Varlet

At best, Varlet is a boring command-based RPG with social sim elements. At worst, Varlet is a fundamentally broken game.

Varlet is a middle-tier game seeped in potential.

Despite the early promise brought by its measured sense of style, interest in intellectual concepts, and distinct combat system, Varlet falls flat in almost every way. It’s still an eye-pleasing RPG experience with fun combat, but all of its surface elements are just that: surface elements. The whole game is dressed up as something it isn’t, which is a shame. I’d love to play the game Varlet presents itself as, rather than the sterile, conveyor belt production line version of a Persona-inspired RPG it feels like.

The portions of the game that take place between the main plot points and dungeons are dull, making it hard to want to go through the effort of completing all the side objectives. The combat is where the game shines, however, allowing for interesting combinations of your characters and what you can do with them.

The impression VARLET gives is that the team had ambitions that they couldn't fit within the scope of the project, whether due to budget or time constraints. This results in irrelevant mechanics, a lack of challenge, and a mediocre story. It's a game with a very nice character design, a competent soundtrack—I really liked the music during a certain boss fight—and character development that positively surprised me. It's a game that will appeal to fans of titles from AQURIA or FuRyu; if you're not a fan, I recommend waiting for a sale: you'll find better games for a fraction of the price.

Unfortunately, some interesting story ideas and decent music are thoroughly let down by a self-destructive gameplay loop, incredibly shallow systems, and a horrendously broken battle system.

VARLET doesn't do anything wrong as far as JRPGs go, but it also doesn't do enough that's interesting. The game puts its engaging characters in a typical high school setting and gives them the standard tasks to complete with little challenge to interfere. It's an OK game to chill with, but it doesn't leave an impression.

Varlet isn’t a game I would recommend to anyone. Even for Japanese high school game enjoyers, there’s just not enough content or reward behind said content to really motivate interest in its pursuit. Every feature in the game feels half-cooked, with the combat system being the only interesting thing, but ultimately falls hard on its face since there’s really no feeling of reward or satisfaction.

Ultimately, perhaps we do need to remember that this is FuRyu’s first self-published game, and the existence of Varlet at all is, itself, an experiment. We didn’t get the usual creative subversion that we’ve come to expect from the company behind the likes of Lost Dimension, The Caligula Effect, Crystar, and Reynatis, but in taking this step as a company, perhaps FuRyu will be able to protect its ability to continue to do those games in the future. Valent itself, unfortunately, is a game I wish I could love more than I did.

Varlet brings a lot to the table in its systems and mechanics. It also adds a lot of self-discovery to the gameplay with the ruler and leader systems. The SSS requests are monotonous and definitely feel more like busy work than anything, but it doesn't hold the game down too much.