I'm... kinda disappointed, to be honest. After all the fun I had with Senran Kagura games, I was expecting more of the same. But unfortunately, this game is worse in ways that matter to me.

There are fewer characters and they are way less interesting. I couldn't care less about any one of the girls at best, and at worst they really annoyed me. When compared to Senran Kagura where every girl had either compelling or fun story and interractions, it's a huge let down. Not to mention they all have the same bodies (3 body types if you count DLC characters).

The interface is very... Japanese for the lack of a better word. Meaning it's not optimized for your comfort, and instead makes you press too many buttons to get what you want. Specifically, it takes you 7 button presses to unlock a single piece of clothing in this game. Seven. Instead of just - push, buy, done.

The tutorial in this game just keeps going on and on and on... In the story mode, instead of fighting, you're just stuck doing whichever button presses the game wants you to do for more than 2 chapters...

On a bright side though, I had 0 issues with the translation and performance of this game. 1080p, 60fps. So at least it's a good port and a good localization. And the combat is fun. In some ways I like it more than Senran Kagura's (although not in everything).

Overall, it's just slightly disappointing. If you've never played Senran Kagura games, you may find yourself enjoying this title. Then again, maybe get SK instead? Especially if you care about story and characters.

Do you like Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus? Well this game has less impressive character models covered in awkward lighting effects that make it look like a bad porn game, more annoying jiggle physics that make it look like the characters ties are trying to have their way with their wearers as they clip in and out of the models, less satisfying combat moves that barely seem to make enemies flinch, slower movement that kills the flow, more clunky controls, and a story that does not seem like it even has as much going for it as Senran Kagura did. And let me remind you that SK's story was little more than just an excuse to have 3-4 factions start beating the snot out of each other. Combine all of this with the fact that the characters have even less depth and you are looking at a pretty bland experience.

But my biggest problem isn't just that it's less impressive than Senran Kagura though. No, my main problem is that they took a concept I am absoutely in love with, characters turning into weapons to be weilded by their partners, and barely seem to do anything with it. The "Extars" (weapons) do not seem to change what the "Liberator" (wielder) is actually holding, weapons do not have any sort of autonomy while transformed, humans cannot partially transform to potentially protect themselves when alone, and anything else I can think of to give this game mechanic a reason to exist is completely ignored, so there is literally no point in having them be people that you can choose between instead of, say, a normal sentient weapon that forms sybiotic bonds with their hosts or even tries to take them over (see Aselia the Eternal for how that can be used effectively). Oh, except that theres some yuri fanservice to kick off super moves, so yeah, that tooootally makes it worth it. I mean, would it have really been so hard to maybe have some sort of weapon swap mechanic where the two people you are playing as swap positions? It could make for a really good dodge move to add more variety to boss fights.

If *all* you want is fanservice, I guess this game can provide, but that still feels like something Senran Kagura did better (even if I did find it just as annoying in that game). Characters, mechanics, concepts, and even the graphics are all things that you could find better versions of in other places. Just give this game a pass.

Side note: Seriously? They do this little with the living weapon concept? One character is stated to be antisocial, aggressive, elitist, and completely uninterested in helping out anyone else. The very first time we see her in a fight, she's the weapon half of the combination and complains after the fight that she could have done better as the wielder, but we see absolutely no indication that this self-centered narcisist even attempted to turn human or reverse the roles in the slightest.

I like these types of games but I'll be honest with you:
Just buy Senran Kagura

There are only 7 characters in the game.
Their designs as well as their personalities are pretty boring, you can't buy ANY additional clothes for them other than color variants (except the DLC of course).

While the character models are better than Senran Kagura and the game brings some fresh stuff in the fighting mechanics, this simply isnt worth the price for the severe lack of content, especially when you can get Estival Versus for around the same price

Unfortunately this PAINS me to put up a bad review on my favorite publisher but i cant make it past stage 1 act 3 without the game crashing and iv played more than 8 hours that's just 8 hours from re-installation. As i said i re-installed the game, checked everything on my computer, checked the community board (after e-mailing them, my bad), adjusted all game setting, and still crash, crash, crash. Also it partial deletes save data so if you upgrade your character to lvl 6 on Level 2 act 2, after the game crashes on act 3 you start back at character lvl 1 on act 3. again i HATE to leave a bad review for this i adore the brains behind the game. if its ever re-vamped and put on switch ill defiantly try again but not on here :-(

Senran Kagura with worse gameplay. Maybe if you are a fan of the show it will be tolerable.

Valkryie Drive Bhikkuni is basically the spin off of the anime Valkryie Drive Mermaid, where you have girls infected with special viruses and are able to power up and wield powerful weapons by....... yuri relationships. Yes, you will have girls French kissing their partners and fondling each other to get a massive power up. Basically there will be a pair of girls, a Liberator, which wields the weapon after the power up, and the Extar, which transforms into the said weapon after being fondled or French kissed. Anyway, this game takes place in an island named Bhikkuni, which sounds oddly like bikini (perhaps a foreshadowing of "plot"?).

In this game you will choose a pair of girls, where the Liberator will be having all the action of hacking and slashing whatever in your way, like a small musou game. Your Extar or partner will be be buffing your Liberator, depending on which character you selected, they may give a higher boost to different parameters like health, damage or defense. Like other Marvellous musou-ish games, you have your light attack and strong attack, which is capable of being charged to give a more powerful attack, or just give an alternative option of attacks. You also have your launcher button, which when charged up, will do a move which pushes whatever mobs surrounding your character away.

You can hold the jump button to do a Phantom Dash, which is a dash like move that is capable of following up with either a barrage of air attack, a dive attack, or a launcher move or a pushback move. You can even dodge immediately after this dash to avoid attacks, in case that you dash into one immediately. Hitting the opponents and doing all these follow ups from the Phantom Dash will help to increase your Heat meter, which actually boosts your damage output up to 400% if you can maintain it in a combo, and also increase your Synchro Stocks. Synchro Stocks are used for three things, which are entering Drive mode, where you will get a massive power up from the power of yuri, Drive Break, which are like super moves that are only accessible from Drive mode, and Connect mode, which basically buffs all your attacks at the cost of constantly depleting Synchro Stock, and it can be done in pre- or post-Drive modes.

Storywise, its basically telling a story of two sisters trying to get treatment for their yuri virus. Along the way they meet similar people and find out about what the island and Valkryies really are. Depending on your mission gradings for specific key missions, you can choose a different route on where the story will be headed, though once you finish a route, you can replay the missions to try the other route, just to see what happens. There are a total of 7 playable characters in this game, 8 if you include Mirei from Valkryie Drive Mermaid, and her squeaky Extar Mamori, which can only be partnered with her, and due to her nature of her backstory, her default mode is a Drive mode, since she needs to constantly "wield" Mamori.

Anyway, game play wise, its a pretty fun mindless hack and slash. You can get to see your favourite Valkryies in actions, destroying mobs and bosses with a perfect angle for fanservice. Speaking of fanservice, as this game's main feature is yuri power up, you will get to see tons of nudity, underskirt shots, ripped clothings, risque lingeries etc. After completing a mission, you will get both XP and Zeni, where the Zeni is your in game currency to buy stuffs for collection purposes, including a huge series of lingerie to be worn. Oh yeah. The Phantom Dash move is pretty fun move to play around, as it allows for some pretty fun juggle combos. Character models here looks pretty good, in terms of appearances and design. Viola is best girl by the way. Challenge and survival modes are also pretty fun as side games, since they test how well versed you are with the game mechanics and characters.

Sadly while playing this game, there are 4 major things that plagued me so badly that I am tempted to not recommend this game. Firstly, the abysmal camera angle. Sure, it gives a good angle of "plot", but how the hell am I supposed to find who I want to hit when the FOV of this game is only 50-60 FOV? Trying to rotate the camera while looking for that Battle Mage, while being surrounding by Fighter mobs and a barrel rolling Kubira is not fun. A certain boss in this game, abuse the camera angle so badly, that fighting her the first few times is a hair pulling experience. Coupled with the ridiculously crappy targetting system, you will literally cry as you struggle just to lock on onto that desired target. The only way to circumvent this is to go right up front to that target and lock on.

The auto save in this game, while a pretty nice feature added in compared to a lack of it in the Senran Kagura series, causes the game to get stuck in a loading screen often, forcing you to terminate the game often. Disabling it will solve this issue. The final main issue to be addressed here, is that this game is insanely buggy! Achievements not unlocking until after a certain patch was released, even so it won't register the achievements sometimes, making you have to try to get them again. Remember that boss that abuses camera angle? Well sometimes at certain conditions, if done right, she will crash your game, or put your game in a never ending loop of cutscene, causing a run to be moot, though this is pretty rare. As I rebounded my jump or Phantom Dash button onto Spacebar, everytime I start a Challenge mission, it will open up the menu screen when it starts and when I press it. For the record, my menu button is on Enter. This is super infuriating, as some mission need to have a really quick head start.

Other than those 4 major issues, I guess that the camera abusing boss is a bit overpowered, as she has some moves which hits super hard and last for a while, and has a one shot move if you are not aware of it. Though with the right strategy and tons of dodging, you can bring her down pretty easily, assuming she doesn't crashes your game. While the character model looks pretty great, their hair looks a little...... dry and glossy for some reasons. Background assets looks really simplified with pixelated assets. For some reasons, equiping a certain character costumes locks out some lingerie options, for example, if I equip Viola with Ranka's outfit, I can't use Viola's default lingerie.

Overall, I spent quite a lot of time here due to one pretty grindy achievement and also because Viola is best girl, followed by Ranka and Mirei. While I mentioned those bugs annoyed me badly, after circumventing some of them in a way, the game gets much more enjoyable. I can say when it's fun, it's an enjoyable game. However, this game is not as polished as the Senran Kagura series in terms of stability and appearance. If you do like yuri power ups and plots, you can go ahead and give this game a shot. Who knows, maybe you won't encounter some of the buggy stuffs that I did, but I would seriously recommend the Senran Kagura series if you are into this type of game. Also, try not to play with people around, since people will think you are a pervert.

5.0/10. Borderline pass. I really wanted to recommend this game, alas it just wasn't meant to be.

No amount of boobs can make up for how badly this game runs. Can't even get past the third level without it crashing every single time. My review stays negative untill the devs decide to fix their game. So like, forever.

I was a huge fan of Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid when it got release few years ago, so i had to buy this game and i must admit i'm not disapointed at all. I really enjoyed playing it. It respecting what the anime did with the Yuri (lesbians) side with the huge Ecchi scene, the Liberators and Extars girls that are stuck on a Island. The characters are adorables (mention plus to Rinka that is my favorite one), the gamestyle is exactly what i love to play (combos and drives skils are weird at the begin but you get easily use to it), the Dressing Room is a good idea and i liked re-done all my characters with accesory, outfit, hair colors and stuff that i like a lot. The RPG style (LvLing your girls) on Main Mode (Story Mode) that got multiples difficulty (Easy, Normal, Hard) with 20 Chapters in total (each of them got 2 or 3parts, depending the Chapters). Sadly, i did not had time to try Survival and Challenge Mode (i will explain above why). The DLC is only if already watched the anime (Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid) and want to play as Mirei and Mamori (Mirei as Liberator and Mamori as Extar). The only reason why it's only for the anime's fan it's because none of them can be on Team with the others girls of the game.

Now the bad part of the game is: i wasn't able to end the game and to try others mods than Story Mode is because the game kept crashing and it has zero fix about it. If you playing on Full Screen the game get stuck on "Checking DLC" right before the Main Menu. If by miracle you acces to the Main Menu and can play, you're game will out of nowhere get stuck on the Loading between Chapters/Missions (bug name: Infinite Loading). Only way to pass it is to close the game by Task Manager and restarting it. Sometime you can just do your Chapter/Mission after restarting the game and it's working. If you're are unlucky like me and many others players you won't even be able to play anymore. Exactly, my game is blocked on Infinite Loading on the last Chapter and i can't even end the Story Mode. And as i said earlier: "it has zero fix about it". I checked on Internet several hours, tried all the things that others players did and the game it's still broken.

Conclusion: Get the game if you're a fan of the anime or that type of game (Beat them all + RPG) but don't except be able to play A LOT and to unlock everything (achievements, rewards, characters, modes, clothes, etc) because you won't due to Infinite Loading bug that appearing often.

Wannabe senran kagura with a bad combat system and forgettable characters, not worth your time.

Okay you want more? Fine. Obejctively bad? No. Mediocre? Very. When compared to Senran Kagura? A bad side project of Marvelous.

An attempt at a new kind of game but lacking direction, so they took some of the iconic things from Senran Kagura, reskinned them, and slapped them into a new game with a clunky new combat system. The combat system is needlessly complicated with unintuitive button followthroughs, and no real rhyme or reason for doing any complicated ones over the most basic chains. There are fewer characters so the game tries to spend more time with each, but doesn't really end up characterizing them, so most of the dialogue is meaningless drivel. Beyond that the game doesn't have its own charm. Playing the game just made me wish I was playing a Senran Kagura game.

Also the camera is one of the worst cameras I have ever seen in gaming.

Valkyrie Drive is a fun little hack and slash action game, don't get me wrong. I can recommend this, but definitely not to anybody. I'm a big fan of Honey Parade and the senran series they put out, and this game is pretty much a reskin of a classic Senran Game, with clothes break, transformations and all. But, unlike the Senran Kagura series, Valkyrie Drive -Bhikkhuni- lacks so much polish. Story is a drag, leveling up to be able to do goods amount of damage takes a long time, and more. I've condensed it:


- Cast is full of cute anime girls with boobs, so instant win.
- Lots of accessories, images, songs, and bikinis to find and collect
- The collecting aspect promotes replay value a little bit
- The combat system is good; halfway through the story but fun enough when playing survival mode as well.

Now,

- The story DRAGS ON FOREVER.;
This game technically has about 24 chapters total including the true ending routes that unlock after you beat it. Each chapter has 2 to 3 missions, and those missions almost always have secrets and bonus missions that require you to spend extra time exploring the maps. It's fine for the first 11 or so chapters, but the story develops at a snails pace so it drags and becomes almost unbearable. By the ending, I felt like it was more of a chore to play. It's not a very interesting story, and it kinda just decides to drop the conflict and climax at the same time near the end.
- Too...much....talking;
This is an anime game so its expected. But remember how many missions there were? Each one has a before and after slew of text between the characters. The fact most of it is voice acted is nice, but the characters go on and on forever with no real reason to, as the story doesn't really ramp up until the end. It's literally anime filler inside of a game that happens for 80% of said game. This makes missions and just clearing the story in all a pain in the ass.
- Damage makes no sense;
The game starts off with the weakest enemies. As you progress, stronger versions get introduced. Fair enough. But damage makes no sense in this game. Outside of an arbitrary level for each girl as each position, there's no real stat system or equipment to modify your dps. This means, even if you're like level 35 near the end missions, the enemy waves still take FOREVER to kill, unless you're in final drive already, and they still are damage sponges by then. It was clearly unbalanced as hell. Speaking of which;
- Unbalanced characters;
Like every game by HoneyParade, the roster is completely unbalanced. It's a good thing the multiplayer community is dead, because it would not be enjoyable. Manpakumaru and Ranka are probably the two worst characters to be in this game; leveling them up all the way doesn't even help especially in boss fights because they're slow, clunky, and they have jank hitboxes. This makes some story mode fights damn near impossible without buying a lot of health items first - especially since in these boss fights the AI can go to final drive instantly while you try to get to even the first one.
- The controls;
This was a Vita game. Learn from me: play with a controller. I played the entire game with mouse and keyboard and its doable, but its still bad. The lock on system is finicky as hell, because barely moving the mouse is the equivalent of pressing the shoulder buttons on a controller. So if you're trying to break the cores on the Valkyrie bosses, you need to have the steadiest hand in the west because barely moving will send the lock on all over the place.
...and the music is bland.

Now, I enjoyed most of my time with this game. But the later half became extremely repetitive, boring, and annoying as it became unfair boss fights and story I just had to skip through. I recommend this game to those used to playing mediocre anime games that require grinding to 100%, or those wanting that classic Senran Kagura feel. But even then I don't recommend it at $30. Wait for it to go on sale. To everyone else; don't try it.

5.5/10