VenusBlood HOLLOW International Reviews

As good as the previous game in the series, if not better 👍 +18 patch is must have 👍

Story is actually really good. The lore is rich and well thought out. The game mechanics are complex and engaging. The artwork is decent, if not a bit trope. The characters are charming and I'm looking forward to more plot growth. -Edit- Originally ran into an unavoidable crash after prologue leading to my previous negative review. Devs quickly patched and have had no issues since. Great job devs!

New to the franchise. Bought this on a whim because I wanted an interesting strategy game. Was not disappointed. The strategy game is really, really intense here. The learning curve is steep and the game doesn't explain its own mechanics very well. 9/10 strategy game. The visual novel is pretty slow paced and very, very lengthy and wordy. It's all skippable if you just want a strategy game. 5/10 storytelling. (saying this as a person who doesn't really enjoy visual novels though) There's hentai in this. It's pretty gross. It's also optional.

HOLLOW is my first entry to the VenusBlood franchise and oh boy, this game is not newcomer friendly at all. no tutorial, no hand-holding. The UI bombarded me with loads of information I don't understand. It was catastrophic. so don't be ashamed to start with easy difficulty, fellow newcomer. In this game you have power to 'Alter' your commanders. Their appearance, personality, dialogue will change according to your choices in the main story. pretty neat feature. there're also choices that impact the story as well. And the story itself is pretty fun. If you like lore-rich fantasy, give it a try. but just so you know, it is a world of brutes and mc is not a gentleman.

Very fun JRPG, with a very well written story. It actually made me dive into more about the VenusBlood stories, and got to say hope that they do bring more of them to steam. The gameplay alone make this worth it already with the story just pushing it even more. And for those who ponder around if there is uncensored version, yes there is just use JAST website to obtain the steam patch.

Pro Successor to venus blood Frontier Separated story from Frontier so no need to play past game to get into Still include extra dialogue and change in dialogue if your character is going down evil or good path Single maps fights and scale down on fight (ex - frontier their is like 30+ space and you have to fight through all of enemies and camps to make it to boss now their is 10+ space instead and enemy can spawn endlessly if you don't Rush through all 30+ space)+less focus on resource building like Frontier Still has nice story and twist like the past but if you play alot of games from this series it become niche and you would know what is coming Good replay value of being good or evil and beating game in higher difficulties in thanatos mode + making every enemies on highest berserk mode will unlock additional bonus when you finish game (super crazy and hard to play) Con Need a guide to get everything Some choice can screw you over from something like CG or make certain dialogue choice not appearing on important choice locking you out from certain things like titles Require to play super high difficulties to unlock additional character which lead you to grinding the game for about 5+ play through and resource hogging to unlock best unit in game in order to unlock said character Single path only aka commit to One path first thing and no longer play around being good or evil at the same time in frontier before choosing to be evil or good path at a certain point of the story Overall Improve from frontier as this game is a sequel to it and I am looking forward to more future release of this game from official translate as the Machine translated still has certain amount of issue for you to not know wtf is going on and not telling you have the game works. Game also went some step forward of improving the fight by down scaling the maps and resource management that frontier have and issue using because you have to do certain things in order to build certain stuff or be further in story which it doesn't tell you even if you have resource to build them early game. Alignment is also change so you have to commit to a single path and trying to split between can give you game over after being on the vibe check session of the story where you need certain amount of law or chaos to move onto the next story. Still need a guide to get certain thigns or ending cause again one wrong move will fuck up your run some how or you won't unlock certain characters

Very customizable and diversified units, 36 formable squads with 18 sorties simultaneously, very grand strategy, very interesting. Maybe the best in the series?

Pretty good game, took me about 53 hours to finish my first run through. If you are a fan of tactical games AND eroge then this is probably the peak. While the actual fights and map graphics leave much to be desired in my opinion, the depth of the combat and stats is pretty overwhelming at first. I downloaded the game just expecting to play an Eroge and what not only to be met with a world map and full economy system. I was so overwhelmed by the amount of different aspects that went into making squads and designing units I actually had to close the game and go read some wiki pages and watch a youtube video. However once you get an understanding of how it all works, building squads and unlocking new units can be pretty amazing and feels super rewarding. You could play the all ages version of the game, and just play it for the story and tactical aspect but in my opinion if thats what you want you should look elsewhere. Unless the game is on sale, the story for the most part is pretty basic, with obvious twists and repetative set ups. Ex "The leader of this country is so much stronger than us, on another level completely." then your army completly plows through them and through the power of boner you win the fight and move on to the next powerful foe, who you have a hard time defeating despite now having one or more people of the same power level with you. TLDR Overall Id give it a 8/10 as an Eroge and a 6/10 as a story driven strategy game, I would Definetly recommend it and its predecessor VB Frontier both of which have free 18+ patches.

I did not know that this game was almost centralized around rape. There is a lot of rape in this game. Even without the 18+ patch, there is still a lot of implied rape. I do not know if steam is censoring this word, so just to be clear, by rape, I mean non-consensual intercourse. I am not here to kink-shame people. You can like what you want to like, these are fictional characters at the end of the day. I only wish the game had given a better trigger-warning for all the rape. There ARE trigger warnings for other things, and it even mentions mind-control, but nothing outright explicitly states that the game involves rape. Perhaps I should have looked the game up outside of steam first to find this out. However, I strongly feel that if your game has rape in it, you should put in a PROPER warning about it. I absolutely would not have dropped $45 bucks on this game. I played thirteen hours in the hope that the rape was a one-off or two-off thing. A lot of this time was spent learning how the systems work and customizing my team. By the time I realized that the rape was going to be the main theme and that the protag didn't seem like he was going to have an arc where he realized how fucked up what he was doing was, it was WELL past the 2 hour refund mark. Again, I'm not trying to kink-shame anyone. I just wish the game had better expressed that it was full of rape.

TLDR: An improvement in every way to VBFI, which was already among the very best games on steam with opt in 18+ content. Well worth the price if it at all interests you. Long version: In relation to Venusblood Frontier: An evolution of the game system from Frontier, but shares no story threads or characters from the previous game in the series. You can freely start with this game. Notable improvements: Much better UI and explanation of mechanics. Pop up explanation of you hover to skills, every gameplay screen has a “?” button that explains the screen. a max of 18 vs 18 battles rather than 6 vs 6, and units can generate resources outside of battle, making better use of the large cast of units. more units, skills, items Unit deployment, Map movement, and choke points, making defense tactics a thing Higher resolution, better overall art quality A longer, arguably better, story with more scenes Best parts: Unique and fun gameplay: Unlike 99% of sexually explicit games on steam the gameplay is not some barebones RPG maker game, cheap knockoff of a better game, a brainless “puzzle” game, or a visual novel with no gameplay at all. But even if it does not appeal to you, the developers don’t have such an ego that they won’t let you skip it. Play as you want: Easy mode literally comes with a “I win” button for every fight that you can use at any time. Hard mode will force you to learn every minutia of the game to be successful. NG+ includes difficulty modes than even those who can beat hard can’t succeed at. Every story scene in the game can be instantly skipped if you just want the gameplay. Every story scene in the game can be read at any time in the extra menu once you reach it in the game. Huge amount of content: hundreds of unique units you can use to fill out your army, each customizable through equipment and the hiring process. 2 distinct routes with many different ending scenes. A long story that is probably better than you would expect from a game of this type. Worst parts: Can be intimidating at first: Lots of mechanics in the game, and, for better or worse, the game does not hold your hand drip feeing your tutorials on each one. I highly recommend you do not play on hard to start if you are not familiar with the series and/or don’t want to spent a lot of time in the beginning learning all the mechanics.