Ganbare Tentacle is an isometric Shmup that has us play as a recently reincarnated man who finds himself in a new world. Much to his surprise, he finds that his body is that of a tentacled creature and is unable to communicate with humans. That quickly escalates when a woman finds that scary-looking monster in her home and our protagonist is forced to defend himself. Frying pan in hand, she seeks to introduce it to our face while we learn the game’s controls and how it plays.
We can either move with the ‘wasd’ or arrow keys. All of the other commands are via the mouse. Starting off we’ll only have access to a basic attack used by left-clicking. It will cause you to stretch out a tentacle and smack your foe if you are within distance. You’ll have to weave your way past projectiles before you are in range to use it. If you hold down the left mouse button for a few seconds, you will charge up a grappling attack. This has an even shorter range and causes less damage, but it will refill some of your health by draining it from your opponent. It will also have you sexually slither your tentacles all over her until you cum.
Draining your enemy of her health is a good way to keep you in the fight, especially early on when you are at your weakest. Doing so will leave you wide open for an attack until the animation is over, however. Be sure the coast is clear before you become completely stationary and helpless while you drain health. The first fight is a simple affair that you will win no problem. It is meant to ease us into the game and give us some Points to spend leveling our character. There is a wide amount of stats and special attacks to purchase. From increasing your attack or the speed you move at, to being able to strike with more than one tentacle at once and launching a flurry of attacks that rival Chun-Li’s kicks.
You get a good amount of points from breaking random background scenery. It is a good way to level your character if you are stuck in a certain fight as those points are yours even if you lose. Defeating the foe will grant you much more, but only if you win. There are only six stages, so you’ll find that it rapidly starts to increase the challenge. I wouldn’t call it a Bullet Hell, yet the amount of projectiles and hazards will quickly overwhelm an underpowered player. This allows you to build a playstyle of your liking. You can focus on health & defense to be able to easily withstand attacks, agility & attack to become a glass cannon, and many other combinations. It may be possible to complete this title without leveling up, but it will take ages if you don’t put some points into attack.
When things become too heated and you find yourself in a bind, simply press the right mouse button. That will clear the screen of all projectiles and stun your foe. It can be used up to three times and is a great way to drain some health when you’ve taken a battering. You can also spend some points to have more than three at any one time. The difficulty will vary wildly depending on your character build. It can be either a cakewalk or offer quite the challenge. If you don’t enjoy how he is turning out, it is possible to refund any stat or move at any time via the shop. This allows you to easily play around with different ideas for stat allocation and offers some replayability.
There are six stages overall, each featuring unique girls. Seven levels if you count the bonus stage that simply has you breaking as many things possible in a minute. Every girl has two unique sex scenes if you manage to defeat them. In those scenes, you can increase or decrease the speed of which you thrust into her. You’ll also have the ability to switch between the two different sex styles available to you and cum whenever you choose to. It will carry on until you choose to exit it and will then be unlocked in the Gallery Mode for later usage. There are 16 total scenes to view between all six girls, all of really good quality.
That doesn’t include the lewd acts you perform on them when you drain their health, bringing the H content up significantly more. While fighting a girl, their clothes will start to rip apart after enough damage. There is a lot to see here. All of the environments are all bland to look at, while the sprites are just decent. The real star of the show here is the drawn artwork found on the borders of the screen and in the hentai scenes. It has a certain charm to it and is quite pleasing to the eye. If you are looking for quality lewd content, Ganbare Tentacle has it in spades.
Before and after every fight, you’ll be treated to some dialogue. This is a really goofy and lighthearted game with tons of charm. It doesn’t have a great English translation, far from it in fact, but that ends up adding to the hilarity of it. The bad grammar, odd wording, and strange music all combine into something that will have you grinning from start to finish. I was not expecting to become attached to any character or be as entertained as I was from a Shmup, yet I would love to see a continuation of this story. It has a ton of potential and what was here was certainly memorable.
Not all is perfect unfortunately, it has a rather serious technical flaw that effects gameplay. You are unable to set the game to full screen, at most you can maximize the window. That may not sound like much of an issue, but it is due to how this title is played. You’ll always be using the mouse cursor to point where you want the tentacle to strike. It is all too easy to lose track of it and accidentally click outside of the window, losing you control as the Windows OS focuses on whatever you clicked on that was off-screen. That is far from ideal in a shmup where projectiles are usually flying towards you. I’d suggest going into the Windows settings and increasing the size of your cursor to make it easier to spot.
In total, I’ve played for around an hour and a half. Most of that was messing around with different character builds as you can defeat all six stages pretty rapidly. One nice touch is that each girl will have different dialogue if you revisit a stage again. Ganbare Tentacle is easily worth the price of admission at 12 US Dollars. It is a well put together little title with a ton of charm and H content. The character leveling system also offers the player multiple ways to get through the game and the replayability of seeing what you can come up with. There is a lot here for both fans of the Shmup genre and for those looking for some quality tentacle hentai.
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