Others - Completed - Ghost Hunter Vena [v1.10a] [Vosmug]

Ghost Hunter Vena is a very unique game in its concepts and designs paired with an amazing story with actually good world building, character development and well-paced story. Despite so, GHV still carries various problems that isn't very pleasant.

++ Pros:

- Art: overall a massive improvement from Vosmug's previous game, Xenotake. Vosmug's 2D blended with 3D artstyle looks better and less inconsistent in this game than it is in Xenotake. The game's "horror" theme gave lots of places where the occasionally uncanny looking 3D artstyle help elevate its dark environment. The enemy's design is much more interesting and the UI is pretty clean. The human character design however are... a bit boring at times because of the shared proportions between female and male characters, at least whenever they're not naked, it's good designs.

- Story: Ghost Hunter Vena's story is genuinely great. One of the few H-games out there with a really strong emphasis on good story telling and managed to fuse good story and adult themes. Although I've played through GHV twice by now, it still amazes me how well constructed everything is. The world building is phenomenal: notes that tells you about the past life of a resident in the mansion, building up the sadistic character of the main villain, several ghosts referencing the victims of the place. The pacing of your story is really well, how it all starts pretty goofy and sometimes serious while the story slowly shifts into a much more serious tone as the stakes slowly rises in the background, until it went batshit insane, all the while the entire thing has been about ghosts and sex. This story-telling is movie level.

- Character and humor: asides from the very serious, impressive story and how it can combine with sex so well, the game has its funny moments from times to times. It's great seeing the character interacts with each other and joking around and brings good vibes in this hell hole. Humorous as it is sometimes, it does great at building characters, and this is also something the game does really well. Each character is interesting, what they serve in the plot and their feelings are shown in a very well-written way. How Miss Sui slowly shifts from jealousy to total acceptance, how Rixa accepts that Leen isn't a weak girl, how Vena slowly loses her humanity and the opposite for Hand, all having serious undertones in the early jokes and great moments at the climax. It's uncommon to see this level of writing in these action H-games and GHV did it really damn good, maybe even the best.

- H-content: like I said before, the game really loves to show you that it still is an H-game, along with being a good story game. It's not the type of game where the story has little to do about sex and the event sex scenes are some forced type of shit, no the game's whole plot and backbone is built on top of the concept of lust. There is a great amount of H-scenes, both from enemies and from events for you to enjoy, and it makes for a great fap if you're into weirder looking stuff, but I assure you the weirdness is much lighter than the usual.

- Combat: the game's approach to combat is very unique. You fight ghosts by waiting for moments where they're vulnerable and quickly stun them with your stun attack before doing a big damage banish attack when they're still stunned. This two-step combat system is pretty unique, and it's very fun once you get the hang of it. The nature of it also brings lots of strategy to each enemy encounters, where you also have to be aware of your current position, what enemies are present, many ways to cover as much of their attack options as possible and so on.

- (Most) bosses: are pretty good, I enjoyed each of them. However, GHV's bosses are certainly pretty demanding in terms of execution and strategies. Most of these bosses are definitely not one off bosses you'd figure out in the first attempt, their patterns requires lots of practice can be too hard at times. Behind those efforts of understanding their attacks are genuinely well-designed bosses that I greatly enjoyed no-hitting.

-- Cons:

- Sounds: the SFX of the game is certainly fine, but it does not particularly stand out, especially with the constant reuse of sound effects, with little deviations even until the end of the game. The OST however is just kind of boring. The game's songs isn't very interesting, most songs sound almost the same, very formulaic and even if you noticed that the song changed, you'd still just shook it off instantly as it does little to your attention. It certainly fits its role at playing into the "horror" theme of the game, but aside from that, it's not pretty good.

- Enemies: although the game's combat system on paper is great, the enemies can pose some problems. Each enemies are actually pretty great as one on one battle of maybe 2/3 enemies of the same type versus you. The problem arises when different types of enemies pops up. Many times, they can create checkmate situations that are inescapable and although you're bound to get hit in this game due to its design, it's still a frustrating thing knowing that you couldn't get out of whatever fucked up situation they gave you.

- That one boss: this is the exception. The 3rd boss is utter bullshit sometimes with one of its attack, which exposes the really weird ways GHV works behind the scenes. The inconsistency of this game's hitbox annoys me.

- Transparency: this is one problem Ghost Hunter Vena hasn't improved from Xenotake, the game is not very transparent about certain important mechanics. The most important one is high/low invincibility. You're completely invulnerable to high attacks if you crouch and crawl, these attacks are usually leaping attacks or flying enemies' attacks. You're also invulnerable to low attacks while you're in the air with the Phantom Wings ability, which includes grounded enemies' attacks. No matter if the visuals on the screen looks like it should have hit Vena, it will not as long as you're doing the correct action that grants you i-frames to that attack type. Yes, such important information is not present anywhere in the game and I had to find that out by myself. There's a few more transparency problems like what's the actual hitbox of your attacks, the confusing navigation of the map at a few parts of the game, etc. but these are more minor and less severe.

- Resources: the game's concept of resource is also pretty unique to this game, but it's not executed very well at all. Vena has two bars, one is your vitality gauge (red) and the other is your level gauge (blue), both can be filled up by absorbing orbs dropped from enemy kills and special resource orbs around the area. Your vitality gauge also regenerate passively. You can make Vena become stronger using a variety of upgrades at altars in the map, which uses your "level". These two bars however has some major problems. First off is how utterly useless your vitality gauge is in practice. It can be used as a health bar (before your real health, the flashing lights that turns yellow and then red to signify you're close to losing, begins), recreate clothes and to use an ability that allows you to instantly kill every enemy in your screen. Clothes are kind of useless because when you're hit on the ground, you have to mash to escape your enemy while the vitality gauge drains really fast, opposed to when you get hit while naked, you can just press the direction buttons once (or twice in Extra/NG+ mode) without suffering any bar drainage. And that insta kill thing? Yeah, that takes the entire fucking bar to do and it will not activate if you don't have the amount needed. The level bar is also not really good, because to get full upgrades, you'll need A LOT of grinding due to how little amount of orbs the enemy drops. It's entirely optional because the game is doable with little upgrades., even still, you definitely aren't going to experience your full power unless you spend hours upon hours grinding the same room over and over again.

**Conclusion: Ghost Hunter Vena does a lot of things really really well, but the things it didn't do well... it kinda really sucks a lot at those. Still, it's not a particularly hard game and it's really worth it for the story in my opinion. I recommend playing it, but it definitely could've done way, wayyyyy better than it does now. 9.25/10.

Made by the same person that made xenotake, and I have to say this is definitely a massive improvement. The control scheme is similarly horrible, but you can customize it this time and that solves it. The h-attacks are great in my opinion, though you have to finish the pretty long story to get them. The attack system is fun but difficult at times, though I thought it was great. The dialogue is interesting if you care, but there is definitely a lot of it.

Unfortunately the only bad thing about the game is the traversal. The game consists of more just walking around then much else, and the map is quite large and sometimes confusing. I understand thats kind of the point in the given scenario but it feels similar to those witch halloween games where the slow walking is a certain snooze. A lot of people probably just wont like it because of the slow feeling walking, and i hope in the next iteration Vosmug finds a way to make traversal more fun.

Other than that the game is really fun and both the story and the cg are great in my opinion. If you can handle the walking, its worth it!

A good game that can take you 4 hours to finish if you are playing for the first time. Here are things I liked and disliked about this game:


Things I liked about this game

• The story and characters are really good.
• The sex scenes are pretty good.
• The monster designs are visually interesting.

Things I didn't like about this game.

• Gameplay is tedious but manageable if you know the enemies reactions.
• The final boss kind of sucked. If he hits you, he will one-shot you.

Vosmug may do releases once every 6 years or something, but his releases are high quality.

2D platformer fighting, kinda gimmicky but it works, defeat H-scenes, story H-scenes, a distinct style,

5/5

I started playing random as I was searching for a platformed and ended playing for the plot. It's nothing out of the world but it's interesting enough. Animations are good and the combat system is very fun. It's not a hard game, specially having in mind you can't be killed. I would like to play more games like this.

It was absolutely incredible. I love porn games which contain, you know, actual gameplay.
The story is cool, the characters are too, and the gameplay is really satisfying: at the beggining you have no idea what you're doing and keep getting fucked by every single enemy, but by the end game you're walking through hordes of ennemies without problem.
5/5, can't wait for Vosmug's next game.

The art was quite simple to me but is also very smooth animation. I played games made by author before and was astonished how this ended up so well. Would support in the future if another game is in development. Those weren't familiar with art style plz give it a try, thx.

Awesome story and dialogue. Awesome scenes. obviously and as usual, amazing animations and quality of animations (frames per second, smoothness, transitions, style) is the best in the world for hgames. Very much appreciate the patches/updates for bugfixes and updates since release. love the various enemies. the sound design is SO good and the play-style/game-mechanics combined with the sound really makes it a creepy, exciting, suspenseful experience, especially with headphones on.

Really enjoyed this one. Fun little story that doesn't overtake the gameplay and gives enough scenes to not get boring. Very good animations; to the point that I could look past the mosaic censor, which is usually an immediate no from me. Gameplay is nothing exceptional, but still good. Really liked the fact that defeat doesn't set you back hours and hours, so you can enjoy the scenes without worrying about lost progress. Overall, this game was exactly my cup of tea, I have no complaints.

Nice game, gameplay movement a little slow but entertaining enough.
Kinda reminds me of xenotake, but unfortunately it's the kind of game that has no replaying interest, maybe just for collecting all the pages, "five stars, would play again"

This is the best side-scroller game I've have ever got the chance to play so far , hands down , the game is long , not your 5 minute widdle-waddle games you see these days , I'm talking hours longs with puzzles included and all , the naughty scenes feel like you earned them and obviously the the corruption of the characters along the way , also character variety . So far lovely game 20/10

It has become one of my favs! Hard to not compare it to Alien quest eve since both are erotic spooky metroidvanias, even tho it's not visually as polished and the combat is lacking, I certainly enjoyed more the erotic content and the plot.

[v1.09]

I guess it's called test2 for a reason...

The upgrade system is a grind based mechanic put in there to justify giving all enemies more health and even when going for purely damage it makes combat slow and very annoying.

Some enemies just feel completely unfair- (like red half-torso) take all the ground space and can both hit from their invincibility or charge around at fast speed. Not to mention 1 ability worked exactly once (Z + DOWN )
Passive recharge is ass, which could be a mechanic if it had any point, just like clothing draining energy without giving QTE grab-break while naked.

Had to wander around, get beaten what felt completely unfairly, had to retrace an entire floor and that was enough.

TLDR; awful level system with enemies becoming much stronger; labyrinth like map with sometimes very far from action respawn points; unfair enemies and enemy spam

Would be a great game if it wasn't made so damn annoying!

I'm honestly stunned by this game. The setting and tone are something that even some of the big devs couldn't replicate. The music is by far the best part of this game for me, it's really creepy and uses some samples that I've never heard used before! I might even play it at a Halloween party.

The gameplay is unique as well, definitely not something you see every day. It can be tedious at times because you'll be doing it over and over in the early levels. I recommend that you grind orbs on lower level enemies in the beginning and then upgrade later so you don't pull your hair out in the later sections. The final boss is an absolute nightmare.

H scenes are mixed for me. Some of them are good and some of them just completely ruin the tone. You can unlock the gallery by beating the game which is kind of annoying.

Overall, I wish this wasn't a porn game because I would love to see something like this fleshed out into an even bigger game!

Has a variety of solid animation scenes with the various ghosts you encounter. The story is somewhat interesting but not particularly distracting. Some of the puzzle elements can be a little unclear and leave you walking all over the house to try to find the missing item you need to progress, but generally does a decent job marking where you need to go on the map.

Not certain about the multiple control issues that reviewers seem to mention as I faced none. Using xPadder you can even play this with gamepad.
The story is most certainly what stands out in this game, and it does have quite a big of dialogue.
Ghost H scenes are rather imaginative, though a lot of it is tentacles if you don't enjoy that.

What i found lacking was flavor text for H attacks. Even after the most horrific seeming H attacks/sequences the characters never really emote about how crazy it was. That takes some of the fun away from me.

Recommended to play, takes 4 hours. Do follow installation instructions.

An absolutely pointless game. The controls are rubbish and the time when the ghosts are solid to hit is too short.
You can outrun most of the ghosts to see the lewd scenes. They are just over a few frames and doesn't classify as fap material by me.

Rated: 1/5
Based on: v.1.09 (either abandoned or complete)

This is my favorite H game

+ sexy girls
+ fun and intriguing story
+ fun gameplay
+ animations A+++

- when does Vosmug release his new game ?!?

If you like side scrollers with some good level design, responsive gameplay, great H elements etc..
Go ahead and play this ASAP, you'll thank yourself later

The combat is completely horrible and there is no way around which makes it unplayable for me, even if the art is good. I can't even recommend to try it, because the combat is just so stupidly bad designed.

Loved this game. Took bit long to complete, but enjoyed every moment of it. Spend some time figuring out map- makes much more enjoyable experience. Animations are fluid and fun. Characters are interesting, story is great