You’re broke, pissed off at everything, and kind of numb already when the game just tosses Rei at you like some bugged NPC that wandered off the tutorial area. She’s sleeping on the sidewalk, dirty, hungry, weirdly cute, and clearly fucked by life even harder than you are. You poke her awake, expecting some quick “thanks” then she runs off. Nope. She sticks. That’s where this thing actually starts to feel fun: two losers trying to pretend they’re adults while everything around them screams “game over” in slow motion.

It’s half “try not to starve” and half “try not to jerk yourself raw”, and the balance is way more fragile than I want to admit. One moment you’re counting every coin, juggling shitty jobs on your phone like it’s some cursed version of a finance app, checking if you can afford basic food for both of you. Next moment, Rei’s in that tiny room, wearing clothes that might as well not count as clothes, asking if you “want a break”. You’re like, yeah, obviously, but also rent exists. And it kind of becomes the loop: work, feed her, talk to her, spy a bit when she thinks you’re not watching, unlock new scenes, repeat. There’s this stupid thrill when she leans over you with those huge tits and gives this shy-but-not-that-shy handjob, and the game treats it like you just hit some romance flag you didn’t deserve. Then she does something ridiculous, like trying to “thank you properly” with a messy titfuck after a shitty day, and you forget you were supposed to be planning your budget at all. I actually laughed once when she tried to make giving you a blowjob sound like some noble reward and then gagged halfway, eyes watering, and still pushed through because she didn’t want to “fail”. That hit my corruption braincell and my “this is terrible but hot” braincell at the same time.

It’s also kind of fun how the story wanders around like it’s drunk. Sometimes it plays like a parody of every poverty romance you ever saw, making fun of your pathetic room and your tragic wallet. Sometimes it suddenly drops a bit of sweetness that feels like you walked into the wrong genre, like when she curls up on your bed just to sleep and you can choose not to touch her at all, just watch, like a creep with feelings. Then later she’s straddling you, pussy grinding over you, moaning way louder than that cheap room’s walls can hide, and you get hit with that “I really shouldn’t be doing this but I’m already in balls-deep” vibe. There’s a bit of that harem teasing too, like the world is full of other girls that might fall into your orbit if you push the sandbox parts hard enough, but Rei feels like the main disaster you’re signing up for. It’s messy, a little trashy, sometimes oddly tender, like a dating sim that got lost on a porn site and decided to stay. You’re poor, horny, watching this girl slowly change under your influence while you sc*** by, and somewhere between the voyeur peeks, the cheap dates, and the rough sex on a bed that looks like it smells, it kind of starts to feel like a fucked-up fantasy that never pretends to be anything else.

Tainted Philter feels like one of those horny ideas somebody had in a Discord call and then actually followed through, in a good and kinda fucked up way. You’re this awkward, low self esteem guy dumped in a new city, stuck in a free room that sounds like a Craigslist scam, and then school hits you in the face. Whole thing looks like a pretty normal school life at first, except everybody’s a bit too hot and the camera really likes hips and thighs. Then this otherworldly woman shows up, like someone mixed a research assistant with a succubus and an RPG vendor, and just casually tells you magic is real and your new job is to corrupt people for her “research”. Totally normal conversation to have in a dark corner, right. She hands you a stash of potions with different colors and effects, and from there the game basically turns into “how far can you push this without everything collapsing on your head”. And you will push it. Even if you pretend you won’t.

The lewd stuff builds up nice and dirty. At first it’s small changes: a classmate who suddenly laughs at your lame jokes a bit too hard, a teacher who lowers her guard after a drink that’s just “a little stronger than usual”. The fun starts when you realize the game quietly tracks how twisted each girl is getting, and scenes start shifting tone. One route I spiked this quiet, ultra strict girl’s drink with something that boosted her confidence and lowered her shame; first time she just unbuttoned one more button on her blouse in the hallway, second time she was already flirting with me in the library like the place didn’t have cameras, third time I ended up with her grinding on my lap in an empty classroom while she kept insisting she was “still a good student”. The game doesn’t scream “you picked choice X so now Y happens”, it just lets the corruption stack and suddenly you’re in some filthy situation that started with a tiny decision three scenes ago. The MC goes from stuttering mess to smug manipulator way faster than feels healthy, but weirdly it fits, since the woman who gave you the powers clearly doesn’t care about your morals. You also get “extras” from her gift that she doesn’t know about, and the way the game lets you lie to her while you keep milking those perks is way more erotic than I expected; she talks about scientific progress while you secretly push girls past the line for your own fun. Some scenes get pretty intense, like harem setups where all the different corrupted personalities clash around you, and it still pretends to be a mystery story on top. The only thing that annoyed me is how the MC sometimes suddenly grows a spine in dialogue and then goes back to being awkward again right after a sex scene, like the game forgot which version of him was active, but by the time you’re juggling several girls in that school and mixing magic like a horny data scientist doing A/B tests on human lust, it really doesn’t matter anymore.

The usual community dude rambling through his city decided to buy himself new glasses. Because now it is not fashionable to wear junk. And the new glasses are a bonus that would entice a chick. Going to the store, this ordinary neighborhood dude buys glasses. Goes out and dresses them... and just look what happens. He got special glasses - they possess the role of X-rays. And today this local dude may look at any person for clothes. From this type of purchase, the dude loses his head and starts to test people passing by. Well, what has been longer to find out for yourself!

Coming back to that shitty little hometown feels weird as hell here. The game drops you right in the middle of it with this guy who has that “I studied abroad and now I’m emotionally fucked” vibe, and everyone kind of knows it even when they pretend they don’t. It is not some epic fantasy, it is boring streets, ugly apartments, cheap phone screens, local bar with bad music. And for me that is where the sex actually hits harder. You’re not a hero, you’re just a horny idiot who said the wrong thing to the wrong girl three years ago and now she looks at you like she wants to slap you and ride you at the same time. There is this one scene where you run into an old classmate, she acts cold as ice at first, and then your dialog choice decides if she keeps that distance or if she starts teasing you about “how much you changed.” I picked the more honest, almost pathetic line, and suddenly her legs are a bit closer to my knee, she’s talking softer, playing with her top. Not porn logic, more like that slow, tense shit that happens in someone’s car behind a supermarket. And then, obviously, it goes full porn anyway, because we are all degenerates here.

What I really liked is that the game pretends to be about “rebuilding your life” but what it actually makes you do is weaponize flirting. Every choice feels a tiny bit loaded, like you are writing your own shameful diary. Answer a text too late, joke in a more cruel way than you meant, try to be a “nice guy” and you might end up completely blueballed while some side character clearly wants you and you keep missing it. At some point I stopped trying to be optimal and just thought “what would my depressed, half-broken self say” and suddenly scenes opened up that felt almost too real. Like you’re lying on a bed, still half dressed, with this girl from your past, and she is talking about why she stays in town while her hand keeps drifting lower. The sex itself is raw, not super artistic, and I kind of love and hate that. Bodies press together, clothes bunch up awkwardly, you get that messy grinding before anyone is naked, you can almost smell the cheap perfume and sweat. One route I picked, she kept edging me, almost mocking me with her fingers while asking about my plans for the future. Philosophy major inside my brain was screaming, because the game basically turns desire into this moral exam. Do you push her, do you back off, do you joke, do you beg. And yeah, I begged, and the scene turned absolutely filthy in a way that felt painfully earned, not just handed out like a cheap Pornhub clip.

The city around all this is like a nervous system of lust and fear that never fully shows itself. People talk about trouble, gangs, shit that might explode later, but it stays mostly in the corners while you make choices that are way more intimate than any gunfight. Sometimes you are just at a shitty cafe with some new girl, and the conversation is half about politics, half about whether she will let your hand stay on her thigh. I opened Twitter mid-play once, then came back and picked the wrong line, and she shut down completely, and I sat there annoyed like it was a real person ghosting me. That is when I realized the game got me. It is not “sexy visual novel with branching paths,” it is more like a horny anxiety simulator where every answer might lead to either a slow, aching kiss or a cold “I should go.” And when it does click, when a character finally leans in and the teasing breaks into full-on fucking, it almost feels like you passed some exam in being vulnerable and dirty at the same time. Honestly, the pacing sometimes drags, some conversations feel like they try too hard to be serious, and I kind of wanted one stupid bimbo that just wants cock with zero backstory, but I also know that would break the whole mood. This game is about how you talk yourself into bed, or out of it, and how that says something really uncomfortable about who you are when nobody is watching. Or everyone is watching. Depends how you play.