Did you get that, because the plot that this hentai does have is completely rushed through to fit the 30 minute length of this OVA.
As usual, all of the voice actors in the English dub sound bored, which was standard lot of low budget anime in general pushed out to shelves from the late 80s to early 90s for a lot of direct-to-VHS features. Nothing surprising there.
But surprisingly, both the art style and animation is really good for this hentai. It's not amazing by any stretch, but there was clearly some effort put in here, especially with the background paintings and character designs. The plot and characters are actually mildly interesting, which is a shame, because the whole thing rushes through it less than 30 minutes.
But when it comes down to it, this is still a hentai. So are the sex scenes any good? For a retro hentai, the sex scenes are pretty decent, but there are barely any sex scenes to speak of. If anything, the sex could have been easily removed entirely, and nothing would have been changed. It's almost like the creative team had a vision of what they wanted to do, but the whole thing was had to be a hentai to be able to sell it to audience, so the sex scenes were forced into it. Which is a shame, because the rest of it is actually quite good.
Even the music has some heart and soul to it, which is not what I was expecting at all going into this. I was just looking for something to jerk off to.
Would I recommend Balthus - Tia`s Radiance? Surprisingly, I would recommend this hentai entirely on the strength of it's art, plot, and characters. The sex is barely there to begin with, so it wasn't like you were going to crank one out unless this was your only exposure to anything scantily clad at the time of it's release.
Sure, it's not going to win any awards and it isn't what I would call a classic, but when you get something genuinely heartfelt, along with an awesome scene of your main character crashing through the large stain-glassed window of the bad guy's hideout with a small zeppelin to save the person that they just fell in love with, it's hard to not give it a recommendation, even if it is a lukewarm one.
