The Goddesses’ personalities will completely change if you choose to corrupt them as well. The proud and prideful Odin will become much more submissive and show a cuter side. The Freya that valued her citizens above all else will only give her love and affection to Loki once she has fallen. There are more details that go along with their fall from grace, but this is something you should experience on your own.
Not only does the choice to corrupt or not play a role in the story of VenusBlood Frontier International, but it will affect combat abilities as well. Some of the Goddesses will gain powerful skills when they become fully corrupted. Tyrca is the best example of this, gaining the skills Darkbringer and Deathbringer. These are super powerful attacks that saved me more than once in my quest to conquer all that opposed us!
VenusBlood Frontier’s combat is actually pretty deep and involved, so don’t go into this thinking this is just some tacked on little section of an H-Game. I’ve played many SRPGs with bigger names behind them that lack the quality of what is found here. I am going to simplify it a bit for this review and cover things I think the tutorials missed. This is the only area I felt the game was lacking. It doesn’t really explain how some of these things work in good enough detail.
The object here is simple, take over the world! You will do this by taking nodes on the map in each of the areas of Yggdrasil. The first thing you need to do before jumping into combat is to prepare your army. Clicking hire will allow you to add troops to your army. Not all troops will be available for you to start with in the beginning. Certain units will require you meet conditions like having X number of certain type of medals. These medals can also be used to power up units during creation. The moon cycle and day and night cycle will have an effect on unit stats as well. Look for the smiley icon in the middle of the hiring screen for the best result. This will also tell you if you have the amount of food or dark energy needed to upkeep this unit as well.
There are six different types of units in VenusBlood Frontier International – Bladers, Lancers, Shooters, Casters, Guarders and Destroyers. Each of these have strengths and weaknesses that you will need to keep in mind when forming them into groups. It’s also wise to note that certain units will get a boost depending on the moon cycle or time of day in which they are attacking. Vampires for example get a great bonus when attacking at night.
You can have up to 10 squads of 6 fighters each to invade Yggdrasil. You can set these to one of three different actions. Attack means the squad will attack when you invade a new area, defense means the squad will defend an area that is being invaded by an enemy, and rest means they will stay out of combat that turn and heal. You will need to check to see the types of enemies that are invading you before choosing which groups you want to defend. Underpowered groups could take massive damage and will cost you a small fortune in gold to heal.
Once you have decided which node you wish to attack simply right-click on it. You will be taken to a screen which shows your groups and if they are set to attack or defend. If you click start battle you will be taken to a turn based battle where you can choose the actions you take for a certain amount of turns. You will want to use this on bigger foes or boss groups that may require you to use special skills to handle properly. After your turns expire the rest of the units you have set to attack will follow course with assault attacks. These are one turn attacks and the damage is calculated on both sides and result is displayed. You can set these groups to use offensive, defense or speed type attacks but you have no real control over the attacks that are chosen.
After all the squads have attacked or defended a turn will pass. If you successfully took the node you will gain whatever resources it produces. You can also change these out for structures so long as you control the area and have the gold to build it. Players can also skip turns to build up resources if you are not being attacked. If you do not defend or at least repel invaders during a turn you will lose that area and have to retake it again. After fighting it out for a while story sequences will begin and you can also check your call menu to see if you can hang out with your crew. Viewing scenes with your crew will not take your turn.
One last thing I would like to touch on before I close out this review is the music. The music found in VenusBlood Frontier International is top notch by any standard. The battle themes get you pumped up and ready for combat and the vocal track “Blank Page” brings you feels as you feel the end of your journey is coming near. I was very shocked the vocal tracks had an English singer. This is something almost unheard of in titles like this and I thought it was a great touch. All of the voice acting in the game is done in Japanese and the cast does an amazing job bringing these characters to life.
While I didn’t touch on everything found in VenusBlood Frontier International I feel this is a pretty good overview of how the game flows. While this combat sounds complicated it’s really not once you start playing and is actually highly addictive. I haven’t had this much fun with an SRPG in many years. The story here is top notch and I loved all of the characters found here. This is one of the few times I can say a game truly met my expectations, and I sincerely hope Ninetails will bring more of these titles to the West. For the $40 you’re getting 100+ hours of solid gameplay and story in a game that has some of the best music and artwork I’ve seen in a long time. This is a must own for visual novel fans and SRPG players alike.
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Game provided by the publisher for review purposes.
