As such, the general gameplay and aesthetic between this game and his previous series are extremely similar. I’m not exaggerating when I say that fell asleep with my Vita in hand once while reading through the dialog.Īs mentioned earlier, Valkyrie Drive‘s producer is the same man behind the Senran Kagura series, Kenichirou Takaki. I don’t care about these characters or their situations, and I could really couldn’t care less about what happens to them.
The plot does manage to throw in some intriguing moments late in the game, but by then its too little too late. Heaps of dialog that goes absolutely nowhere, a cast of characters that are more annoying than likeable, and much of the story driven by repetitive battles against the same teams over and over. Yet, despite the amount of crazy entertainment I thought this setup could create, the plot of Valkyrie Drive is one of the dullest I’ve played through recently. The premise of the story is complete nonsense. There is one final sidenote – for a Valkyrie to change into a weapon, their partner must sexually arouse them. Our main characters, along with other women on the island, pair up to fight each other, with one member of each team wielding the other in her weapon form. The infected are known as Valkyries, and numerous islands around the world have been turned into quarantine area and research posts for eliminating the virus, of which Bhikkhuni is one. This island has become well known for managing to successfully treat many patients, so Rinka and Ranka have arrived in search of treatment.Īs it turns out, the course of treatment is battle. A new kind of virus, known as the V-Virus, has run rampant on the world infecting young women…letting them transform into weapons. Valkyrie Drive follows the story of sisters Rinka and Ranka, who have recently arrived to the utterly unpronounceable island of Bhikkhuni. Unlike those titles, though, the themes in this game are presented front-and-center, and do feel like they’re intended to provide titillation to the audience.ĭeveloped by Meteorise and published in the west by PQube, Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkhuni was released on October 11th, 2016. Actually, today’s game was produced by the man behind the Senran Kagura series. We’ve looked at some titles in the past that use sexual humor in standout ways, such as Gal*Gun and Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus. I make mention of this debate as the game we are looking at today is driven heavily by sexual themes. This is despite, or perhaps even because of, the way these themes are handled. Movies such as American Pie, Eurotrip, and Superbad are very driven by immature sexual humor, and while they definitely aren’t amongst the greatest films of all time, they remain seen as classics by many. However, the same is true in other mediums, including works that are loved by many. I will agree that games can handle this in a very juvenile manner. Yet, when sexual themes are added to that list, that’s when complaints begin to arise. Many games handle other mature themes such as death, mortality, war, PTSD, and so on, and receive critical acclaim when they do it well. The story is way better than Queen's Blade, but the characters are about on par with Queen's Blade, but not better.Sexuality is a major part of the human experience, so it’s inevitable that it will turn up in our entertainment media. But despite that, the story and characters are really good. And yet this is somehow not a hentai, but it might as well be at this point. In the anime, they have to make the weapon-girl orgasm in order to transform, so instead kissing or doing a boob touch like the game, they actually finger each other. Personally, I think they characters are fine. The game sort of throws all of that established lore out the window to make it more playable so that you can have different combinations of characters fighting together. In the anime, all the girls are either a wielder or a weapon and it's implied that the girls become a specific weapon and they have one perfect matched partner.
The anime takes place before the events of this game and Rinka and Rana make an appearance on the last episode of the anime.īasically, the game's characters are special in that they can play both roles and become whatever weapon is needed by girl who wields them. If you watched the anime, you'd understand the deal with the two DLC characters.