Dragon Star Varnir (竜星のヴァルニール) is a turn-based JRPG developed by Compile Heart and published by Idea Factory in 2018. It features a significantly darker theme compared to the company's other titles. It is another new IP developed under the Galapagos RPG project, similar to Death end re:Quest.
The story follows Zephy, a knight obsessed with exterminating witches, who ends up being saved by one and fed dragon blood to survive. This turns him into a "male witch" (the first to ever exist) and forces him to become the hunted, leading him to join forces with the other witches to survive.
In this world, witches are beings who will inevitably transform into dragons after ingesting enough dragon blood. If they do not ingest the blood, they go insane and die, so they have little choice but to wait for the inevitable end. Zephy had his family killed by one of these dragons in the past, though not much is revealed about his history at the beginning.
As he starts getting involved with the witches, he begins to realize that the propaganda the country spreads about them is false. They are just normal girls who are as scared of becoming dragons as they are of being killed by humans without cause. Together with them and the mysterious witch Charlotta, they start investigating how to stop the transformation process and secure a normal life for themselves. Apparently, witches were far more numerous in the past, but a tragedy occurred that destroyed their base and killed most of them.
The story continues with this exploration while the group fends off armies trying to exterminate the witches. You must also take care of the three young witches living back at their sanctuary. Will you manage to find a cure before any of your allies turn into a monstrous dragon? Everyone seems to be hiding secrets, and Charlotta is the most mysterious of them all. Can she be trusted, or is she just using the party for her own purposes?
The gameplay is a turn-based RPG with interesting mechanics. Your characters can consume dragon meat to obtain the powers of defeated dragons, but at the cost of moving closer to becoming a dragon yourself. Mechanically, this means you can customize your character with specific skills that better fit the encounter you are about to face. It costs points to unlock the skills obtained by killing enemies, so some level of grinding is required if you want to unlock everything.
At the base, you also need to keep the three small witches fed. There is a specific mechanic where you must balance feeding them certain foods to prevent them from going insane or turning into a dragon. The latter would remove them permanently from your base and preclude you from getting the True Ending.
There is also a bond mechanic with the various older witches that allows you to see more of their lives and personalities through small visual novel segments. It feels very similar to a dating sim and occurs every time you unlock a new bond level. This also affects which character ending you receive.
The art style is, as usual with games from this company, amazing, and every character is utterly charming. The story itself is fine, but I feel like some elements could have been expanded upon, such as the interactions between characters in the village. It felt like there was a bit too little content to get fully attached to the otherwise charming cast.
There are multiple endings to the game; some are quite negative and depend on the actions you take throughout the story. There is, of course, a True Ending, as I mentioned before, which requires you to keep all the little witches alive and fulfill a series of other triggers.
Overall, I can suggest this game to anyone with an itch for a new JRPG. The story is interesting, the gameplay is traditional, and it has a fair length (around 25 hours) that will keep you busy for a while.
