Violated Hero 5 is the fifth instalment in a series of monster girl hentai RPG games. The first two used Dungeon Master-style (I suppose for the younger audience Etrian Odyssey-style) navigation through a pseudo-3D maze. From VH3 onwards the exploration element has been reduced to a series of branching paths with events at each node.
Violated Hero is nominally an RPG in that the main character fights random monster encounters to level up stats enough to get past the various boss characters at the end of each location. The mechanics are very straightforward. There’s little complexity and the gameplay is mostly filler connecting one Bad End scene to the next. Like most monster girl hentai games, Violated Hero is a Game-Over-Rape game. If you lose to one of the boss characters you get to see her do naughty and frequently perverse things to the male protagonist. As with previous entries, VH5 features ten minor bosses and five major bosses. Each has two to three H-scenes, with some additional non-Bad-End scenes as well. The H-scenes have always been one of Violated Hero’s strong points. The artwork is usually gorgeous and each scene is fully voiced.
Violated Hero 5 came out very quickly after Violated Hero 4 and my concern, along with others, was that they’d rushed this. Most of the monster girl designs looked a little too cartoony and loli-esque for my liking, especially the final designs of the fan contest winners. Dieselmine, the makers, have an odd habit of improving some aspects of their series with each new iteration, but also getting something comically wrong elsewhere in the process. For VH5 I think they managed to undermine one of their key strengths—the character designs.
So what’s different this time around? Despite sometimes looking like an underage choirboy in some of the scenes, the main protagonist can handle himself in a fight. This is more like VH3 than VH4. The mechanic of recruiting a travelling harem and then ignoring them because the first companion’s magic attack is so much stronger than everyone else’s is gone.
Also new this time is additional Bad End scenes for the bonus mini bosses. In earlier games these used to be conventional monsters that provided stats bonuses when defeated. In VH4 they became sexy monster girls and in VH5 they now have small Bad End scenes. These are voice-only scenes and vary in eroticism from not bad to ick!
Compared to previous instalments VH5 is a little lighter on the ick factor. The scenes with the first five bosses have plenty of ick moments, but after that the game becomes more vanilla. This will be a plus or a minus depending on how much you liked the bonkers craziness present in previous games. Overall, the monster girl designs are also a little more vanilla this time around. I would have liked to have seen a couple more imaginative types like the two-headed cyclops girl or sandworm girl from VH4.
For the first part of the game I did think the concerns about it being rushed out and that affecting the quality might be valid. At that point I would have placed it as much weaker than previous entries. The game got a lot better once I met the major bosses. The scenes were much hotter and the story and characters are actually rather good. Violated Hero is much better when the major characters have competing agendas and plans rather than the One Big Boss With Four Generals model used in VH2 and 4.
One major plus point was the character of Ariel, the crazy manic-pixie-dream-girl angel that accompanies you on your quest. She’s cowardly, annoying, but also frequently funny. A surprisingly well-written character in other words.
Overall, once you get the weak start out of the way, it’s another solid addition to the monster girl hentai game library from Dieselmine.
