Collection VN Others Unity Completed VenusBlood HOLLOW International [v1.0.3 + Fandiscs] [Ninetail & Dual Tail]

[Iexist]

Hey VB veterans, I've got a non-gameplay question for y'all. I've been noticing in some threads such as hgg2d that seem to have the collective opinion that VB frontier has objectively the worst plot out of the VB series. Do y'all agree with this opinion? I'm still quite new to the VB franchise (finished frontier, almost done with hollow), but for me while I do think the cast in hollow is overall better mainly because of sylvia, I don't exactly think Frontier's cast or plot is much worse either.

It's been way too long since I've played Frontier, I'll have to replay it before Ragnarok comes out next year... But what I do remember is that I kind of disliked Loki specifically? Well, that and the over-reliance on the keys and some other stuff. To some, the problem with Frontier is probably also related to the fact that it's a bunch of mutilated, stitched together Norse myths like some kind of Asian Frankenstein with tentacle smut added in it.

Of the properly translated games, I'd definitely rate it as the lowest in terms of story. Though I think it's kind of like Gaia where the Law Route is better than the Chaos route... only worse. In Gaia, the Chaos route is at least ok... Hollow is kind of the opposite in the sense that the Chaos route is by far the better written route, but even then, the Law route isn't outright bad, just not super remarkable.

At the end of the day though, it's also a matter of taste. Saying that a story is "objectively bad" is kind of difficult, since even "objectively bad" stories can be enjoyable for someone, and there's no sin in liking a story that other people don't. No matter what anyone else says.

That said, I'd think that thoroughly discussing the Frontier story would work better in the Frontier thread.

 

[silos]

It's been way too long since I've played Frontier, I'll have to replay it before Ragnarok comes out next year... But what I do remember is that I kind of disliked Loki specifically? Well, that and the over-reliance on the keys and some other stuff. To some, the problem with Frontier is probably also related to the fact that it's a bunch of mutilated, stitched together Norse myths like some kind of Asian Frankenstein with tentacle smut added in it.

Of the properly translated games, I'd definitely rate it as the lowest in terms of story. Though I think it's kind of like Gaia where the Law Route is better than the Chaos route... only worse. In Gaia, the Chaos route is at least ok... Hollow is kind of the opposite in the sense that the Chaos route is by far the better written route, but even then, the Law route isn't outright bad, just not super remarkable.

At the end of the day though, it's also a matter of taste. Saying that a story is "objectively bad" is kind of difficult, since even "objectively bad" stories can be enjoyable for someone, and there's no sin in liking a story that other people don't. No matter what anyone else says.

That said, I'd think that thoroughly discussing the Frontier story would work better in the Frontier thread.

Oops, my bad on the wrong thread. Though I do have to agree on the Norse mythology being kind of tacked on rather than being expanded on and explained thoroughly. It's like the devs kind of searched up cool sounding Norse words and just said random bullshit go when naming the characters and their weapons. I'll just stop here on frontier to not get further off topic on this thread.

On the topic of Hollow though, where would you rank each individual route when compared to other games in the VB series? Also, is there a significant difference in how the final chapters transpire when comparing the true law and normal law route, and vice versa for the chaos routes?

 

[Nemo de Nemo]

Oops, my bad on the wrong thread. Though I do have to agree on the Norse mythology being kind of tacked on rather than being expanded on and explained thoroughly. It's like the devs kind of searched up cool sounding Norse words and just said random bullshit go when naming the characters and their weapons. I'll just stop here on frontier to not get further off topic on this thread.

On the topic of Hollow though, where would you rank each individual route when compared to other games in the VB series? Also, is there a significant difference in how the final chapters transpire when comparing the true law and normal law route, and vice versa for the chaos routes?

I'm pretty sure that the difference in true Law and regular Law is that it changes things... significantly but not entirely. Gameplay-wise, norm law is finished off with an event battle while true law is an entire map battle to go through. Story-wise, I'd describe True Law as an additional law ending with extra steps. The build up to it is the same as regular law possible endings and leads to the same general story conclusion, it just comes with some additional requirements and has extra bells and whistles attatched to it.

The Chaos routes is a bit different as the story ending between regular chaos and true chaos will actually differ significantly (story-wise) with how they conclude. Pretty sure its the same deal gameplay-wise (correct me if I'm wrong) where regular chaos is finished with an event battle and True is a map conquest, but I could be wrong since I have yet to do a True Chaos run.

Avoided saying any spoilers if you couldn't tell.

 

[silos]

I'm pretty sure that the difference in true Law and regular Law is that it changes things... significantly but not entirely. Gameplay-wise, norm law is finished off with an event battle while true law is an entire map battle to go through. Story-wise, I'd describe True Law as an additional law ending with extra steps. The build up to it is the same as regular law possible endings and leads to the same general story conclusion, it just comes with some additional requirements and has extra bells and whistles attatched to it.

The Chaos routes is a bit different as the story ending between regular chaos and true chaos will actually differ significantly (story-wise) with how they conclude. Pretty sure its the same deal gameplay-wise (correct me if I'm wrong) where regular chaos is finished with an event battle and True is a map conquest, but I could be wrong since I have yet to do a True Chaos run.

Avoided saying any spoilers if you couldn't tell.

Appreciate the lack of spoilers. I'm on the final chapter right now of the law route so I'll be done with the game soon.

 

[desmosome]

The plot is always serviceable in VB games. They are mostly cliche and formulaic, but they still reflect a professionally written endeavor by a legit eroge studio. So what is better for worse will be just a matter of taste.

It's been too long to remember specifics of the plot, but for what it's worth, the "plot"(porn) I enjoyed the most was Frontier.

 

[Iexist]

Oops, my bad on the wrong thread. Though I do have to agree on the Norse mythology being kind of tacked on rather than being expanded on and explained thoroughly. It's like the devs kind of searched up cool sounding Norse words and just said random bullshit go when naming the characters and their weapons. I'll just stop here on frontier to not get further off topic on this thread.

On the topic of Hollow though, where would you rank each individual route when compared to other games in the VB series? Also, is there a significant difference in how the final chapters transpire when comparing the true law and normal law route, and vice versa for the chaos routes?

Somehow I missed this until now. >.>"

If I were to rank things in terms of how much I enjoyed them and what I perceived in the quality of the writing... I think it'd go something like...
1. Hollow True Chaos and Normal Chaos Harem ending.
2. GAIA True Law Route and its ending. (Though the way Law endings work in GAIA means that they're not all specifically mutually exclusive... it's complicated...)
3. GAIA True Chaos. (Theofrad cucking his alternate self was just hilarious.)
4. Hollow True Law.
5. GAIA Normal Chaos.
6. Hollow Normal Law and variations.
7. GAIA "Bad" Chaos. (It's the ending variation for Chaos where you basically did next to nothing with the girls and Theofrad kind of goes insane? It's not a very great ending.)
8+? Maybe? Frontier. It's honestly been too long since I played Frontier for me to really rate it tbh. I might reconsider when I replay it again.

As for differences between True Law and Normal Law... There's not that much gameplay between True Law and Normal Law. Just one extra map if I remember right. The important difference is in the ending if the right conditions are achieved. It's a fairly nice ending tbh... it's just that the road to said ending is not THAT amazing and the main antagonist of the Law route just isn't that interesting.

Gameplay-wise, it's more or less the same between Chaos and True Chaos. The story difference and the overall consequences are greater though. The main villain for the Chaos route is just much better written overall than the one in the Law route, and the extension from Chaos to True Chaos is done way better too imho.

 

[Some Guy 9001]

I feel it's worth noting that True Chaos in Gaia and Hollow were added with the international version.

And I don't recall people saying Frontier has the worst plot. On the official ninetail discord I mostly saw complaints about Ragnarök. Calling the protagonist of that one "discount Leon", and saying it's a step back gameplay wise because it goes back to the one army VS one army fights of Frontier rather than the 3 V 3 Gaia and Hollow have. But these are people who are familiar with the story of an untranslated game, don't know what the opinion of people who've only played the translated games is.

 

[Iexist]

I feel it's worth noting that True Chaos in Gaia and Hollow were added with the international version.

And I don't recall people saying Frontier has the worst plot. On the official ninetail discord I mostly saw complaints about Ragnarök. Calling the protagonist of that one "discount Leon", and saying it's a step back gameplay wise because it goes back to the one army VS one army fights of Frontier rather than the 3 V 3 Gaia and Hollow have. But these are people who are familiar with the story of an untranslated game, don't know what the opinion of people who've only played the translated games is.

I mean... judging the original version of the games, here, is pointless, since I don't think there's many particularly active f95 peeps that know Japanese and played the original versions in Japanese. It's also difficult to say how much re-writing was done on account of the fact that International versions have added characters to them. Though, admittedly, I don't remember if that was the case with Frontier.

The International version of Ragnarok may flow a lot better than the original one. From what I heard, the International version of GAIA works much better than the original one, mainly on account of the fact that the added character and writing around her plugs some holes in the original narrative.

As for gameplay. I honestly wouldn't be 100% sure on that one. GAIA doesn't have anywhere near the same (1-3)v(1-3) system that Hollow has, and the dungeon stuff works completely different from Hollow's investments and whatnot. The NG+ in Hollow is infinitely better than GAIA's... so in a number of ways, you can easily argue that GAIA was a downgrade from Hollow... but that didn't automatically make GAIA worse than Hollow in an absolute sense.

Plus, it's not like Hollow's system was perfect... It put a lot of emphasis on monster units that could be formed into divisions that could 1v3 even in difficulties like basic Thanatos....

The only good thing about Hollow's system, in theory, is that it made it easier to have full TH and BH divisions... but that can be mitigated by adjusting rates and whatnot. At the end of the day. GAIA was notably less obnoxious than Hollow when it came to the gear grind, and Hollow in turn, I think, was a lot less obnoxious than Frontier.

As such, there's a decent chance that Ragnarok might be very good, very fun, and will have more room for varied division building when you don't have to worry that your division will end up outnumbered.

 

[Dothackjhe]

Hello, uploader. Can you please mirror the files contained in this thread to GoFiles and Pixeldrain?

 

[VuckoKucko]

Hey VB veterans, I've got a non-gameplay question for y'all. I've been noticing in some threads such as hgg2d that seem to have the collective opinion that VB frontier has objectively the worst plot out of the VB series. Do y'all agree with this opinion? I'm still quite new to the VB franchise (finished frontier, almost done with hollow), but for me while I do think the cast in hollow is overall better mainly because of sylvia, I don't exactly think Frontier's cast or plot is much worse either.

For me I hated how much Frontier dragged on and how much bullshit it pulled out of the hat in its last third. Also I like the Hollow system of event list much more then getting random events when ever of Frontier and Gaia

 

[Iexist]

For me I hated how much Frontier dragged on and how much bullshit it pulled out of the hat in its last third. Also I like the Hollow system of event list much more then getting random events when ever of Frontier and Gaia

I honestly don't remember how Frontier handled things, but Gaia actually had very specific triggers for all of its events and they only created an illusion of randomness depending on how you approached things. Hollow is actually not that different... The key difference between Hollow and Gaia is that the triggers and the points for those triggers are tied into dialog choices and whatnot. In Gaia, they're partially tied into gameplay turns which need to pass so mingle/training values have the time to go up.

Frontier never got the kind of detailed guide that Gaia did though... At least, back when I played it. I dunno if no one bothered, or if the way it handles events makes it impossible to make a smooth guide... I suppose it doesn't matter overly much.

I won't lie though, I'm glad that Ragnarok will have an event system similar to Hollow though. At least, that's what they mentioned on the kick-starter page.

 

[silos]

I remember when I was playing Frontier that you had to be very careful when raising the mingle stat. For example, if a certain heroine had events at 10 and 20 mingle and you haven't read the 10 mingle event, you had to toggle off mingle before you reached 20 mingle, otherwise the game will automatically skip the first event and progress to the second event, effectively making the first event no longer readable in your run. I learnt this the hard way when I left the mingle stat to rise on its own while I progressed through the early chapters. Suddenly, I found myself skipping like 3-4 events which locked me out of a heroine's route in my run.

I will say playing Hollow after Frontier made me appreciate its more structured event ladder and clear event triggers, along with its general improvements in systems and gameplay over Frontier.

 

[DuniX]

I will say playing Hollow after Frontier made me appreciate its more structured event ladder and clear event triggers, along with its general improvements in systems and gameplay over Frontier.

It's still shit since they optimal strategy is to save the optional battles at the end so that you have enough time so that you can max out all the character events.
This almost screwed me in the first run.

 

[Feed your chickens]

Can anyone tell me what's going on here? Why am I unaffected by Fool's lie? Is it a bug?

 

[Nemo de Nemo]

Can anyone tell me what's going on here? Why am I unaffected by Fool's lie? Is it a bug?

I remember there being a skill capable of counteracting Fool's Lie... Do any of your units have Troop Carrier?

 

[Feed your chickens]

I remember there being a skill capable of counteracting Fool's Lie... Do any of your units have Troop Carrier?

Its Terrain Null and the enemies had it for some reason.