VN - Others - Completed - VenusBlood GAIA International [v1.04] [Ninetail & Dual Tail]

This is a really high quality game, as you'd expect from this studio. You can easily sink dozens of hours into this one, whether you come for the hentai, the story, or the gameplay/unlock grind.

I wound up playing the Chaos route for my first playthrough, and would actually highly recommend against this for most new players, for two reasons - First is that after having played the Law route, I can say that the story for the Chaos route is far weaker, (even if you don't feel like a monster as I did, it's really just a bit rushed and seems rather out of left field when you "turn to the dark side" towards the last chapters), and second is that the Chaos route is a bit less balanced - it has a significant difficulty spike between the last few chapters and the penultimate and final bosses. I found myself feeling *very* powerful for most of the Chaos route, but struggled mightily against these last two bosses, I almost wasn't sure if I was going to be able to win, and that was with normal difficulty!

As for the overall game balance, the Hard difficulty was indeed hard on the next playthrough, I was able to scrape by but only by using a lot of my resources on healing - I haven't been brave enough to try Despair level or add any berserk settings yet.

The "birthing" minigame where you select different titles and attributes for a selection of hundreds of available summons is quite engaging, and I can find myself spending many minutes strategizing and setting up my perfect squads.

As for the hentai content itself, I think it is indeed high quality, albeit with the caveat that most of the content is your standard Japanese tentacle game fare - elf princesses, loli girls and noble knight waifus falling to your charms, all with top-notch Japanese voice acting for the fully voiced female dialogues!

As for the few cons - there are still a few rough edges with this official translation, and while most of the errors are not going to impact your understanding of the text, there are a few times where I found myself at a loss as to exactly what the game was trying to communicate to me due to the awkward phrasing or outright mistakes with the translation. Also, I personally found this game to be rather sad at times, so If you are not a fan of games which make you feel things other than horny or happy, you might save yourself here!

Definitely one to add to your catalogue if you are a fan of in-genre games such as Kamidori Alchemy Meister, Sengoku Rance or the like.

yes I'm scoring it low. it has way too many flaws gameplay wise to even consider it a good game. I'm sure a lot will roast me for this so let me go to the technical details that makes it horrible.

and yes, I played with the UI mod. the mod is a godsend, but ultimately it has still way too many flaws.

1. the battalion settings that you can decide if they'll fight 1, 2 or 3 per encounter. you can only set that once and all your division will follow all that, to the letter. this is way too annoying, because there are plenty times where I want to decide if I want to defend in full force or just one at a time. this is so bad that...
2. if you forgot to set it correctly then you'll be very sure to reload the entire game. losing maybe good progress.
3. this seriously needs an undo button. sometimes I double click and that is enough to fuck up your first turn. so you will have to reload yet again.
4. the same can be said with the building section. wrong click? reload! because you cannot sell buildings here. and of course building costs a phase.
5. the tutorial section doesn't explain much. very basic of basics. trust me, you can play this for 12 hours and you might even not know how to attack. you think you can only defend.
6. the fact you only have 10 phases on first turn. when you have 12 squads and you can only deploy 10 to defend, except what if there's more than 10 needed to defend? speaking of which
7. there are only 12 squads for you to have, each with 6 units. totaling 72 units. when the game has over 140 units (so far that I've seen), 72 is too little. i get it, you're supposed to throw away the lower level units but that doesn't justify the small squad. because
8. in the later levels the enemy can have 20 squad if not more. and yes, all of which can move in first turn. while you can have 12 powerful squads, you're still fucked because those squad can just decide to destroy buildings meaning losing resources. I managed to stall the majority of units just outside of the entrance but I don't exactly know how I did it.
9. i swear to god that without the UI mod you'll be staring at the formation screen for over 30 minutes trying to mix and match what units should go to. so not only you have to fix your squad lineup, but you also have to ditch the lower units once a stronger one is available, and thus more micro managing units and thus more time wasted staring at the squad screen. double that when you're also managing the item/equip section. but I think the most offending one is
10. the rng drops. I've seen it plenty times, where I'm hoping for the right equipment to be given to me, but nope, rng wants to fuck me up. when an equipment costs an entire fortune and you have to rely on rng, then yes that is seriously fucked up. this is pretty bad on tier 5 or so, but tier 7 equipment and up? uhh yeah...

Venus Blood Gaia is a turn-based strategy erogame with deep gameplay, a surprisingly engaging story, and a healthy serving of tentacle ero and corruption.

Highlights from my in-depth review
[Review] Venus Blood Gaia: Taking Strategy Eroge to the Next Level

Pros:
- Engaging main storyline that doesn't rely on saving the world through the power of friendship.
- Optional event-based storylines for each heroine, one focusing on friendship/romance, and the other focused on sexual corruption
- Deep turn-based strategy gameplay that combines dungeon defense, RPG-like unit progression and customization, resource management.
- Loaded with content that will keep players busy for 50+ hours for a single playthrough, with a high degree of replay value.

Cons:
- Barrage of optional sex scenes in late-game interferes with the pacing.
- Heavy focus on coerced sex may be a turn-off for some (and a delight for others).

Bottomline:
Venus Blood Gaia is a shining example of how story, gameplay, and ero can come together to create an experience that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Venus Blood series is top quality series which mixes great strategy game with good story and characters. Gameplay offers great depth and customization and can keep you engaged for many hours and multiple replays. Ero scenes are top notch too.