Yay! Vakyrie Drive! The spiritual successor kinda thing to Senren Kagura. Part of the something of a media blitz by two people who really like big tits, Valkyrie Drive came out with 3 parts. The anime, Mermaid. The mobile game, Siren. And of course, the game Bhikkuni. Is a Bhikkuni a mystical female of some kind? Or is it just so it sounds like the girls are saying bikini? Basic research would answer that, but I kinda like leaving it as is.
Anyway, I’ve never watched Mermaid. Read a synopsis though so I’ll reference it once or twice. Siren is dead. That’s where my experience with this series is. If you wanted a genre to fit this into, cinematic panty hack and slash.
Edit- So I skimmed through Mermaid, and glanced through the manga for this. How the fuck is this so clean? Like compared to the other two sources this is barely erotic. It’s almost crazy how weak in the fanservice department this is compared to the other pieces of media that came out for Valkyrie Drive.
Since this is basically a panty fighter with a big emphasis on boobs, we should start with the fanservice. The basics are similar to the Senren series, busty girls beating each other up with their clothes ripping apart, a dressing room for groping and changing clothes, and a few erotic cgs here and there. The story makes more mentions of groping and sexuality then Senran does, but doesn’t really focus on that, though I’ll get into the relationship stuff in a bit.
The first change is a minigame in the dressing room tied to a… stat. Every girl has a rack rank, which sounds like a score for their boobs and I guess in world that’s what it is suppose to be but you can up it by rubbing their heads if you want to be all ages about it, or rub there ass and tits to up the score. Every 20 ranks gets you an unlock for that girl and at the first unlock you get access to a minigame that makes getting more ranks much faster. Called Heart Catch, it’s the grope/massage minigame of Valkyrie Drive. You time taps/clicks(use a mouse, not a controller for this) to a heart filling up. Once you click you go to the next one and after some time you get rack xp. So they moan, you click, and you get stuff. Rack rank is also used in some levels as a tested metric for unlocking other things, though I don’t think a high score is ever really needed for those. At some point in rack ranks you get lovey dovey mode, which basically changes the girls response and tone to groping while active with the minigame being the easiest way to trigger it. None of this is really my thing but someone out there probably likes this stuff and this game actually needs you to do it to unlock everything. As for the dressing room as a poser… It isn’t. You can move the girl around, but you can’t pose her at all.
Moving on, boobs. So for those who don’t know, Senran Kagura doesn’t have a jiggle engine. There is no physics to the boobs in the game, they bounce based on other animations playing. This leads to the girls bodies feeling like they are the exact same since they respond the exact same to different effects, but it does mean that while exaggerated, the bouncing at least looks plausible. The boobs in Valkyrie Drive don’t bounce. They ripple and wiggle like jello on an earthquake machine. For every movement. In cutscenes and gameplay. For some it’s probably good looking, but for me it can go to far. When the characters are just speaking in psuedo visual novel form their tits just go crazy and it looks bad. In combat though and with the pre-done animations like victory or specials, it’s fine.
Next up in the fanservice list is the clothes, or complete lack of. The game has 7 outfits, one for each girl and 7 color variations of those outfits. That’s all the clothes you can unlock without dlc(with most of the dlc being swimsuits). But underwear? There’s 200+ of those. Like ~20 main designs and 7 color variations of those each. Everything unlocks lingerie in this game. Stages have medals that unlock a single pair, challenge mode and survival unlock more pairs, the shop has a gacha with 100 pairs in it, that unlock more pairs when you complete a rarity and so on. You basically unlock lingerie doing anything in the game. Which is nice enough since you see those pretty often, but actually seeing them for me was a chore, because they crash the game. My game was rarely stable, but changing underwear crashed it more often then anything else. Often the bottom wouldn’t even load, making the girl look naked save for a small bandaid looking thing on her model. For being the major unlock it got annoying unlocking more of them because I couldn’t see them without crashing. It would help if the dressing room at least tagged new ones or something. but no. Figure it out by wearing them. It takes maybe two switches to crash. God this was something that could at least be appealing but ended up a pain for me.
A bit more on the underwear thing. In the Senren games, you had a mode you could enter right away that let you instantly go down to just the girls necessities, so you actually could play around wearing just the bare minimum. In this, a good player will never see their character’s underwear(except for during dodges and Manpakamaru could give 2B a run for her money with how often she flashes her ass), because the player character only loses clothes from a small list of attacks. Your partner loses clothes based on drive level(more on that later), but that amounts to a short cutscene you will likely skip after the first 2-3 times you see it. As for your opponent though, you will see their’s a lot if you play a certain way. It’s different that you basically need to dress up your opponent to actually see the main unlockable in this, and it doesn’t work that well for me. I’m just to lazy to actually change the girls when it’s probably going to crash the game.
The cgs are really miss for the most part. The few cgs that focus on the girls at all(a lot of the cgs are just mechs) tend to be part of a really dramatic or creepy moment. So the game’s art is at its most erotic, for example, when there’s a literal pile of naked humans on screen and two of the main characters looking at them in shock. It slips into disservice very easily.
Then there is the yuri-baiting. A common thing in shows and games a while back was to have some girls be vaguely romantically interested in each other but never actually do anything with it. Basically get yuri fans without committing to the content. This has that. All the girls do kiss(as part of combat), and they grope each other a lot. There is definitely crushes(though who with who is more in the player’s mind), and the game encourages shipping with what it calls “romance novels.” Basically really short text+dialogue only scenes between any pair of girls. Each pair has 3 and they basically exist to allow you to ship anyone with anyone. So unlike Mermaid with its main couple, no one here gets to together. It’s just a bunch of empty content for fans to latch onto. There are three cgs to get from these, all from Rinka’s. Based on those, I imagine at some point they intended to do cgs for all of them until they started and realized 21 cgs for this was overkill. So they finished what was started or something, and so three random extra Rinka+other girl cgs.
Not really part of the fanservice, but an observation about the virus. Mermaid has a part of the story where they basically re-insure the audience that the virus is not why the girls are into girls, it just happens that every major and minor character with the virus is either bi or a lesbian. Which means instead of the virus causing them to get into girls, getting the virus is based on being into girls in the first place. Which I guess is better for shipping, but is still kind of weird.
So moving on, the gameplay. Story is last since it’s likely the the thing you are least playing this for. It is similar to Senren Kagura in a lot of areas. Every character has a unique weapon and style with a fairly limited move pool. Every stage ends with a boss fight against another girl who’s clothes fly off as you beat them up(or a giant robot). Levels are usually some weak enemies before the boss shows up. And those are the main comparisons.
If you compare Senren’s first three game to Dynasty Warriors, compare this to Devil May Cry. That’s a comparison I’ve seen, and I think it works. Where Kagura is big areas that all you do is beat things up in until the level ends, Drive has an actual map you move place to place in. While the individual levels limit your movement a lot, you can recognize what connects with what and find collectibles through the levels. The combat itself is far flashier in Drive, with better flow then almost anyone in Senren has mostly do to infinite air dashing, though both have limited move pools that never really expand with similarly limited enemy pools. Drive has something like expanding move pools, but that has to do with the drive system.
Basically, you have a special bar. Once it fills up, you can combine with your partner for a big attack boost, up to four times(this is where the most yuri stuff is). It also adds more combo options as you drive more. While the character you control is your move pool, your partner(extar in game) gives you buffs(small) and her level decides how many drives you can do. And yes, you do level. At the end of each stage your points are turned into xp you can funnel into either girl you brought with you. I’d say extar is more important until level 10, just because drive is such a power up and leveling the attacker is nowhere near as big a boost. There are seven characters and each one has a separate liberator(fighter) and extar(weapon) level to be raised. The dlc characters are just a singular liberator and extar who only link with each other.
That’s basically the extent of unique content Valkyrie Drives combat/gameplay has over the early Senrans. Even the shop is the same with a stupid panty gatcha machine. I’ve mentioned the minigame in the fanservice section, and this game doesn’t have much else. There is a challenge mode where you complete missions and a survival mode for long combat bits, but no character stories or side story content. This just has its main story and the above mentioned. And boy does it’s story take a while to go anywhere.
So in the world of Valkyrie Drive young women/girls are getting a virus. This virus comes in two strains and does some magic stuff. The first strain makes it so that if the girl gets aroused, she turns into a weapon of some kind. The other strain makes you obsessed with power and fighting and really strong. In an attempt to quarantine the girls while they look for a cure, the world made 5 islands to ship infectees to. Bhikunni is the island our story takes place in, the only island said to actually cure the virus.
The setup of the plot is interesting. I just wish the main 4 characters got me interested in playing the game at all. The first half of the story focuses on the twin’s, Rinka and Ranka, and two others, Mana and Momo. Rinka and Ranka are the standard tsundere in love with deredere sister twin set, which I have always found boring. These two don’t really develop at all during the game, unless you count a few arguments. The other two get a lot more of the early games screentime while you wait for the actual plot to start. Mana starts as a timid girl who just wants peace and to get along, though she quickly starts hungering for power and is the source of a lot of conflicts. Momo is a war veteran with strong PTSD symptoms that seem induced on purpose. This is never really explored. I think the only character who gets any real plot of before they came to the island is Manpakumaru, who is mostly a comedy extra as far as the actual conflicts go. Momo starts as edgy as possible and I found it really hard to care her. A big reason this game took me 8~ months to finish was I had a real hard time wanting to continue the early plot because I was sick of Momo being edgy dark girl, and of Mana getting more uncaring of other people.
Anyway, it’s a school island for people with the virus. Our seven leads have a third strain of it, called the VR virus, which lets them take up both roles in combat. I guess because of the uniqueness of the virus they have, they get a lot of attention from the school’s teachers, the Pillar Gods. Valkyries(women with the virus) who turned into giant mechs. They serve as both the more interesting boss battles and to lead the plot to actually progressing. Basically every time things need to change up, you beat one of the gods. Eventually this leads to some bad stuff about the truth of the cure and the real plot happens, but I’ll stop there. I actually like the real plot and the moral question it kinda asks. I just wish the story didn’t have to spend so much time on building its characters to get to that plot.
I overall enjoyed the game. It’s combat is better then any of the beat’em up Senran’s, I just wish the game called on being good more often. Outside of one boss battle and the final set of challenge mode/survival mode things, very little in the game is hard or requires the player to really perform well with the systems. It’s kinda brainless actually. Too few enemy types and when you fight the girls as bosses you basically beat them all the same way. Makes a lot of the levels feel the same as nothing stands out other then the Pillar God boss battles. Basically the game could have been DMC tier fun, I believe it has that potential, it just doesn’t have the actual content to let it get there.
PC Save for Valkyrie Drivel; Bhikkuni
Two saves. One for dlc and one without. I think I unlocked everything there was, so a lot of underwear and accessories. The only things I didn’t do were SS rank one level in all three difficulties because I hate that fight, and gold medal one of the pro challenges. Based on my research, doing those wouldn’t get me anything. Only other thing that possibly could unlock something is beating up one of the Pillar Gods some more since that apparently unlocks their items. I think I got them all though.
Gameplay: 7/10 Eroticness: 5/10 Story: 4/10
Completion: What it Took-
Way to long.
Double S rank each level on at least one difficulty(I did every difficulty, which got me just enough xp to get everyone to max level except the dlc girls), complete challenge mode and survival mode, get all the lingerie in the gatcha, get everyone’s rack rank to 120, buy everything, do the romance novels thing, and level everyone up to max for both roles.
It mostly boils down to play the game well and do any minigame grinding it presents. Rack rank is like 40~ minutes of the same rhythm game per girl for 9 girls. Constantly checking the dining room for affection points for romance novels breaks the flow of the game(as those respawn in real time). This is not a game I would recommend bothering doing everything, it just flows bad when you go for completion. At the very least, the order I did things in made it play poorly.
english h-rpgs 
still waitin for this
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