Recommend if it's on sale, or if you are ok with paying more for a game with a bit more quality/polish.

Tokyo Valkyries is a roguelite deckbuilder for sophisticated and classy pantyshot enjoyers. Some people will be turned off by how much this game toes the line - it might as well be marked Adult Only, but it just barely isn't. Some people will appreciate that the game doesn't have the sex appeal cranked up to 11 like many games seem to have nowadays.

You'll pick three girls and try to assemble something resembling a synergistic build. Each girl has two sigils which can be one of four colors (red, blue, purple, green), which determines which cards you have access to and which ones that girl will use. For example, the starter character Haruka has two red sigils: If you play a red card, she will do that card's effect twice. But if you play a blue card (which you have because one of your other party members has a blue sigil), she will do absolutely nothing. Each girl also has a leader skill which you can only use if she is your designated leader.

While there are eight girls and 336 possible combinations to choose from, the sigil and color system means there are really only 10ish teams you'd actually want to play. Four-color teams don't really function - if you're going to spend mana on a card, you'd want it to trigger multiple times and not just once. More colors also dilutes the reward pool and makes it harder to find synergistic pieces (fortunately, the game never forces you to add unwanted cards to your deck). The choice between a two-color team and a three-color team is a bit interesting though - the two-color team will have 3 sigils in each color, while the three-color team will be stronger in its main color with four sigils in exchange for having to carry the dead weight of two weaker colors.

Each color is roughly split into two halves, each half being the obvious intended build for one of the eight girls. There's a bit of crossover within these colors, cards from the other half are at least playable due to being the same color, but generally you want cards from your half of the color. I'd say these builds are not built equal, some builds are playing a normal 3 or 4 cards a turn and some are doing infinite damage on turn one every game.

Your girls are tasked with finding Gates to the underworld, nuking the enemy guardian, and pulling out the cursed sword that allows the gate to exist. The ritual of sword pulling requires you to press buttons while you're treated to seeing your chosen girl (she doesn't need to be in your party) pull on the sword in a suggestive pose, with her panties or cleavage visible. You cannot skip the ritual, watching it is mandatory. At the climax of the ritual, the swords will disappear/transform into purple slime and the girl will say something about how she's exhausted from the ritual yet refreshed. I don't need to tell you what the sword pulling ritual is supposed to be.

Completing these rituals unlocks the second sigil for your chosen girl, raises her base stats a bit, and progresses the story so you can recruit more girls and have them do the sword pulling ritual too.

This makes it a bit harder to try out different teams, as you'll have girls who are underpowered and lacking sigils until you complete more stages. A girl with the sigils you want for your two-color team might be one of the last girls you unlock. By the time you unlock every girl and their sigils, the story is almost over. I settled on a team early on that felt strong and basically played that same team all the way through the story... eight hours of playing the same build over and over can get stale.

I finished the story at nine hours. There are two endings, but which ending you get just comes down to whether you take the handicap in the final dungeon or not. Completing the story unlocks the gallery (why isn't this open by default?) and a 'freeplay mode', which is sadly not the post-game endless mode/superdungeon you're looking for. I'd say the game isn't very challenging, though I should note that I stumbled upon an infinite combo and used it to steamroll the last chapter of the game. Boss fights were often easier than the random encounters before them.

While I've enjoyed my time with the game and will probably spend a bit more trying out other builds, I'd also say the amount of content is a bit lacking for 21 buckaronis, and the lack of a real post-game challenge is very disappointing.

Solid deck builder with lots of fan service, it's very easy to break the game but it serves the power fantasy.

I really liked it! Cute girls and scenarios.
Difficulty is just right. It's tough at first but after some experimentation and unlocking things, you can usually become pretty powerful. Length is just right for me too. For a game like this I think the balance is just right, including the price and the gentlemen content.