Only took like 5 months WOO. Baldr Sky is an impressive VN with surprisingly great gameplay that honestly could've stood on it's own in an action game. The depth of the moveset customization surpasses even God Hand and it's a ton of fun putting together smooth high-damage combos with cool-looking moves. The difficulty is generally fine for all of Dive 1. Fair challenge but gives you room to experiment with low level weapons and develop new ones. In Dive 2, there's some annoying enemies introduced and the difficulty is hiked up a fair bit, especially in the final route and it can be pretty annoying but manageable if you stop experimenting and put together a solid maxed weapon combo to stick with. The final route is also loaded with way too many filler fights and it made me a bit tired of the gameplay as I reached the end. The combat does a good job of making you feel more involved with the story since you actually experience the main character's battles and the bosses in particular are consistently exciting and varied.

The visuals are pretty solid with nice art for the CGs and backgrounds as well as cool-looking animations in the battles. I'm not really a big fan of the character art but I warmed up to it a bit over the course of the game. Nanoha's tired face still ticks me off though. The soundtrack is solid and fitting but didn't really pop for me aside from the final route remixes and the vocal tracks kicking in during some of the boss fights.

The story is generally good, but Baldr Sky's strength mostly lies in its setting and worldbuilding since the focus on cyberspace and AI is what really sets it apart from other VNs. The cyberspace aspect in particular really appeals to me so I was happy to learn details about how the world worked. It's interesting having a cast of characters that lived through the semi-apocalyptic event that changed everyone's lives and seeing how they changed as a result. The hero has amnesia so the player can learn everything alongside him but Baldr Sky handles that cliched premise in a fairly refreshing way by having him regain his memories rapidly and retain at least some of his instincts and knowledge from his mercenary days instead of acting like a high school kid the whole time. The constant flashbacks revealing Kou's past are the weakest parts of the story with a plethora of cliches and childish misunderstandings but they're much more bearable than they could've been and they do provide crucial information. The plot is compelling and enjoyable, but generally lacking in impact until the great ending.

Baldr Sky's cast is full of likable and cool characters, but unfortunately almost none of them are the heroines that get most of the focus. Rain is probably the best one since she has relatively less emotional baggage and doesn't bother dragging highschool drama into adult affairs like the others. She is also endearingly smug when bickering with Chinatsu which is greatly appreciated. Nanoha is far too whiny and self-deprecating while everyone else is realistically growing up. Chinatsu is, for lack of a better word, a bitch for nearly the entire story outside of (barely) her own route and even though it's understandable given the traumatic experience she went through, it's tiring to listen to over and over again. Aki is rather likable and it's nice having a character Kou can interact with without any bickering or emotional meltdowns for the most part, though their diehard attempt to brush incest under the rug by making her a second cousin instead of an actual sister is comical when there are far worse things going on in the world. Makoto is another girl with the emotional fragility of a 5-year old and her mind-reading shtick gets pretty annoying. That being said, her cyberbrain syndrome does make her and her route pretty interesting from a story perspective. Makoto does have the most unreasonable romance out of all the girls though since Kou barely shows any signs of affection for her before they're making love on their beach honeymoon. Sora's route has the most interesting premise and her connection with Kou is the most natural and intriguing one due to the simulacra link which was one of the few good pieces of drama presented in the flashbacks. However while Sora's route has a great premise and an even better ending, the first half or so is a slog with filler fights and repetitive scenes. While I did enjoy the ending a lot, the section where every heroine dies in order and comes back later anyways was too cliche for me and gave me bad symphonia flashbacks. All the characters beside the heroines like the members of Fenrir and Noi are very likable while the unpredictable actions of Gilbert and Kurihara consistently kept things interesting. Neuzhen also ended up being a very intriguing antagonist that fit excellently with the setting and themes. One aspect of baldr sky that limited the story's impact in my humble opinion is that every route shares all the same major events with the changes mostly just lying in perspective or the minor scenes you spend with the heroines as well as the flashback scenes. This has a strong result with the ending revelations but results in a somewhat repetitive experience for every route. I think this could've been rectified at least a little considering Baldr Sky has a linear structure which helps with gameplay balancing but the knowledge of what the reader already knows by certain points could've been used to skip over a lot of the repetitive explanations like those for Assembler, Gungnir, Neuzhen, etc. Even if these explanations are practically unchanged between routes, the game won't recognize it as read text since it's a different route so it made me feel awkward about skipping them since they might have new info which was annoying. The requirement to go through all Reminiscence nodes to access Makoto's route was also stupid since 80% of it was flashbacks I had already seen plus battles without my unlocked weapons which were a pain in the butt. Thankfully I could skip through most of it.

This review is too long. While I do have a lot to rant about, it really was a great VN and I'm glad I played it.