VenusBlood HOLLOW International

Games of Venus Blood series are always the ones I love to play, they are real games with plots well developed, beautiful artworks and great battle system for a porn game, which is not hard to understand while it still makes the game interesting.

This is a strategy game that has VN elements, instead of a VN with strategy elements. Then again if you're only here for the VN, you can pick the lowest difficulty which lets you skip all combat elements outright with a instant win button. Gamplay 6/5 To put it quite simply, I spent more time crafting the perfect squads in this game than I spent playing unicorn overlord, fire emblem engage, and fire emblem 3 houses combined. This is one of the best strategy games I've played, and that's including non-porn games. You build squads with monsters that each have very different and synergestic skills that you can further customize with gear and other mechanics, and fight with those squads as a basic unit. Except unlike most strategy games, there's HUNDREDS of base units, each with different skills and stats. And the best part is, while unlocking a unit type is tied to progression and achievements, once you unlocked it, you can respec all the customizable parts very cheaply, so experimenting with new squad setups is pretty simple. Art 5/5 Scenes are your typical VN style scenes: a few static picture + lots of dialogue, so less dynamic scenes for higher quality art. There's a lot of pregnancies and tentacles invovled, and in typical VenusBlood fashion, there's equal parts rape, corruption and love. The quantity is also ridiculous. There's maybe 200 base HCGs, and only 5 or so are game over CGs. Writing ?/5 The trasnlation's good, the writing's decent, but because I like the gameplay so much that I started skipping dialogues pretty early on, I'm can't really rate it.

First time I played a game on this site for the gameplay. It's an extremely complex squad builder/SRPG. Story is alright, Law is a bit boring, Chaos feels more original and entertaining, either way I skipped through the fight and sex scenes to get back to the gameplay.

I mashed through sex scenes to get back to the gameplay. Also the main character can just be straight up evil instead of pretending to be a good guy and care about all the girls he's fucking. Great game overall.

4/5 because the art isn t the most suitable for me, i like more the Waffle or other artits style said that this game has the best way of corrupting women i've seen in a VN ( some games of black lilith aside, like all the brainwash games ) the story is very good , it focus in the plot some anime shonen have, and it doesn t get boring for me at least, the characters don t get boring and i found myself reading all the dialogues the gameplay is so fun too, you can select a higher difficulty if you want a challengue, if not, only with the basics you won battles without think so much and then...the corruption of women, i only played til chapter 2 but i can already say that this game knows how to make the corruption stages fairly interesting without rushing too much or making it long, it has the exact amount of content you need to enjoy the depravity of the women slowly ut surely take in ...he heh... the sex scenes are good, idk if i will have any other choices with some of the women you capture at side battles (not main heroines) but well, play it and enjoy it

As much as I really, REALLY hate the stupid review window, I've spent so much time with this game that it'd feel like a crime to not review it. My playthrough was done on v1.07 of the game, which affects gameplay, but changes nothing about the story. Now, first of all, before getting into details of this specific game, let's first establish some facts about the Venus Blood series for newcomers. If you're familiar with the Venus Blood series in general then you can skip this part. I'll even drop it under a spoiler. Spoiler: Venus Blood in General For those of you not familiar with the Venus Blood games, the first thing you need to know is that they all have some common elements. Corruption, rape and tentacles are things that are part of all Venus Blood games to a great degree and if you dislike any of these, it may be difficult for you to enjoy any of the games. How much of each exists per game varies to an extent, but on average, all of them that I know of have at least one unavoidable rape scene for every enemy heroine that gets captured, and at least one tentacle scene. It's not uncommon for already allied heroines to have numerous tentacle scenes as well, and even if you avoid the corruption elements, as much as the game allows anyway, you generally can't avoid all the tentacle scenes. It's just part of things. Oh, and on average, the harem scenes/ending are ALL tentacles. So yeah. If you ARE a fan of this sort of content, you will find a LOT of it in Venus Blood games. Beyond that, gameplay-wise, there's more than one type of Venus Blood game. The most famous (or infamous, depending on who you're asking) is the strategy game type. You build units, which form squads, which fight enemy squads and capture territory. There's also the occasional event battle thrown in. You also have resources to earn and manage, and recruiting, as well as fighting with your units costs you resources. There's equipment for all of your units as well. So all in all, it ends up with a very complex system that results in a very complex and interesting game.... But there's a downside. The games have utterly shitty tutorials, and it can be difficult to guess what's important if you don't know what exactly it does or how it works. Indeed, learning the game the hard way is generally going to be VERY hard, and there are a lot of pitfalls that can mess with you. There's area attacks and their counters, different type of special attacks and their counters, terrain bonuses and maluses, end of turn healing and damage, tactical skills, revival stuff, self-destruct.... The game makes it very easy to end up stuck on Hard, or even Normal, simply because you didn't prepare for something and you end up losing units to stupid shit like self-destruct, which btw ignores a lot of forms of damage resistance. All in all, if you're the type to like over-thinking things, you will have a LOT of fun. If not, Easy difficulty allows you to insta-win battles or even missions entirely, though I do not recommend the latter, as missions have the occasional cut-scene that expands on the story when you take certain territories or whatnot. Difficulty does not affect the story or scene collection in any way, so if you're in it for the story, you don't have to worry about the gameplay. Now, let's talk about Hollow's Gameplay first. I'll helpfully put this under a spoiler too, in case you're the type that finds Venus Blood games too tedious and just use the Easy mode and the Win button to look at stuff. I will mention that difficulty has NO impact on scene collection and story, so if you're here just for that, don't worry. You do NOT have to deal with the gameplay to enjoy Venus Blood's art and story. I do however think that it's more satisfying if you play though. Spoiler: Hollow's Gameplay For everyone that played Frontier, the other title that was officially translated, you'll be at least somewhat familiar with the gameplay. As mentioned above, there are the usual elements. You can recruit units, put them in squads, and fight. You have resources that you need to manage and items that you can equip on your various units. Each unit can only take two items, and what types they can take will vary from unit to unit. What Hollow does different from Frontier, aside from adding a few new skills which ARE mentioned in the tutorial, is the fact that you can now deploy up to three squads, or divisions as they're named in the game, in a single battle. And so can the enemy. This ups the complexity of needed tactics, because more enemy squads means more possible things you need to defend against for your division(s), as well as more tactical skills per turn. Luckily, the AI is as stupid as it was in Frontier, and they will always try to attack the unit with the lowest effective HP in the division they're facing. This means that you can arrange your squad in such a way as to know where the attack is coming every time, and ensure that it either doesn't land, or is redirected to a unit that can take the hit. Hollow does a decent job of providing you with the tools you need to deal with the stuff you need to deal with. You get some commanders with useful stuff like spell-barrier and self-destruct barrier pretty quickly, and you should take this as a warning. End-of-turn spell damage as well as self-destruct are very simple noob killers that you can run into very early on. The various area nulls (pierce, wide, cross, all) are decently accessible, and you should set them up as quickly as you can to avoid unnecessary damage to anything other than your tank. You get I believe one/two units at the start with Absolute Cure, that's also a hint. Debuffs can and will turn a battle, so make sure to have that on every division if at all possible. It's going to be a bit difficult at the start, but not impossible. Synergy also matters. Boosts and Command type skills make or break a division, so always build squads with synergy in mind. Squad Boost and Command Squad are the only exception that is universal, so units with high values in these can potentially contribute to any squad, but remember that they might not receive bonuses in turn, and that can be a problem. (Though you can also take advantage of this to get a useful unit in a squad, while also using it as an attack bait). To quote a user in the forum. Every squad should have one tank with Defense Only, Hardy OR Godly Physique (they do NOT stack), Defense Formation if at all possible and any other defense skill you can get, Forward Guard Optional depending on bait. One bait unit, the details of which vary depending on other skills. About two good attackers, and the rest support units that provide useful skills. Absolute Cure and Area Nulls are must. Flank Null is almost always a must, but Range Null is optional depending on bait and set-up. Barriers vary. For example you can skimp a bit on Spell-Barrier if you have really high healing. You can skimp a bit on Shelling Barrier if you have a high Barrier value for the start of battle. So on and so forth. On lower difficulties, perfection doesn't matter too much. Easy is, well, Easy, as long as you don't completely ignore the mechanics, and Normal won't punish you too badly unless you do stupid stuff like going into an area filled with units that have Self Destruct with absolute zero self-destruct barrier for your attacking battalion. On hard and up, everything starts mattering a lot more, obviously, so if you're a newcomer and this is your first Venus Blood strategy game, I highly recommend playing on Easy and taking the time to recruit units, experiment with divisions and build up your Investments. This makes tackling Normal and higher much easier. I do NOT recommend starting on Hard unless you're a masochist or a very smart. Enemy formations are NOT identical. Stats, levels and equipment on enemies will become more complex with each level, so don't think that "passable" will work on higher difficulties. All that said, while getting the information to understand the game mechanics is difficult, and the lack of it in-game is a problem, it's still fair in the sense that it doesn't give you truly impossible challenges. You generally have all the tools you need to solve all possible problems... though you may need to grind some for some of them... Now here's the problematic bit. Gear is a VERY important part of Hollow's gameplay. Available gear, and the way they can boost or add new skills to units, makes or breaks entire battalions. What that means is that the better gear that you have, the more options you have. Unfortunately, the good stuff is locked behind ores, and ore drop rates are horrendous. What's worse is that just unlocking the higher tiers of gears and ore require treasure-hunting. The problem with that is that you need fairly high values of this skill, and it only mixes per division, and it only counts if the members of the division are alive. What that means is that the division in question tends to be VERY weak and very difficult to keep alive in its entirety. This is supposedly mitigated by bounty-hunter skills. Bounty hunter skills give you a high chance at a piece of ore, the level of which is determined by the level of the bounty hunter skill on a unit. They do not stack and they do not mix. The highest is 8. The total tier of items is 12. Yeah, all in all it amounts for a VERY grindy system which can lead to taking ages to unlock the tiers, and then the items. It takes 10 pieces of ore per item, and for the higher tier ones, a ton of gold to boot. It's so bad that it's the one game element that I genuinely recommend cheating. You'll have to unlock the ores the hard-way due to how the game works, but once a tier of ore is unlocked? I highly recommend using cheat-engine to boost its numbers and skip that particular grind. The gold grind is going to be bad enough on its own, but that's made easier by Investments and the ability to make Commerce divisions, which earn you gold at the end of turn. Oh, and there's also an exploit that allows you to unlock Tier 12 stuff without absurdly high Treasure Hunt divisions and higher difficulty. If you have 999 Keys of Destiny, any Key of Destiny drop will become Tier 12 ore. This does not apply to mission rewards. If you DO want to do this the hard-way, I recommend grabbing ShinV's table that has a Treasure Hunting calculator, info on Treasure Hunt units and Gear, and so on. You can theoretically unlock all the tiers on Easy with absolute Min-Maxing of TH on a division + around 20-something runs to farm Keys of Destiny, but yeah. It's a pain, and no one in the whole thread enjoyed the ore grind. It's the one element that can seriously sour your enjoyment of the game... With that out of the way, or if you skipped, let's talk about Hollow's Story. I put actual spoilers under their own sub-spoilers. Spoiler: The Story of Hollow I'll start this section off by saying that, like all stories, how good or bad it is will depend entirely on your preferences and taste. There are some unavoidable elements like rape and tentacles, and a good number of characters get raped by the protagonist at least once. The good part about Hollow, that's different from Frontier, is that aside from that one mandated rape scene with a number of characters, all others are pretty much optional. So if you're really against Rape, stick to the Law route, and you won't see much of it. Be mindful of the Defense Missions though, several of those choices lead to rape scenes of side-characters, but those are all one-offs and easily skippable. Tentacles are almost entirely unavoidable though. Even in the good route, several characters get them, especially the main love interest. Speaking of routes, like Frontier, there are essentially two main paths. Law, which is the arguable good-guy route, and Chaos, which is the entirely unarguable Evil Path. Having played them both from top to bottom, I can say that from my perspective, the Chaos route is better written than the Law route. The problem with the latter is that it assumes "things happen" between scenes, without giving you a good time-frame, making it feel like a number of developments are entirely out of the blue. It doesn't help that the only way to get 'good' endings with all the other heroines is to go through Normal Law, where Anora, the main love interest, dies. So overall that kind of sucks balls as far as I'm concerned and makes every single one of those endings rather bitter. The one good thing Law does is that it expands on certain elements of the character's stories that Chaos skips on account of them not being particularly relevant due to the corruption. In some cases though, it definitely feels forced. I'm looking at you here, Elea. I don't care how much childhood trauma you had, you're still a total psycho. Chaos is of course the corruption route, and your mileage may vary with this one. The important thing to note is that Hollow is the International version of the original Venus Blood Hypno. That should give you a big hint about things. That is to say, all corruption in this game occurs via hypnosis. If that's not your thing, you're not gonna enjoy the story of this game very much. If it is your thing, there's quite a lot to enjoy. Every heroine and her aide has a different hypnosis route, and different needs. While hypnosis is the main tool, the way it happens for each has different requirements that is tailored for each girl's specific circumstances, strengths and weaknesses. Of particular note is when Leon makes Julia think that she lost her wings to mentally unbalance her, all because she was extremely proud of her wings and her country had an entire caste system revolving around the presence or lack of wings. But there are a lot of little details like this. It's easy to think that it's same old same old with every girl, but there are a lot of details with each scene, and each corruption related ending is very character specific. All that said, I will note that the requirements for the endings can be VERY convoluted. Getting on either Law or Chaos is relatively easy, but actually unlocking endings and whatnot can be pretty complicated. It's also LITERALLY impossible to unlock all scenes in a single playthrough. Even with saves at key points and back-tracking and stuff, you will need a guide (and there's a very good one linked in the thread) and at least two full playthroughs to unlock every scene in both routes. This is especially true since not all choices are obvious for each scene, and even the order in which you view the scenes matters, along with being consistent with your choices. For me, going through it all was enjoyable, but again, mileage will vary with this one. Spoiler: Thoughts on Characters (Actual Story Spoilers) Personally, I think that the characters of Hollow were fairly well written. Leon, the protagonist, starts off as someone in a shitty situation that's on the very edge of becoming a complete monster. He's been used as a tool and weapon and made to do horrible things, and at some point he started to enjoy doing those horrible things while clinging to the one thing he cares for the most, Anora. Anora, who never really had anything except for Leon, doesn't really care for anyone else except for him, and is willing to go with everything he wants because of it. Both routes expand on these details to an extent, but you need to play both (and actually read the story) to fully understand the two as well as see their varied facets. The Law route makes it much clearer that Leon used to be a very curious and kind young-man, and if you've gone through this, it's Sylvia's idealism that in essence helps bring that part of him back, while also allowing Anora to more easily connect to other people besides Leon, who was originally literally the only person to give a damn about her. The Chaos Route is where he takes the lessons that Karvia beat into him and turns them against her and the entire world, all for the sake of making a world where Anora can live happily. The romance between them becomes a bit more twisted here, but I personally don't think it loses any value because of it. And hell... that world kind of deserves it... especially the gods. Like seriously, total dicks... Iris exemplifies this pretty well when she shows up in the True Chaos Route. All the other characters have their own circumstances and motivations, and regardless of route, they affect their development. The only one I didn't really like was Elea. Her Law route just didn't make sense to me. She never cared about anyone except Tetra and was perfectly happy to be a monster. She had less motivation that Karvia, who the Law route reveals that she was caught between the extreme and dumb punishment of the gods, and the machinations of the dark-gods, forcing her to walk on a very tricky tightrope. It's not an exaggeration to say that the world survives at all, in either route, solely because of her actions, painful as they may have been for Leon and Anora. Her road to Hell was very much paved with good intentions for her people, which is very amusing. The most generic thing in the whole story was Vergius, who pops up in the Law route. He's just the most generic sealed big-bad ever, so that's another weak point for the Law Route. Nachtu though was very annoying, and very punchable, as the primary antagonist of the Chaos route. Props to the writers for managing to make him even more twisted than Leon going full Chaos and becoming a Dark God himself. Even more props to them for showing just how fucked up the Divine side really is when Iris pops up in True Chaos. It makes the contrast with Sylvia in the Law Route even more impressive, that a half-demon is more merciful and accepting than the gods. All in all, VB Hollow is a pretty amazing game, with a very good story if you give it a chance... and of course if you like the focus elements of said story. It has its weak points. (Fucking Ore grind maaaaaaan), which is why I only gave it a four star rating. I really, REALLY wanted to give it a 5 star rating... However, the difficulty to understanding and learning the gameplay, the sheer grind to unlock and gather gear and the extremely convoluted way the story and scenes are structured lower the score. It's very good, but unfortunately, it's also easy to get frustrated or tired of it if you don't follow any guides, especially with the gameplay. This is especially bad for people that only have so much time to play games in general, which I'm one of. It's really a testament to the quality of its gameplay, convoluted though it is, and the quality of its story, that it managed to keep me engaged for as long as it did. However, that wouldn't have been possible without guides.

This game, like most Venus Blood games, focuses on two main aspects. 1. Weird sex involving tentacles, monsters and corruption. 2. Complex team building and strategic gameplay. The first aspect is, in Hollow's case, a failure. The game's protagonist Leonhardt is not a very good corrupter, mostly relying on his partner's mind control powers like a crutch while the narration takes great pain in reminding you about his MASSIVE dick (the translated script really loves this adjective, though it also at one point states the MC's dick is "thicker than an orc's forearm" — yes, really). As a result the corruption scenes are incredibly bland and repetitive, lacking the sick creativity displayed by some of Leonhardt's predecessors such as Loki and Theofrad. In the end Leonhardt is little more than a thug in the Chaos route and this really is a shame. It really says something when the Law path with its consensual sex manages to be sometimes more creative. As far as gameplay is concerned though, Hollow is excellent. If you are the kind of person willing to spend hours browsing skill lists and theorycrating squad compositions you'll lose yourself in the game easily in order to prepare for the highest difficulty levels, as my own 158 hours spent on it can attest. For a more casual approach the Normal difficulty should provide enough of a challenge to make you put some thought into your teams without softlocking you for not optimizing. So, should you play Hollow? If you're here only to fap I don't recommend it unless you really, really love mind control. If you just want a story with gameplay you could give it a try at the easier difficulty settings, as the plot and characters are serviceable enough without being exceptional. If you're up for some serious theorycrafting and don't mind having to grind a bit for unlockables and materials then absolutely do play it and watch the hours rack up.

I took my time playing this, and am still playing through the higher difficulties, but I know enough to drop a review now. If you are a fan of the first official localization from this studio, Venus Blood Frontier, you will certainly enjoy this as well. It adds layers to the already rich gameplay systems found in the first game. I do want to preface the review by mentioning 2 things. Tentacles. It is something very prevalent in the scenes. It's kinda this studio's trademark. If you REALLY hate tentacles, maybe the game isn't for you. I personally dislike tentacles, but not strongly enough to find the game displeasing. The other is unavoidable rape of heroines by the MC. The initial encounter after beating them results in rape, regardless of your intended route. Turn back if these things are unacceptable. ---------------------------- There are roughly 3 aspects to this game that is worth mentioning. 1) Incredibly complex and satisfying team building mechanics. 2) Pretty nice corruption arcs and generally decent overall plot. 3) OCD collector and completionist aspect. 1) The gameplay is the main selling point of this game. If you don't want to engage with the extremely complex mechanics, I personally think this game isn't suited for you. You can actually play on easy to just see the story (by using auto win function), but that's like playing final fantasy tactics while skipping all the battles and unit management. Obviously, this game doesn't come close to the epic nature of FFT's storytelling, but it's just a comparison. For those of you who like looking through skills and unit recruitment screens for hours on end, trying to make the most synergized and optimal teams, this will be your playground. The only caveat is that the game's tutorial is abysmally insufficient. The learning curve is STEEP and understanding the mechanics is not easy. Feel free to ask in the game thread and someone will help you with it. To by fair, the game systems are much too complex to really teach everything in a concise tutorial, but it's still one of the game's failures for sure. To generalize, the gameplay revolves around recruiting units and placing them in divisions and watching them fight with minimal control. Think Ogre Battle on SNES to get an idea of actual combat. The main input comes in forming the divisions. How you build the team and the position of the units in the division can mean the difference between steam rolling everything and getting annihilated. 2) The corruption arcs can be satisfying. As you work your way through the Chaos route, you gradually increase your control over them until they Awaken into your loyal sex slave general. This unlocks a form change which is a great way to tie the plot into the gameplay. You can then go even furthur and use them up and discard them and turn them into Altered forms of their units. The general world building and plot is... well, pretty good for a porn game. It's a bit cliche, especially on the Law route, but it's certainly better than a lot of random VNs. The MC starts off as an anti-hero. He is a douche. From there, you can bring him to redemption via the Law route, or fully indulge into depravity and domination on the chaos route. Law route has few scenes but more character backstories and endearing moments. Chaos route has most of the scenes and satisfies the dark overlord rising type of H story. 3) After you finish the main story, you can choose to participate in the "grind." Different routes and difficulties unlock different units. You get mats for higher tier equipment. Enemies get progressively stronger on the many higher difficulties, enough to challenge your own power creep as you unlock more stuff. This gameplay loop can last quite a while if you enjoy the gameplay. -------------------- So there you have it. Personally, I enjoyed the hentai aspect of the first game more. I don't know if my tastes have changed, but back when I played the first game, I was fapping furiously. This time around, either the game became less provocative, or my tastes have become more deranged, but I find myself just speed reading through most scenes. The endings are also done in a more underwhelming way. You have a list of endings you meet the conditions for and pick one, then reload, and see the others.... The first game had a whole montage where they show you all the endings you qualify for in sequence, leading to a grander feel of the MC achieving everything he wanted. Still, the improvements in gameplay makes this just as enjoyable.

Edit: I completed more routes with updated info, which makes me even less hopeful for this "game". Which results in the rating being decreased to 2 from original 3 at the time, but let my words describe on what the game really is. Well, to be honest I never expected to see a indirect sequel to a game that...let's be honest, wasn't particularly great, but at very least was either decent at best or indecisive at worst, and this game, thankfully improves on said faults...but not all of them, and this is what I am going to address on top of what I experienced in this game. Hopefully for the best. Let's start with the game's plot; it starts with our foul-mouthed protagonist who swears like a chimney(and I assume he's just rude rather than swearing in the original)and loves sex above anything else, and his squad bringing glory for his empire while also trying to become free from it, being lucky that he got special powers to brainwash unlucky sods to his will, doing conquest and then overthrowing the ruler, only to discover that there's greater evil than that, like some holy people who only believe in themselves and all-consuming demons that look like ctuluhu abominations in their "true" forms, and then once you beat them all with the sacrifice of your friend, happy end, followed by marriage if you have enough relations with character in question. And that was just the law route. Then you have chaos route, where the protagonist finally embraces being a jerk but still in the right and being able to save his girlfriend as co-ruler of the world(excluding the secret route where your girlfriend survives without dark powers, happy end), where you end up fighting the fallen angel that has an attachment to a holy mech that wants to erase all life, and even harder than the other route due to much, much nastier enemies overall. And you end up with 2 sadistic choices; you either turn your dark lords into abominations in order to open a dimensional door for some reason, or sacrifice the people and fight uncorrupted dark lords because they want to keep them alive despite being obeying morons to our "hero" otherwise. And that's not mentioning time travel elements for some reason, future/modern tech in medieval fantasy world and such that makes the story less believable and taken seriously. Overall, the story is fairly mediocre and predictable, but at very least not as stereotypical as previous game, since regardless of path you choose(law/chaos), you still end up the better choice in the end while the villains are just nothing compared to you. Now the best part, the gameplay - let's be honest, in first game you just need 1-3 or so squads with excellent null abilities and stats and you pretty much unkillable, and treasure hunt is pretty much outright bonkers due to fact you can attain really good equipment day 1 is you try that, now it's on more balanced scale, meaning while you can't get that broken levels, you now need bounty hunter in the mix due to ore requirement, but obviously the game won't give high tier equipment/ore that easily till you reach late-game, but those abilities are nice to have. Well until you play very hard, since it is the difficulty that goes up to eleven by having every character have an equipped item, some battles having enemies with fool's lie 4 on items alone! And that's before the player gets access to said items, much much later in the game on thanatos setting which is just very hard but with even higher levels and nothing else. I almost lost the game on very hard difficulty, because of fact it replaces mid-late game units at later stages of the game with post-game ones, that makes the otherwise advanced feeling of very hard suddenly turn into nightmare that pummels your score and with only 12 squads during sortie fights with super strong enemies, you'll be in pain unless you play on hard first but hard is much easier overall even on berserk settings(which just make enemies stronger level wise)unless you set it higher than your team. But enough of comparisons, you now have 3 squads to manage per battle instead of one, with new abilities, units and instead of building structures that can be captured by the enemy, they are static and you upgrade infrastructure instead, which is much better compared to previous game for rather obvious reasons. And the mechanic in order to get their events no longer requires corrupting/mingling them, you instead get events that decide whenever you'll get them or not, and that's a much better system that fixes the previous faults. Just like the first game, higher difficulties reward with unlocks and expanded story, which isn't a bad thing per se, but since they mostly just involve stronger enemies with equipment and not things that actually make the game harder but more rewarding, it makes them mostly irrelevant aside from very hard difficulty itself, which gives 10 law and 10 chaos points, which allow you to get the ending you want easier and get higher tier crafting materials for strong units. Managing units and especially restructuring teams however, is a nightmare since you have a lot of units that are outright unusable due to better variants of them existing later on, thankfully the internal affairs helps with that somewhat allowing you to recoup resources, but not the fact you have a unit that is pretty much outdone one way or another with other units with same growth but much greater abilities. Basically similar issues as first game, but somewhat mitigated by new features. Overall, the gameplay is solid, expect when it comes to grinding aspect for higher difficulties. The design aspect, if you include modern era bunny suits in medieval world, hero category involving a character that has "deal with it glasses" and "i like the cut of your jib" quote if you alter him, as well other nonsense the game has to offer, like barely dressed female fighters that are somehow kept alive by magic despite taking obvious wounds to their unprotected spots and "all-ages" version doing nothing about it, essentially making a feature to appeal to others meaningless. While I am not in that category, if you are going to make a game that appeals to everyone, you have not only to tone down the sexual designs themselves and the fact tentacles mention assaulting women anyway, but also the chimney swearing protagonist who is unchanged in that version as well. And that's not mentioning Kickstarter backer rewards that all involve making characters younger as their alternate forms, all have 1 sex scene and then never mentioned again in the plot, let alone being kept in your party despite losing/weakening actual characters they are based on, but gameplay wise, all of them are very, very powerful, and even if you get late-game units with power comparable to them, they are still the strongest options based on what they focus on, like the fairy dragon being able to endlessly extend battles by stacking strat support to point you can literally spam it, and the fact it's the earliest character with surround null, until you get said option for the dog girl that is. Not to mention their leader links only focus on the protagonist even if they are better off with other teams based on their type and abilities, not their base characters, further meaning they are self inserts meant to love our "hero". All that makes options to corrupt heroines pretty much not good for first play-trough. Well expect certain ones that do have chaos options and those alternative forms. And like previous game, it still pretty much demands careful choice management/picks if you want to get everything the game has to offer, including alternative forms, character titles and special events. The writing part, if you count the story itself, well not so great I am afraid - same issues as predecessor game, just less stereotypical, convenient means to get sex, convenient superpowers, lucky calls both from "heroes" and villains, this is not my final forms, an "hero" who is a huge jerk to pretty much everyone, but he's still in the right, even despite the tragic backstory, unsympathetic characters and nonbeliveable "love", funny elements that are more on cringe part, "pleb" and other american dialect that feels off. Happy end, one way or another, no ending that could be seen as an overlook on what happened while sides having good points on why they do that, like saving their kind or well intentions. Can't have hard feelings for something that I will forget very quickly nor give good lessons. The only character that I can sympathize with is the dog girl, because everyone treats her like garbage and a toy, yet never invoked negative feelings aside from design that could be done slightly better. The sex scenes, well they are done fairly well on other hand, but if you count the story and the writing, they make the emotional element of them pretty much nonexistent, regardless if its a victim, or the character actually asked for it. Appealing if you have fetishes, for me that feel empty, especially with the protagonist who loves nothing more than sex because its all convenient for him. And swearing left and right, as if he thinks he's a badass, but to me he's a unlikable prick and a designated hero, even in path where he reserves most of the sex for love. Even others can only feel jealousy on how lucky to have powers like these and get away with it. There's a fair amount of characters who are jerks with good intentions, but the protagonist is not one of them. And there's some bugs and oversights; lowercase letters during dragon singer story parts, one catgirl mage event not giving alignment points properly aside from law option, Unicode descriptions on certain units, characters not having naked versions of their sprites from previous game, and some more I overlooked. Overall, nothing too bad, but fairly annoying on quality control. And certain untranslated minor character names during one of chaos route events where you end up turning the girls into abominations in order to proceed. Soundtrack is better than the first game, which is good, but it still feels generic, and feels like a RPGMaker game, and some of the tracks feel that way. However, it really gets on dissonant side when you get to time traveler events, where a English voice acted music plays for supposedly heroic moment, yet it never fits neither with the situation you are in, nor in combats you are going to see. Forgettable, I could say. But at very least not bad. So what I could say about this game overall? A improvement but a disappointing in one. You have improved gameplay and design of UI and other features, as well act of sex for some, but the story has barely improved, same tricks, same elements, same lucky lottery, abuse of negative colors that feel unnatural, unfunny attempts at humor, and many other things, but I can say for sure, if you want sex, you can go for it, but if you expect a story that can be remembered and inspected, you are in the wrong place. I didn't have much hope since the first game, and it still managed to disappoint me in that regard, especially when everyone's is either a moron, jerkass, or incomprehensible god of all things. The gameplay is something that you can forgive for, but not when it comes to playing it over and over again for days, not to mention compared to sandbox games, it doesn't compare well in that case. Is this game really bad? No, it does have "some" value, if you ignore the rather edgy and predictable plot with heroines who are for the "hero" one way or another, and even if he's nasty, like the previous game main character Loki(who is also part of loot box system in form of keys of destiny, which in turn requires stacking treasure hunt and hoping you got units that you cannot recruit yet, because of fact it pools from unit's base costs/tactica required to unlock them, and its bugged if you get all units with truth/ruin tactica from chaos route, since you can't use it anymore once you get all non-hidden units even if they require extra tactica, like 3 chaos route seraph elites that get multiplied on very hard setting ), who's always in the right, whenever he murders citizens, being a huge arrogant jerkass who swears while thinking he's a badass, turns heroines into slaves, or sexually harasses them during rest. And villains are still nothing compared to you, especially minor characters who are not women that don't even get mentioned during mid-late game, like dragon commander named Mason, who while the females and our "hero" fight, he's like, nowhere to be heard aside from fact he's in your party, and only gets mentioned in the law ending. Which is opposite of male sidekick from previous game, who despite not being memorable, at least gave some reason to believe that the writing and the plot isn't detail-less. Basically all women get events especially sexual ones, while males get nothing, unless they are our "hero", or genderbent like the priest in the first peacekeeping event.

I'm suspicious of talking because I liked Frontier so much so I loved Hollow. The corruption of the heroines through hypnosis is very satisfying, the story is interesting in its own right. The gameplay is strategic and very rewarding if you really get into it and delve into it, however if you don't want to get into it too much you can choose the lower difficulties and even skip the gameplay part altogether. If you like strategy gameplay and like heroine corruption this is a right choice. Easily among my top 5 of eroges.

1 hour 30 minute in game this is a Point and click game, it's repeating from Quest Decision > Battle map > battle phase. everytime the phase end, it will go back to previous phase. (e.g : at the end of battle phase will return to battle map phase.) you can recruit, heal, organize unit and organize equipment during battle map phase. there is also an option to investing in internal affair to get more resources by using resources in battle map phase. [search for it, upgrading twice for each category will really help] you get resources by owning a location with every turn pass. it's a type of game where you need to buy sigil using resources, Recruiting new ally will consume sigil requirement and resources listed. then you set up 2 equipment on that unit and put it in a team of 6. every team only can move location 1 times / turn and you start with deploying them in a location you already owned by consuming their move quota. the game allow you to move 3 unit in the same location at the same time by click on them first before their target location. defeated unit can be re-deployed next turn and every location have maximum capacity of 3 team. beating a quest allow you to unlock new sigil sometimes and you can get access to more unit from newly discovered sigil. every unit will eat small amount of resources every turn and you can neglect it since you earn far more than these upkeep. battle phase is very simple, click on enemy to focus target and you can either run away or fight for a single turn. (you only earn exp on a winning fight) map phase end when you conquer every location then repeat it back to quest decision phase. the gameplay is going back and forth where you tried to move to enemy location and enemy tried to move to your location and only strongest team win hence you always want to win every fight to gain EXP. there is lot's of mechanic, combo, and character skill which actually overwhelming since they put so much detail over a simplified fight scene. all these detail doesn't really interest me since i didn't know what they did or does. ultimately it's became raw power game where i gain more exp and brute forcing my way to victory either by using higher leveled team OR surrounding the target location and send a team of 3 repeatedly before they heal.

Game system is a better version of Venusblood frontier. The 18 vs 18 unit fighting system is much better compared to vbf 6vs6. And moving units physically like chess pieces is much better then vbf where you can attack from any part of the map as long as you controlled a city connected to a enemy city. Issue i had with vbf is enemy can attack a lot of your cities at the same time. And if one of the squad attacking you cant wipe out their squad the next attacker will take a free city. And hypnosis mind control with corruption is my favorite so a bit bias on this end owo Much better the vbf in this sense.

Another Rance copy under another wrap, another game where you fuck, rape and kill everything and everyone, i would not played this and just ignored it but god damn if it isn't a good game (except story, character, dialogs) and that makes me really sad since anything Normal of this caliber doesn't exist.

Amazing game you can spend hundred hours on. Great everything but most notably very deep combat system with amazing number of options. You can spend hours customizing and optimizing your units and building squads. There is a lot of difficulty options that make all of that work worth it too.