Dark Rose Valkyrie

First things first, performance was abysmal - the game was stuttering every second. This method fixed it. The FPS drops remained, but they were tolerable. I also had a couple of crashes at most.

Now for the game itself.

Story. Quite simple, nothing to write home about.

Characters. The MC is too wimpy for a squad captain. Other characters, especially waifus, have good personalities. Unfortunately, these personalities aren't fleshed out much. There's barely any character progression, but the worst things is that they don't have conversations without the captain, and even during group talks they talk to the MC one by one. Thus, the game doesn't show any bonding situations between the squad members themselves. There are a couple of events that show discord or chemistry, but they are plot devices rather than character development.

Romance. It's bland here. You increase the girls' affection levels by answering correctly during one-on-one conversations, just like in traditional VN dating sims. However, as opposed to VNs, these events here are too short and not very interesting. There's only one short date event with each girl. At some point before the end, you can choose which heroine's ending you want to see. It's just a short scene after the credits, so not worth the effort, to my mind. No harem ending either. You also can't romance the best waifu - the commander Miyako Osatani. A big shame.

Script / Dialogues. A bit too simplified and sometimes repetitive. I wish the quantity was bigger, so you could know more about the characters.

Difficulty. Difficult on the hard (there's easy, hard and very hard here) difficulty. Now, I don't like grinding. Usually in RPGs, I kill every regular monster in the current location and that's enough XP to enjoy the game while keeping some challenge. It doesn't work here. First, there's too many mobs on the map, and at some point, every third encounter leaves you are almost dead. There are no HP/AP fountains, you can only restore those by teleporting back to the base. You can't even dodge or outrun the mobs properly, since there's too many of them, and in case your preemptive attack fails, they decimate you. This becomes more egregious as you progress in the game.

I'll admit, I bought the cheat items and points for this game, and restarted on very hard, because for some reason they locked greater affection bonuses behind this difficulty level. By the end of the game, if I didn't one-two shot a regular enemy with my strongest skills, the mobs would paralyze and KO most of my party.

Before cheating, I managed to get to the shopping mall boss (Chapter 2 or so), and then the difficulty spike happened. Why do I have to use up my whole inventory of healing items so early? And then I realized what's the biggest problem with this game...

It doesn't tell you anything. What's the most effective way to guard break the enemies? Which character abilities to upgrade to get the skills? What are the party members' proficiencies? WHO CAN ACQUIRE HEALING SKILLS? I spent 8 hours without a healer in my party because all the members have the same starting skills and you need to increase certain stats to unlock the healing ones but only for specific characters. It's also the same stupid system with party points that was in Agarest.

You need a guide for everything. How to fight a boss, how to increase affection, since correct choices are inconsistent, what stats to increase to have a chance against the foes, what members to have in your party, etc. It would all be part of the experience if, say, your first run was an introductory one, and then the game encouraged you to do a NG+. But here, you lose almost all progress if you decide on replaying the game. Experience: gone, affection stats: nulled, money, party points: halved. IIRC, only equipment fully transfers.

The bonding events are missable, so you sometimes need to fast-forward the time to make them appear. Constant alt-tabbing for correct choices just as in the Agarest games ruins the experience immensely. I'd rather prefer the choices were black and white - you either go for the heroine's affection or not. You can't quickly skip the game as you can a VN just to make another choice, what's the point of complicating the process then?

There's also an interview mechanic, where you need to find the lying member of your squad. You need to submit several correct reports on these interviews to get the true ending. They don't have any relation to the traitor plot, so you're not weeding out the real culprit. Like, a girl is for some reason lying about another girl's opinion about her phone strap. What does that have to do anything with the traitor sub-story? And once again you have to use a guide to do them correctly, because the number of questions you can ask is limited, and if you fail at an interview, you will only find out about it at the end of the next one, which is a whole chapter away. And it's not even a real mystery anyway, because it's YOU who decides a traitor - not discloses or unveils, but specifically chooses who have been betraying the team the whole time.

What's the point of playing the game if the only way to do it properly is to either use multiple guides or sink countless hours experimenting without any joy? There's no reward for it, no feeling of accomplishment, and the punishment for not "sticking to the script" is too severe. This game is simply too much fruitless hassle.

The game is the 2nd game with the most crash after FFXII. Never had any issues with other games.
Game crashes randomly during fast travel. A total of 6 crashes within 30 hours and they all occur when trying to fast travel to HQ. Most of them happen right after defeating the boss of the dungeon to the extent whenever I defeat a dungeon boss, I go back to the save point to save before using it to fast travel. This also happens on the world map, similarly I go to the nearest save point instead of using warp point.
FPS is very unstable and it always cap at 57 as though game is set in this manner, using different PC with intel/ GT960/ RTX4060 GPU all end up with same result because it is an optimization issue. I also followed forum's posting instructions to resolve the stuttering using hex editor, unfortunately it didn't work for me. On world map I get 15-22FPS when it happens, it is 30FPS when it is normal. In battle is steady 30FPS except during the beginning when loading the enemies/ party. In dungeon is 22-30FPS. In HQ is steady 57FPS. These issues are just too much to resolve just by hex editing 1 address. This affect gameplay as you need to hit an enemy to initiate combat and gain advantage. While you are doing this, FPS fluctuates randomly causing you to mis-time and enter combat without advantage. Or you sneak behind an enemy and attack, the FPS fluctuate again and the enemy turn around and your attack didn't execute. This is a big deal in very hard difficulty because the enemy will take initiative during battle screen and hit you several times before you even have chance to select attack. Imagine Persona 3 Tarturus but with lag and weird hitbox.

The VeryHard difficulty mode in this game is meant to be done during NG+ where PP used to upgrade characters get carried over. Or if you bought the PP DLC and invested all of them in 4 characters. Even with the PP DLC, you will have very low hit rate. I tested the accuracy with cheat engine, in chapter 3, you will still miss at 99 skill which is the stat that determines accuracy. Your character level up and gain 3-4PP at that point (stamina costs 2-13PP to upgrade), while the game requires too much PP used to upgrade skill, your character is torn between whether to upgrade stamina (defence) or one other offense stat. At post game, speed has to be upgraded even more as the enemy will take 2 actions before you even react. So with stamina/ attack stat/ skill/ speed to upgrade, this game is extremely grindy the longer you play it which is why the level cap is different for each difficulty. You will be grinding for hours or even days (if you invested in wrong stat) starting from chapter 4 because of the 2 consecutive boss fight. Level cap is 99 for lowest, 999 for highest difficulty.
With so much performance issue and the game being a major grind. Do not buy the steam version when you can buy on other console. If you intend to start with VeryHard, you need to buy the PP DLC else you will constantly fail stat check for accuracy. There are achievements tied to VeryHard difficulty, it's definitely not a game you want to go for achievements when it is this grindy unless you are using cheat engine to turn your game into infinite PP.

This game stutters so much in combat and while exploring to the point of it being unplayable. It's not even worth $5, a game this unplayable should be considered as a scam. I wanted to like it so bad because the story seemed interesting, but the experience turns horrible after finally getting to explore and fight enemies. It doesn't matter if I use my Steam Deck or my beefy PC and install it on an SSD, it'll still stutter like crazy.

The story and battle systems were very good but there two things that completely RUINED the experience for me.

1. Overuse of Luck in Interviews.
In the Interviews, the player has a limited number of questions they could ask. Which means players can only depend on their luck to find the conversation which is a lie. Either that or reload till you read all conversations in all possible Interviews for that chapter. This was extremely annoying. I strongly suggest an update where this limit in the number of questions is removed. Interviews should depend on the players' real deduction and reasoning skills only.

2. Loss of Parameters in New Game+ [MAJOR ISSUE WITH GAME]
Dear Developers. In case you do not know, the whole POINT of a New Game+ is to allow players to play the game all over again with the levels, stats, money and items they earned in the previous game. You may have allowed us to keep the items, but the fact that you completely removed all the stats and levels upon New Game+ means that all the players' hard work in the previous game went up in smoke. THAT IS NOT COOL!

All in all, narrative-wise and battle system-wise, this is a very good game.
However the above points completely ruined replayability for all BUT the MOST hardcore players.
Sorry but: "Sayonanara. Mou anata to tsukiatte masen."

I did put up a guide for the Interviews so that new players can do the Interviews more easily.
BUT, until you fix the New Game+ issue with losing player levels and stats (which gives me the feeling you destroyed my hard work). This game cannot get a good score from me.

this is a fun game, it's got likable characters and a good battle system. it's no final fantasy but it worth picking up if you like jrpgs and can get it on a discount.

This game is a great example of a Compile Heart RPG's best and worst aspects: interesting combat, niche ideas, but suffers from terrible amounts of padding and reputation.

I really enjoy the combat. The ATB system, its "levels", the concept of Riot Combos, and the "Break Gauge" plus backline support where your non-active party members can just pop in and do damage or gun down all your enemies is terribly fun. It's not perfect, however, as many will attest to, especially because Riot Combos, despite being recommended by the game, turn out to be quite useless as many enemies get specialized or the resulting "better" technique is worse than when you had stock.

I like the setting. This Taisho/Post WW2 era of Japan has such interesting architecture, sociological implications, and technology, even with all the future tech as a result of this being an alternate universe. The Chimeras, the traitors, the issues with monsters and humanity facing uncertain futures and being unable to trust your fellows is rather fun to me as a bleak fantasy.

However, the game is below average. There are bugs that remain unsolved, like a hard crash that wipes out several minutes of my progress due to the game's saving system and lack of auto-save. There are the infamous stutters.

And worst of all, the PADDING. I lasted till the beginning chapters with all the repetition, the lengthy combat, and the lack of interesting variety with enemies. Despite the promise of depth and tactics with the combos, I never felt like I was using anything other than the same bread and butter with some odd bits of spice when an enemy was resistant.

I lasted 17 hours but now, no more. There's just too much padding, too many bugs, and not enough to keep me playing.

I was happy to drop the on sale money for this, but this will probably be one of those games that I keep as future reference for critique than something I pick up again to play.

This took me quite a long time to complete. The setting was my favorite part in particular, but there were a lot of pieces that made this MUCH longer than it needed to be. The sometimes confusing mechanics (like the interviews) were hard to really get a grasp on.

Gameplay wise, the turn based system is interesting, but could use a bit more depth. I ended up relying on a very small set of arts. There was quite a huge difficulty spike at the end. Overall this is a 7.5/10 in my book. pick it up if you're interested in the setting, but otherwise avoid.

It might actually be a great game (on PS4), but the PC version has been released in a truly unacceptable state. For some reason the game is aggressively polling/accessing USB devices during regular intervals, right during gameplay. This causes stutters, mini-freezes, poor framerates and basically a horrible gaming experience that the game itself might not deserve.

No game patch that fixes this issue has ever been released since the game's release 1.5 years ago. Therefore I can only say this: don't spend money on this careless product. If you have a PS4, get that version of the game - that one runs better with no need to remove USB devices, at least.

I don't think I've seen a port this horrible. Among more common "couldn't be arsed" sort of things like having all of the button prompts be for a controller only and not having the ESC key do something sensible, the keybindings are straight up copied from the controller. You actually have areas of your keyboard assigned to mimicking left stick, right stick, D-pad, and 4 action buttons. Borderless-window fullscreen is actually something the game is relatively graceful about displaying, but if you let the game go out of focus and then return to it, it freezes completely non-responsive while it "catches up".

To save yourself some trouble, the main menu (including how to shut the game down gracefully etc) is bound to 'i' by default (the analog of the 'y' button), rather than the start or back buttons. Yes, this does seem to mean you can't quit the game gracefully while in-combat because you can't open that part of the menu. This resulted in Alt+F4 a few times when I entered a battle I could not win, ew.

Yes, each keybind has multiple context-sensitive purposes so just browsing the controls won't actually give you a sense of how to play. But the context-sensitive purposes have you constantly swapping your right hand between Numpad, arrowkeys, and IJKL because it doesn't realize that the numpad isn't an analog stick and we have enter, backspace, spacebar and escape for going forward and back through menus and prompts. So you swap between Numpad for world-map, arrow keys for menus, and IJKL for combat.

Oh, and yeah, doing it that way is nicer than using the mouse, because mouselook doesn't really work how I'd expect (you have to hold MOUSE2 to look around when on the worldmap). Nothing gets bound to MOUSE3, despite having a third mouse button being kinda important to how the game works with a mouse. I get the feeling you can't configure how the mouse works really either since it uses entirely different context-sensitive purposes for its buttons than anything the keyboard controls do -- though it's possible I just need to check the options again. Either way, the default mouse controls suck.

Oh, and it sells in-game progression for real money too. I picked it up for cheap and I'll find it diverting enough, but it isn't really the best game it its class. It regularly has pretty grindy missions as part of the main story and seems to make some of its mechanics deliberately obtuse. The characterization of the characters are are almost completely at odds with the military setting. And lest I miss the point of this review, it has one seriously impressive PC port job.

Broken since launch and abandoned by developers.

The game has a serious stuttering problem, and the only way to solve it is to disconnect all usb devices (including mouse and keyboard)...
The problem (and possible cause) was reported to developers more than a year ago and nothing was done.

Using a Microsoft software to monitor the game, it is possible to see that it does an absurd amount of operations involving the registry (apparently more than 15 thousand per second).
Most involving usb and audio devices.

First off: I really, really like this game. But unfortunately I can not recommend to buy it. Dark Rose Valkyrie is easily Idea Factory's best round based JRPG, but at the same time it also is their worst JRPG. Sounds shizophrenic? Find out why.

Quick Overview
Pros
- best story out of all IF games
- very cool characters
- deep game mechanics, lots of stats and options
- many dungeons and they are quite large in comparison with Neptunia

Cons
- technical issues
- trash tier graphics
- very grindy
- overly complicated to learn
- dungeons and world mostly consist of copied objects

In depth explanation.
Dark Rose Valkyrie got the best story.
Compared with Neptunia games, where the story is somewhere between dorky jokes, reoccuring running gags and brain crippling nonsense, Dark Rose Valkyrie is a serious tale of a world overrun by monsters (Chimera) and a task force assembled to stop them. You get to experience your growth as a team, live through set backs or success, and feel the agonizing pain of betrayal. The plot is totally unpredictable, you never know what happens next. To me it is one of the most captivating JRPG storylines of recent years. I'm the kind of person who gets easily bored and skips parts - I've not skipped a single dialogue in DRV. And everything is fully voiced in English as icing on top.

The characters are quite the characters!
No one seems to be of a flat, simplyfied personality. Everyone got a few facettes to their own. Let alone the fact that by using a power up system to temporarily boost a person's combat strenght, at the same time their personality suffers and gets closer to chimerarisation. Then the behaviour drastically changes. And there is no shortage of mistrust and betrayal. Awesome, awesome stuff! Plus everyone looks really cool despite just wearing uniforms. Good job Iffy!

Deep game mechanics and a lot to customize.
Round based combat has never been better. Not only do you get the classic stuff to do, you also gain the ability of having your rear characters block an enemy attack, have them perform side attacks upon guard break, or call in all four back liners at the same time to either focus on one guy or spread their fire power throughout everything on the field. But you have to press it actively when the button appears. Furthermore you also have to make decisions about how to spend your TP meter and backline assist meter - Is it worth to block that now or do I better save for later? Should I use up some TP to transform into a stronger form or maybe do a special attack? Or is it not worth at the moment because I'd lose the activation of perks that require at least one TP to become active?

You get to freely distribute stat points to develop your character in one or the other direction. The growth points costs for each field differ depending on who you are leveling up, but it is possible to pay the higher price and make someone different from their suggested main role.

As in most IF games it is possible to freely chose a combat formation/position on the battlefield, which is not unimportant since the front fighters can protect those further back from being targetted to some degree.

There is plenty of gear to put on your characters to boost this or that, sometimes with benefical or hindering side effects. Everything got its own weight and you can boost the endurance of your characters to make them carry more - or not and put the points into something else instead. Want to have a really bulky decked out front liner? Possible. Want to go all out offense and rely on evasion? Can do. Want someone who focuses on spells and having the AP (equivalent to mana) to keep them going? You got it. Viable to have a hybrid of melee and ranged combat with evenly distributed stats in everything? No problemo.

You can craft many different costumes for your team, especially female underwear. Doesn't add anything to the game for some, but quite important for others. And yes, there is male underwear too, just not quite as many variations.

You also make your own combos, a bit like in Fairy Fencer ADF or Neptunia VII, but with more delicate decisions as for what combos well with what.

The big downside of this all is, that it can become quite challenging to find your way through all that is being offered. And if you are, like myself, not the smartest person in the world, it can be really hard to predict the effects of what you are actually investing into. It somehow always works, but leaves you wondering if you should perhaps done it differently.

Dungeons and World Map
There is a lot to explore. World map is big, but you have to clear the garrisons gating access to each area one by one as you progress through the game. Dungeons each got their own settings and atmosphere, and they are quite large. Larger than Neptunia dungeons, probably about the size of Fairy Fencer dungeons, not quite as massive as in Omega Quintett. However, no matter where you go you can see there was a budget issue. Almost every dungeon consists of the same few background objects being placed in different shapes and combinations and it feels quite underwhelming. The world map can only be expored through a very far zoomed out bird perspective and it's different colored pixle ground, elevation, water and trees. That's pretty much it.

This is a really bad port.
If you happened to stumble through the mostly deserted sub forum, you will notice people are quite aggravated by the performance of this game. The whole thing is a graphic desaster, sporting low res textures and very few options to make it look somewhat better. Upscaling larger resolutions is just not the way to go anymore, you can't even set the game to 4k, have to play window mode all the time. Textures on objects? What is that? Bloom effects or different lighting? Not in this game. Jagged edges all around? Check.

Now if the simplicity of the graphics at least meant you'd have a smooth performance... but nope. The game miraculously starts lagging every time an enemy spots and approaches you. Welcome to your life without symbol attacks (first strike). It just feels so bad, so unfinished... makes your heart bleed.

This game is too much grind.
Oh well, I guess we can all agree that IF games are always a bit of a grind. But DRV is worse than all of them. Not only do you have to grind your usual stuff, meaning levels and money (the latter always being short], you also have to grind uncertain mob drops to upgrade the weapon of a character. It is one of the biggest stat gainers to do that. But it's extremely tedious work. Imagine wanting to deck out 4 front line and 4 back line replacement characters. And you have to deal with the same materials per 10 levels on each weapon, that are uncertain to drop. Hours of hours of time wasted just on getting a decent weapon growth.

Now the worst news is: During the story two people will leave your squad. And you can not know who because it's random. Maybe someone you loved to death and leveled the weapon on leaves. The only save bets are the main protagonist, the replacement girl for your first loss in personell, and the DLC girl. Sounds fun right? Nah, it doesn't.

One more annoyance I didn't mention before.
Quite a few enemy spells have a chance to instantly kill your character. This is really cheap. Can be countered with resistance but you have to grind the materials.


To summarize things up once more:
Dark Rose Valkyrie had the potential to be a must have for any JRPG fan, but due to the lack of care for delivering a working quality product, and no post release patching what so ever, as well as a tedious chore like grind, ended up being the JRPG we really wanted to love but just couldn't. Better buy something else, there is plenty to chose from. But if you happen to find this game at a nice discount and got too much time at your hands - it is quite fun once you look past the downsites.

Not going to waste a lot of time here; if you like this type of game, it's a good game.

This review is solely to add my voice to the list of people saying that the stuttering issue in this title is abysmal and the team should be ashamed of themselves. If you're like me and think 'What a nub, my rig wouldn't stutter! I'll buy the game and prove them wrong' - Don't be that guy. This game can't do a full camera rotation without stuttering on even the lowest settings on my rig that plays anything and everything I throw at it beautifully.

Fix this mess, this is embarrassing for an indie free to play game, let alone a game from an established company.

So I just finished this game. Final conclusion: It was good. Not great. Just good.
As a general overview of my thoughts I feel like this was a game that experimented with a few really cool gameplay aspects that were really impressive BUT... it just lacked the polish to really make them all shine.

*Function*
The game runs... OK. Yeah, it crashed on me a few times and I would get stutters in the FPS here and there but overall I really couldn't make a lot of complaints. My computer would seem to slow down for a minute or so after closing the game, so I can only imagine what a mess was made out of the port optimization.

**Story**
Personally, I enjoyed it. The characters are fun and the plot has some intrigue to offer. My major struggle came from understanding how any decisions that I made had any effect on anything that was happening. Does something change down the line if I hug the girl or if I slap her? (YEAH! You have to make that decision!) I just never felt that my decisions effected the story and thus I never really felt any gravity to any of the choices that I made. Am I actually part of this? Another weak point is that the characters really don't act at all like military personnel with any concept of protocol. One scene plays out kinda like this:
------------
Me: "Hey!! Glad I got you alone over here. I just got some intel. I think you might be a spy."

Spy: "Doh!! You caught me! Glad you came to me about this in private instead of bringing a security detail. Guess I'll make an unhindered escape then!"

*Spy escapes*

Me: "Dang it!! Who saw that coming??"
------------
They can just be idiots sometimes.

**Gameplay**
I couldn't shake the sense that the combat system in this game is what Final Fantasy 13 was trying to do and failed completely to accomplish. It's interesting and you will have to stop and weigh your actions for many fights. However, for others battles you may freely press the Auto button and let your AI take control for you. But the fact that there are still button prompts that you can capitalize on means that even the auto battles can go smoother if you're paying attention. It was a good idea, I just wish they would have put a little more finesse into it.

**Irks**
This game has an interview minigame which is just painful to make any sense out of. There is some measure of how much other characters like you and this gauges how many questions you can ask... I guess? You know, because that's how real military interviews and interrogations work...
Sometimes I wasn't even sure about the purpose of the interview so I wasn't even clear what I was looking for in the responses besides simple inconsistencies.

Of all the Chimera monsters that you will face in this game there is one foe that rises up above the rest. He emerges from the start of the game and haunts you for every moment thereafter. That foe is THE FRACKIN' CAMERA. It moves around all over the place. You'll be trying to get something out of bundle of trees and the camera will move up overhead so all you can see are treetops leaving you to search blindly. You will try to hold back to run away from an enemy and the camera will spin on a whim leaving you suddenly running right at opponent that you are fleeing from. The camera hates you. Just remember that.

*Last Thoughts*
I think the game was trying really hard to appeal to replay value but it's hard to give them props on that front. I just have no idea how I'm effecting the narrative or what options I have to do things differently. There are no comprehensive guides if you're confused about anything (and trust me, there is quite a bit that you will be figuring out on your own). Thus, the game didn't feel like the epic that they were really going for. It's a shame really, since I'm such a big fan of Kosuke Fujishima's work.
In the end, I do recommend the game, especially if you enjoyed the likes of the Neptunia franchise, but get it on sale.

7.5/10

The Most Gamer-Frustrating Idea Factory Game on Steam

Recommendation

If you like difficult games that force you to do all optional quests and reload save game files hundreds of times, buy this game. Alternatively, if you don't mind buying a bunch of DLC and also buying the $7 trainer on Cheat Happens, and you like the idea of fighting monsters with a team of teenage girls in skimpy bikinis, buy this game. Don't think you are going to fight monsters with girls in bikinis without the $7 trainer, however, for this game is designed to make that impossible without a hack program.

Explanation of Recommendation

First of all, this game was overdesigned even for the Japanese fan boys. No fan-based guide has been made for this game in any language I know of. Part of the reason for that is the positively ridiculous number of questions you are asked that require visual-novel-type choices. And you need to get them correct. But the worst part about it is that you have no real way to know why choice is the correct one even if you make a choice, see the reaction, load your save file, make the next choice, see the reaction, and so on. Idea Factory should have made a New Game Plus option where you could actually see the impact of the choices you are making. However, the best I can tell, you have AT BEST a set of vague clues. And if you want to wind up getting a certain ending the game, your one choice seems to be "get lucky".

Second of all, I have received the "True Ending" in many Idea Factory games, including the two Agarest games. This game has the most baffling requirements for a good ending of any game I have played (and that includes visual novels). It's peculiar to say the least. The five questions you answer at the beginning of the game randomize several parts of your game experience. I haven't seen anything online that spells out just what gets randomized. That wouldn't be so bad if Idea Factory provided a way to guarantee that the gamer could get one of the good endings once the gamer perspired through getting a good ending one time. But I have yet to experience such a thing.

Third of all, this game is by far more difficult than either of the Agarest games in two aspects. First, you don't get "EP" to enhance your gear. As a result, I have no idea how the common gamer is expected to beat the game WITHOUT the concern of getting a good ending to the game. It's an absurdly difficult game. The combat is brutal. And in the end, the gamer must spam all the special attacks over and over in order to win. Second, as opposed to the crafting system employed by many Idea Factory games, they invented a new one. I have yet to figure it out. To be honest, I don't even think I'm close to figuring it out.

Fourth of all, don't get me talking about the map. Trying to find out where you are supposed to go when you are going to a new area is just nuts.

Fifth of all, what is up with the portable monster analysis device? Why can't you just buy or build the darn things? Particularly since they are needed for the mandatory quests....

A Rumor and An Explanation

Rumor: I have heard that you can use medals to gain "trust" once you beat the game once. If such a thing is true, than either you don't get that option on Easy mode or the Cheat Happens trainer messes that up. Honestly, I don't care enough about the game to figure out which one of those two things is true.

Explanation: I have pushed through the game using the Cheat Happens trainer as fast as I could just so I could try to figure out the game's infernal "trust" system. The best I can determine, the system was designed with one purpose in mind: frustrate the gamer. Everything is randomized to the point of insanity. Therefore, if you like a certain girl and you want the captain to wind up with that girl, get a different game. Seriously.

One Last Warning

Don't think about finding answers for this game's many problems on the Internet. This game was not popular enough to warrant dedicated fan posts. If you get stuck trying to figure out how to get to your next location, tough luck.

Just as a first note. There are plenty complaints about hardware issues from other people. I, for one, did not encounter these major issues and had smooth gameplay since the initial release of the game. The developers have patched the game, so it may be fixed for your computer. In any case, here are my overall thoughts on the game after achieving the true end.

Story and Pacing

The story itself is interesting and has good voiceovers (English and Japanese) that makes the characters have more personality. You start off the game as a commander of a small task force in order to combat a virus (Chimera) that infects humans and turns them into rabid monsters. Over the course of the game, you unravel the dark secrets of the virus. It’s not a bad story line and has a general darker theme compared to other compile heart games. I did have some gripes about the pacing, as the story is segmented by forced side missions (collect quest, kill monster quest, etc.). It’s a bit troublesome, but these generally did not take too long (~20 minutes), so you can get back to the main storyline + exploration.

The game also has an interview minigame, in which you have to determine the liar of your group. If you like detective stuff, then you may like this. Unfortunately, I think it’s not very good and disliked the system quite a bit. The main problem resides with the fact that you have to question 5 girls about the other 4 girls (20 possible questions), but you are limited in the number of questions you can ask (you start with 8 in early interviews. I had 9 in my late interviews). Given that there are specific lines that are lies, you may simply have missed it through bad luck. It gets worse because there actually can be no one that is lying at all! This leads to constant reloading and trying again to get it right. You may decide that it’s not worth it, but successful interviews are required for the true ending. There are also multiple variants of interviews that have different liars. This would be a plus for being less linear, but interviews just were annoying, so having variable interviews actually made me dislike it more.

Gameplay

For me, the game was played on very hard with no DLC on my first playthrough. I play this way as the hardest difficulty usually forces you to better understand game mechanics. Thus, my perceptions may be different than how the game is meant to be played. Overall, I think the gameplay is quite fun and strategic. Not overly difficult.

Real-time battle. In Dark Rose Valkyrie, allies and enemies get a turns whenever they fill up an action. Once they are ready for an action, they can do 4 level of actions, where level 1 is quick and weak (which also means they get to their next turn faster), while level 4 is strong and slower to execute. This is all tied towards the SPEED stat, which dictates how fast they can act. Thus, it can be quite fun to try to line up actions to seamlessly flow together. This is made more enjoyable by the fact that normal attacks are able to stunlock enemies in place. You can also attack using charge, which is a very weak attack that knocks back the enemies turn position. Time it properly and you can combo an enemy to death without even letting them move! Unfortunately, one downside is that the system doesn’t really kick off until later in the game because of two things. 1) You won’t have enough SPEED until later on to combo well and also spice it up with skills and items. 2) You need CP to equip attacks for your level 1,2,3 normal attacks. You get CP from learning skills, but you won’t have enough CP to fill out all your level 1,2,3 attack slots until mid game.

Naturally, since the battle system allows you to break it through stunlocking, the developers put in a counter to this called Berserk. The enemy activates berserk at specific times (variable from enemy to enemy) that will immediately stop all current attackers, boost movement speed, and prevents charge from knocking back their turn order. It essentially makes it so the enemy can get a turn off… or does it? The developers put in another mechanic called part break. Part break is mainly used for farming (break all parts to ensure an item drop), but provides another nuance to boss battles as breaking a part also removes berserk! This allows for some serious combos if you can manage your actions well. For instance, I performed a ~2000 hit combo on the FINAL BOSS, which is very satisfying.

Boss battles. This may be partially due to the difficulty that I was playing at, but bosses are extremely powerful and can easily wipe the floor with your party in 1 or 2 turn rounds. This is especially problematic when enemies are given a random amount of turns they can perform at once (1-3 turns). So if you go into a battle with bad luck, the boss and 2 minions could potentially attack you a total of 9 times right off the bat, severely crippling your team into a game losing position. This makes it a race against time to unload all your skills/magic/special attacks to kill off the minions as fast as possible before you can tackle the boss. Sometimes it is a bit annoying to have to reload a fight to get a favorable battle start. On the other hand, strong bosses makes the battles much more tense as a mistake can definitely make a really bad situation.

Enemy telegraphing attacks. A small tidbit that can be seen is that enemies look at the player that they will attack when the turn comes (most of the time). A decent mechanic, but sometimes can be difficult to pinpoint the actual target if two players are close together. Still, it makes for some fun moments when you see most enemies targeting one person, so you put them on guard mode!

Crafting/customization. The crafting system is really not that great. You are able to craft armor, accessories, and weapon attachments. In order to do so, you need to collect enemy drops and convert them into materials. Though you want to craft items to get stronger, it is really cumbersome to do because of a couple things.
1) Higher tier items need the lower tier item. Doesn’t seem to bad right? Sure, if you already have the lower tier item crafted. Unfortunately, as the game progresses, you decide you want a different item type instead. Thing is, you cannot craft it because you cannot craft its lower tier first as you need low tier materials. Want to backtrack to the beginning dungeons to grind materials? I don’t.
2) Grind heavy. You’ll need to outfit 4 people at least (ideally 8 to swap them in battle), but doing so takes a large amount of grind. Natural progression by fighting all enemies in your way is not enough.

I mostly just used items that I found.

Also, you can allocate your stats through the use of BP (obtained from leveling up) and PP (obtained from quests). This allows you to spec a character the way you want (melee vs. ranged for instance), but is a bit cumbersome because you want to get CP, meaning you have to learn both melee and ranged skills (most of your characters will have similar builds).

Conclusion

The gameplay is very good and is quite difficult. The story is fine. There are some flaws like in crafting, customization, and the interview system. Overall, I would say that the game is above average and I would recommend it if you think you’ll enjoy the battle system.

Early review just to state little stuttering issues. Slight stutter when first entering combat, but that passes after a second. FX6300, GTX 970, 12gb RAM, Win 10. Nothing fancy on my end.

The game has a lot of similarities with Omega Quintet with mission design, field layout, base events, costumes which unfortunately means spending for repairs. Leveling system sort of like Fairy Fencer F where you get a set amount of points to spend in various stats. Enjoyable enough game so far, and thanks to everyone's technical issues, picked it up cheap!

i honestly bought this game cause of the mostly negative reviews. totally get it if the game is unplayable. it's, however, completely playable on my shitty system of a i5 3470 and a 1060 SC 6gb. they have capped the frames for some reason at 57 fps. Not sure why it's capped there but, maybe the game isn't stable at 60... i am not sure. it doesn't eat resources when playing. my cpu is old... 2012 cpu and it only uses maybe 20-50% cpu power and 20-60% gpu power on max settings.

GAMEPLAY - gameplay is turn based and weapons you use... well lets say alot of this is inspired by the game god eater. I haven't gotten far into it yet but so far the game is completely playable... though i have had slight stuttering. nothing that is really a big deal in a turn based game though.

edit: four hours or so in and the gameplay is... very in depth. you can customize your weapons making new combos that you can use. melee and ranged via assault rifle, shotgun, sniper etc. these are all attachments to your giant swords.
since the game is turn based fighting has a front row and backrow and you can learn formations that give added benefits. like melee does more damage in front row and ranged in back row.
part of the game is visual novel ish and you do have to get your parties approval ranks up. for what i don't know yet. but you get asked questions and you have to respond to them and they can hate or like your answer.

STORY - wise seems to be nearly identicle to god eater. your team is a group of people that are, i believe they said "experimental unit" to fight the chimeras that are running rampant. which are just monsters. so story isn't unique in anyway but so far it's not bad at all. if you like end of the world type stories where you fight for survival. i believe this fits the bill. haven't played much. maybe a hour and thats the gist of what i'm getting from the story is going to be.

Edit: it verges a bit from god eater as in from what i'm understanding, chimeras were formaly human and it's some type of virus that is turning them into the monsters that you are killing. it's a basic post apocalyptic story and i'm cool with that. i'm glad the entire cast isn't female and one male... that always annoys me when they do that. kengo and kazami are interesting characters and are the other 2 guys in the group. i don't get why the MC is the captain. they don't really clarify why he was put in charge when he has no experience. least nothing that i read yet... probably explain that later. but it's a good cast of characters and as long as you don't mind a VN/rpg hybrid story is pretty good.

PRICE POINT - since they had such a terrible launch in april and mostly negative reviews becuase the game is unplayable for alot of people. it's on sale for the summer sale at 10 bucks... which is a steal for the type of game it is. 40 is a bit much for something so poorly ported but if they fix it it might be worth that. if you like games like fairy fencer, legend of heroes, with stories like god eater. give it a shot during this summer sale. play it for a hour... if you don't like it or it doesn't run. return it. i had just beaten fairy fencer F dark force and wanted another game with over the top combos in a turn based environment. this fits the mark. stutters sometimes but it's turn based... and i don't drop below 30 fps and it's only for a split second at random times does it stutter. what i'm getting at is that it's not a overkill stutter. it still needs to be fixed obviously, but based off them patching things last month they are still trying. now if it's on sale for 10 bucks right now on the summer sale cause they gave up... i can play a game with a slight stutter.
EDIT: the stutter litterally only happens after loading for me. it's nothing that even bothers me.

There's performance problems and I can live with them, there's visual artifacts when doing dialogs but I suppose it's not a deal breaker.

But, I left the game on pause for a few hours and came back to find the game unresponsive and had to be closed. I just can't recommend a game that feels like it's going to crash any minute and would actually do so.

I am sorry but I don't normally review negativly for a bad port but I will give my opinion on ps4 version of the game after this. The port is close to unplayable with it stuttering every 2 seconds and crashes, IFI is aware of the issue and me and multiple other people have reported this as a complaint just over a week ago and still nothing has been done about it, this is what gives this a negative review, purly the port, not the game

Game review- I played the game on PS4 previously and it is a decent game, not something you'd expect from Compile Heart, the story is dark unlike there other games and it seems slightly higher quality, the combat can be abit of a pain to learn, other than that it is a solid game for JRPG fans, I recommend this on ps4, do not buy on PC until it is fixed.

I highly recommend those who want to play this game buy this on PS4 because the port is quite bad. I'll give you guys few reasons:
1 The stuttering make you hardly enjoy the game (and it is the main reason the game get most downvote), the game is playable but annoyed as hell.
2 Sometime you will get a crash.
3 No graphics change after the port.

I'll keep my downvote untill they at least fix the stuttering.