Dark Rose Valkyrie Review
By: RJ (@rga_02)
- Dark Rose Valkyrie
- Developer - Compile Heart
- Publisher - Idea Factory
- PlayStation 4
“It’s time to look for some cute girls,” says the protagonist when you launch the game. The line is signature Compile Heart. At this point you probably know what you are going to get. Fanservice with cheeky silly humor. However every now and then they try to shake it up a bit. Dark Rose Valkyrie is the result of the folks over at Compile Heart kidnapping a few Namco employees who have worked on the Tales of series and asking them to implement that signature Compile Heart feel.
Normally with my reviews I usually do an overview of the game first. However I’m going to talk about the art because this game is drop dead gorgeous. The character designs were handled by Kosuke Fujishima - who is known for the Tales of series and manga such as Ah! My Goddess. The art work is aesthetically pleasing to the eye and the colors light up your screen with vivid flavors. The character art work translates really well into 3D. In my opinion - character design wise, this is the best from Compile Heart to date.
With my gawking over the art aside I’ll now get to the nitty gritty.
Dark Rose Valkyrie stars Asahi Shiramine in an alternate version of Japan set in 1929. Giving off some vibes reminiscent of Valkryia Chronicles. But this game is nothing like VC. Instead of a serious war on the European mainland, a meteor has struck the Earth which inflicted the Chimera virus throughout the land. Now it is up to Asahi and his Special Force Valkyrie squad to prevent the spread of the virus.
The premise sounds serious enough, but with Compile Heart being Compile Heart you are bound to get your dosage of fanservice to try to keep you occupied in more ways than one throughout the game. However choosing the fanservice route will eventually bite you in your daily grind. For example, roaming around in your lingerie isn’t a good idea against a boss battle. Thus you gotta tailor your uniforms back into tip top shape if you want to be the best soldier out there. The tailoring of uniforms and customization of other items is surprisingly pretty deep for a game from Compile Heart.
The game caries on that depth with the battle system. If there is anything that I adore from Compile Heart games is that their battle systems for each of their respective games is unique.
Out in the battlefield, you have a squad of four with four backups at your disposal. You have to carefully balance out your group to each situation so you really can’t play any favorites.
There you can either execute physical attacks or use your arts to perform special magic attacks with your God Eater looking weapons. You can chain up combos with your comrades for maximum damage. Apart from that you can also nullify attacks if needed be. Overall the battle system wasn’t very satisfying to other Compile Heart games such as Omega Quintet or even Fairy Fencer F. Like those two games, you have the option of speeding up the battles should you find yourself bored.
Missions were also poorly executed in this game. For the most part, you are doing various fetch quests such as “Find X” or “Kill X.” Repetition really harmed the structure and lore of this game. By now you should expect that from a Compile Heart game, but if they want to shake up the formula every now and then, they should start looking on how the game is laid out.
And like the missions itself, the world and music is very bland. A stark contrast from the beautiful art for the characters. I know that the game is set in a war-torn Japan, but even in war you can find beauty. The environments look really dreadful, to the point where you might think they ripped those models out of some PlayStation 2 game.
Apart from some dreadful looking aesthetics there is some sweet moments sprinkled around. You are provided some downtime with your comrades and this gives you some visual novel like gameplay which is a nice departure from ugly. Moments like these make you connect with your group, and then you realize that someone in your group is a traitor. So your waifu of choice could be the one trying to bring down humanity.
Dark Rose Valkryie is a nice game in concept but fails to deliver due to it being bogged down by the same formula we’ve seen multiple times. But hey, at least we get to see Fujishima’s nice art.
