Joyful Stick: Corruption of Champions 2
Welcome again to Joyful Stick, a series powered by you. Miss the last entry? You can read it here. Today, we’re going to talk about a very old name in the erotic games community with Corruption of Champions 2.
The True Value of A Name
It’s a weird thing, reputation.
It can open doors, change perspectives and completely alter the course of your life. It’s the reason you root for the hero and scowl at the villain. While the games market is one of constant flux, a dev with a reputation tends to be one you follow. It’s what makes their successes a triumph for consumers. It’s what makes their failures bittersweet things you fervently defend. A reputation, when applied to modern market principles, isn’t simply that. It’s a marketing point, a culture.
If your name can stay on consumers tongues via nostalgia or product worth, you’re never truly gone. Which is what makes approaching Corruption of Champions 2 from Fenoxo such a quandary.
Fenoxo grew success with the original Corruption of Champions, a text-based adventure RPG in which the player fought a war against the influences of a minotaur queen. What separated it from the rest was the inclusion of graphic sex scenes which appealed to niche fetish communities. Expansion of all sorts, lactation, teratophilia and more were common throughout the game. Upon defeating an enemy or losing a battle, the player could have sex (either with or without both parties consenting). This coupled with Fenoxo’s inclusion of the player base in the games development made for what was critically lauded as a success. Fenoxo grew, and now has published several other text adventure titles with similar themes. At the time, there was nothing else quite like CoC. It featured scenes of queer sexuality (however questionable those depictions are now) and appealed to communities lacking content in mainstream porn.
But that was then.
Much has changed in the way of adult content since. Triple A titles regularly feature nudity and graphic sex scenes professionally rigged, voice acted and designed. Steam openly welcomes adult content of all varieties. Funding and communicating with an audience is easier than ever before. The communities that lacked representation when Fenoxo published CoC now have a wealth of media to choose from, often with more mindful representation than what the kink community offered before.
Yet CoC and Fenoxo’s games still remain a subject of discussion based on their reputation. People often refer to the games with a sly grin and an eye roll-or openly talk about their playthroughs. Corruption of Champions 2 wasn’t just an inevitability-it was openly awaited. The market seemed perfect for an actively developed, ever evolving and continuously funded text adventure like this once again. One from a developer that not only knew their audience, but communicated with them actively and often took their considerations into their process.
Two years have passed since the game was published.
So, why did I wait so long to review it?
It’s a doozy. Buckle up.
Addressing Problematic Content
I still remember the first time I was called “faggot”.
The anger I felt in that instance has since been replaced with an eyeroll and a sigh. The word has no grip upon my identity anymore. Most often when it’s tossed at me, I reply back with a wry smile and say “Yep, and I’ve broken men better than you’ll ever be”.
Facts have a tendency to curdle a bigots stomach, but I digress. The term “faggot”, and all it’s associated friends, now serves as a means of literally dating the mentality of those that utter it. They’re physically before you, sure. But in their skull they dwell in a bygone era, clinging to an artificial memory of when “the gays” didn’t exist and using sexuality as an insult was high comedy.
CoC2 has absolutely zero qualms about calling more effeminate male characters “traps”. Nor does the game have any issue with tossing around the phrase “futanari” and “futa”. Without entering a massive debate about this verbiage, it physically dates the concept of sexuality in the title back to the early 2000s. Right when the first Corruption of Champions dropped. Games don’t necessarily have to be a reflection of the era, but in doing this CoC2 creates a marketing issue titles like this don’t need. It further instills these ideas as “okay” for other devs to resort to as Fenoxo has a reputation-why not copy the bigger devs, right? What’s more, it alienates consumers and players who now have an entire market to give their dollars and support to.
And for what? Absolutely nothing. It gains nothing by using the phrases either. But it does. Repeatedly. This takes what could be a hand-waved moment of bad script into a purposeful part of design. A design choice that is one twitter thread away from costing you market share. It’s so pants-on-head stupid I can’t imagine why anyone working on the title thought it was a good idea.
Let’s say I’m making a big hub-bub about nothing though. There’s certainly going to be some of you who think I’ve got my dick in a bunch. Okay. Sure. I could see your point, but CoC2 takes it a step further by purposefully disregarding a players pronouns even when in-game menus state otherwise. No, really. There’s an option within the game menu to specifically have your character referred to as he/him or she/her (because apparently expanding it to include they/them was too much of a stretch). The same menu option goes out of it’s way to tell you there will be times it will not refer to you by your preferred pronouns. If that addition hadn’t been placed within the menu, I and others may have written it off as a simple mistake. A bug report might have been filed. Fenoxo undoubtedly would have said they’re working on it, even if they weren’t.
By adding that within the menu option, it essentially states “we don’t give a fuck about how you feel about your pronouns”. This not only invalidates the players themselves, but aspects of character creation and the point of having the menu entirely. It’s a purposeful design choice to make a statement.
A really idiotic statement considering how much of the queer community is aware of your product, willing to give you money, and may have had their first inklings of identity through your previous game.
We can argue semantics and games all we want, but at the end of the day they’re often entertainment for profit. Neither of these aspects accomplish that in any way whatsoever. They arguably do the exact opposite of that. This is before we get to the Steam community forum, where threads discussing these issues magically disappear.
Word spread the day the title dropped, and I was so incredibly baffled as to why any dev would do this in 2018, I stayed away. Then eventually, I completely forgot about CoC/Fenoxo at all. It was only as I started this series the game came back to the forefront of my mind. I fooled myself into thinking the bad press had got the best of Fenoxo, maybe they had seen how juvenile an idea this really was.
That thought, and the reputation of the previous entry, is what made me purchase the game at all. I had to see for myself if things had changed. I hoped for a refinement of what made Corruption of Champions fun during my younger years. I had enjoyed Fenoxo’s creations once upon a time. It was nostalgia and jerk off memories that made me open my wallet.
The Burden of Leman Russ
Corruption of Champions 2 opens to a simple text menu title screen with colored borders and a backdrop. That’s it. No music, no animated menus, nothing. For a moment I was curious if the game had loaded properly or if I’d purchased a stripped edition. I checked back on the games product page only to realize no, this was indeed the right title. I was a bit taken back, as many modern text adventures make use of music and more now even at the menu. Engines like Twine and others allow the inclusion of such elements easily enough. Yet here I was, at an incredibly simple menu with no sound effects.
I convinced myself this was an aesthetic choice, and clicked a new game. I’d seen odd things from smaller titles-there wasn’t any apparent reason CoC2 could be any different. Yet as I made my way through pages of exposition explaining the events of the original, I realized this wasn’t the case. There simply was no music or animation.
I decided to make a concession here. Despite the overwhelming amount of copyright free and creative commons music, perhaps Fenoxo was waiting for the right moment. Perhaps they were really channeling that old school vibe. I opened some ambient fantasy tones in my browser and windowed back to the game to create my character.
There’s the standard array of options (race, class, background) like you’d find in any adventure game. What surprised me was the multitude of body type options. You can change everything from your character’s build to how virile or fertile they are. In any other title, these inclusions would be superfluous at best. With CoC2 however, they can alter character interactions throughout the game. The player isn’t locked into these options either as the title very openly appeals to transformation fetishism. With this in mind, I opted to start as a Lupin (wolf man) that was also a “charmer” or bard. As I finished, the game gave a saucey eye-fuck style overview of my character and confirmed my choices. Then it asked if I wanted to play the tutorial. As it had been a while since I’d played anything deeper than hearthstone, I decided to do so.
Corruption of Champions 2 opens in tropey enough fashion-it’s a dark and stormy night at the bar. The barkeep talks to you and gives some exposition, then oh gosh someone staggers into the bar and our adventure begins. Despite the pedestrian setup, the scene and it’s conclusion feels “whole”. Is it an innovative idea? Absolutely not. But I mention the tutorial specifically to illustrate this:
The tutorials pacing, character development and more feels well thought out and designed. The barkeep treated my Lupin with surprise and appreciation as a fellow cannid. I could mention whether I was a charmer, or not. My background as a concubine was a stray thought I had over ale. By the time Cait (a walking plot device if there ever was one) staggers into the bar with a wound on her head, I felt drawn in and ready to play for several hours. The game explains it’s combat system, movement and more in relative fashion while being intuitive enough to understand if you’ve ever played any RPGs. By the conclusion of the first act, I was ready to pursue the main quest.
However, the signs of what to come were there at the edges. Spoilers from here on out.
The tutorials antagonists, a cult bringing an evil demon queen into the world, shame Cait for being “impure” and “promiscuous” which feels radically out of place in a game where everything can be fucked. It was an odd finger pointing that made me audibly say “what the fuck?” as I read the dialogue. It’s a trope of occultish bad guys, but simply doesn’t make any narrative sense in this context.
Towards the end of the chapter Kasyrra (the primary antagonist) shows up. The game leaves nothing to the imagination in describing her-but also doesn’t give her any depth whatsoever. Kasyrra is a big sassy evil succubus that wants to fuck a lot and turn the world into an orgy. Whatever. She acts like a cartoon cutout of what a clueless writer thinks powerful, scary women should be. It’s a disservice to the audience to introduce your villain and immediately lay bare how boring and one dimensional they are. When I refused her advances, I cackled. Not because it made me as a player feel righteous in my choice, but because clowning on her was all I felt like doing.
I should mention all encounters in the game feature still art of the characters, which shifts depending on your interactions with them. But like, not a lot. If you remember the “dress up” games from Newgrounds, it’s like that but with slightly better if incredibly generically western design. Kasyrra and the cultists didn’t scream “unique” in any way, shape or form. If I’d seen their art out of context, I would have assumed they were from any mid-2000s Deviantart gallery.
Despite this, Cait and I returned to the bar. We rested the night, and I was ready to keep going. Something ticked in the back of my skull at that moment. A devious thought on how best to put this game to task. What if I played as pure as possible, not fucking at all, turning down every single advance? Could my bard pull it off?
More importantly, was the narrative and role playing elements of CoC2 strong enough on their own merit without all the porn?
With the barkeep pointing us in the direction of the forest and Sabaton booming from my speakers, I sped off to purge the land of sin. I had a smile on my face, one that parted into a low chuckle as I started mowing down enemy after enemy. We picked up a minotaur barbarian, bad ass! Everything was looking up!
Then the reality of CoC2s core mechanics kicked in.
Endless Walls Of Hetronormative Text
CoC2 is, at its core, a rather involving erotica fiction. Sexy things happen and are supposed to keep happening during the course of your travels. Playing as a Holy Warrior of The Gods got real old, real quick about an hour in. So I decided my lupin would fuck. Anything, everything. If there was a hole, there was a way. If there wasn’t a hole, why by gods I had a few. It would happen. I turned from the path of light, knot firmly in my grip. There were all kinds of body shapes and sizes, a veritable buffet of fuckery for me to feast myself upon. I set forth, bracing myself for sexual conquest that I’d never experience in the waking world.
As I sit writing this review, I can now confess my real life dick didn’t move. Not a fraction. I remained flaccid throughout every single sexual encounter and eventually began simply scrolling through each as fast as I could. For a game about all kinds of niche sexy times and encounters, CoC2 features overwhelmingly hetronormative interpretations of what fucking is supposed to be. Almost every single monster you encounter is like a horny teenage interpretation of a DnD critter. Gay sex of any variety is almost put in as an afterthought. The closest the game gets to trans representation is genitals for a body type, but gods forbid it’s with an effeminate male character. Then they’re a “trap”, a word the sexual encounters hit you over the head with time and time again.
Yes, you’ve multiple options when it comes to how you fuck in a particular encounter, but the variety of what to fuck is an illusion. Almost everything comes down to oral, anal and vaginal intercourse in a one-on-one encounter. There’s exceptions, but they’re so far between and such a slog you barely notice.
I wondered if this incredibly pedestrian level of writing was simply with the random monster encounters. So I started fucking my party members. While there were more intimate options available, the writing for these scenes simply wasn’t engaging enough for me to care. As a writer myself, it is easy to make sex engaging. It’s also easy to make it boring, apparently.
None of this would be an issue except for the fact your character mechanically has to fuck or masturabte, or they’re more pliable to corruption. Thus you’re forced into endless slogs of vaguely similar text with only the occasional, totally optional stat buff that makes no real conceivable difference on game play. If I fucked, if I didn’t, I was still blowing everyone away with fireballs and not giving a shit.
Which brings us to the mechanical issues of CoC2. As the game progressed, my class and race ultimately didn’t matter. My “charmer”, a class that specifically focuses on performance arts, could learn holy cleric-like spells and things literally labeled “dark magick” with equal aplomb. For a title with a reputation towards allowing players to become totally unique embodiments of their fetish, it completely drops the ball on common RPG elements other games get right with minimal effort. This allows you to effectively powerplay your way through encounters regardless of your difficulty level.
“Your choices ultimately don’t matter” also seeps into the game’s narrative with regards to quests. Mess up a dialogue option? Just start the dialogue loop again. Where other games would encourage save-scumming and worrying about your actions, CoC2 just…doesn’t. Unless it’s in regards to the main quest your characters choices rarely leave in-game impact that reverberates throughout the narrative.
When the worst thing that can happen to your character is getting fucked in the ass, when your villain lacks enough dynamic elements to be evil, when the mechanic elements of your entire genre ultimately don’t fucking matter, you don’t have what anyone would consider an engaging title.
You just have tedium. Endless, boring tedium that loses sparkle just hours in.
When Reputation Fails
I went into this title wanting to be surprised. Eager for it, actually. Despite all I’d heard, I figured a proven developer like Fenoxo could earn my trust. It would be hard to fuck up Corruption of Champions as a concept. There was probably at least something I’d find arousing. And hey, it even had big tiddy art!
But.
In the end?
I’m just disappointed. Really, thoroughly disappointed. CoC2 doesn’t feel rushed. It’s not even explicitly bad. Controversies aside, it’s still a very playable game. I’m sure someone out there would enjoy it. But I believe my experience with the title can best be summed up from a single line at the title screen:
“Bug reports by YOU”.
CoC2 isn’t the refinement on it’s predecessor I’d hoped for. Instead it’s more of the same, but with less attention paid to the audience than before. Even with ongoing patches, seasonal content and more-there’s just not enough there that innovates in any way, shape or form for me to care. CoC2 is a relic from a decade ago that easily could have been an add-on for the previous title.
Was it worth ten dollars?
Absolutely not. Had I not completed the title, I might have even sought a refund. I’ve seen what other titles in the same genre can accomplish for that much. Hell, even out of pornographic games. DUSK as of this writing is still on sale, and well worth the original sticker price. Fenoxo even has other games in their own catalogue worth your time on a level CoC2 simply can’t meet.
Skip this one, folks.
-j