FuRyu has got to be the one company that loves to experiment with new things. How well those experiments end up working is admittedly a mixed bag, and based on my own personal experiences, they range from superb, like The Caligula Effect 2, to borderline messes such as Lost Dimension. When I first saw the trailers for VARLET, I initially found its premise rather interesting. But let’s see if this manages to become a true diamond in the sea of RPG releases this fall season.
Welcome to Kosei Academy
VARLET begins its story with our protagonist, whose default name is Tachibana Ayase. After his mother was hospitalized with a disease, he was forced to move out and live with his cousins, and as such, transferred over to Kosei Academy, a prestigious high school with both geniuses and normal people alike.
The first thing you’ll do upon starting the game is take a Triad Analysis test. The game will flash you thirteen questions, which you must answer truthfully. Next, based on your answers, the game will give you six different stats: Morality, Psychopathy, Altruism, Machiavellian, Sympathy, and Narcissism. These quizzes also repeat in each of the game’s chapters, each of them sporting a different context in mind.
The way the story of VARLET is paced out is utterly bizarre, to say the least. You have some weird jump cuts that happen haphazardly, and it can be very confusing to follow at times. Plot points are introduced out of literally nowhere, with no proper bridge connecting them. Honestly, I would go as far as to say that this story commits every single RPG sin known to man, something I can’t say lightly.
The first chapter takes forever to get to something even remotely interesting, and even as you progress through the main story, it doesn’t get that much better, to be honest. I will say that this is not the type of quality I was expecting from the same developers that brought us MONARK. VARLET feels like a hollow imitation of that game, but without half the things that made that previous title fun or otherwise interesting.
To give credit where it’s due, though, the character portraits are really expressive, and perhaps a lot better than the 3D models. I also enjoyed the special character episodes that you unlock by hanging out with your party members. Still, I think a lot of them feel really odd. The character attempts to converse with you, but you seemingly don’t get to answer back. It feels very weird sometimes, like a one-sided conversation that is generally awkward. I struggled to even come close to connecting with any of the characters as a result, and it is seriously so difficult to enjoy a game without liking the characters.
Since VARLET only features Japanese voices, I also decided to check the translation quality. And while I did not spot any egregious typos, the team certainly took some interesting liberties, especially when compared to what I’m hearing in Japanese. Overall, though, I didn’t have any major qualms with it.
Special Student Support, At Your Service
VARLET‘s gameplay can be divided into two facets: You have your work as a member of the Student Support Services (or SSS for short), which is a group dedicated to helping Kosei Academy’s students. Then you get the dungeons the game calls Glitches, where you’ll dive into those and defeat the Desires, which are manifestations of a person’s wishes and, well, desires, and try to discover the truth behind them.
The SSS activities are easily described as just going out around the campus, using your AI assistant MENA to use her Sonar to find some lost items, and occasionally closing stray Glitches and placing some ads around the areas. Doing so will accumulate Likes, which increases your SSS rank. Once you’ve accumulated your quota, you are able to continue the story. You’ll also encounter Triad quizzes, which will slightly give you points towards the six stats mentioned at the beginning of the story.
Believe me when I say that this system feels like a nothingburger. You can collect student information, which is saved to your terminal, but this information basically means nothing for the story. It’s just some extra fluff that, quite frankly, you can freely ignore. Maybe this could have been something greater with narrative implications or extra substance, but it unfortunately falls flat as a system. Curiously, the game features a calendar system, where it will go from Daytime to Night, but it’s really awful. All you can really do before going to sleep is save the game, and then proceed to the next part of the story.
Monotonous Turn-Based Combat
Now let’s move towards the combat system, which is presented in this turn-based command format. On the left of the screen, you’ll have a timeline of when your allies and enemies will act. There are two types of attacks: Normal and Special. Now, remember the six statuses? This is where they will really matter. The more of a specific stat you have, the more passive buffs you’ll obtain in combat, which can affect you in several unique ways.
For example, the more Morality you have, the less damage your party will take in combat. But if you increase Machiavellian, for instance, it will instead grant you a passive ability that reduces an ally’s HP whenever you use a Skill. However, I’m not sure why, but I have not seen that much of a difference in practice, and that’s probably because of how easy it is to overlevel yourself. Even if you set the difficulty to Hard, all that really seems to do is increase the enemies’ HP, but there’s practically no benefit to going hard mode, since the EXP gained is unaffected. This leads to difficulty that seems pointless, and that’s a huge problem for any major RPG fan. What is the point of even having fights in the first place if there is no chance for me to lose?
Furthermore, the dungeon design is incredibly dull and boring, with puzzles that failed to engage me in the slightest. Nothing here ever grabbed my attention, and I found many of the puzzles both bland and frustrating. At the very least, I haven’t needed to do excessive grinding like I had to do with MONARK.
The soundtrack of the boss battles reminds me a lot of the songs used for The Caligula Effect 2 bosses, but unfortunately, you do have to understand Japanese, because there are no subtitles provided for them. A minor gripe, but I do find that the lyrics match quite perfectly with the boss, and they’re quite catchy too.
One of FuRyu’s Worst Releases Yet
There is no other way to sugarcoat this, but out of all the titles in FuRyu’s catalogue, VARLET has got to be one of the worst. It commits quite literally every sin an RPG could possibly make, and the real kicker is the insultingly high price tag of $60 it carries on its back, which leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
VARLET feels like a hollow, disappointing waste of time. While it has just a few redeeming qualities, such as the charming cast, this is not enough to save it. The narrative is boring, the combat system is dull and uninspired, and as a result, I honestly don’t think it’s worth spending your time on. I greatly appreciate the effort from FuRyu to make this a worldwide release, but I hope the company’s next game is of higher quality.
Disclaimer: FuRyu provided a Nintendo Switch copy of VARLET for review purposes.
