This is fourth of fifteen essays contained within the fourth issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. If you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: MxMorganic

For years, I grappled with the fascinating paradox inherent to NTR games: games are inherently defined by the player’s agency over what happens, and NTR is inherently defined by denying a cuck agency over what happens. Therefore, anyone intending to make meaningful progress through an NTR game where they play as a cuck must exercise their agency so they, through the protagonist, can lose their own agency. How the hell do we reconcile that?

Last year, reading Leo G.’s article in the previous Adult Analysis Anthology, I got the answer I was looking for: “a cuck chooses, a bull obeys.” Those six words and the breakdown that follow finally helped me make sense of my question, and if you haven’t read their article, you absolutely should.

But later in that same paragraph, Leo G. writes, “the player-as-cuck gets to choose if the NTRing happens. There’s almost always an alternate way forward where the relationship is saved.” True as that is, immediately I thought of my favorite NTR game, a game I adore precisely because of how thoroughly it rejects that idea: UROOM’s Dark Hero Party.

Denying The Player Their Options

If you’ve played a turn-based RPG before (especially if it was made in RPG Maker, as here), Dark Hero Party’s going to feel very familiar, only instead of playing as the Cloud Strifes and Persona 5 Jokers of the world, you’ll be playing as Imos, a man so pathetic he’s defeated by bees not ten minutes into the game.

As for the premise, decades before the game begins, the world faced an invasion by demonic forces, repelled only by the might of the world’s dragons. The dragons instilled their power into human avatars, Dracovalises, and they continue to choose new avatars to this day.

Dark Hero Party is chock-full of characters, so before we continue, here’s a list of everyone you’ll need to know:

• Imos: the protagonist, a normal human who’s sweet on Lotia
• Lotia: a Dracovalis, who made a childhood promise with Imos that they’d marry each other one day
• Thrash: a Dracovalis who’s also a major sleazebag, intent on making Lotia his
• Tori: Imos’ half-sister, an apothecary, and a fellow human
• Aina: a Dracovalis, a princess, and a friend of Lotia’s
• Schum: another sleazebag Dracovalis, intent on making Aina his

Thrash shows up early in the narrative, when he’s sent to Imos’ village to bring Lotia to serve in a new battlefront against a fresh surge of demonic invaders, but you’ll be shocked to hear, considering this is an NTR game, that the narrative also revolves around Thrash shattering Imos’ childhood promise to marry Lotia. While that seems standard enough for the genre, there’s one particular moment when it becomes clear the game’s doing something special in its relentless insistence on ruining Imos’ life.

In the beginning, when a fight is done, you get a message like “Imos’ Party earned 70XP,” and it’s “Imos’ Party” because he holds the first slot in the battle lineup. Then, a few chapters in, Imos’ Party becomes Thrash’s Party, because Thrash replaces Imos in that first slot. Reasonable enough, right? That sort of thing happens in RPGs, as you adjust your active party members for the sake of strategy.

Only you didn’t change the party’s lineup: Thrash did. There’s no text box asking “would you like to add Thrash to the party?” There’s never been an option to shuffle party members around, and there’s not one now. There’s only a message telling you Thrash was added to the party, and that’s that.

Prior to Thrash booting Imos out to take the lead spot in battles, the rest of the party’s been composed of Lotia, Aina, and Tori. The first two are as powerful as Dracovalises are supposed to be canonically, Tori’s a decent healer, and Imos is… well, like I said, he dies to bees ten minutes into the game. Let me put it this way: as I replayed Dark Hero Party for this article, there came a point in the first boss fight when Imos was about to be KO’d, and rather than heal him, I thought “eh, he doesn’t matter.” I let it happen, and I still don’t feel bad about it.

But at least when Imos was in the party, he had a chance to maybe not be so worthless. Thrash won’t even give Imos the dignity of pretending he could ever be good enough to be his fellow human Tori’s equal in battle, much less hang with the obviously superior Dracovalises. And not only was Imos denied that opportunity, the player wasn’t given the choice to let Imos keep trying either. Thrash denied Imos his agency so completely, he managed to deny your agency over the party lineup too.

Forced To Roleplay Futility

Later on, you get to fight with Imos in the party again, but it’s only because there’s no one else around to do it. Aina’s been kidnapped by Schum, Thrash is tricking Lotia into sex with the hollow promise that he’ll leave Imos alone in exchange, and Tori’s preoccupied with a third shithead Dracovalis of her own. So Imos teams up with one of his only friends in town, another weak, normie NPC, to go save the day. They rush to the cave where Aina’s held, and they start combat with Schum’s goons…

And they lose. Mechanically, the math’s impossible, there’s no way to win. They’re wiped almost immediately, waking up back in town in the disgusting beds their superhuman bulls relegated them to. Imos’ friend admits it was a crushing defeat, but he insists they can’t give up on Aina, they’re the only hope she has right now! So they run back to the cave, and they challenge the goons to another fight…

And they lose again. And again. And again. Imos and his friend slowly lose faith that they can do this, to such a point that eventually they don’t say anything at all before they slog back yet again to face their inevitable defeat. And after every loss, the game cuts away to what’s going on in the cave, to the newest development in the battle Aina’s losing against Schum, and you’re made to watch as, after she can fight no more, he breaks her down until she can barely remember where or who she is anymore.

And it feels like your fault. Not Imos’ fault: yours. You’ve known since Imos wiped to bees how hopeless he is in battle. You might not want to admit it, but you know Thrash booting Imos from the party was the right decision for getting safely and smoothly to their destination, because your battles got a whole lot easier once he did. So you know perfectly well you’re never going to watch Imos save Aina, but until he’s ready to accept that for himself, Dark Hero Party’s going to make you pilot him through every single defeat, to feel firsthand like the literal loser that Imos indisputably is, and that, in my opinion, is fucking brilliant.

Eventually word of what Schum’s doing reaches Thrash and Lotia, and they stop fucking long enough to save Aina themselves. But in short order, Thrash stops caring about any of that, far more interested in manipulating Lotia some more, and Schum gets back to abusing Aina, and Imos is kept in a cell nearby to make sure he hears it all. (He can even head over and watch for a bit, if you feel like putting him through that.)

Now everyone’s lives are worse than ever, but it’s OK, all’s not lost! Around this time, Imos starts getting offers from a mysterious girl in white, and if you’ve been taking those offers, you’ve watched as he’s finally grown a little stronger! Not strong enough to make any kind of difference before you reach your first ending a few chapters later, but strong enough to give you, the player, a hint that Imos might just be able to escape the horrors Thrash is putting him through, if only a couple things could go differently.

And indeed, after you reach your first ending, you end up in a barnyard full of all the scenes you witnessed along your journey to tragedy (plus a few bonus scenes if you really wanna watch all your friends’ bad endings too), where a sheep’s waiting at the exit from the yard with the offer to begin New Game+ from three different points, including one you might not even have dared to hope for: “From the Revenge Route.” Revenge? On Thrash and the other sleazebags? A chance to avert disaster for Imos and his friends? Of course you want that! What could possibly go wrong?

Everything, it turns out. Everything can go wrong. How couldn’t it? This is Dark Hero Party: there’s no hope here.

(Spoilers follow: proceed with caution, if you’d like to see these endings for yourself!)

The Reward For Revenge

If you start “From the Revenge Route,” you return to the story’s climax, when Imos hits his lowest point, and he hears a voice. If you choose not to have him listen to it, you’re letting him stay cucked, and you head right back to the endings you expect from an NTR game (one where you choose to watch a magic crystal’s recording of Lotia and Thrash fucking, and one where you’re not brave enough to find out what’s on there).

But if you do choose to listen to the voice, Imos starts talking to the very Demon Lord who started the conflict with the dragons all those years ago. And the girl in white, it turns out, is the demons’ dragon of their own, forged from the shadows to lead the forces of hell. “I’m looking to kill a certain Dracovalis, just like you,” the Demon Lord tells Imos, who he offers the power to change his fate.

So Imos, wanting nothing more than to murder Thrash for the hell he put him through, agrees to help the demons in their campaign. They put him to sleep for a year while his body absorbs unimaginable power, and when he wakes up, the player finally gets another crack at combat with Imos. And wouldn’t you know it, the area he wakes up in is riddled with bees. Guess who gets the shit beat out of them this time?

Not Imos. He’s as powerful now as his Dracovalis companions always were, and after proving his mettle against various tests provided by the girl in white, he’s finally let back into the world for the ultimate showdown between the demons and the dragons. And there he runs back into Thrash and Schum and their cronies, and after blowing the others to smithereens, Imos and Thrash face off in the hardest fight of the game so far, and Imos wins! He’s rid the world of his tormentors. They can’t hurt anyone anymore, including Lotia. He’s freed her, and in fact, there she is, walking toward him now…

And when Lotia realizes what Imos did, she hates him for it.

Lotia started hoping earlier in the story that she could change Thrash for the better, that there was a redeemable man buried under all his awful behavior. (In addition to trying to protect Imos, this is why she lets her guard down enough for Thrash to steal her away in the first place). Over the year Imos was asleep, the marathon sex she and Thrash had every day turned from acts of carnal lust to expressions of genuine love. By the time Imos returns, she and Thrash have had a kid together, and she’s pregnant with their second child.

Imos, the boy she once imagined having a family with, killed the man who was actually the father of her children, and Lotia makes no secret of the hurt and fury she feels at this. And so, mere moments after the reunion that Imos wanted so badly, Lotia starts combat with him to get revenge of her own.

After Thrash died, Imos lost a reason to feel the hate that consumed him, and when the hate left, the evil power coursing through his veins went with it. As a result, in this fight against Lotia, he gets to get his ass beat with the pitifully inadequate stats and abilities he had before.

And you get to feel just as responsible as ever as it happens. You get to watch as all the levels you got to actually grind along the revenge route, when you got to play as a real RPG character, end in Lotia blasting Imos with lightning. His sprite turns to a smoking skeleton on the ground, and the game cuts to credits, and you end up right back in the field with the sheep, just in case you still haven’t learned your lesson, and you still want to search in vain for hope among the game’s remaining endings.

Conclusion

Games, and NTR games especially, are supposed to be about choice. And when you make a choice in a game, it’s supposed to matter. You’re supposed to get to choose where the story goes, to avoid a bad end if you don’t want one, but Dark Hero Party won’t let you. It cucks you, the player, out of your narrative agency, just as hard as it cucks Imos within the narrative it makes you watch. It gives you plenty of “choices,” but they all lead to Imos’ suffering, and they all make you feel firsthand just how awful it is as he loses, over and over and over again.

So what’ll it be? You want the obviously bad ending, or the one that’s all the worse because you dared to dream things could be better? Pick your poison, suck it down, and as it works its way through your hopelessly cucked veins, don’t forget to say thanks to UROOM for all the misery they were kind enough to let you pay them for.

MxMorganic is a storyteller, and when they’re not writing their own stories, they write about how and why their favorite stories are brilliant. You can read more of those thoughts on their (entirely free) Substack, Boar, Deer, Butterflies, you can read their fiction on Archive of Our Own, and they’re @mxmorganic.bsky.social on Bluesky, if you’d like to get in touch.

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