Tou no Shita no Exercitus, as I mentioned in the previous post, pretty much eliminates most of the problems that Verethragna had in terms of the card combat system, in exchange for a loss of any real challenge, outside of the last boss and a few others along the way. That impression didn't change throughout my experience of the last few chapters of the game, so at this point, I won't bother rehashing that explanation.

More importantly, I thought I should mention that this VN doesn't commit the greatest sin of a gameplay hybrid by using the gameplay in place of narration (rather than to supplement it). Its combat scenes have decent (if not overwhelmingly good) narration, and there is a general sense that this was someone's work of love, as well as business, which is relatively rare in VNs these days. The plot, while not anything new (the setting channels Wild Arms and Mana Khemia, which had me cracking up a bit) is nonetheless solidly written, and the characters, while sometimes a bit overly comical in nature, were generally well-described and developed by the end, with a few exceptions (Ruana's team, the tower keepers), though this was alleviated by the large number of side-events you could access during the last chapter to get to know them.

The existence of money is actually pretty pointless, since you can get by just by using the cards you pick up along the way (though third level single-enemy magic attack cards can only be purchased in the store, as far as I could tell). On the other hand, this means that you are free from the need to budget, instead allowing you to focus on dungeon-crawling to get your levels even with the enemies and obtain cards you might find of use.

Overall, this VN was surprisingly good, leaving me with a general good feeling, though it wasn't exceptionally awesome. This VN would probably suit the tastes of people who like the Koihime Musou series (if you excise the first game, which was localized) and other 'light' gameplay hybrids, where the gameplay is designed to be easy to navigate. It isn't anywhere near kamige level, but it is nonetheless VN of the Month, August 2015.