The Craving Shadow Review By Undercity 4
Hello everyone, and welcome to another review for the year. I rarely get to do these anymore since I hardly have anything to write up a review for. I've been waiting for this moment, so this time we have another full-length featured film from DesireSFM of the Witcher Series, and yes, it seems Corruption of the Lodge is still an ongoing project that never had its final conclusion as some of us thought. There is still much more story telling to go around; in fact, I'm beginning to think that it's just getting started. Let's see, that gives us about 3-5 movies so far in this series. The Golden Grain was the longest one, especially if you include Aftermath, which expanded over 30+ minutes in length. That gave me a lot to cover and talk about, but I find ways to do this even for projects with less runtime length.
So if we were to combine all 4–5 films together, we're looking at 60+ length total. According to one of Desires responses to a 7-month-old post on his Patreon wall where someone asked him if he was going to ever do more 30-minute videos, he declined... It was a bit disorienting and disappointing, but I also understand why it was a one-time only deal with The Golden Grain because it's the only one he did that went over a 30+ minute long runtime. Because of this, nothing else in terms of length, detail, and man-hours he creates from now on will be able to dethrone that.
I thought the last one, Golden Grain, and the extra "DLC" explaining the ending portion were indeed the end of this particular series, especially if you consider how long it was. I thought, for sure, Desire would focus on working on a newer series. However, I do know that The Witcher is his newborn child, and he loves the series more than any of the others he's been experimenting with as of lately.
So the possibility of there being any ending to the Witcher Corruption series, I'd say, is rather slim. It can easily expand beyond the Corruption series, though I find it fascinating how these movies almost work like an actual featured film with additional sequels leaving all sorts of extra hints in the end that there just may be another one coming even if it doesn't connect directly with the one that ended. Each portion of these gives us new details on how this wild adventure is progressing further.
Our blue demontress is always at the forefront of practically every movie. She was there in the very beginning, so it seems this mysterious creature has more dark plans prepared in The Craving Shadow. She isn't finished doing her nasty deeds anytime soon, and this time she has a much more devious plan for Fringilla to carry out her order as she procreates with our newest lady, who I thought would never ever appear in one of DesireSFM's animations. Who is she? Well, that would be the Duchess herself, Anna Henrietta. Though I'm not interested in her much, for one thing I don't like her hairstyle, and I find her to be the least appealing Witcher female character out of the full female cast. I'm just going to be honest about that right now. She reminds me of that era when women of royalty used to have those weird, goofy-looking hairstyles.
She doesn't do anything for me in terms of excitement, like the women D used before in the past from this particular series, and because I don't like the royalty types in general... I'd rather she was replaced by someone else like Shani, Iris Von Everec, Philippa Eilhart, but then I realized that all of those other girls would be better off doing the dominant parts instead and wouldn't look good as the submissive.
Because Iris looks dark and gothic, Philippa played the femdom role well in sacrifice. There are so many women in this damn game with dickgirl potential too: Vivienne De Tabris, Magarita Laux Antille, Ves, Irina Renarde, Corinne Tilly, Cery An Craite, there's so many! And D never used any of those women before; what a shame! Maybe I've been spoiled by those dirty in the streets type of girls that look kind of rough around the edges versus the clean and sleek spoiled by wealth and power types. But I can understand why DesireSFM chose to choose Anna this time because of what happens when our Demontress appears and starts making commandments. This happens after Fringilla goes off on Anna once they destroy the end part of the bed! This time we can save the tables for a family of four that need a nice place to sit down and eat rather than Triss power fucking someone on one for the second or third time...
I don't know; I've lost track of the number of times someone was fucked on a table in one of Desire's videos! It became a staple of his work in a way. I believe he admitted that doing bed sex scenes was challenging, but it is a much better choice than the table. Just imagine the amount of splinters! They would have been roughing it up on those damn tables. The bed is also useful for a number of specific ideas that wouldn't work very well with tables. For starters, they can spread out a bit more, and there is plenty of room for D to take advantage of.
I remember getting to this part, and it seemed like D toned down the roughness...I was quite disappointed with that.
Well, rather than the table suffering, it was the bed that broke down; eventually, Fringilla becomes so powerful, strong, and intense that the bed collapses entirely! I was actually pretty damn amazed at how D figures out how to make all these interactions just work like this in SFM. Desire never fails to come at you with a crazy surprise, and I always, ALWAYS! Expect something unusual or different to occur in one of his videos that you'd never see appear elsewhere. With over 10 minutes, the video gives us plenty of opportunity to first invest in the plot, then expect the unexpected when the action unfolds. There is a lot of detail here, especially after Fringilla unloads and tries to catch her breath for a while.
But that doesn't suit too well with our dangerously blue Demontress who appears from the dark, cold shadows and gets far more interactive for the first time... She touches Fringilla flaccid shaft that begins to pulsate with immense levels of energy and causes Fringilla to become completely possessed! From the moment her balls begin to pulsate to her body growing and becoming much more dominant in appearance Fringilla still maintains a level of femininity and doesn't lose it.
For a moment I thought she was doing the Super saiyan thing where she becomes more masculine and muscular looking, not that I would have disapproved with that idea since I'm open to seeing what D is willing to try with these things. She did get a bit muscular, and that just added to the determination. The blue Demontress whispers to her in a dark, wicked voice, "Breed her!"
The moment she says this. I had to be sure she said exactly what I thought! Because I downloaded both the subtitle and non-subtitle version and I watched the version with the subtitles. So I rewinded it over and over, then I checked the subtitle version to make sure I wasn't just hearing shit. She actually commanded her to knock up that royal bitch. I knew it was on! I tried not to even masturbate until there was a part in the video I would have liked; the minute I heard "breed her," I wasn't going to sit my ass still anymore and just watch... Furthermore, I had to become part of the movie itself.
I had to get involved; I had to commit myself! To the whole damn thing, DesireSfm knows my obsession with this whole impregnation idea, and I'm really glad to see more futanari artists go in that direction. Radroach does it often too, so it's great to see DesireSFM finally play around with that whole impregnation concept more than once because Futanari really needs this! It's just so unfair how heterosexual content often has those breeding themes.
There is no shortage of such videos involving males attempting to impregnate, but futanari material rarely goes in that direction. So yes, it's been a welcoming addition to see it in someone's animation that understands how important those fetishes and kinks really are to futanari's development process. Because of that one element, I was able to overlook how much I didn't like Anna and involved myself in the film. And the added effect of Fringilla getting possessed by all of this sweaty sex and her attempt to create an heir to Anna's kingdom—it was all so welcoming. This is what I love: impregnation and possession themes! So there is some bit of light horror in Craven Shadow; it's not the wet your bed level of horror. In the movie industry, the second movies are always better than the first. I know that Desire has done this before.
But Frigrilla returns, and I'm satisfied, although I think he puts a lot more invested effort into Triss body appearance than he does with the other women in this franchise. Triss was packing so much voluptuous and female masculinity in The Golden Grain that it ended up being my second favorite one, and my first favorite is Sacrifice. At least here I get to see Fringilla, but I've been looking through the Witcher list cast, and I'll talk about this in a few minutes. Although, something is a bit off about Fringilla's face... Not sure what to make of it, really, but it looks a little different here. Or it could just be the body portion; it's not a major problem, though.
I am not so sure what to make of the plot after sacrifice, either. The thing about DesireSFM is that he will create something with stories for them, and I know how much pleasure he gets out of coming up with the plots for all of these videos and the images. But the only way I was able to really talk a bit about the plots in the other ones is because I slightly understood it, even in such small parts. The Craven Shadow felt like a quick project; Desire just wanted to get out there because it took him a long time with the Resident Evil one. So the story here is that a few words are spoken between Fringilla and Anna before the action begins. Dialog is never redundant in these videos anyway; there's just enough information for you to grasp and understand what's occurring before it moves into the sexual side of things.
There is something mentioned, an heir, at the
end of the video. So I take it he was dangerously serious about that
whole pregnancy aspect, rather than it just being mentioned for the sake
of being mentioned. I know that DesireSFM has been leaving behind clues
and hints in between his patreon post and because I wasn't a paying
member until today. So I couldn't read any of the stuff he was writing
on his Patreon wall for every post. But a lot of it attached to the
images seemed like it was leading up to the Craven Shadow. But he would
include story elements in each one, and so I was able to piece some of
that together to get a better understanding as to why this series
continues rather than ending after Sacrifice and The Golden Grain.
The moment her cock came to life after our powerful Demontress touched her, I was astonished, and held my own mouth wide open and was praying for the possibility of being able to taste her from the other end of my screen! I've never seen so much....The dick alone had a living soul on the inside of it! One thing I love about D's work is that he knows how to do these demon possession scenes really well! That's something else I'd like to see more of in the future for sure!
From my understanding here, there is a lot Desire can actually do to continue forward with it. The Witcher world is easy to expand upon, and there's always something that can be added. I'm still interested in seeing how he approaches the Resident Evil one. Another thing I'd like to cover here is that from the looks of all this, DesireSFM continues to improve by a lot even with SFM, I know people would like to see how all of his work would look if he could learn how to use Blender, but I believe at this point everyone has gotten used to him making all of his animated material in SFM.
The Craving Crow did a lot of things differently, and I noticed a lot of experimentation going on this time around. Normally, DesireSFM puts more effort into the environments with all sorts of props and set pieces scattered about. The lighting is still rough and harsh, but they are cast in all the correct and right places, as they would appear in a room lit well by candlelights. But this time he kept the room rather simple, and he didn't add as many props. There weren't a lot of cameras focusing going on. In his other work, he usually zooms away from the action for a moment and allows you to explore the atmosphere. You know, like how everything was in the Golden Grain, it was really cinematic!
The Golden Grain had a lot more dynamic camera angles from varying perspectives, which gave us that cutscene feeling before something major happens. Like when Anya is slowly walking toward the door, and you can hear the muffling noises coming from the other side of the room. The camera aims down at her feet as she takes baby steps toward the door, then the camera moves up to focus on her upper frame, so when she pulls open the door, you see the powerful blur effect comes into view when she's in shock, and the camera returns to Triss in focus, pounding the hell out of Anya's mother.
D made incredible use of depth of field in that video, but he didn't use it at all in The Craven Shadow. This is why I felt like The Golden Grain was the finale; he just did so much more with it that The Craven Shadow somewhat felt like a quicker assignment to get something out for the fans so they wouldn't have to wait for much longer. I'm not saying The Craven Shadow was poorly made because it's still a spectacle worthy of watching. And 10 minutes is still a very lengthy video compared to the usual 30 seconds or fewer minutes that everyone else is offering. I feel that when he went and tried for 30 minutes he was able to create a full story behind all of that, and since he loves to be cinematic with his work. Well, the long runtime benefited him. It is a lot of work for one person to tackle all alone, but damn, it was worth it.
In fact, out of all the Corruption videos Desire's done up to this point. The Golden Grain had the most detail, with Sacrifice coming in second by involving up to four characters ganging up on Ciri all at once. I've always thought that one video would be very difficult for DesireSFM to surpass or beat because of how complex it was. As much as I enjoyed Craven Shadow, it didn't come close to surpassing The Golden Grain or Sacrifice, but it did include my favorite sex position other than the lift fuck, and that would be the missionary. That's the best position to impregnate someone, and Fringilla unleashed the demon within Anna. In a way, I felt that Craven Shadow could have worked as a prelude because it felt like one.
I would say between Golden Grain and Sacrifice. Golden Grain had the most level of drawn-out detail; Sacrifice had to be the most challenging and hardest one to make because it involved up to 4 women putting Ciri in her place. But according to D, he said it wasn't as challenging as the current project he's doing for Resident Evil.I went back and re-watched all of those Corruption videos again, and Craven Shadow has a lot to catch up to. The Craving Shadow was more on the experimental side because it allowed D to test out a new character and testing himself with how he would go about animating the scenes on the bed rather than another table beat down. So when the bed fell apart, I was surprised to see that happen! It was something new.
Overall I'm not a Witcher Fan at all and don't care much for this series, but I know that it's D's favorite series and so I just take what I can get in terms of good content. There isn't that much of it available. Months and years go by and the only artists worth anything that animate at all is DesireSFM and Radroach. I'd include Pixel3D to that list too if they weren't wasting their time with the male on female content which I strongly hate having to wait for them to eventually put out futanari material.
The other downside is the voice over work is always stuck on repeat like they don't bother to hire any voice talent. And sometimes Rigid3D delivers something really great once in awhile...Nyl has been a let down ever since he started messing around with that shitty Baulder's Gate series and the ugly characters from it which is even worse than Overwatch. Plus the sex is never hardcore enough for my taste. So DesireSFM, Rigid, and Radroach are the only ones I'd financially support at this point.
DesireSFM loves to experiment and explore to vary degrees. I'm noticing that he's challenging himself a bit more too in areas he had no interest in before, like the breeding concept, which I remember him saying wasn't likely possible in the world of Witcher. So it's nice to see him break free of that restriction and limitation by taking a risk. So let's break down the final verdict.
STORY ELEMENTS:
DesireSFM understands that it's a lot of work to balance these things out. I wasn't really sure what the complete plot is behind this story. But D could easily create a bunch of story notes and written parts that weren't added into the film, and then use that as a background to write up a much more thorough plot. That would give people a complete understanding as to how this whole Corruption story really began, where the Demontress came from, and how she managed to successfully corrupt all the women she comes into contact with.
SHADOWS AND LIGHTING QUALITY: No Rating (Software Limitations)
Since I'm fully aware of lighting limitations with SFM, I rarely bother to score it at all in this area of any video DesireSFM makes. I know that he tries to make the most of it and does the best he can to achieve some level of decent detail with what he has to work with, so it wouldn't be fair to vote a low score here. The problem with SFM is that it can't create believable shadows, so everything often has this dark and harsh effect to it, which is the fault of the program and not the artists.
SEXUAL POSITIONS AND CREATIVITY: 10/10
I don't like the doggy style position as much as I enjoy the lift-standing or missionary positions, but seeing Fringilla ass and her viciousness from the angle it was positioned in changed my mind. At least here, there was plenty of time to take advantage of both of these popular sex positions and make exceptional use of them. There was no lifting position this time, but the missionary didn't let me down. The moment the bed broke apart, I just knew that was going to piss off Fringilla and that slow intimacy teasing she was doing in the beginning of that position was finally over!
CHARACTER CHOICE AND PHYSICAL ATTRACTION: 6/10
I've been paying close attention to some of the feedback D already received within his discord group about Fringilla being a bit unattractive or not so appealing in the facial areas. In a sense, I noticed some issues with her face as well. One person didn't fancy her body appearance or the proportions much either. Some even mentioned how they weren't fans of the massive dick she had. I've grown used to these massive dick sizes that DesireSFM is so fond of creating for his girls, so it's not an issue for me when the dicks grow massively large; it works for his art style. Some futanari artists have made them bigger than that! So compared to them, the dicks in D's animations are on the average side as far as futa's go.
D doesn't go overboard with the body types that often; in this video he decided to increase Fringilla's proportions, but that was after our Demontress touched her first, so it was more like a curse or spell put on her, and it worked for that scene. So I had no issues with that either. The reason I'm giving it a six is because I didn't like Anna... As I said, I'm not fond of her hair, and she's not my type of girl either. So far out of all the Witcher women D used in his work, she's probably the least appealing to me.
LENGTH: 8/10
The runtime was around 10 minutes long which isn't too bad, though I prefer the longer ones that are between 18 minutes and he only did one that was 30 minutes (The Golden Grain) but said he wasn't going to do anymore like that because they were too difficult to manage...A tragedy really as it does take him awhile to complete these anyway so I figured well, why not? Of course, 10 minutes is much better than 6 minutes or less.
ENDING: 4/10
The ending was rather interesting with our Demontress appearing behind Fringilla after what she had done to Anna. But this time D didn't add any cliff hangers like he normally does... At the end of every other Corruption of the Lodge there was always a bonus ending scene showcasing what might possibly happen next. That was excluded from Craven Shadow which is why I said I felt like this one was just a rushed project so D could hurry and get something out for those who have been waiting for him to release something or anything at all this year. There is no telling how far away he is to finishing The Resident Evil one so I understand why he most likely ignored a bonus/extra segment that usually happens after the end of every credits.
VOICE ACTING AND DIALOG: 7/10
I rather love the way the Demontress voice sound how deep and masculine it is. I was getting turned on, replaying it over and over when she said, "Breed her." I'd like to hear someone use that voice during the sex portions. As far as dialog being spoken between Fringilla and Anna, D dialed it down a bit during the sexual parts, unlike Golden Grain where Triss talked a lot of dirty talk and had a lot to say to that sexy milf she humiliated. I don't know how others may feel about talking between characters during the action segments. But I quite like it a lot... Especially if the voice actress is fantastic at it.
Sometimes I find myself bored when there is no dirty talk going on, and that helps in a very big way when there is some dirty talk and plenty of it! Most of the time DesireSFM and animators like Radroach find the best voice actresses, even if they may reuse the same ones, which isn't a bad thing at all. If I really love a voice actresses work, then I'd like her to keep coming back and have as much dialog as possible.
Especially during the grunt and heavy dominant parts. It's always welcoming... So there wasn't much speech between the characters in Craven Shadow for all those who don't like a lot of conversation... In my own experience, I was disappointed there wasn't much of it. But what can supplement and substitute for it is lots of heavy breathing and aggressive grunting.
ELEMENTS OF SURPRISE MOMENTS: 10/10
There is a part in the video where Fringilla is wrecking Anna so aggressively from behind that the bed breaks completely apart as I already mentioned. You would think the bed would be able to accommodate them, because D has done a lot more vicious pounding on table moments! And those tables never fall apart. Although, sex on a wooden table that looks as old and raggedy as the ones in Witcher would cause a person to get splinters all in their ass and back... It definitely wouldn't be comfortable fucking on one of those old Medieval like tables that look like they've been sitting in an attic for years.
ATMOSPHERE: 10/10
The bedroom is certainly a classic environment that you can never go wrong with. It was a simple bedroom, quite dim with light but that's what I liked about it. Too much light makes it lose that dark appeal.
MUSIC: 10/10
Music is another one of D's strong points, ever since Miranda in Charge he's done exceptionally well with finding the right kind of music that fits the scene, atmosphere, and situation from start to finish. It's never anything that annoys the viewer either, so he has extraordinary taste in the type of music that anyone can enjoy while watching the action. Some people would just throw on some shitty Nikki Minaj and ruin the sex completely forcing you to listen to some pink hair ugly barbie bitch rap.
THE FINAL SCORE 7 OUT OF 10
