because the Chief God preferred hedonism over literally anything sane.

And the sexbots that were rebelling, were doing so because of a holy virus!

Going from a paladin to that left me baffled, but I was foolish.  I was so, so foolish.

Alchemical Corruption 7 is so well-loved because it’s the only game in the series that deals with the gods of that setting without feeling the need to hide.  I realized halfway through the game that every piece of lore in 7, that isn’t focused directly on Atlantis, was already mentioned in previous games.

The ‘Time Slot Study’, the ‘Divine Negligence Paradox’, the ‘Sexual Energy Hypothesis Debunking’ -- all of those have been described in other games before.  I actually went back to 3 to confirm for one of them, and the ‘Divine Negligence Paradox’ was actually created in that game.  The protagonist is the one that proposes it!  You play the character that comes up with the infamous paradox that the chief god spends three games trying to erase!  But because everybody is being cautious to avoid catching the wrong eye of the divine, they couch it in language and actions that make it hard to understand what they mean.

…That said.  The gods can’t see Atlantis.

They found the Spark of the World after they crashed into the ocean, and used it to hide them from the gods.

Spoilers below for overall series plot:

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The Spark of the World is one of the 64 Divine Shards that the chief god had when he made the reality of Alchemical Corruption.  It’s the exact same thing that he gives to a mortal when elevating them to a goddess; so with Alchemical Corruption 12 and Alchemical Corruption 7, we now know the location of a total of 31 Divine Shards.  There’s one for each of the 27 goddesses, one to keep the world running, and 3 in the final boss of AC12.  Presumably the chief god has the remaining 33.

View the ‘lore discussion’ page for more of my theories!

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Spoilers end!

The point is, because the gods can’t see Atlantis, Alchemical Corruption 7 is when most of the fans realize just how fucked up the world is.  Myself included.

I thought the first time that I played the game that it was just the complaints of a failed rebellion, but no.  Oh no.  It’s so much more than that.

There’s even some hidden lore that you can find that is, I believe, relevant to the plot of Alchemical Corruption 11!

The overall plot of the game itself is… fine.  There’s a bunch of old grouchy seniors in charge of the mechanics of Atlantis, your sister, that one of the old dudes was trying to marry off to his grandson, swiped his tablet that had access to the city when he was dying, and now the two of you need to try to fix the city because you accidentally released a sexbot that was ‘blessed’ by the chief god that tries to break the seer-shroud that protects the city from divine eyes.

Decent enough.  Some hot incest happens if you get the right events.  Several girls become cyborgs, one can become an outright sexbot, and this is the only game where the protagonist can get stuck as a girl without it being a ‘bad end’.  Which is neat, even if they do, inevitably, become a massive slut if that happens.

But overall the game plot is… fine.  But when taken into account as part of the Alchemical Corruption Series?

Then it becomes excellent.

I’ve never had one game reframe so much for me.  I had to completely rewrite half of my game theories after playing it, and I’m still processing everything it laid out for me.

So yes.

Alchemical Corruption 7:  Atlantean Sexbot Rebellion, has more than earned its lore ranking of SSS.

The New Average:  S

On its own, Alchemical Corruption 7 has an average rating somewhere north of B- or B.  That alone is better than my initial average of C-, but the game is not on its own.

As part of a series, the game is absolutely outstanding.  And as this is a retrospective review, a review done with the entire series being kept in mind, that is where my rating comes from.

If you’ve played any three games of the Alchemical Corruption, then you need to play Alchemical Corruption 7.  If you’re only going to play one game, I stand that AC12 is the one to go through.  And do not play AC7 as your first game in the series, good goddesses, they don’t even explain Axiomanagers when one shows up halfway through.  The Atlanteans just panic, and it comes out of nowhere unless you understand the greater cosmology of the setting.

But it is still an essential glue for the series as a whole.

Do not make the mistake of ignoring it, or playing it too soon, like I did.

But I am proud -- and embarrassed -- to announce that Alchemical Corruption 7 has gone from my ‘lowest rated game in the series’ to the ‘second best’, and the fourth best game I’ve ever reviewed.

Hentai Sentai Sentry: Signing off, and looking for the next perverted paradise on the horizon!

Okay, so.  I made a mistake with Subscribestar, and it wasn't actually ready when I said it was ready.  And I had an extra chapter to announce it and everything!

It was fixed by the time I got up, but I still made a mistake.  So you lot get a second extra chapter as an apology.

The previous announcement is copied mostly verbatim (there were some odd formatting issues) below:

Sooo, you might ask ‘why is this chapter here, why is it extra, why wasn’t it released on the normal schedule’?

Well I am pleased to say that this chapter is being used to announce the release of my Subsribestar account!

...Minus one chapter, due to Subscribestar's annoyingly reasonable 'ten posts per day max' rule, but chapter 40 will be out for $10 subscribers in 24 hours, along with a poll for the first subscriber-only extra chapter.  I wonder if people will want to learn about the other games of Alchemical Corruption, see more of the gods in charge of the reality, or see things from another persons perspective entirely!

Now, I decided not to sign up for Patreon at the moment, as the incest arc -- despite the many qualifiers that are stated during it, making it clear that it’s not something to do in reality -- makes me worried Patreon would suddenly cancel my page if I set one up.  If Subsribestar goes well, I’ll make one for Patreon and see how that works regardless -- but I really don't want to set up a page for Patreon that doesn't get any attention and gets canceled.  Unlikely, yes, but the thought got stuck in my mind.

~~~

So, this chapter:  It clearly wasn’t in the normal style of the story, and that was intentional.  Twice a month, every subscriber will get one vote on a poll for an ‘extra’ chapter, set up like this; those will be subscriber exclusive content, provided that things actually work going forward.

As for what the tiers of subscribers get, and my thoughts on them…

$1 gets you 1 chapter, and a vote in the poll.$3 gets you 5 chapters, and a vote in the poll.$5 gets you 10 chapters, and a vote in the poll.$10 gets you a full 20 chapters ahead, a vote in the poll, your name every chapter as thanks, and my eternal gratitude!If people want to offer more, I shall panic and try to figure out something that is hopefully worth your money!

More details on my thoughts and plans are in this super-special nested spoiler!  Beware:  There is honesty in there!

I based the rewards off of what I’ve seen other, similar accounts offered, in an attempt to get roughly par with them; that set the basics.  On top of that, naturally, I wanted to make every tier a better value proposition than the one before it.  That’s just basic marketing.  You’ll note the money to chapter ratio gets better the more you pay; that’s intentional.  Because… uh… well, bluntly, money is nice and kinda needed to live?  The exception is the $10 one, and that’s because my plans are a bit in flux for the first month.

My initial plan, as I stated in earlier chapters, was to increase my release rate for higher tiers of donations.  I am most certainly capable of doing so, but have decided to hold back for now -- for a fairly simple reason.

I don’t know how successful this will be.

If this blows my expectations out of the water, then next month I’ll be upping the release rate for higher-tier subscribers.  If it seems dead, then I won’t.

I want to be clear that this isn’t me blackmailing or holding back content.  If things don't work, then I'll stop writing Capture Target, and release what I have for free.  It’s just that if this doesn’t do well, I will be working on other projects that I would enjoy that might do better, instead.  Perhaps something safe for work, or more action-y; I have a few ideas in mind.

In either case, I will be, at minimum, keeping this up for one month.  And if it falls flat and just doesn’t work, then I’ll either end the account and keep things going at three chapters per week, or stop writing Capture Target and release all that I have done for free.

This is an experiment!  One that I hope will work!  Because this story is fun and I’ve got lots of ideas for it~  But if it doesn’t work, then I won’t make any promises.

All that said, do not donate if it’s only to keep me from stopping writing.  Donate if you think it's worth the money, and only then.  If this works, great!  If it doesn’t, well, it was fun while it lasted, and I hope you enjoyed it!

If the Subscribestar page works out well, I'll flesh it out more with goals and whatnot, but for now... well, I hope it works out!  Thanks for reading!

As of now, my Subscribestar is up to date, and the only thing to add is a poll for the first subscriber-only extra chapter.

If the extra chapters messed up your expectations, then I'm sorry!  I figured I should have something to actually show things are ready, instead of letting them linger.

Currently, for ten dollars, you can read up to chapter 41, which reaches to the point of halfway through year 2.  You learn what's up with Takeo, what kind of threats need to be dealt with, what an 'Axiomanager' is, meet Elizabeth's family and more!  Just click the button below~!

Or, you know, you can wait until it comes out for free.  Up to you!

Either way, after I post this, I'm going to work on my poll post for Subscribestar.

Apologies once again for my earlier mistake, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter~!