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Dungeon 9 was definitely too easy. Having had a number of special attacks unlock late into Dungeon 8, but be useless due to that dungeon's meta, I tried them out here, and following up Mami's Ribbon Tie with Firewind and Lovely Barrage (and later Gun Volley and Heartfelt Barrage) made short work of most opposition. I managed to defeat the boss at party level 35 (Kyouko had just made 36), having only lost one girl at any point, and after encountering exactly zero fetish events... not counting failed bikini thefts or the boss's tentacle grab attack. Nothing even managed to land a parasite on a girl until well after defeating the boss, so the rate on that probably needs a boost; it would've been a lot harder dungeon if I was getting stat and XP debuffs prior to defeating the boss and hitting the level cap, instead of the other way around. Of course, as a beach episode... it's kind of on-theme for it to be easy? This tickles a vague thought I've had for a while; one of the major factors in how hard a dungeon is seems to be how easy it is to avoid the fights. Forced encounters with large groups of enemies to pass chokepoints makes for difficult dungeons, but more open terrain and enemy patterns that make it easier to sneak past makes dungeons quite a bit easier. That's not the only factor that matters, but it's a big one.

It'd be a QoL improvement if the mermaids were visually removed from the fight after running away, like the bombs and the tentacles are after doing their attacks. Speaking of the bombs, they didn't really seem to add much to the dungeon? They weren't dangerous enough to need to defuse (although having Mami start the encounter with String Up on a bomb mostly negated its threat), and they didn't add any fetish aspect to the dungeon. In grinding out the titles, I eventually became unhappy to see the mermaids, since they became straight up physical attackers with nothing to steal (it didn't help that they often disguised themselves as tentacles on the map)... but the bombs were never fun to encounter, especially since they often came in roadblock singletons. Considering the previous dungeon's more interesting mechanics... maybe the bombs could blow up on *one* girl, covering her with pheromones and giving her a lingering debuff that makes the other enemies more likely to target her with their more dangerous techniques?

As a final note; I decided to give the boss a second try with a fully stripped and parasitized party, just before leaving the dungeon, and it put up a real beast of a fight! Even going in with the usual full debuff stack against its attacks, the stuns from the parasites and the boss's own tentacles made it very close. If the many tentacles I fought in the process of exploring the island, flipping the switches, and opening all the chests had used their parasitic attacks more frequently than never pre-boss, I'd have had a much harder time of things.

Dungeon 10 is probably my new favourite, thematically speaking. The relentless focus of all the enemies in lowering Resistance made them comparatively gentle, and there was plenty of extra medicine drops to ensure that I could easily recover from any lost HP. Instead, it was just quickly making my way through enemies to switches and chests, while on a slippery downward slope that made their techniques more and more effective. Special Attack aoe spam remained the obvious way to go here, given the many, many forced four-enemy fights; it worked out just as well as it did in the previous Dungeon, but this one was just a lot longer. The repetitive nature of the rooms was thematically on-point, giving me real "have I been here already this time?" thoughts when checking everything. For some reason, Mami consistently picked up a lot of Suggestibility despite not being the taunt-tank; I wound up using nearly every Brain Rewirer on her to fend off the debuffs. The re-use of the grovel animation felt a little off, here; seeing the girls suddenly without all that hypno gear when they knelt was incongruous. I didn't actually lose anyone before confronting the boss, and felt that my party was still in good shape when I did face it, level-capped and ready to go. The group straightjacketing was unexpected, but I'd weakened it enough while I still had moves available to pull off a win anyway.

Interestingly, the straightjackets stayed on after the boss fight, though I couldn't find an item or trait to explain why. Though hot, this rather interfered with my ability to do anything else in the dungeon after the boss fight. Fortunately, I had plenty of Brain Melters on hand to get the title stats, and the enemies' Strip commands still had mechanical effect while straightjacketed, even if they didn't have visual effect, so I was able to get all the titles without having to reload a save. Still, if anywhere at all in the entire game needed a post-boss item to remove a fetish effect, it's this one, given the way the jackets prevent most of the other enemy commands from working correctly; it'd have been nice to have had a chance to play around with the enemies and their hypnotic commands while grinding the titles instead of just getting the right numbers down and leaving. Unusually, this boss didn't unlock an easy path to the exit after being defeated, so I needed to defeat it again in order to leave, with the whole party bound in straightjackets and unable to fight properly. Madoka's Inner Strength came in handy, allowing a narrow win anyway... but it was a very strange fight.

As a sidenote, in this dungeon, Mami learned Breaking Shot, which I'd hoped would be a good status effect. It was not. Using it on a single enemy and seeing the word stun flash by them twice in quick succession before they attacked felt particularly unfun; like they hadn't been stunned at all and the game had lied to me. Yes, I get that it'd be too effective against bosses and such (I tried it on the boss out of curiosity, and it did the same thing); but it's very genre-standard for bosses to be immune to the cheesy spells, and it'd help in making singleton fights less annoying. Since there weren't any normal enemies dangerous enough to be worth locking down, it felt like a worthless addition.

Dungeon 11 was more comical than sexy, but that's alright; it was short and sweet, a series of not-too-confusing passages going right by a large number of guarded treasure rooms. The positioning of things meant that you could easily see where you'd gotten the treasure and where you hadn't, and there weren't too many enemies that you had to fight to continue down the path (as opposed to having to fight in order to get loot, but it was possible to stealthily grab loot in many cases as well). Slowly replacing all of the party's moves with Haigure would've been more annoying if it weren't for getting Inner Strength last dungeon, and the late addition of Inner Focus was also welcome. The boss was vulnerable to magical debuffs and single-target special damage the first time... and after a second trip around to clear out a passageway I'd missed and Haigure the girls, I found that the boss was also quite manageable with the all-Haigure party, focusing Haigure buffs on Madoka to up her offensive and defensive stats while she soloed the boss with single-target Haigure. Not my favourite in either mechanics or theme, but with the excellent level design, I had nothing to complain about here.

Ugh, Dungeon 12. It was like the evil opposite of Dungeon 11; everything I liked about 11 was wrong in 12. The ero-theme was there, but wasn't presented in a very exciting way; it was like the enemies were shooting pregnancy darts instead of doing anything more erotic. This was one part "the characters automatically get pregnant in one hit" and one part "the impregnation graphic was only on screen for about a frame". If the process was more of a multi-step thing, like web-then-impreg, that'd also help. Actually birthing new enemies at the end was a neat touch, though there didn't seem to be a reaction from having done that?

As for the level design, it was an horrid twisted maze with little room to avoid enemies, lots of unavoidable fights to simply progress down the paths, and the fights were fairly brutal slugfests with real danger of casualties at all points... and of course, that same nasty path back to reset if I did take any losses. All the enemies seemed to be the same (barring the newborns), so there was no interesting variety here; just a grim slog through a cramped maze. That's very thematic for an insect nest, but it wasn't enjoyable to struggle through.

The boss, strangely, was totally anticlimactic. I'd actually lost Madoka earlier, and (unusually) decided to stumble on anyway because I'd rather die than find my way back through the mess... but somehow, I managed to get to the boss without taking another loss, so I figured I'd try it out and see what it did to prepare for a more serious return. Except Kyouko had just learned Bloodletting in the fight before the boss... and she basically soloed the boss with repeated uses of it, while Sayaka and Mami contributed a debuff each before dying / spending the rest of the fight webbed.

There may still be treasures hidden in the dungeon, and I still have to go back to get the titles on three of my girls. This is the first dungeon where I find that I don't want to, though; I'm just not having fun with this one at all. Fortunately, there's only a title for max belly size here, not max addiction, so it probably won't take too much more time to clear it... assuming that I haven't missed any items, which is a lot harder to check for here. I feel like I want a checklist for per-dungeon items, or a magical detector that tells me how much loot is still present. Probably won't go back to this one today, though; I'm going to take a break.

Dungeon 13 missed my fetishes, but was thankfully straightforward; much like Dungeon 11, this one was short and sweet. Treasures weren't hidden, and the enemies weren't that dangerous... in fact, they spent most of their time handing out neat stat buffs! Of course, there's a drawback in all this; the boss wipes out all those drug-related buffs, leaving scary debuffs in their place. But I had the foresight to gag Sayaka the moment I found a gag, so she was fine... and Parry Stance into Conturbatio, with the rest of the party throwing debuffs from their withdrawal, made for a handy win without much trouble. I actually cleared this one in one shot, opening all the chests and defeating the boss without needing to heal up with Kyuubi... which was critical, because as I found out after seeing him, full healing also resets your current drug value! If I'd somehow lost anyone at any point, this would've been a much trickier dungeon. Also, if I hadn't guessed correctly on keeping Sayaka gagged for much of the dungeon, and ungagging her for the boss, I'd also have had a much rougher time.

Grinding the titles was initially a pain; it requires wandering around at max alcohol/nicotine values for 200 steps, which seemed tricky, when every combat action decreases both values! Then it became clear that, with four bottles and four cigarettes scattered across the dungeon, the correct way to get those titles was to have one girl take all the drugs, then stumble back and forth in Kyuubi's room for 200 steps, then reset and repeat. This worked, but it was exactly no fun; it would've been nicer for the titles to be related to hitting max drug values and/or walking around with max addiction values. The majority of my time in the dungeon was spent grinding to XP cap after having done everything else.

Dungeon 14 was way too easy. In fact, I'd say it was my easiest dungeon experience yet. After previous dungeons, and having heard the warnings, I was prepared for it to be substantially more brutal and punishing... but it seemed obvious, going into it, that the obviously correct decision was the tanking strategy (so that I didn't take permanent debuffs on anyone I needed to be able to fight). The dungeon didn't live up to the level of precautions I took; there were plenty of cures available for amputation and piercings, and Mami was the only one who ever took any damage (poor Mami, though).

Still, the place was seriously a breeze. I'd rearranged my party to ensure that Sayaka would come in right after Mami's Taunt with Guardian Stance, and I'd further have them layer on extra Defence buffs after that, and it mostly didn't even seem important to be that careful, since Kyouko and Madoka could quickly slaughter every enemy group in a move or two anyway, so long as they hadn't been injured. By using all the recovery items on the only one who needed them, by the time I got to the boss, Mami hadn't even lost an arm (which I only realized the importance of after the boss fight, since she'd have lost all her moves if she'd lost all her limbs before that). I noticed a few branching paths at different points, and wasn't super-diligent about totally exploring all those paths on my 'first run', so it's possible I picked a lucky route and got to the boss in good time. It certainly helped that many fights were avoidable, and the simple layout reduced confusion.

Unfortunately, this dungeon hardlocks players out of proceeding further to title grind; the backside of the boss door leads back to the boss room, and no other exit from the boss room exists, so after beating the boss, you must immediately end the dungeon. Having overwritten my save without thinking about it after beating the boss, that was it. Given how unusually generous this dungeon was with pre-boss fetish removal items, I'm certain I could repeat the performance in an all-titles run, but I would've had to have known that before entering the boss room. Had that been my only save, that would be that; as-is, I can't proceed without loading a pre-Dungeon 14 save. This feels like a game-breaking design flaw; every other dungeon in the game lets you keep grinding after the boss. It's a nice trick for the boss door to be cursed and force a confrontation, but if so, there really needs to be an extra path from the boss room to the starting room unlocked after beating the boss. The thematics of the dungeon were definitely a hit with me, but the unexpected hardlock limited my ability to engage with them (hopefully that gets patched soon!).

Given the ease at which I beat the dungeon, I want to say that this dungeon would be much better if most/all of the recovery items were after the boss. That might mean putting cursed items in some of the chests instead of useful ones. Instead of super-abundant healing, the thought that comes to mind are prosthetics that can be applied to girls at various levels of Amputation/Piercing, offering a variety of potential tradeoffs in exchange for their 'help'... or maybe just straightforwardly making a bad situation worse for fun, curses be like that. Alternatively, staples from previous dungeons like gags and blindfolds might show up to add additional helplessness for no good reason.

EDIT: Also, before I forget, it seemed strange that there was a max-amputation title but not a max-piercing title; this continues a trend where the later dungeons seem much stingier with titles than the earlier dungeons.

Had some time free to finish up, so last post for the Casual Mode playthrough!

Dungeon 15 was shockingly easy. Sure, Dungeon 14 felt too easy for how seriously I took it, but Dungeon 15 honestly felt like I could've beaten it with my team from two dungeons ago. I had revives and tons of healing items, and I hardly needed them; I didn't so much as break out the Orange/Red liquids for full heals before defeating the boss. Of course, part of this might be stat accumulation from this being an all-titles run? Gradual move replacement wasn't much of a downgrade in many cases, and the ability to swap movesets made it feasible to replace moves without it being a big deal. The level design was reasonably straightforward with chests in predictable locations, and many of the enemies came in singletons... which could often be defeated two at a time, using the overlapping glitch I reported earlier (the barn is a case where this feels intentional; just walk straight up the center line and you only need to fight half as many battles. Between the pills and easy fights, I capped out quickly here, well before everyone was trained, partway through my first run (and found more pills after that to save for later!). 

When I found the boss, I defeated it in exactly one move cycle; open by debuffing special defence (with Ribbon Tie) and murder with existing single-target specials. With its low HP and meager defences, there are individual monsters from previous dungeons who felt scarier than this boss; I didn't even need to bother debuffing its offensive abilities like with most bosses. Its actual attack was unimpressive, and even the scary debuff wasn't all that scary. Getting everyone fully-trained took more effort, of course, but the all-pet team beat the boss just as easily; debuff regular defence (with Moo and Tail Whip), and quickly kill with Backwards Kick and Crunch. Given the availability of multiple attack debuffs and stacking attack buffs in the pet moves, this boss could've been MUCH more difficult.

Thematically, this was definitely a hit with me. The transformation dialogue really helped sell the theme here; it definitely added a lot to this dungeon! I also really appreciated the infinite section for helping train the titles, since 1000 steps would be a lot if I needed to make them in more confined space. The semi-repeated level layout reminded me of Dungeon 10, in a good way; much like with hypnosis, repetition felt exactly on-theme for a dungeon based on training. The only downside was the enemies, which didn't feel different enough despite their cute costumes.

A couple minor bugs... Kitten's "Purr" move wasn't usable for some reason; whenever I ordered a girl to activate it, it instead selected the most-recently-successfully-used move by that girl and did nothing. Also, it's a minor graphical issue, but when fully-transformed, Pig has a skin-toned bald head from behind, instead of the pink pig hood.

Dungeon 16 was, of course, just a boss rush. The first two forms actually felt like serious bosses (unlike the 15 boss), but serious boss tactics worked just fine, and I beat the first two forms with no losses. I nearly ran into trouble with the final form of the boss, but just being able to have Madoka Inner Focus repeatedly and use Holy Shot when she could was plenty, especially since Mami and Kyouko got their debuffs in before going down. The post-boss dialogue felt a little anticlimactic, especially with the absence of a final cutscene. I was expecting something like Homura apologizing to the group and explaining what the whole game was about (sort of a less-private post-14 scene; Homura obviously has some explaining to do about why she's repeatedly been sending the girls into fetish dungeons), but instead there was just nothing, which was a little disappointing.

Another quick sidenote; Invoke Hypnosis II has an image glitch, in that bare arms are visible outside the straitjacket. Not a huge deal, but it bothered me a bit.

And... that's it, I guess? You'd mentioned previously that there'd be an update out around now for bugfixes and adding new content to Hard Mode, is that still planned with the Itch demonetization thing?