Venture Seas

What are you doing here, you Pleb? Did you get interested in a new game on steam, so you decided to look for a review about it on the internet? Well then, peel your eyelids and sit your ass down because I’m about to give you a review about Venture Seas! An Omni-RPG game where it’s a Visual Novel superficially but becomes more than that as you delve deeper into the game. Venture Seas is a porn game too! So get excited about that!

Venture Seas is a one-of-a-kind game where you start off as a Visual Novel - Scenes where you’ve forgotten your memories, have sex with voluptuous women, and just talk to NPCs. It then quickly becomes an adventure, setting sail to explore the sea, diving into dungeons, and battling whoever comes across your path! The part that makes this an adult game is that you run your own on-board brothel

Though the game is still under development, you still need to pay to play the most recent version that has everything unlocked. The demo lets you play the first chapter, and you don’t get much from that. The content in the demo version is enough to give you the whole feel of the game throughout your play-time. So if it’s to your liking, then go ahead and buy it from the Virtuous Development team’s official websites.

Take to the Seas!

You are the captain of your very own ship! Though indungeon explorations, you are treated as nothing more than a pack-mule, you are still the captain! Explore the different areas of Miloria, the towns - eat your fill, buy your items, drink until you can’t drink anymore! The dungeons - explore different zones, fight all sorts of beasts and human enemies, walk around and loot for whatever you can find. Don’t forget that you can make some of them into sex slaves!

The Gameplay

Okay, so, the selling point of Venture Seas is that its multiple game types in one package. When you receive the backstory and context of Venture Seas in the form of a Visual Novel. You’re introduced to a shadowy figure - she(or he) is the one who fleshes out your appearance because you’ve forgotten everything there is to know about yourself. This is the only opportunity you’ll get to customize the appearance of your character.

During this stage, you decide whether you’ll be a male, female, or hermaphrodite - take your pick, choose your preference, this is your adventure after all! You get to pick your typical character customization stuff(skin tone, eye color, cock size, tits size, facial, and body structure). This doesn’t have much of an effect on your gameplay but rather, a convenient aspect of the game that helps you fulfill your sexual fantasies.

You wake from your unconsciousness to be greeted by your big-titted scribe(who has receipts in places they shouldn’t be). She’s the one who runs you briefly on how to play the game - this is done with a few panels, nothing really practical. This is how the tutorials are given, so you’d best believe that you’re going to be reading plenty. If your tiny 30 IQ brain can’t do that, then Venture Seas is going to be a huge hurdle for you.

After a few dialogues, you’re immediately thrusted into your first dungeon exploration - to be greeted with yet another couple of slides about how to get through and around the dungeon, how to manage your crew, and what you should expect as you navigate around. This is where the adventure-RPG comes in, with all of the walking around(old Pokemon type of thing, but you can’t hold WASD or the arrow keys to continuously move in one direction).

Once you’ve gotten your first enemy encounter, you’ll get yet another flash-card, slides tutorial about how the combat system works. Basically, it’s a strategic card battle type of game(I wasn’t lying when I said this game is more than what you’d expect). Taking turns on what your action will be, be it healing, attacking, defending, or summoning. As you progress through the stages, you’ll get more cards, so mix up your deck to get different combinations.

And finally, the part that makes this game rather not-safe-for-work. You get your very own on-board brothel! Run by a voluptuous cow-girl, who helps you find girls to put in your brothel. You can fill this member count up by defeating and capturing enemies in the dungeon and turning them into your own sex slaves. You can train them to up their experience but remember to watch their mood; else they’ll give lousy service.

What I Like

The far-fetched idea of having plenty of game types into just Venture Seas is commendable. Setting a price on this game is a fair thing for Virtuous Development to do. They’ve given us a Visual Novel, with RPG elements that give a somewhat nostalgic vibe, followed by good adult content. This combination might sound overbearing, but the team did a great job of finding the right balance to make Venture Seas an enjoyable game.

Their attention to characters is great as well. The dialogue given to each character adds to the story without too much of it. The uniqueness of each also gives excellent diversity; you get monster people(humanoid creatures, som retain human characteristics, whereas some are just anthropomorphic). The ability to dress or undress your crew members is also a great addition! Through your dialogues in adventures, you always see them naked!

The storyline and writing(though only playing the 1 chapter demo) is already plenty to make you want to buy the game to see what the whole experience should be like. They give quests that help further the development of your adventure and the whole story. The game has enough storytelling elements to remind you what the game is about without putting much stress. There’s some lore to read too, so if you want to waste time, you have those to read.

The art is great, albeit really simple. The simplicity doesn’t take away from it, being good overall. The scenic art during dialogues is pleasing to look at, the stage art for dungeon exploration really makes reminisce the times when you used to play Pokemon; the attention to detail of characters deserves praise.

What I Don’t Like

Yes, Venture Seas is an adult game. However, the adult aspects are severely lacking. There’s one sex scene that doesn’t really give you much, and that’s all you get. The other aspect is when you strip your crew members and sex slaves of their clothes, but that won’t get anyone wild, would it? Training the sex slaves gives you a long text, so you’re reading smut. Unless you have the imagination power of Einstein, then you’re not going to nut, buddy.

The combat system is boring and repetitive. Though the deck customization allows for new things to try out, it’s going to get stale soon. You’re not guaranteed enemy encounters, and you’ll probably only get at least 1 per zone, which takes away from the whole battle experience. The enemies are going to be the same per dungeon, so you get a lack of variety(especially in the demo version). So be prepared for boredom.

You’re going to do a lot of reading! Aside from the fact that you’ll already be doing lots of reading because of the Visual Novel aspect of the game, the tutorials are rather wordy(even if they did simplify it). The dialogues that you go though with insignificant characters are rather long too, so that’s going to be a pain in the ass. The “adult content” in the form of smut is fucking long, so I didn’t bother reading it at all because I know it’s a strong boner-killer.

It’s a click-hell and button-pressing struggle. You’ll need to spam your left-click to get through all of the damn dialogues, tutorials, interactions, and you’ll need to mash your keyboard to move around quickly through each stage. I mean, couldn’t they have at least programmed your character to keep moving if you just hold the buttons instead? It’s going to be a pain in the ass playing the whole game if it’s like this all the way through.

Conclusion

Though I was content with the 1 Chapter demo, I can see why people would want to pay 15 dollars to try and play the full game. There are enough elements to keep the players interested without presenting too much simultaneously. I find myself already satisfied with that one chapter(despite being left on a cliffhanger), I had an enjoyable time playing, albeit the annoying tidbits the game has.