I bought this game at release with the thought process that it was a sort of spiritual successor to a previous Furyu-published game "Monark" so that bias will likely show. I'm neutral leaning towards Recommended.
[b]Story[/b]
At the start of each story chapter, you are subject to a short personality quiz, an appeal point similar to how Chess was for Monark. In regards to gameplay, it only really affects you in a small way. Whichever personality trait you have the most points in determines stat adjustments you will have going forward. There are six traits in total, 3 under the category of "Leader" and 3 being "Ruler".
Similar to most other "new student" stories, your place in the story begins with joining the school's SSS, pretty much a helper's club, a common enough anime cliche. You act as the SSS's second in command to your cousin, who is the leader of the group, but she's pretty much just a mascot when it comes to story relevance. She does become more involved near the end of the game, but for over half of the game's runtime, she's just sitting there looking pretty. For your band of misfits, you have the following: Aspiring Streamer, Overworked Committee Member, Newly Popular Idol, Silver-Spooned Graffiti Artist, Troubled Filmmaker, and Low-Confidence Junior (kouhai).
The story starts out innocent enough, you go around solving problems around campus, typical high school issues and then also those relevant to the special otherworld of this game: "Glitches". You interact with the "Glitches" that pop up as your combat segments for the game. Every chapter is spread out in in 8-part segments. The story only begins to become somewhat interesting near the end.
[b]Gameplay[/b]
The gameplay loop is split into two main phases: School Exploration that feels like tacked-on filler, and then the actual Story Content, where dungeon exploration and combat take place. Every so often you get to spend time together with one of your fellow club members, which is the way you're meant to develop your relationships with them. Unfortunately, you won't be able to see all the character stories in one playthrough, as there just aren't enough available days to do so.
In the school exploration part of your day, you go around the school campus. Typically, you will have some sort of goals set by the SSS: things like finding lost items or placing digital flyers, with the occasional student help request. The way you go about searching for lost items gets monotonous very quickly: you tap a button to activate your "sonar" which will ping any interactable items or "Glitches". Usually, student help requests will be a combination of the two: locate a missing item and then go into a related Glitch to fight an enemy to complete the quest.
Something I did really like, however, was all the different conversations taking place on campus (a feature that was also present in Monark) made even better by the fact that in Varlet, the campus is one big area, meaning that there are far less loading screens to deal with. If you're a fan of the school setting in these type of games you'll find it fun to walk around campus and see what sorts of conversations and cliches are going on. And just as a side note, some of the flavor text for the student help requests are also pretty funny/snarky.
Throughout the course of the game, if you choose to not skip the campus exploration section and complete all the sub-missions, you will receive more stat boosters than you'll know what to do with.
[b]Combat & Dungeon[/b]
This game is not difficult. At all. The puzzles they do ask you to solve aren't really that complex, primarily having you activate switches to solidify corresponding tiles to walk on top of, or place blocks to activate pressure plates or block off sections. In the latter third, there are actual puzzles to solve, making use of color-coded switches and moving tiles, but even then it's not too difficult to solve. I honestly had more fun trying to find ways to position myself to "Flank Attack" the enemies placed around the map.
Dungeons themselves are split into sections with save points between every "room", so you solve a nonexistent puzzle and do severely barebones combat, save, and repeat until reaching the end of the dungeon section. I feel like this save point design was moreso a band-aid fix meant to address any potential crashes.
There's no Mana-type resource in this game, just HP, which stands out to me as even more casual command-battle games will still have a resource pool to maintain. Combat is timeline based, so some actions are faster or slower than others, but that's about as deep as it gets in regard to a speed stat. You will be doing one of three things when it comes to using damage skills: Pure DPS with some sort of boon/Cancel an enemy's cast/Break an enemy's guard. There are also healing/shielding and (de)buffs to ATK/DEF, but outside of bosses, I rarely found myself using them. Also, there is a stun bar, but again, this is usually only relevant to boss fights. If you manage to break the enemy's stun bar, you are able to "bind" them with certain skills, which enters your party into a short segment, "Blitz Mode" of freely whaling on the boss, which ends with a massive burst damage finishing move.
Some might view this as a plus or a minus, but there is no gear progression in the game. Your base stats increase solely by level up, skill tree, and stat boosters. As a result of this, money is really only used to purchase healing items, so if you're playing well enough, money doesn't matter at all.
The chests scattered about the dungeons aren't even worth the effort. You solve a simple puzzle and get healing items you won't use, stat boosters you won't need, or purely sellable items to increase your ever-growing pile of useless money.
Experience gain is not party wide, mainly going to the three party members you do combat with, which is really just You and two other characters, as you're not able to move yourself out of the main party. However, this isn't too bad, as under-leveled characters will more or less slingshot their way back to level par when placed back into the party. I feel like this 3-man party design is moreso in line with that fact that you're only able to fully complete side stories for 2, maybe 3, characters in a playthrough. I feel the intention was for you to focus on one half of the playable cast in a playthrough.
This game just isn't difficult in any sense, so there's no sense of achievement for overcoming a tough boss or figuring out a difficult puzzle. The only thing boss fights have going for them is the music, which for the most part, is fun to listen to. The main issue however, is that you will likely finish a fight before completing the song.
[b]Closing[/b]
As much as I would like to, I can't fully recommend this game. It's just far too middling and half-baked to recommend it for full price. The best things the game has going for it are the art, music, and voice acting. The story is decent enough, but nothing most out there likely haven't already seen before. The campus exploration can feel like a slog, although you can choose to skip it if you want, and there's no depth to combat. Instead of doubling down on what Varlet had the potential to be good at, they generalized the game to a point where it just exists.
If you want to try out a similar Furyu game, I would highly recommend you give Monark a try before entertaining the thought of Varlet. Monark is a bit older, and it shows, but I think it's still the more finished product. I would say though, a 50% sale is a good enough price point for this game, it's a low stakes, low investment, for fun game. If you do choose to play Varlet, I would highly recommend you consider using CheatEngine for a speedhack, overworld movement is just too slow, 1.5x was my sweet spot.
If you're going to buy a Furyu product, just go buy a figure.
