What if Harry Potter was an otome love game and not written by a horrible woman who seems obsessed with being a one-person “can you separate art from artists” talking point? Battlefield Waltz is a bit like that. It’s a story about a bunch of teens in a special, magical academy and you play as the one with a particularly special talent.
As far as safe settings go, you don’t get much safer than this. It’s not just the province of Harry Potter, either. Everything from Buffy to X-Men, to Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea work, through to my own nonsense scribblings as a kid makes use of this setting. I don’t read many YA novels, but based on my anecdotal experience about 50% of them follow this in one way or another. There are many reasons that schools make a convenient setting – they’re a common point of reference for almost every single person that is able to read the story. They inherently allow for stories of youth, without needing to find a way to explore those stories in an adult’s world. And then there’s this excellent point of analysis about the appeal of the Harry Potter series too:
School settings allow children to be thrown together, with the resulting friendships and conflicts – much as a workplace setting does for adult stories. But a boarding school goes one better – it goes on 24/7. And why not take it one step further? Why not exaggerate that sense of selection, separation and difference? What if the children at the school were special in some way, and what if, instead of learning maths and history, they were learning magic?
Battlefield Waltz is a very conventional kind of story that you might expect from this particular genre. In the background, there is a war going on, and indeed in the early stages, the protagonist and her family are a victim of that conflict. However, the academy that she winds up being enrolled in (for a series of reasons that I can only describe as a complete blur) is shielded by a queen’s magic, and so she fairly quickly settles into life in her new home, even as everyone around her continues to prepare for more conflict.
From there it’s just about every drama you’d expect from both a school setting and an otome. Lan – the protagonist, makes friends, gets bullied, struggles in class, starts to find her place in her little corner of the world and, of course, meets boys. Six particularly fine specimens, to be exact, and like with any otome, the goal is to pick the boy you like and then try to make the decisions that will result in a happy ending. Yes, euphemism intended (though not depicted in the game).
The boys on offer in this little reverse harem largely fit the types that you’d expect. There’s the guy who has a single-minded focus on achieving perfection in combat and is totally incapable of handling interactions with a pretty girl. On the flip side of that, there’s the gorgeous prince man-slut that is just fundamentally dangerous to be around. That dude even has “Lust” in his name, so… not the most subtle character.
There’s the sweet, innocent loser with a heart of gold, a dude that doesn’t take life seriously enough (and eats far too many samosas), a total mystery man (his story’s locked at the start and everything) and… well, the problematic one. Or, at least, particularly problematic in the noisy, culturally imperialist part of the world where the age of consent is 18 (we all know which one I mean). In reality the dude’s anything but predatory, it’s just that he’s a touch older than the other students and Lan is 16 and… yeah. That’s kinda it. The Japanese write for the Japanese audience where this is legal, albeit perhaps still a bit borderline, and this guy can be uncomfortable without being seen as “scream on Twitter until everyone involved in that storyline is a pariah” offensive. Otome novels don’t tend to shy away from problematic relationships in one way or another and I will say that even this particular relationship isn’t designed to shock like in some other titles.
The writing across all these characters is exceptionally strong, and while the characters might seem like mundane cliches in summary form, once you start getting to know them you that initial eye roll goes away pretty quickly and you realise that these characters and just really well written. Battlefield Waltz also has its sharper edges and tensions – it’s not an innocent story by any means. However, overall it is written for a more broad audience than some of the otomes that can veer off into some outright shocking areas, like Olympia Soiree, Piofiore, or (dear lord) Virche Evermore. Admittedly I haven’t reached all the endings of Battlefield Waltz just yet, but I’m fairly confident that there isn’t any sex slavery or… Virche Evermore endings here.
Really the nastier edge of this game just comes through with the way the conversations keep looping back on how “weak” women are. Here in Australia, we’re running up to an election right now and one particularly odious loser got booted from his party for saying that women shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military combat roles. He’d probably enjoy this game’s rhetoric. The developers were clearly aiming to establish this society as one where there was an undercurrent of sexism running through it. It’s just that they then largely forgot to actually do something meaningful with that theme so it just sits there, stewing along.
The presentation of Battlefield Waltz is as gorgeous as you’d expect from Otome. Character sprites and backgrounds are highly detailed, creative, and evocative. The CGs are at another level entirely. At some stage Otomate needs to collect all its CG art together, print it on canvases, and hold a special gallery exhibition somewhere. I’d fly there to see it because I can look at Otomate CGs all day long and never get bored of them. The voice acting is excellent, too. As far as presentation goes my only criticism would be the interface, with the text being a little too blended into everything else on screen for my liking.
There are only two meaningful issues I have with Battlefield Waltz. One is that the game comes very close to having a very powerful message – the first half or so of the narrative is very sincere in the way it wants to dissect the impact of war. In most cases video games use war as a tool to push the narrative on or, worse, a playground. Battlefield Waltz does its bit to dwell on what actually happens during and in the aftermath of war, and that’s a genuinely worthwhile theme. Unfortunately, that eventually makes way for the “chase the boys” storylines. It’s an inherent weakness of the otome genre, and I don’t begrudge this particular game for it. I just would have liked to see that potentially excellent theme play out further.
The only other problem I have with the game is that one of the secondary characters, Yuriana, is female, and I would have given anything to have the opportunity to romance her too. She’s absolutely gorgeous and as far as I’m concerned perfect for Lan. But, alas, that was not to be.
Battlefield Waltz is one of Otomate’s stronger efforts. It takes a strong setting, a strong narrative, and strong characters, and makes the most of them. It’s a “safe” game that takes few risks and doesn’t really push boundaries, but it’s an enormously enjoyable and moreish page-turner. The digital equivalent of picking up a good paperback.
