Last Evil is a lewd roguelite deckbuilding game about a succubus on a quest to revive her king to destroy mankind.
Adult Content?
(F, FxF, FxM) Sexual content.
Censorship?
No. Woot! Woot!
Hours of Gameplay?
Seven or eight hours.
Patch Available?
No, not necessary.
Gameplay: published August 27th, 2021 (4/5★)
I’ve read a lot of folk liken this game to Slay the Spire, but I’d like to add Dominion and Star Realms as comparable experiences. Using randomized cards, you must build a deck (or “spell list”) to fight your way through a variety of increasingly difficult enemies. Each turn, you may draw a hand of five cards from your deck (called a “spell pile” during combat). Any cards that are unused by the end of the turn are placed into your discard (or “spell grave”). Each card costs a certain amount of “Mana” or “Lust”. The former is recharged in full at the beginning of each turn. To reach the end of the game, you’ll have to make the most out of your mana practice damage control. It’s extremely difficult to restore hit-points, and “rest stops” are few and far between. Generally speaking, you may either heal or improve your deck — if you’re unable to refine your spells, your run is probably a lost cause. “Lust” can also be used to play cards (allowing you to conserve mana), but it is considerably harder to acquire. Lust is recharged by “artifacts”. Artifacts provide a multitude of benefits in and out of combat, but acquiring them is risky business — they are typically guarded by powerful foes, or multiple-choice situations that can easily go awry. Whenever you win a battle, you must collect “essence”, either by fucking your foes or via “magic”. The former provides the most essence, but it drains your lust. Essence is the in-game currency for purchasing new cards or modifying your deck. Whenever you’re defeated you lose everything — you don’t get to keep your cards, artifacts or essence. After spending literally hours building powerful decks, I couldn’t help but lose motivation every time I had to restart with default cards.
I understand the appeal of the roguelite genre, but Last Evil doesn’t offer enough variety between playthroughs. Building a winning deck takes hours of luck and grinding. While there’s a variety of collectable cards in the game, there’s only a handful of (rare) cards that’ll pull you through the hardest foes. Many cards are designed for synergies that won’t work unless you’ve already built a deck to accommodate them — until then, they only clutter your hands with mediocre (or outright useless) spells. Enemies rapidly grow in strength, leaving no time to “experiment”. The games Dominion and Star Realms also have you “delete” your deck between games, but it’s fun building new decks in these games. There’s tons of “spells” to choose from, with lots of synergies that don’t take long to put into action. While choosing a single faction in Star Realms would improve the reliability of my deck, I can still power through the game using a mix of factions. If anything, it’d make my turns more unpredictable — you wouldn’t be able to form a reliable counter to my deck. In these games, the difficulty slowly ramps up, providing some “wiggle room” to build an interesting deck. In Last Evil, you begin the game with a premade deck. If you stray from your cards, you’ll be crushed before you have the opportunity to redesign your deck.
Sexual Content: published August 27th, 2021 (3/5★)
There are one-hundred-sixteen entries in the gallery — wow! Among these entries are eighty-seven animations, and twenty-nine static CGs (played during special encounters). A handful of the animations are actually cut-scenes (related to the story), but the rest of them are sexual CGs. After defeating an enemy, you have the option to fuck them (or “harvest essence”). When these animations elapse, your foe(s) will comedically ragdoll (marking the moment their “essence” is drained). When you’re defeated you’ll get to enjoy an animated “game-over” screen (specific to whatever killed you). These scenes showcase rape animations, where opponents repeatedly cum inside the protagonist as she protests. Cumshots are physics based; it’s rather blocky, but it’s satisfying to see it ooze from the protagonists’ holes. Alternatively, you may “surrender” to prevent restarting the game, but you’ll be forced to don BDSM gear (which is reflected in sex-scenes). There’s a wide variety of sexual animations, which include monsters (such as slimes, tentacles and skeletons) and variety of human characters. However, the animation, models and visual effects leave something to be desired. Human characters not only look derpy, they seldom move during sex (not even so much as blink). It’s uncanny watching characters remain still — it’s as if they’re cold, lifeless bodies. Clipping and floating are rampant among the gallery. The lighting isn’t great, and an ever-present vignette effect distorts your view. Overall, I loved the variety of sexual content, but I’m disappointed by the quality.
Story: published August 27th, 2021 (2/5★)
Banished into “the Dungeon”, the Archdemon and his lackies have been defeated by humanity. A sewer was built over the Dungeon to “hide it from history”. Bent on vengeance, a lone succubus plans to “wake the Archdemon”, and make Humanity “pay with their blood”. Since the war, demons have turned on each other — it’s only a matter of time before they’re really expunged from history.
Sound: published August 27th, 2021 (3/5★)
The music and sound effects are decent. I wasn’t “wowed” by them, but I didn’t feel the need to mute or replace the audio. The music didn’t make me feel pumped for combat. There’s a slim library of sexual sounds, which perform major disservice to the sexual content. It’s a turn-off hearing the same few moans over and over again. I found the rest of the sexual sounds to be exaggerated. For the most part, they’re delightfully excessive, but cumshots sound alien.
Visuals: published August 27th, 2021 (4/5★)
The titlescreen looks great! The background showcases the main-protagonist, with a dynamic view that responds to your cursor. The user-interface looks and feels premium, I was overall impressed by the visual layout. From the “Settings” menu, you may adjust a variety of audio, display, graphical and gameplay preferences (including the option to toggle “mature content”). Previously encountered CGs can be reviewed from the “Gallery”. The user-interface can be hidden during animations and combat via the (default) “Z” key. Unfortunately, the UI can’t be hidden while viewing static images. Your deck and assorted stats are recorded between playthroughs — this data can be viewed from “Play Records”. You’re able to perform limited customization to the player-character via the “Customize” menu. However, outfits are tied to completion of the Gallery. I enjoyed the graphics Last Evil has to offer, but there’s issues between the animations and models; movement is stiff, and a lot of enemies look somewhat derpy. Something else that bothered me was how cutscenes don’t reflect any customization performed on the character model. The lighting is a little jarring, and there’s an undesirable blurry vignette effect. I wish it was adjustable (or at least toggleable).
Verdict: published August 23rd, 2021 (3/5★)
I remember having a high opinion on this game, but I fear times have changed. For how long Last Evil has been on the market, I expected a little more polish from Flametorch. The stiff animation and iffy graphics may have been acceptable on release — but it’s been nineteen months since I last played this game! Last Evil is plagued by samey gameplay (which is only exacerbated by roguelite mechanics). You’re forced to start every playthrough with the same deck, and chances are you’ll be pursuing the same few cards (RNG-willing). It’s a great game while you’re progressing, but it doesn’t offer enough variety between runs to justify resetting your progress. Enemies remain the same, and there’s seemingly only a handful of cards worth collecting. Ultimately, I “broke” the game using a grossly over-powered deck that allowed me free-cast powerful spells on repeat. I exploited the “amplify” mechanic to bolster zero-cost spells, and utilized aggressive card-drawing effects. After seeing how tough end-game bosses are, I’m skeptical any other deck would have allowed me to beat the game. By the third (and final) floor, enemies are able to deliver and absorb obscene amounts of damage — and they heal and respawn! Despite its flaws, I think I’m going to continue to recommend Last Evil. This game would benefit from another round of love, but it’s still fun deck-builder with loads of adult content. This is a game that’s worth picking up at full price.
