If you’re unfamiliar with Compile Heart and Idea Factory, chances are you have no idea what to expect from a game like Dragon Star Varnir. Idea Factory is the parent company of Compile Heart, a company known for making anime-style JRPGs and first person dungeon games. Most of these titles are remarkably complex and nuanced, like the Mary Skelter series (our review of Mary Skelter 2 is here), the Hyperdimention Neptunia games, and Death End Re;Quest 1 & 2 (our review of Death End Re:Quest 2 is here). The world-building in Compile Heart’s games is fantastic and only slightly diminished by the tropes that many of the games follow in regard to anime style characters.
Dragon Star Varnir is no different. There’s a fantastic backstory here, full of witches being hunted by soldiers, dragons, and a combination of politics and morality that makes the plot of Dragon Star Varnir fascinating. You play Zephyr, a young knight who has suddenly developed the powers of a witch, alienating him from his comrades and forcing him to thrown in with the witches he formerly swore to destroy. There’s a lot of exposition in the beginning of the game and it’s honestly a bit hard to follow as the number of characters you’ll meet in the first few hours of play is pretty high. Everyone refers back to events that Zephyr is unfamiliar with as well, leaving you floundering to figure out what’s going on if you aren’t paying close attention.
As you play, things settle down a bit, but the storyline takes the long way round and becomes a bit frustrating as dialogue choices and background gameplay redirect the plot in unexpected ways that aren’t always positive. At least the writing is solid! On top of that, the character development in Dragon Star Varnir becomes somewhat sporadic. You can give gifts to witches to make them like you, expanding their backstory eventually, and you’ll have to manage their little sisters or they’ll go mad with hunger, turn into dragons, and you’ll have to kill them and devour their souls. Cheerful! Since there’s so much going on at the beginning, it is hard to get attached to the characters at first too. There’s a ton of dialogue, but by the time you get through it all, you’re losing interest in some of the characters, and there’s definite balance issues between and within the different components of the game.
In addition to the management aspects of the game and the visual novel style dialogue, there’s a fair amount of combat in Dragon Star Varnir. This is turn-based JRPG stuff, but there’s a few twists here that you might not expect. First is that combat is multi-planar. Not just horizontally, but vertically as well, so you’re actually fighting within a 3 dimensional grid with three vertical levels, somewhat reminiscent of the old 3D chessboards in Star Trek. Dragons can fly, but so can witches, so you’ll end up shifting from plane to plane to gain maximum tactical advantage. Additionally, you can attack the body parts of some dragons, blunting their attack power and allowing you to run roughshod over them. The optional enemies aren’t even that tough if you’ve been grinding a little bit and that feel continues through the game. However, the combat controls are a bit weird, opting to have a second menu that you can accidentally skip to. They’re awkward enough that you’ll likely end up hitting the wrong button sequence and attacking or defending when you don’t need to more than once. Pay attention to what’s going on around you and your menus though and you won’t struggle too much in Dragon Star Varnir.
Weaken a dragon enough and your witches can consume it’s Dragon Soul, upgrading their magical powers For standard dragons, only the witch that defeats it consumes the soul but for bosses, everyone gets a boost! It’s a weird system, but it allows you to trick out your characters relatively quickly and they end up as absolute tanks which blast through enemies like they’re wheat against a scythe. Between upgrades and the weapons you find and buy, your witches are definitely a force to be reckoned with.
Moving through dungeons to get to those fights is probably the weakest part of Dragon Star Varnir however. Dungeons are third person and filled with loot, enemies, and a variety of obstacles requiring you to shift characters in order to move past them. The level design in these dungeons is basic, the obstacles seem mostly pointless, and worst of all, the dungeons look absolutely terrible on the Switch. There are optional enemies hidden about here and there as well, but honestly, you’re just going through the motions to get to combat and plot points.
The mechanics of Dragon Star Varnir are the high point of the game as well as part of the problem. In addition to devouring Dragon Souls and keeping the young witches from turning into dragons, there’s a constant balancing act to keep your active witches from going mad as well, and it’s a unique mechanic, if not one that’s entirely perfectly executed. Between madness, morphing into more power versions of themselves, keeping the witches happy and spreading equipment properly, there’s a lot of sub-game to work with and it definitely fleshes out the game in a satisfying way, even if not every aspect is balanced to perfection.
Dragon Star Varnir looks phenomenal during the story sequences. Characters are detailed and well-designed, as one would expect from Compile Heart. The resolution is fantastic too, and the characters and backgrounds are simply excellent. That all changes when you’re exploring dungeons though. Resolutions drop to a muddy mess that wouldn’t look out of place on the PS1, with hard polygons, nearly non-existent textures, and a pervasive blurriness that borders on offensive. Perhaps the PS4 version looks better, but on the Switch, dungeons look utterly terrible in motion. The screens don’t entirely show this either as the stills look decent. Combat isn’t much better either. If you’re expecting crisp, clean visuals, looks elsewhere because the enemies and combat in Dragon Star just don’t look nice on the Switch, especially in undocked mode and after a while you might just start ignoring them for the menus. There’s definitely not much of a wow factor here in terms of presentation, odd because the character and enemy design work is so good. It’s probably a matter of being ported to the Switch, but it’s definitely a noticeable issue.
Fortunately, the music is better than the visuals though, and the soundtrack of Dragon Star Varnir is quite enjoyable. Add that to the visual novel aspects of the game’s plot and there’s a pretty decent game hiding under some of the graphics issues and control weakness. It’s not a perfect game by any means though, and the budget pricing reflects that. $30 isn’t bad for the hours you’ll get out of this one, but it also kind of reinforces what you’re getting.
Dragon Star Varnir isn’t the top-tier content we expect to get out of Compile Heart, at least not in its entirety, but it’s also not a bad game. There are some interesting ideas here, a wildly divergent world from other games in the Compile Heart library, and while combat and exploring aren’t pretty, they are pretty fun once you get the hang of them. Varnir is definitely an upper mid-tier JRPG with enough unique ideas and solid writing to make it worth your time to play. If you’ve never played a game like this before, it probably isn’t the place to start, but for the price point, most players will enjoy themselves, as long as they’re expecting the slow pacing and odd graphics choices.
This review is based on a digital copy of Dragon Star Varnir provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Dragon Star Varnir is also available for Playstation 4 and PC on Steam and additional DLC for the game is also available.
