CW: Discussions, mentions, and visuals of violence, rape, pedophilia, dismemberment, vore, and unbirthing. This game is fucked up.

Oh, you thought I was only posting one Halloween review? Just because it’s no longer October, doesn’t mean I can’t post a Halloween themed review! Looks like this year’s Christmas is going to be red! Also, I see where the views come in, you all love it when I cover games like this, as much as you pretend otherwise.

It really is right there in the title; DepaviA is fucking depraved, and it’s proud of it. Normally when I’m reviewing fucked up eroge, there’s an attempt to tell some deeper or meaningful story, and I get to talk about how media can use ugliness and depravity to tell a story that’s more real than most people want to believe. However, I’ve come to realize that I may just be a bit of a freak, and I can credit this game for bringing out that freakish side of me.

A few years ago, I created the Definitive Dark/Creepy/Scary/Disturbing Video Games Iceberg, or one of them at least. There have been a lot of variations on this particular Iceberg, but mine was certainly the most expansive, listing over 1,000+ games. I went out of my way to find all sorts of weird and fucked up games for that iceberg project, and some of them I found by searching some of the seedier parts of the internet. Anyway, DepraviA was one of those games, and simply knowing that a game like this exists awakened a sort of curiosity in me.

Those that have seen me post off site may know that when it comes to my taste in erotic fictional media, that my tastes are kinda fucked, but this is actually a more recent development on my part. Most notably, I wasn’t into guro until the past few years. When I reviewed Euphoria and Maggot Baits, I wasn’t drawn to them as erotic works, but rather for how their brutality complimented the tone of their respective stories. Even now, I can’t say that either of them do anything for me on a sexual level. The reason for this is the context within their story that these scenes occur, and the horrifying screams coming from VAs who were way too good at their job. It isn’t the violence of this game that disturbs people, it’s the fact that it’s sexually charged violence.

For some odd reason, humanity has collectively decided that there’s nothing wrong from gaining catharsis from ripping a person’s head off with the spine still attached, but you better not get sexually aroused by it. Oh sure, it’s SO much worse to enjoy a game for sexual sadists and masochists than it is for a game that forced its developers to watch Liveleak footage to create the most realistic gore possible. Just as long as no one cums from it it’s all okay. “Fun fact: this is colloquially known as the “Mutahar defense.” “Oh, but Annie, there’s lolis in it! This game promotes Philadelphia!” one may say. Well, if you’ve ever went to see a Hollywood movie with a child actor, or bought anything from Nestle, then you’ve objectively contributed to more child abuse than anyone who bought this game has, so you don’t get to whine.

DepraviA is the rare hentai game that is graphic enough to freak the fuck out of normies, while not being so excessively brutal and grotesque that my masochist ass can’t enjoy it. In fact, DepraviA was the game that brought my morbid guro fixation out of the depths of my subconscious. I found myself fascinated by the amount of detail that went into it. Backgrounds are draped with animations of freshly killed anime girls, oftentimes missing limbs or slightly twitching. Each level will also show your comrades being killed in different ways, depending on the environment of the stage. And this is on top of having unique death animations for each enemy and stage hazard that can kill you.

It is because of this that DepraviA demonstrates a strong prowess in visual storytelling. The grotesque background imagery reduces your captured and murdered comrades to mere background objects, almost as if they saw that one Anita Sarkeesian video and said “that’s a wonderful idea!” It simultaneously showcases the brutality of your enemies and sends a clear message that this is what awaits you if you fail.

This is a rare instance of a fetish game being more realistic than its mainstream counterparts, in that real life doesn’t have an ESRB rating, and doesn’t need to pull any punches. One of my many criticisms of reactionary puritanism is the widespread belief that brutality and depravity are fictitious or mythical, as opposed to the unfortunate reality that many people have to live. This means that a game like DepraviA, that doesn’t hold back on the types of horrific rape or torture that are depicted, loops around to being realistic, in spite of the fact that it’s a literal fetish game.

In fact, DepraviA’s greatest strength is that it knows when to relent on the depravity, and that it adopts a strangely tongue in cheek approach to its subject matter. There are some deaths that are kind of nasty, but some that are just kind of weird. You expect to get cut in half or impaled on spikes, but to see a Lamia stuff you into her womb and keep you there is quite the surprise. And this is something I’ve come to appreciate about DepraviA; much like Matt Gaetz near an unsupervised 11 year old, this game is not afraid to get weird.

On aspect I need to give credit to is the music. I was astounded to hear that the music was not composed for this game, considering that I cannot imagine this game with any other soundtrack. The BGM for “The Sloth,” the first real stage of the game, has such a unique sound, perfectly fitting for an environment made up of rusted, blood covered gears. It shocks me that this is a royalty free track, and it frustrates me that I can’t find a video of just the track itself. The same goes for the penultimate stage, “The Pride,” playing as you traverse over stormy ocean waters, and also deal with the wind pushing you back.

While it’s violence and sexuality may be it’s most noteworthy factor, what is also interesting is the amount of ways that DepraviA pays tribute to classic retro games such as Castlevania and Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. The opening stage uses a very similar backdrop to the opening stage from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, complete with a blood red sky and the undead roaming about. Even the music gives a similar vibe, where it’s moody, yet strangely upbeat. The Sloth Stage quite literally looks like Metal Man’s stage if it was abandoned after a horrific industrial accident, and the aforementioned “The Pride” bears striking similarity to the ocean level from Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts.

The most obvious inspiration comes from that of Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, since both series deal with someone traversing through hell to fight Satan, both involve a protagonist who loses clothing when they get hit, and they even have similar gameplay and design structures. Most importantly, both games are made for masochist, albeit much more literally in DepraviA’s case, since the overall game is much easier than Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, and some notable improvements have been made to the gameplay for ease of access. For instance, you can control yourself in the air and also can hover for a brief period, so there’s less of a chance. Additionally, you can take 3 hits instead of just two (though that’s also because it wouldn’t be a hentai game if you couldn’t see Angelica nude somehow), and can wall jump ala Mega Man X.

The Castlevania influence can be seen with not just the look and sound, but also in the RPG elements, and the souls you collect as currency. Throughout the game, you have have the ability to upgrade your attack power, attack speed, maximum projectiles on screen, and how long you can fly. You also hold onto the number of souls you gain when you die, which makes repeat runs easier. Also as an aside, you collect a red orb at the end of each stage just like in the classic Castlevania games to.

The only real criticisms I have of DepraviA (besides a lack of an English localization) is “it’s too short,” and that you can get locked out of certain endings by playing the game too well. There is also a story, which I am somewhat familiar with since I took screencaps of all the dialogue and put it through Google translate… I probably should have just used a machine translation or something. The story looks interesting enough that I would like to see it without broken English, but it’s probably not particularly deep.

What really drew me in was the set pieces, the monster design, and overall presentation. Yes, it’s also good fap material for the mentally depraved, but there’s a lot of shit that fills that niche. What’s exceedingly rare is a game that contains all that niche kink material, that has a reason to play it beyond its premise. There’s an inherent contradiction present in how we approach art as commercial products where we claim that we want originality and innovation, but also get offended at certain types of artistic expression. It’s almost like the conundrum that comes from telling people to be themselves and to stand up for what they believe in, until one become displeased with what those values are.

The point I’m getting at is, I’ve always favored games that are strong expressions of artistic desires and creator spirit, rather than those intended purely as a product meant for mass consumption. There’s a part of me that has considered using this line of defense for those that dismiss DepraviA as pure sadist fap fodder, but it’s kind of hard to claim that a game literally titled DepraviA is going for anything else other than being depraved. In spite of this, DepraviA does have a little something extra to add to whoever gives it a fair chance. It’s not something that will win over the vast majority of people who look at this game and recoil in horror, but for those that it does appeal to, it’s enough to make this one special to them.

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