Battlefield Waltz Review – A Tale of Love, Magic, and Missed Potential

Battlefield Waltz Review

Battlefield Waltz is a visual novel otome game about romance, swords, and going to military school. It leans hard into a variety of classic fantasy tropes and has some very solid characters. However, this game markets itself on having elaborate politics and wartime drama as well as romance. Does it live up to expectations?

Battlefield Waltz is a game that’s hard to predict. As such, this review will contain spoilers for Chapter 1.

The heroine, default name Lan, comes from a small village where nothing ever happens. Naturally, the game opens on her village burning as invaders seek a legendary cursed sword. To defend herself and her mother, she accidentally calls on the weapon’s power. Then she wakes up in chains. The military organization Nirvana has taken her into custody, and now she’s on trial.

This game opens on quite a dark note. Lan is threatened with death and assault, rejected by her mother, and nearly executed. Then the cursed sword manifests and she’s conscripted into military school instead. This leads to a rather significant tone shift as the game becomes much more lighthearted and focuses on school. I would have preferred the darker wartime fantasy it looked like the game was building toward, but this is fine, too.

Swords Over Flowers

Battlefield Waltz is, as I noted earlier, an otome game–in other words, it’s a dating sim. There are plenty of dark fantasy otome games about young women swept into dangerous circumstances. This title, which focuses far more on adventures and school days, is not really one of them. While some routes are darker than others, this title is fairly typical fantasy fare overall.

The characters are pretty standard genre archetypes, including a taciturn warrior, a frivolous prince, and a shy healer. That said, they do each have some nice depth to explore in their routes. The main selling points of this game are the romance and characters. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but the game does what it does well enough.

If you like Lan’s potential love interests, you’ll probably enjoy yourself. Fortunately, they’re all pretty likeable, especially if you enjoy ‘I can fix him’ set-ups where she can actually fix him. Unfortunately, the lack of strong narrative outside of the romance leaves the overall story disappointing.

Each boy has his own charm points and they’re all pretty funny to watch. On a related note, more dating sims should feature bratty cursed swords. It’s a fun character archetype and I want to see more of it.

Battlefield Waltz Features More School Shenanigans Than Expected

Battlefield Waltz is a visual novel, putting it closer to interactive fiction than a typical video game. It’s also a dating sim rather than a more plot-focused visual novel like Ever 17 or Tsukihime. While it does a good job of portraying interesting fantasy romances, this title isn’t going to change your life.

The game features six routes. The player makes choices, triggers events, and raises affection with one of six bachelors. Once you pick a route, you make more choices and trigger–or miss–more events to get a specific ending.

To get a character’s best ending, you must get all of their event flags. If this sounds annoying, don’t worry, the developers thought ahead. The game features a Chronicle option that contains a story flowchart. From here, it’s easy to see which scenes you’ve already viewed.

Once you’re on a character’s route, you can open up their Chronicle and restart a node. Chronicle is your friend in general. Unfortunately, the game’s common route is quite long, so get ready to use the Skip function a lot.

Every once in a while, Lan will have some free time. During Exploration events, players choose a location and meet with specific characters. Exploration events have their own Chronicles section so you can keep tabs on them, too. These Exploration scenes can be disappointingly short.

Style vs Substance

Battlefield Waltz has some highs and some lows. For starters, the game looks very good. The backgrounds are gorgeous, the character designs are slick and memorable, and the Japanese voice acting is solid. The cast is so pretty that I had some trouble guessing which characters you could and couldn’t date.

And the music is good at setting the scene, even if sudden tone shifts can be jarring. Lan isn’t voiced, which is irritating, but not a deal-breaker.

Now come the game’s issues. Setting aside its tonal bait and switch and general preoccupation with school instead of wartime drama, Battlefield Waltz has a few other problems. Its portrayals of combat are kinda lackluster. Playing action games like Fate/Stay Night and the Tsukihime remake may have given me unfair standards. But even Ever 17, a meta mystery, did a better job of establishing tension during its fights than Battlefield Waltz does at times.

There’s a lot of questionable worldbuilding and some confusing plot choices. It seems like Lan gets bullied based on what would be dramatic. Also, even though she’s defined by having access to the cursed sword, she’s not exactly an action heroine.

Overall, Battlefield Waltz is a pretty good time. Don’t expect something revolutionary, but do expect some fun romance. And the visuals are very nice.

***Switch codes provided by the publisher***