Time to enter a world of romance.

Luxaren Allure is a traditional RPG with yuri themes created by unity in RPG Maker VX Ace. The game was voted RMN's Game of the Year for 2015.

The game begins with the protagonist Karuna and her friend/love interest Aurelie rescuing a child from the dreaded Castle Darkloft. But during the mission, Aurelie vanishes without a trace, leaving Karuna confused and heart-broken. Two years later, Aurelie suddenly reappears, having taken up the mantle of the evil overlord Darkloft, and threatens to destroy the land of Luxaren. Karuna confronts her but is no match for Darkloft's power, but for some reason the dark lord spares her life. Can Aurelie's soul still be saved? Karuna, now a master of the Unwavering Blade, sets out on a quest to save Aurelie from the darkness, no matter what. But from the mainland arrives another hero, armed with an artifact of unfathomable holy power, determined to slay the Dark lord at any cost...

The first thing to talk about with this project is obviously how it looks. While some of the assets are RTP edits, this game has a lot of custom artwork, from tilesets, highly detailed and expressive character portraits, and fully custom animated(!) battlers for heroes and enemies. It's clear the artists went to a lot of extra effort to give all the artwork some flair, and it really brings something special to the game. The custom tilesets also look great. You won't feel like you're playing just any RPG Maker project when you open this one up.

The story is ostensibly presented as a traditional 'collect the artifacts' story, with your character being sent on one fetch quest after another until she reaches the final dungeon and throws down with the local evil overlord. However, the real meat of the game's presentation is anything but traditional. There are only five characters of any real significance, all of them are women, and four of the five are lesbians (the fifth's orientation is unclear.), so right off the bat we're looking at a pretty different experience from the norm, and I personally really enjoyed seeing a squad of capable lady heroes save the day and occasionally smooch.




Your party consists of the wise and level-headed Karuna, her adorable squire, a sultry naga ally, and a young paladin from a distant land, desperate to prove herself. While a little slow to start the plot picks up quickly and the cast is solid. The writing is quite strong and often funny, and I was always interested to see what would happen next. While most of the plot is focused on Karuna, each character has an arc and quite a few scenes of development, particularly the romantic scenes, which are a central component of the story and not just window-dressing. I was also particularly interested in the character of Lynette as her abrasiveness and stubbornness brought some really interesting inter-party conflict and her backstory was rather heart-breaking. The developer also cleverly uses some game mechanics as story device with her to create some really effective foreshadowing. The first time I looked at Lynette's skill list I actually got chills.

Don't worry though, it's not all drama, the game has plenty of adorable moments too.



With the help of the custom art assets, the game creates a pretty strong sense of atmosphere. This is not an idyllic RPG setting, you actually feel like the land is under siege from a powerful villain. You'll pass many destroyed and burned out buildings on the road, people are abandoning the cities, merchants are going out of business, and as waves of the city guard fall to monsters, eclectic crews of armed citizens take up positions at the entrance of each town as a desperate last line of defense. It feels pretty bleak at times. I found the music pretty tonally confusing though. Luxaren Allure uses mostly an upbeat techno/modern soundtrack, and while the tracks all sound good it sometimes doesn't map to what you're seeing onscreen. The game also has an odd habit of cycling through songs really quickly during scenes, sometimes within seconds of each other, so the songs interrupt each other instead of letting the atmosphere build. This happened a lot in the game's prologue and it was noticeably distracting, although of all the sins a game can commit this is pretty low on the list.

As for the game itself, you'll wander dungeons, fight monsters and solve puzzles. I like the dungeons in this game as most are simple and the puzzle elements often build organically on elements you saw in previous areas. Some of the dungeons drag a bit though, particularly the final dungeon which felt about twice as long as necessary. It makes for a worthy end game challenge, complete with an optional superboss who was foreshadowed earlier in the game, but I was over it long before it was done.

Encounters are thankfully not random, but they're often hard to avoid so you'll be doing a lot of fighting in this game. fortunately, for a game as focused on story and characters as this, the combat is pretty robust and has a lot to offer. Each character has spells they can cast using MP as is standard in most games, but they also have "Impulse' skills that they can use by spending IP, which rises as a character takes damage and lets the character unleash some really potent abilities. Each character has a wide array of skills to choose from and many remain useful throughout the entire game, and the characters synergize very well, allowing quite a few strategies. I played on normal and found the difficulty pretty reasonable until the end of the game when things started getting pretty mean, but the game does allow you to change difficulty at any time if you need to make things easier (or harder!) Finally, the game has a pretty elaborate crafting system allowing you to create healing items and gear using the pile of vendor trash that otherwise accumulates in your inventory. The ability to transmute weaker, obsolete healing items into stronger ones is welcome, and many of the game's best weapons and armor can be created this way, including a game-long sub quest to craft Karuna's ultimate sword (which is well-worth the effort). It also allows you to craft some very useful supportive items, such as an item that automatically heals you to full HP at the end of every battle, so it's definitely worth experimenting with.

Man, there's a lot going on in this game.

Whether you like to play games for the story or like some meaty game mechanics to dig into, or even if you just want to see some cute girls cuddle and kiss, this game has something for everyone. Almost every aspect of the game is executed extremely well and what flaws exist are minor at best. Any fan of traditional RPGs should find something to enjoy here, and in my opinion it's well-deserving of its Game of the Year title. Play it.