Varlet presents itself as a turn-based, Japanese role-playing game with a heavy emphasis on school-life simulation. Its influences are immediately apparent to anyone familiar with the genre.
The game is set in Kousei Academy, a futuristic school where student life revolves around a virtual reality social network called “Johari.” Players take on the role of a transfer student who is quickly positioned as the leader of the Student Support Services club, or SSS.
The central conflict involves the SSS investigating “Glitches,” which are otherworldly dungeons created from the unchecked desires of students. Inside these spaces, the team battles monsters known as “Desires.” The game immediately establishes a strong, anime-inspired visual style and signals its focus on character-driven drama.
An Exercise in Futility
The social simulation half of Varlet is structured around the daily activities of the SSS club, a gameplay loop that unfortunately proves to be the game’s lowest point. The primary task outside of the main story is to roam the same plaza and hallways of Kousei Academy day after day, performing a set of recurring chores. Using a “Sonar” function, which prompts an AI companion to repeatedly announce its use, you scan the environment for interactive objects.
The main activities consist of finding Lost Items, reading students’ public Augmented Reality notes, and placing AR advertisements to promote the club. The stated purpose of these tasks is to collect “Likes” for the SSS. Accumulating a certain number of Likes fills a meter and eventually raises the club’s rank.
On paper, this appears to be a standard system for a school-life RPG. The execution, however, is hollow. The daily tasks become a tedious grind almost immediately, and the rewards for engaging with them are practically nonexistent. Raising the SSS rank provides trivial benefits, such as a barely perceptible increase to the Sonar’s range.
There are other minor activities to fill the day, like listening to scripted student conversations, completing requests that are just recycled SSS chores, or entering bite-sized pocket dungeons. You can also make “Triad Judgement” choices, which are simple moral questions that raise one of six social stats: morality, sympathy, altruism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism.
These systems add a layer of mechanical complexity that amounts to nothing. The social stats have no discernible impact on dialogue, character interactions, or combat. The system can also feel arbitrary; one choice intended to show familial affection might inexplicably raise a stat for narcissism, creating a disconnect between player intent and outcome.
This entire gameplay segment feels disconnected from the rest of the game’s design. Games that successfully merge daily life with dungeon crawling, most notably the Persona series, ensure that every social action has a clear and tangible purpose, directly impacting combat abilities or unlocking new story paths.
In Varlet, the SSS activities, the social stats, and even a compendium of student facts you fill out are all dead ends. They do not feed into the combat or narrative in any meaningful way. A player can choose to skip these daily chores entirely with almost no penalty, which makes a significant portion of the game feel like purposeless filler.
A Solved Equation for Combat
Varlet’s combat is a turn-based affair that uses an on-screen timeline to display the action order for your party and its enemies. Different abilities require a specific number of “steps,” which dictates how quickly they execute in a round. Stronger attacks typically take more steps, leaving a character vulnerable to being damaged or having their action canceled before it can resolve.
This system initially suggests a strategic layer where players must manage the turn order effectively. A particularly interesting design choice is the complete absence of an MP gauge or a similar resource system, meaning characters can theoretically use their most powerful skills at any time. While this could have led to unique tactical thinking, it is instead the foundation for a fundamentally broken combat experience.
The game’s difficulty is completely nullified by a single mechanic. The party’s healer, Aruka, learns a skill early on that heals the entire party for 40% of their maximum health. This ability is not only one of the fastest skills in the game, but because there is no MP cost, it can be used every single turn without limit. This single design choice makes it functionally impossible for the player to fail in combat.
Resource management is a core pillar of the RPG genre; the challenge is often about reaching a goal before your resources are depleted. By providing an infinite, free, and fast party-wide heal, Varlet removes all tension, strategy, and sense of danger.
The game is effectively “solved” the moment Aruka joins the party. It is possible to beat the final boss on its hardest difficulty setting by simply programming her to use this one move while other characters attack, a process that requires no thought from the player.
The dungeons, called “Glitches,” do little to redeem the combat. They are monotonous, visually repetitive areas composed of wide rooms connected by indistinct hallways. While simple environmental puzzles are introduced, such as colored platforms and moving paths, they never evolve into complex challenges. This repetition is made worse by an extreme lack of enemy variety.
There are only about six standard enemy types in the entire game. Later dungeons simply reuse these same models with a different color palette. Consequently, every fight plays out identically; you use the same skills to break and stun enemies from the first chapter to the last.
Even boss fights are mechanically indistinguishable from normal encounters, lacking unique strategies to defeat them. This shallow design is reinforced by the absence of an equipment system. In most RPGs, finding or buying new gear is a primary motivation for exploration and earning money. Here, money can only be spent on consumable items, which are made completely useless by Aruka’s infinite healing spell.
Narrative Promise and Polished Presentation
Where the core gameplay systems fail, the narrative and artistic elements offer some redeeming qualities. The story attempts to explore themes relevant to modern teenagers, examining the pressures of social media, online identity, ambition, and jealousy in a world dominated by a virtual network.
The plot is delivered in a rigid chapter structure, with each segment focusing on the personal conflict of a different party member. This approach gives the story a predictable rhythm: a problem is discovered, a Glitch is investigated, and the desire is resolved. The pacing can be slow, and the plot often forces the player character to follow along with the party’s incorrect theories long after the truth of a mystery is obvious.
Character progression is handled through “Character Episodes,” which function as the game’s version of social links. These story events are integrated into the main plot, and choosing to spend time with a party member earns “Trust Points” used to unlock skills on their personal skill tree.
This is the one area where the game successfully connects its social and combat halves, as your choices directly impact which characters become more powerful. A limitation that you cannot view every character’s full story in a single playthrough adds a small amount of replay value.
The cast is a definite high point. While the initial party members fall into familiar archetypes, such as the delinquent best friend and the tomboy girl, later additions are written with more nuance. Characters like a mean-spirited pop idol and an annoyingly confident filmmaker have sharp edges and believable flaws, making them feel more like genuine high schoolers.
However, the writing sometimes stumbles, particularly with a forced romantic interest in one female character, where the game reveals her internal thoughts and makes the protagonist reciprocate regardless of player choice.
Artistically, the game is quite strong. The character portraits are crisp, expressive, and feature excellent designs that give the world a distinct personality. The Japanese voice acting is also performed at a high level of quality, effectively selling the story’s emotional moments.
The English localization makes some odd choices, such as using only first names in the text, creating a disconnect with the spoken Japanese audio that uses honorifics and last names. The script also occasionally relies on dated internet slang that feels out of place. These elements of polish are commendable. They are consistently held back by the deeply flawed combat and the tedious, unrewarding social simulation that form the game’s foundation.
The Review
Varlet
Varlet is a game of frustrating contradictions. It presents a stylish world, high-quality character art, and a cast with genuine personality. These strengths, however, are anchored to a foundation of flawed gameplay. The social simulation is a tedious and unrewarding grind, while the combat is rendered completely devoid of challenge by a single, broken healing mechanic. The game’s aesthetic appeal cannot overcome its critically underdeveloped core systems.
PROS
- Excellent character art and expressive designs.
- High-quality Japanese voice acting.
- Some characters are well-written with believable flaws.
CONS
- Combat is broken by an unlimited healing mechanic.
- Social simulation gameplay is repetitive and unrewarding.
- Extremely low enemy variety.
- Dungeons and puzzles are monotonous.
