“Undying Blood Boal! Fight! With your troops at your side for a hundred years continue to fight…”

Venus & Braves is sometimes described as an SRPG, and while I feel the label doesn’t quite fit, it's certainly better than just calling it an RPG. The goal of the main character the immortal Blood Boal is simple — prevent the destruction of the world by slaying the monsters that seek to destroy the world, and also prevent the prophesied disasters which the goddess Ariah warns him of. In practice, this is far easier said than done, especially with how fragile and short human lives are in comparison to this century-long struggle for survival.

The combat system of Venus & Braves is the very same Rotation System used by its predecessor Seven: Cavalry of Molmorth. The basics of this system is that you have 7 units on a battlefield at a time, and they can be placed on one of three four width long rows. Units on the front row can attack with their main attack, those on the second row can boost the attack or defense (depending on their class) of those on the front row, or use ranged attacks if their class permits. Those on the back row can heal. The system gets its name from the fact your two main options in battle are either to rotate or stay. If you rotate the front row goes to the back, the second row to the front, and the back row to the second row.

It’s a very hands off combat system, and if you’ve ever played Ogre Battle, or Ogre Battle 64 it might seem familiar. Perhaps the most notable difference besides the rotation mechanic itself, is that there’s very little randomness in the combat; you are given all information on the enemy’s moves before the battle begins, and even including critical hits, all damage can be reasonably determined from before the battle begins. In other words, you’re going to know whether you will win or lose before you’ve even pressed “begin battle.”

I personally think Venus & Braves doesn’t really use the rotation system nearly as well as Seven did, however it makes up for it by providing greater variety in the non-combat portion of gameplay. Combat encounters in V&B mostly serve to test how well you’ve been managing your company, rather than being challenging in and of themselves. Nurturing relationships within your company, ending battles quickly to prevent fatigue build-up, optimizing your travel time, recruiting fresh potentials and retiring those whose abilities have begun to decline with age: these are the real challenges of this game.

You might notice in some of the previous examples a large emphasis on time. This is because while the main plot of Venus & Braves might be that century-long struggle against annihilation, the day-to-day of Venus & Braves is a struggle against time. To provide a succinct example: in Venus & Braves while there are levels gained, these are minor in comparison to the three stages of life every fighter goes through: growth, peak, and decline. When you look at a character in the recruiting menu in Venus & Braves, you’re not just thinking about how well their stats will grow, but also how long those stats will last (some characters might be at their peak for 12 years, some a year.)

The story itself makes superb usage of this fact, and touches on some of the realities of this system within the narrative (such as characters that are simply worthless in combat, and the consequences of keeping excellent characters past their prime, even if they are still of some use.) The natural sequence of meetings and partings that a generational story like this provides also some fairly clean and natural breaks in story arcs, while also allowing for long-term character development for the immortal characters. The writing itself is also rather good, and the dynamics between the mortal and immortal characters remain enjoyable to watch throughout the runtime (although sadly this becomes less of the focus of the story as the game proceeds.)

The gameplay gets rather repetitive (especially in the final arc,) however there’s a certain beauty in how ephemeral almost every aspect of gameplay is, and how this interacts with the story. Your treasures will one day turn to dust, the young will grow old, the old will go to their graves, and ultimately there’s nothing that can be done but to keep going forward, until that 100 year fight is finally finished.

The story framing here doesn’t feel like set-dressing, the story is the gameplay more or less. Sure, the generic characters you recruit might not show up during the visual novel sections, but their presence is certainly felt. Besides some death dates not matching up with epilogues, I never really felt a disconnect between what I was playing and what was happening in the story. Since I feel like a lot of strategy games and strategy rpgs fail on this front, I was really impressed. It’s very rare for a game to achieve a (relatively) seamless fusion of gameplay and story.

Hopefully one day this gets an English translation, so many more people can go on their own long, long journey with Blood Boal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5Bxak_yjT8

PS: This is definitely a sequel to Seven: Cavalry of Molmorth. I believe the English wikipedia calls it a “pseudo-sequel,” which just isn’t true. It might not be a direct sequel but Venus & Braves most assuredly continues from where Seven left off.