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Valkyrie drive is not the kind of game i would ever gravitate towards, while i love character action games and am a big apologist for games like oneechanbara and even senran kagura, Valkyrie drive is so aggressively not for me in a lot of ways, i don't like the designs and i actively dislike yuri as a genre and Valkyrie drive is no exception there, but the game is so well made and the gameplay is just that good that I've put dozens of hours into it and even more into its amazing multiplayer modes, this game really overcomes all obstacles and ends up being one of the best action games on the vita, in spite of its one or two major issues.

a lot of the games issues generally come down to its designs and it's more eroge elements and i want to get those out of the way before i get to the stuff i really really like about the game. graphically the game is so vita, one of the most vita vita games even, it's got that bloom and the shine and the fact the lighting can be downright blinding to look at on an oled and this owns actually, it's really pretty and it has some super cool locations too, you have a nice resteraunt hub area you can talk to party members and develop social links with and the levels are all really varied, cool cities filled with shops, snowy mountains with really nice ambient music, fields and blindingly bright beaches and even cozy country riverside areas, there's some cool crystal caves and even an edo Japanese district too to battle through, i might even go so far as to say its one of the systems best looking games, in addition to carrying the systems 3D aesthetics to their peak, it even has some more primitive live 2D for some of the characters like the director (who has the best character design in the game) and the shop owner echigoya and there's a pretty cute twist tied to that art direction, it's really neat. now that the good bits are out of the way i'll get to what i don't like about it's whole aesthetic and stuff. it's difficult to ignore how horny the games aesthetics are and its maybe a little uncomfortable at times with how overt it can be it has clothes that rip after damage and very horny character designs with revealing outfits, very weird and entirely incorrect assumptions on how women who like women act and boobs so big it makes me fear for how hellish these womens lives must be, though to give it credit unlike many of the other horny games on the console like omega lab or senran is one actually doesn't have any overtly underage "loli" characters and while this is a very low bar i will give it some credit where its due, it also doesn't pretend to be anything otherwise and even from the box art you kind of know what you're getting into here at least, it won't blindside you with anything. thankfully the mildly uncomfortable borderline fetishistic GL elements though those aren't as prevalent as they look in the games art, reputation (it's banned in multiple countries for "promoting homosexuality", and its exactly the places you would expect that banned it) and box might make you expect, if you skip the drive cutscenes in battle they're mostly confined to a few jokes and the social links, which might disappoint weirdo yuri fans but its nice as a yuri-disliker that i can just avoid most of it, with a bit of work you can get through this without seeing much ick moments, though there is a shockingly high amount of implied incest here which doesn't bother me but that is something to be warned about, all cutscenes are skippable at least, though weather all this is worth pushing through will depend on how much you either have a tolerance for that or how much you want to get to the gameplay, and many people who are into deep action games will really want to give this a try for its gameplay, this may have some of the deepest combat in any game like this.

so the gameplay is based around its 7 (8 with dlc) characters and they all play very distinctly and everyone here is really fun. the first you get is rinka and he is your faster sword character with her long katana, lots of twirls and sweeps and she's got one of the few uses of the triangle button on its own, with a judgment cut kind of attack that you hold down to use. her sister ranka is a brawler with her fists and she has one of the best movesets, tons of fun sweeping attacks and she even has an ora ora style move she can spam, plus she has a charged fist attack that even seems to have some range to it at higher drives. viola is maybe the most interesting, she gets a moveset mostly similarly to kiryu's wild dance style from yakuza isshin, with the use of a gun and a sword at the same time, with tons of spinning sword moves and thrusts inbetween gunshots, easy to use and easily the most fun character here. she gets a charged burst on her triangle, but i'm not fully sure what it does beyond just AOE damage, looks cool though where she spins her sword and it looks like lightning strikes it. mana is the main ranged character with her bow, where violas gun works more as part of her usual sword combo, mana can actually shoot at enemies from a little far away with both her normal arrows and her launcher which is actually an aoe shot that rains down from above, the most unique one in the game, she's also the only one with both a square combo for shooting and a triangle combo for hitting with her bow, she was another favourite, just so fun to use and her moveset feels so varied, one of the better ranged users in the genre i feel, especially when she gets in her final drive.momo i assumed at first would be the games twin dagger user but she's actually the spear user and she's also one of my favourites to play as, her spear works really well mostly for aoe spinning attacks, tornados for her specials, she has a dash charge that goes into a launcher and she has maybe the most fun drop attacks in the game, she also rolls around on rollerskates, which i dont think is faster but it feels that way for sure, she has a triangle attack that's a bit like a dash that you can chain into a launcher.

manpakumaru is the actual duel dagger class and she's pretty good, less fast than you would normally expect and almost more like she's duel wielding axes or cleavers, which fits her food theme well i guess, she's one of the harder ones to use but very powerful if you can get her rhythm down. her triangle is just her getting out food and eating it, i'm not sure it actually does anything, but it fits her character well. tsukikage is the last character you unlock and she's the hardest one to use with her rapier type sword, feeling very underpowered until you get her drive going, with just some very basic combos and a shield looking thrust as her best attack, plus a vergil style judgment cut thrown in, but once her drive is going and she gets her combos added she can absolutely destroy with huge combos including adding things like a jump rush to her shield attack and a wild flurry to the end of her normal combo, she's fun but getting past her early drive can be much slower and less fun than the rest of the cast. there's also the DLC character mirai, she's who i used to blitz through the games side stuff and the grind for SS ranks to get the true ending, she's a little broken. she has a greatsword but she feels like a mix of rinka with some of tsukikage's light attacks thrown in and her damage is through the roof, she can destroy bosses in half the time it takes other characters even with being a lower level than them, it's a little absurd and she's fast as hell to boot, with her swings being even faster than rinkas and being hugely sweeping too. her only real downside is that she can't use any other support other than her dedicated one, but you probably won't care much about that, her triangle is also a little hard to use, being a multi tier charge that can be interrupted but it does gain extra swings as you get to higher drives.

all of this combined with things like the combos you gain as you level up your drives, a rage mode with some really cool perlecant effects on the characters that gives you unlimited health while you have meter and a stat boost, the special moves using the meter and the games very in depth dashing mechanics that make the combat very fast paced (there's like 5 different moves tied to the dash all with different contexts and the game has tons of air play), there's even a dedicated launcher button that can chain into all sorts of attacks, it leaves you with one of the deepest combat systems in any game I've ever played, its all really very impressive. on normal enemies the game is fun enough, can be a little musou'y with the enemy counts especially lategame and theres some fun mecha boss fights too but i think it shines the most with the duels, where you and another Valkyrie fight with the movesets you actually can use on the other characters, these are amazing, tense and difficult at times and a real showcase for the combat system, with them using special moves and rage mode, dashes and the drives, its like a mini fighting game within a DMC clone and they're amazing, you get one almost every chapter too, it's a real peak moment.

there's some other modes here too, a challange mode that has you learning the games mechanics better and full of non-combat stuff, similar to a fighting game challange mode, it's cool but very difficult. there's also a survival mode you unlock more of as you go through the campaign (the challanges work similarly) and these are as you would expect, waves of enemies done 10 at a time per challange, this is really fun and is where i got the most use out of mirai since she can't be used in the main missions other than replays, it's worth trying to finish the last one, its a real rush. there's also the multiplayer which is one of the most stacked and interesting on the system, there's so much to do there and it might even be worth buying the game for alone, especially since its still somehow active. there's 2 main modes here, technically 3. the most interesting is melee mode, this is a super basic smash brothers clone with only one map, it's 2D like certain segments of the campaign, you smash each other out of the map and it even has animations for things like the characters hitting the screen, it works well and is pretty fun, though again its basic and some characters are super not built for it, but the fact they tried at all is really impressive to me and its a fun enough time. the other two modes are based on the games 3D combat, one based around the outfit tearing mechanics and the other just based on kills, these are great fun and they build well on the best part of the original games combat, the duels, you can have 4 people per match and its a great chaotic time, very reminiciant of good game of gundam versus, anarchy reigns or kamen rider climax scramble, but with a bit more depth to the combat mechanics, it's a standout for being some of the most fun multiplayer on the system and its still active to boot, it's a real showcase of just how fun these kinds of character action games can be in multiplayer. the game is downright RPG length with its main campaign, taking me around 30 hours to finish and you can spend a ton of time in the challange modes and the multiplayer, so you do get a lot of game for your money here.

the story might be the games biggest shock, it's like, actually good, like it's very schlocky for most of it with some kind of bland slice of life antics that drag out for too long, but it goes shockingly dark and the darker atmosphere of the later chapters really worked for me, it even has a surprisingly well handled take on PTSD of all things, in the booby DMC game where the characters litterally turn into weapons, *how*, multiple characters including the joke one have these in depth storylines and i really didn't see it coming, especially out of the joke character, there's even a plotline here about genocide and actual political intriegue with how the worlds government is set up, it's really not something you would have ever expected from a game like this and i think its really cool how it does try and have something a bit more than just, funny slice of live, it's super commendable, at times it even reminded me of metal gear solid of all things with how one of the characters essentially wants to create outer heaven. the characters are all fun archatypes and while manpakumaru and her food antics was very annoying at first, they kind of grow on you over the course of the almost RPG length storyline, even the more at first bland characters like tsukikage and rinka end up being very interesting towards the end, but i found momo to be the standout, she had a genuinely really great arc and the PTSD angle was handled really well like i said, she's basically the games protagonist for large chunks of it and i wanted to see more of her, viola was great too as a foil to the main cast and her snarky responces are really fun. the other big standout was mana who had a really interestingly done arc with the *spoilers* staff grooming her into being the games other main villain, her turn from sisterly support to being corrupted and power hungry was really neat to see and her voice actress pulls off the role really well with how her voice and speech style changes over the course of the story, her interactions with the cast became so tense later on. the rest of the cast are a good mix too, the delinquent sister who has a really cool role in the games bad ending route, the comedy relief food obsessed girl that has a great arc, the rivally queen bee type with viola who has some amazing one-liners, very Cheryl blossom. tsukikage and rinka are the more boring of the cast but they still have their arcs and they're fine enough, but they did come across as a little bland vs the rest of the cast, the quiet sisterly type and the "best at everything" head of the class.

the music here is very good, all of the battle themes are amazing, viola and ranka get special shoutouts but they're all really good, very jrpg boss theme or fighting gamey and some of the best on the console,the store and hub themes are great too, there's a specific song in here that sounds very like something from fairy tail and even the cutscene music owns, even the dressing room theme kills it's a seriously good OST. it has 3 composers and all 3 of them are very talented people, there's Ryusuke Fujioka who had also worked on the amazing hakuoki Kyoto winds and edo blossoms, Naruto to boruto, black clover quartet knights and even bloodstained! plus clap handz golf along with one of the other composers Ryo Shirasawa who worked on that same Naruto, the shinchan game and THE bass fishing, shoutout simple series, many tamsoft connections here. the final composer was Noriko Murakami who also worked on super pokemon mystery dungeon, omega quintet and DBZ kakarot! it's an OST good enough for me to recommend listening to it even outside the game, check it out. the game is subbed only but all of the performances are super good, especially echigoya and the director.

the game has two main ways to play, the vita version and the pc version, but pc games don't exist so i'll ignore that one. the vita ver is pretty difficult to find physically, as with many vita console exclusives, so you'll be hunting for a while for it, but its available digitally and via other means and the dlc character is pretty cheap too, there aren't any real modern console verions and i'd say its unliekly it'll ever get one since the game is tied to an anime licence, which is a shame, hopefully one day it gets one. initially i would have assumed this would have been tamsoft but instead it was made by a different studio who did work on many tamsoft IP's, Meteorise Inc. had worked on some mobile games and some wrestling thing but they also worked on senran estival versus and bon appitite, so they have some credentials here, clearly they have action game talent if this and estival is anything to go buy, both are two of the best action games on vita, and bon appitite is a damn fine rhythm game too. the tamsoft connections don't stop there, the games director Kōji Watanabe had worked previously on the oneechanbara series for them and had worked so long as to even be thanked on toshinden 4, he also worked on games like resonance of fate, star ocean 4 and dragon sisters, plus bon appirite for the same company. i'd reccomend the game overall if you can get over the hurdles it has, which i do get can be a lot for some people, but if you can its well worth it for some of the deepest hack and slash combat in the medium and one of the most fun action games on the vita.