Valkyrie Svia Review

Title: Ikusa Otome Suvia
Original title: 戦乙女スヴィア
Alias: Valkyrie Svia
Release date: 2006-12-22
English release date: 2014-01-24
Developer: Black Lilith
English publisher: MangaGamer

So, it's time to review a Lilith nukige for the enjoyment of all the perverts and lovers of the darker eroge. It's a shame that there is unexpectedly nothing "dark" about Svia, though...

First things first. Let's say a few words about the translation of this game: it's quite bad. Scratch that. It's very bad. The translator and the editor responsible for this mess need to be fired ASAP. Dear MangaGamer, I know that "Valkyrie Svia" is a nukige, but that doesn't mean you can take some random schmuck from the street, give him a few bottles of cheapest beer and tell him to translate a visual novel. The only good thing about this "translation" is that it preserves correct Norse names for various entities and locales.

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so".

Oh, yes, this nukige has an Old Norse setting, which is quite unusual and rarely seen. The prologue explains the situation quite nicely. Loki betrayed Asgard and conspired with both jotnar and Hel to help them take over the world. Odin was imprisoned in the Underworld, but managed to lock the gates to the river that feeds Yggdrasil. The Life Tree will wither and die within five days, resulting in the destruction of the Universe, if the alliance of jotnar and Hel will not surrender. Of course, Loki knows a way out of the seemingly hopeless situation - there are two keys hidden within the wombs of valkyries Sigurd and Svia that can unlock the river and save the Universe. The catch is, they have to birth those keys of their own will. Hence the two valkyries are caught and imprisoned by Loki, who then proceeds to rape and humiliate them, because, in the logic of 99 % of nukige, rape equals love.

That's about the gist of the "plot" of this visual novel. What follows is a bunch of quite hot scenes where Loki, Hel and the leader of jotnar, Flungruni, try to break our two heroines. I was surprised that there were only two endings to this game: good and bad. A good ending can only be reached if Loki himself takes a personal interest in Svia and oversees her training, and the obvious result is both Svia and Sigurd becoming Loki's sex slaves. You experience bad ending if you deviate from that path and the result is the destruction of the Universe. It's highly ironic that "Black Lilith" chose to grant us a good ending only if we treat valkyries in a semi-humane way. Giving them (or rather Svia, as she is the only one who matters) to Loki's allies results in harder and rougher sex scenes... and a bad end. Not that it says much. H-scenes taken as a whole are very tame in "Svia" (at least by Lilith standards). It was a surprise, and not necessarily a pleasant one. When I go into a "Black Lilith" game I expect to see balls-to-the-wall no-holds-barred fucking. This VN does not provide that. It's not to say that I didn't enjoy the sex scenes, but I expected more. It's like the game was afraid to cross a certain line. One of the scenes showed Svia being pumped full of demon eggs and I gleefully awaited to see some stomach expansion or egg birthing, but suddenly... cut to black, the scene ends and the game forgets the aforementioned action even happened. If I didn't know better I would suspect this VN was produced by one of the less hardcore Lilith brands like "Lilith Mist".

Now you can download orgasms through torrent?

On the other hand, once you get past the fact that "Valkyrie Svia" is not that hardcore, you realize that it's a fairly pleasant short fap-fest. The H-CG art is good looking, and the scenes themselves are hot and varied enough to keep interest. Bonus points for the fact that both actresses are doing an awesome voice acting, which lends credence to their portrayal in the scenes. Nevertheless, I was sorely missing voices for at least some of the male characters, and, of course, foremost among those males is Loki.

Sadly, Loki himself is almost a non-entity. We get a snippet of background details revealing that Loki basically rebelled against Asgard for shits and giggles, and that he doesn't even care if he loses or wins. Loki couldn't care less about the impending destruction of the world and only tries to break the valkyries, because he has a crush on Svia and wants her for himself. Other than that, Loki is a blank slate, which is unusual even for a Lilith nukige. More often than not their protagonists are quite memorable. Not so with Loki. The game doesn't even try to hide that by using a third person narration most of the time, instead of an expected first person one.

Saint Sigurd on a cross.

Svia is an obvious main heroine of the game. She is a proud valkyrie who likes fighting and even displays some traits of a blood knight. She hatches a plan to free Odin from the Underworld, but the plan badly backfires and she ends up as Loki's prisoner. At first she tries to present a strong front against her captor, but soon falls for Loki's mighty macho dick... obviously. While I found her fall quite unbelievable, that didn't matter so much as her voice actress does a marvelous job to portray her struggle against her desires.

Sigurd, though, is more of a background character and matters less than she should. Her scenes are always the same, no matter which path you would take, but her fall is somehow more believable than that of Svia. I like Sigurd due to how perverted she becomes as part of her breaking process. Her thoughts and reactions during the final stage of the game are really funny.

Jotnar in a "Thor" movie were much more fit.

There are two other male characters in the game that at least somewhat matter to the plot, and I probably should talk briefly about them. Hel is a non-entity like Loki is. For such a powerful deity he is barely present and when he does appear, his reputation hardly seems justified. Funny that actual Hel in Norse mythology is female, but Japanese do love their genderbending. However, Flungruni - leader of jotnar - is the most fleshed out male character in the game. He is the nemesis of Sigurd, who took out his eye and thus he seeks revenge against her. Flungruni is shown as a dumb perverted idiot with a severe case of megalomania, but that is what makes him so likable. I would have liked to see an ending where he manages to one-up Loki, break the valkyries and turn them into his sex slaves. I hate that the game suddenly put him on a bus halfway through the game, never to be heard from again. At the very least the H-OVA gave him a very fitting epilogue.

Dah. There is a four part H-OVA made for "Valkyrie Svia", just like they are made for many Lilith games. It is a pretty competent adaptation that follows the good route with some scenes from the bad one thrown in for fun. And it actually gives us Loki in his full glory, which is a big bonus. Not to mention the Flungruni's epilogue... Actually, I would probably suggest you watch the OVA and skip the game. As adaptations go it's a good one and you won't have to deal with a nigh unreadable translation (shame on you MG). Not that Erobeat's subbing is not without problems. They completely butchered Yggdrasil's name and called Hel's domain Hades. Please bitch, we aren't talking about Greek mythology here!

Every good game needs to end with a bang... gangbang preferably.

To sum up, "Valkyrie Svia" is a mediocre "Black Lilith" nukige that looks like a budget release in between bigger titles. It has moderately entertaining sex scenes, but lacks an identifiable villain protagonist and any kind of content that would separate it from thousands other similar fap-fests. Lilith fans might like this VN, but others should probably skip it.

Links of Interest

Visual Novel Database
Official Japanese site
Buy a digital release of the game on MangaGamer
Buy a physical release of the game on MangaGamer
MyAnimeList page for H-OVA

Final Verdict: 63%