Varnir of the Dragon Star Receives More Details, Media
Compile Heart has revealed more information for its upcoming title Varnir of the Dragon Star: Ecdysis of the Dragon, also providing new screenshots and some video footage from the game. The new details primarily concern the game’s battle system, with the latest screenshots showing both the combat and some conversation event scenes.
Combat in Varnir of the Dragon Star is turn-based and has the combatants floating in the air. There are three vertical levels, with players starting in the middle layer, but able to move freely to the upper or lower layers. Turn-order is based on the fighter’s agility stats, with the turn-order displayed in the top-right of the screen, which also shows which of the three layers each participant is on.
There are two main types of skills: physical skills, which can only hit enemies on the same layer, and magical skills, which can hit enemies on any layer. Physical attacks are split into four sub-types — slash, strike, pierce, and shoot — that enemies may be weak against; hitting a weakness lets players block that enemy’s next turn. Meanwhile, magical skills are split into various elements — earth, water, fire, wind, light, and darkness. Hitting any enemy weaknesses with magical attacks will simply cause enhanced damage with no additional effects.
One of the main themes of the game is “devouring dragons” and various systems reflect this. As players hit enemies, those enemies’ fear levels will increase. As this rises, opponents become easier to “devour”. A successful devour sees the character that devoured it gain that enemy’s skill tree. In addition, if the fear gauge is maximised, it permits a rush attack involving three party members that always results in a successful devour.
Players take a party of three into battle, but each party member can be assigned a support member. Support members can substitute into combat at any time, as well as potentially guarding or countering against the enemy while they are in the support role. Players can also set the formation of their party, which can provide additional effects. For example, the Delta Force formation is when two party members are in the middle layer and the other is on the lower layer. This gives a 3% boost to the attack and defence of the middle layer characters and a 3% boost to the magic attack and magic defence of the lower layer character.
Finally, as party members receive damage, they will increase the value in their Dragon Gauge. The Dragon Gauge carries over across battles, and when it is full, players can activation a Dragon Awakening. This causes the character to transform into different armour, significantly boosts their stats, and gain access to more powerful skills. However, if the character it a low HP total when entering this state, they enter a slightly different state that also significantly lowers their defence.
Varnir of the Dragon Star will be released in Japan for PlayStation 4 on October 11, 2018. There is no news regarding a potential western release.
Source: Gematsu
Disconcerting premise aside, I’m very suspicious it’ll have the usual CH issues of an unencessary complex layer of systems and painful balancing (especially with the mention of the support member and formation stuff, flashbacks to Dark Rose Valkyrie…).