VenusBlood has a Kickstarter to finally get us Western gamers an official localization! They have a demo available now that you can download and check out for yourself.
Download and play the demo now!
Once you start up the demo, chances are that you’ll be completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of customization options for your divisions, the countless skills your units can use and a multitude of other factors you should also consider to build an effective army. To make it even worse, the game will throw everything at you right from the start, no hand-holding at all.
In this guide I will discuss some of the basic gameplay mechanics Frontier in a more user-friendly way.
I recommend to choose ‘Normal’ for your first time.
Onto Adventure!
As soon as you finish the prologue, you will find yourself on the world map and your conquest of Yggdrasil can begin. The goal of the demo (which contains the whole first chapter of the game) is to conquer Edda Island by seizing territories which will weaken Tilca’s influence on the continent. If her national power is low enough, you will trigger events that advance the plot.
If you look at the different territories of Edda, you can see the enemy divisions stationed in every location ruled by the goddess. You might think that you have to do the same, but it’s important to understand that the movement of the enemy is completely different from how the player can act on the world map.
While you can see all of the enemy’s divisions on the map stationed at certain locations, the player’s divisions aren’t located in a specific area. As long as they are set to defend, they will intercept the attack, and as long as they are set to attack, they will help in the main battle of this turn.
Two enemy attacks, but you only have one ‘main battle’ you can fight. The other one will be a skirmish.
You can fight one main battle every turn by clicking on an enemy icon on the world map. In the next screen, you choose the division to fight this battle. The battle itself will continue for five battle turns you can decide which unit to attack and whether you want to use a tactical skill (an active skill only commander units have) or change the battle tactic (offense, defense, speed).
Only commanders have active skills. Normal units have only passive skills.
Fight Back The Enemy
If you haven’t beaten all of the enemy’s units by then, the battle will either end or ‘skirmishes’ will happen. A skirmish is an automatic ‘one-turn battle’ that will be fought by the divisions you set to attack. This means that if your ‘main division’ wasn’t able to beat all the units in the enemy’s division, you can essentially get another battle turn with every division you set to attack, hoping that they will slay the remaining units.
If the enemy attacks one of your regions, every division you set to defend will have a ‘one-turn-battle’ trying to fend them off.
Do not underestimate affinities or the effects daytime and nighttime have on your troops.
In short, one of the most important strategic decisions in VenusBlood Frontier is to decide every turn how many divisions you must set to defend and how many you can spare to help your attacking division to fight the main battle.
The Items You Will Find
After successfully slaying the goddess’s troops, you will probably find some items or Medallions. Medallions are spent to recruit new units, equipment can be given to units to improve their stats or give them some additional passive skills. You can also get some skills for your units during the hiring process by adding up to two additional Medallions to the unit.
Don’t forget to heal your troops. If you don’t have the necessary resources, you can pay them with gold.
Since experience level is saved when you retire a unit and experienced units have higher stats when hired, it’s a good idea to retire and rehire units to make them stronger. Make also sure to hire units on the day of their element, making it harder for Tilca to defend her home. Depending on the difficulty setting, Tilca might have never had a chance at all, though.
Create divisions with units that synergize with each other.
If the game still sounds too complicated, you can just play on Easy and you will win nearly every battle with ease. And even if not, there is an “instant win” button to quickly advance the story. You won’t get any exp though, so you shouldn’t use it too often if you want to enjoy the combat of the game. If you only want to experience just the story, like a standard visual novel, it is possible to skip every single battle with the help of this feature. Pretty much, you have no excuse to miss out on Loki’s adventure!
The ‘Win’ button only appears on the easiest difficulty…
… but you won’t get any experience points for cheating.
Since the demo contains the first chapter in its entirety, it’s also a very good opportunity to familiarize yourself with the advanced features of the game by playing on Hard and using different strategies to win. For full coverage of all the important gameplay mechanics of VenusBlood Frontier, I recommend checking out Ninetail’s official English Gameplay Video. You’ll be able to familiarize yourself with the units, skills, and deeper mechanics while waiting for the full game release, hopefully in later next year.
Visit the VenusBlood Frontier Kickstarter page to find more detailed information on the story, characters, localization and development progress. If you enjoyed the demo, please support the project, by grabbing one of their amazing backer rewards. It’s going to be an amazing eroge, and they can’t make it a reality without your support!
