VenusBlood HOLLOW International
StoryIn ancient times, the Holy Land of Helvetia flourished under the goddess Elnath’s protection. Then the demons came—pouring out from the land below, overrunning the holy land and defeating the goddess through violent war—bringing about an age of darkness. The humans who once lived peacefully under the goddess’ protection are now ruled over by the four demon queens, known as the Dark Lords. Any humans deemed worthless have their souls farmed to create Tactica, a crystalline object used as a material for weapons and as fuel.
However, a new conflict arises as rumors of Empress Karvia’s plans to take over all of Helvetia spread, causing the other three Dark Lords to simultaneously declare war on the Empire. Despite being surrounded on all sides, Empress Karvia remains confident that she will prevail. After all, she has a secret task force under her command, one that served her well in the war against the goddess: The “Black Arme Vapula,” led by the war hero Leonhardt Arknoah.Gameplay Features
Battalion Battles (Triple Squad Battles)
In this new instalment of the Venusblood series, we present you with the new “Battalion Battle” system! With three squads of six units each, you enter battle… with all 18 units!
Watch the chaos unfold as units start fighting each other based on your orders and pre-set tactics…Sometimes battles are won before they even start!
Customizable Squad
Put together your own custom, unique teams! Be it a team filled with commander units only, common units only, or a set up based on synergistic affinities, you are free to create handmade teams to conquer the land. Create teams, deploy them, and watch as your custom-crafted teams destroy the enemy!
Squad Positioning on the Map
In VenusBlood HOLLOW, you can place your units on important chokepoints to play defensively, or you can go all-out and send multiple squads to the enemy base and capture it by force! Do you have what it takes to command your forces and lead them to victory with a tactical mind and strategic skills?
Optimizing Units
You can customize your units in various ways! Raise them, assign them to a squad, give them equipment, and bring them with you into battle! You can also assign titles to soldiers that you hire, which will allow the unit to learn skills that they would not have learned otherwise. Try putting together a unique squad comprised of only your favorite units and watch as they decimate the enemy forces!
Internal Administration
Internal administration is an important part of waging war as well! Your internal administration parameters influence your generation of food, magic, Anima (required to recruit units) and gold, as well as the effectiveness of your military and medicine. Logistics are important in a war, too!
Awakening System
You can choose to “awaken” a captured Dark Lord to make them loyal to you and your cause. Once a Dark Lord is fully awakened, both their outward appearance and personality will change. Will you leave the captured Dark Lords the way they are? Or will you break their will to awaken their new potential?
Multiple Endings
Depending on the decisions you make throughout the game, how the story progresses will change. Do you seek chaos and evil, or justice and nobility? Choose wisely, for they will influence the ending you get.
Both the Law and Chaos routes have unique endings, as well as sub-endings! Will you agree with Sylvia’s method and seek a more peaceful means of revolutionizing the Empire? Or will you give in to your desires and take a darker path of destruction to fulfill your ambitions…
Difficulty Modes & Replayability
Multiple difficulty settings offer a wide range of gameplay options. For those who want to skip the gameplay and just enjoy the story, use the easy mode’s “Win Skip” function to skip battles or even entire maps altogether. Hardcore fans, use the New Game Plus mode that allows you to carry over progress from your previous run and challenge the newly unlocked higher difficulty levels for a more challenging experience! In fact, if story isn’t really your thing, there is also a battle royale mode available after clearing the game that cuts all story content!
Steam User 62
Good game, good team behind it. The game was kickstarted and original made in 2014 if anyone is curious. The team added a lot to this international release due to the large amount of donations they got to translate this game, so you know they are decent people considered they did not have too. JAST USA has the patch for 18+ content because steam approves of horrific violence but not boobs. Hopefully we'll see the team translate and release their other games because they have a couple that released after Hollow/Hypno. Also I got the physical version of the game before the steam release, so my playtime is longer than what it shows on steam.
Steam User 27
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.
Steam User 20
Disregard the total play time as I picked the game up on another store.
This is quite possibly one of the best visual novels with gameplay on the market.
The story and each character are very unique and kept me engaged.
On the gameplay side alone I've managed to sink hundreds of hours (no joke).
Give the game a try. It may be just the kind of thing you're looking for.
If I need to REALLY express my love for this game, I backed the highest tier on the kickstarter and don't regret a thing. It's that worth it.
Have fun!
Steam User 7
Check out our Steam curator , YouTube channel and Twitter!
Meet Dark Lords and choose them to be justice or chaos as you like that affects the multiple endings. The battle system is unique and fun! Wholly big volumes.
同シリーズ『~HYPNO』世界版
Steam User 7
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!
Steam User 4
VenusBlood HOLLOW International is an amazing game and a solid upgrade from VenusBlood FRONTIER in almost all aspects... once you are able to figure out how to play it. What we have here is half visual novel and half turn-based tactical strategy. If you aren't familiar with the term visual novel, don't let it scare you off... you can substitute the phrase "story driven" instead. Both compliment each other very well, but to fully enjoy both, a bit of work will be required from you.
First you will need to download an external patch to restore the "too hot for TV" scenes. They are worth it, and there are a lot. All are uncut and there are no mosaics. Do keep in mind that this is optional, and the game is perfectly playable and enjoyable without the adult scenes added back in. The game was created with these scenes in mind, but without them still lies a very solid title in the turn-based strategy genre with a great story to boot.
Next, you will need to figure out how the heck to play the game. There are tutorials, but they don't really delve into all of the necessary mechanics. There are classes, titles, passive and active skills, stats, titles, equipment, affinities... even your battle order and lineup can decide a match, but again this isn't explained in detail.
Regardless of the game's inability to fully equip you with knowledge, everything is easily within reach after some experimentation. The battles in this game definitely warrant some replay, and I definitely felt reward upon success. If you're here just for the story, the combat can be skipped on easy mode.
The art, music, story, and gameplay are all excellent and I can easily recommend this purchase. Newcomers shouldn't be turned off as the previous game is in no way required for context or enjoyment. The international version received some extra content due to its kickstarter campaign, so if you've been unsure about this series now is a great time to get started.
For other Adult/Hentai themed reviews, please follow us at Lewd Gamer!
Steam User 3
Honestly, not even half way through the game but so far I love it. This game is basically a war game sim + visual novel and I feel that this game does it better than others of the same genre. The only complaint I have is that the tutorials are all in the main menu, so you have some required reading before you start playing the game, I wish they had a segment during the first mission to explain what was going on. I spent the first 4 hours just confused on how to play the game. but aside from that, this game is great and I would recomend it