Developer: Meteorise, HONEY∞PARADE GAMES
Publisher: Marvelous
Platform: PS Vita, PC
Tested on: PC
Valkyrie Drive -Bhikkhuni- (PC) – Review
Do you like those typical busty anime girls and do you also like a fast paced fighting game? Then Valkyrie Drive might be the game for you. In this game you can expect a lot of breast fondling between girls. There isn’t a single boy/man present on the island so every speck of romance is from girl on girl action. Besides the enormous amount of fan service, Valkyrie Drive also is a fun fighting game with different weapons for each character and really cool specials. With upgraded graphics and more Valkyrie Drive is now available on PC trough Steam worldwide.
Story
A mysterious illness fell upon the world only infecting young girls. This virus is called the A-virus and turns the infected girls in either weapons named Extars or a user of the Extar weapons named a liberator. However, a unique strain allows some girls to be both an Extar and a Liberator, this strain is called the VR-virus. There are 5 secret islands that offer treatment programs but only one is famously successful in treating the V-virus: Bhikkhuni. In the game we follow 7 girls infected with the V-virus during their stay at Bhikkhuni.
The treatment for both the viruses is simple: the girls need to fight each other to strengthen their mind and body which then grants them more control over the virus. Each of the seven girls: Rinka, Ranka, Momo, Mana, Viola, Manpukumaru and Koharu have their own weapons and fighting style as well as their own thoughts and feelings which you can discover more about in the dining room. You mostly follow Rinka and Ranka their story but each of the other 5 girls play an important part as well. During the game you start to see more and more of the girls’ their character and start to love your favourite even more.
Graphics
The graphics really got an upgrade from the PS Vita version to the PC version and is now available in 1080p with native support for even more. Every girl is pretty well made but sometimes they seem to have put more time in the boob animations than the rest of the bodies for example: the lip syncing doesn’t always match because they use a bit too few mouths for the Syllables. When fighting they put in some nice effects for the special moves plus when starting the drive, you get a nice animation from only the Extar and Liberator including some nice fan service. Fan service is a main component in this game and you can see that the makers didn’t deny it and put a lot of effort in making everything look soft and fluffy, even when you fight the boobs still look good. Everything to keep certain audience’s attention to 100%.
The background in game seems a bit empty and flat sometimes. There are boxes you can hit but when those are gone there really isn’t that much left except for trees and rocks but not even that many. The human enemies sometimes look a bit strange because they have a blank face but the mechanical enemies look much better. When walking or running around the character’s hair does look a bit strange especially long hair.
Sound
The voices of the girls are pretty great and make a real difference than if they would only use text in between the fights. They even made an effort to let the voice actors play out the romantic novels. When selecting some things in the menu the characters make some comments or say what you’re doing which is pretty nice. The background music is very nice while playing the game and doesn’t make you fall asleep like some other background tracks. When the fight music plays you get excited but it isn’t too much that you might find it over the top.
Gameplay
Valkyrie Drive is an action brawler with a bit of visual novel included. You fight against different level enemies until you get to fight the boss which could be either two of your classmates or a guardian from the island. The lower level enemies are either other infected girls, some kind of dogs or mechanical robots. These lower level enemies give you the chance to get into your first, second, third or final drive before you get to the “boss” which is quite handy. Either drive from the second one gives you a special move called drive connect. These special moves are mostly one hit kills on lower enemies and do a lot of damage to the boss as well plus if you’re fighting against one of your classmates these are the perfect moves to undress them. You don’t actually get to see 100% nudity because the private parts are censored but you see enough naked skin to leave the rest to the imagination.
Undressing an enemy can also happen with regular moves but are hard to obtain because you have to do the right amount of damage and then do a stronger attack to rip their clothes. The clothes of the extar (the weapon) gets less and less per drive and there are no clothes at all after the final drive animation. Some might even say undressing the girls is the goal of the game. When playing story mode there is no option to save in a chapter. Meaning if your game crashes -which sadly happens with this game- you have to play everything again. You can skip the story itself but you have to redo everything in the fighting part. A save option or checkpoint inside a chapter might’ve be a good idea to avoid all that. Outside of the story mode there are a few different things you can do. In the dining room you can collect hearts from all the girls except the one you have selected but you can switch in the dining room so that’s not a problem. The hearts unlock romantic novels and if your heart level is full it unlocks a romantic image. There is also the shop where you can buy accessories for the girls, music tracks, story images, recovery potions and more. At the shop you can also print lingerie because lingerie is import in this game since you’re going to view a lot of them during battle. You just spend the amount of points and press the button with the right timing and it prints you a new set of underwear.
In the dressing room you can use the lingerie and accessories you bought/printed in the store. The cool thing about the accessories is that they enable you to move it wherever you want plus change the body part so that it animates correctly. You can even scale and rotate the accessory. It’s really cool to see the way you changed the accessory of the girls appear in game and be animated with them, not always perfectly but good enough. In the dressing room you can also increase the rack rank of the girls by touching them in inappropriate places. When you get at a certain level you unlock the heart catch game. Where you wait till hearts fill up and then click on them. All the while the girl you are playing with makes inappropriate noises. When the “massage” was a success the rack rank goes up a ton and sometimes gives you back two tickets which is great.
There are also two extra modes: challenge mode and survival mode. In challenge mode your complete challenges in a set amount of time like for example: do a certain move an x amount of time. In survival mode you try to beat waves of enemies and try to be as fast as possible so you get a better score. Sadly, both modus requires you to advance the game and buy a ticket from the store before you can continue which really sucks. Online modus is also available. Online you can compete against players from around the world in different challenges or just a regular battle.
Conclusion
In the game there seem to be a few bugs still present like random crashes throughout the game mostly during drive animations or loading screens but otherwise it really is a fun game to play if you don’t mind a lot of fan service and storytelling. This action brawler anime game is a must have for anyone that likes big boobs, fighting girls, cool fighting moves and girl on girl action.
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