First, I should describe Astronauts, the mother company that created this VN. Astronauts produces a wide variety of VNs done in its own unique art style. Most are halfway to a nukige without quite going there, and about a third of them are gameplay VNs like this one. Since their VNs vary so wildly between subsidiaries and even just between games, the art-style is pretty much the only common thread.

Exercitus is reusing the base card-battle system from Astronauts' previous card-based battle rpg, Verethragna. To be honest, I dropped Vereth because the battles were so tedious. The random draw system made the game unbelievably annoying, because of the sheer number of battles you ended up experiencing, even in the early game. Thankfully, in Exercitus, the monster/character cards are separated from the magic/trap cards and it is only the magic/trap cards that are drawn randomly. This allows you to actually treat your monster/character cards like a party in a normal rpg, rather than wondering what kind of BS draw the AI is going to give you next. Also, because you and your enemies are limited to six party cards in total, the actual battle length is cut by about 4/5, making it actually playable, despite the expansion of dungeon-exploration elements.

For those who want hard-level difficulty, this VN is probably not really going to fulfill your fantasies. In exchange for eliminating the tedium and irritation of Verethragna's version of the system, most of the challenge is eliminated, once you've figured out the elemental affinities and have a solid deck of magic cards and party cards.

The story of the VN is your basic 'protagonist summoned to a fantasy world' gig, with the twist that the protagonist is a genius engineer, who can pretty much grasp the composition and purpose of any tool, given time. This is a nice change from the tendency to put faceless nobodies in VNs like this, who tend to either be muscle-brains or weak-spirited, kind-hearted 'rulers'.

This VN does fall into the cliche of the harem... you are going to end up in H situations with pretty much everything female in this VN, and their protests against the protagonist's philandering are really weak, lol. The actual story of this VN is pretty good, though it tends to walk a tightrope between a 'fantasy jrpg' plot and a school life one (reminding me of Mana Khemia before it started to suck).

I'll give my final comments once I'm done with the VN, which shouldn't take too much longer.