Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria

"The return of the Valkyrie"

If you are still looking at the Square and Enix union with doubt, this game is a reason to stop doing so. And another reason is that this solid game of eminent developer in the past (who belonged to Enix) - tri-Ace. Their new product is called Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria.
This game is a prequel to Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (1999-2000) for Playstation One, but knowledge of the plot of the first part is not really needed. VP2 tells us the story of Alicia – the Princess of Dipan, who once found the spirit of one of the Valkyries trapped in her body – Silmeria's spirit. Silmeria was trapped in the body of the young princess because Odin, the all-father wished so. The reason is simple: Silmeria began to question the actions of her ruler, but as you know, the gods believed that their actions are justified and always right. Odin, who sits on the throne in Valhalla, had wished to punish the rebellious soul, and sent Hrist, another Valkyrie, to finish Silmeria. Silmeria is weak now and she's a little help to poor princess Alicia. Despite that fact, in order to escape from Hrist, Alicia will need allies, and Silmeria uses all her abilities to teach Alicia to summon Einherjars. Einherjars are the wandering souls of dead warriors, who were brave and mighty in the past.

What can I say about the visuals? This game is very beautiful; her majesty can be easily matched with the latest instalments of Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid series. It is difficult to say what exactly is this beauty, but when you look at the picture, it seems that everything is moving, growing, living. Each detail is made very carefully and lovely. It's not only about beautiful pictures; every element of design is wonderful. It simply must be seen. Most cut-scenes in the game are made using its engine and let me tell you, they're made perfectly, watching them is simply fascinating. The design of characters and monsters is very well detailed and pictured. Sheer beauty, I got to tell you. But I must say it seems that developers gave much more time to picture main game characters, the design of Einherjars often looks worse. As for the monsters, despite the situation with the same monsters of different colors (which is used in many, if not all Japanese RPGs) – they are all performed at a sufficiently high level, each new type of monster is not just a different color, it's made in very different textures, and that's what makes them different and does not create a sense of "tiredness" of looking at the same enemies all the time.

If you've ever played Valkyrie Profile on PSOne - the gameplay will basically seem similar to you, but only at first glance. For those who are familiar with the series - the first game is a 2D platformer in 3D environment. The dungeons of Valkyrie Profile 2 are a set of mini-maps connected to each other in one location. Each mini-map can be a simple flat surface and moreover, it can contain masses of different levels. It's a role-playing game – so obviously you will meet enemies and find many chests with various treasures. If Valkyrie Profile's key element was the creation of crystals, which could be used as a platform to navigate through locations, this game lets you fire photons that freeze enemies and turn them into crystals. If you jump on these crystals, you can get to higher areas of the map. If you fire another photon at a crystallized enemy - you swap places with them. Moreover, you can forget about the gruelling and annoying battles with hordes of enemies. If the enemy is crystallized - it can't attack you, and you also can't attack it. This is a very big plus for those who can't stand random battles all the time. This photon system allows you to solve many puzzles that the game will offer you – they vary from simple to very complex. And it's not hard to guess that in the place where the puzzle is quite hard, the reward is better. Another element of VP2's gameplay is the Sealstone system. To make the long story short, these stones give certain advantages or disadvantages to you or your enemy. Here are some examples of bonuses - doubling the earned experience, increasing attacks by 120%, weakening the defense up to 1 / 4 of the base value and many, many others. If you are carrying a stone (later in the game, you'll be able to increase the number of stones you can carry), the effect applies to you, if you are inserting stones into special pedestals - the effect applies to your enemies. The effects that are given by these Sealstones are sometimes very strong and that's why developers of Valkyrie Profile 2 decided to limit their usage. All the stones found in any location return to their places, if you exit the aforementioned location. You can still take stones to other locations of the world map, but to do that, you have to "buy" the stones for special crystals (you receive these crystals in battle).

The combat system is another advantage of Valkyrie Profile 2, which stands high among its allies in the world of Japanese RPGs. After contacting the enemy you start the battle. Up to 4 characters can participate in the battle, and each of them is controlled by one of the four buttons (square, X, triangle, O). You can navigate the full 3D battle zone, which can vary from small to very large size. The combat system in Valkyrie Profile 2 takes place in pseudo-real time. This means that your opponent moves only when you move. It seems pretty complex at first, but you'll get used to it (though I still prefer the original Valkyrie Profile's battle system. Depending on the weapons, each of your characters is able to perform 1-3 attacks. Attacks are worth a certain number of AP (you can have up to 100 AP at most). AP is replenished by killing enemies, moving through the map or after simply attacking the enemy. After a certain period of time the Special Attack Gauge fills, and you can perform a mighty super-attack, called Soul Crush (each character has his own Soul Crush). During the battle, you can cut off enemy's tails, wings, and horns. This isn't a joke - each enemy has destroyable body parts. Cut off the wings and a bird, for example, will fall to the ground, letting you to smash its head your heart's content. The destruction of vital body parts simply kills enemies in an instant. But that's not all - cutting a certain part of the body, you have the chance to enter Break Mode - immediately start crushing your remote control buttons, as your attacks will cost 0 AP. You think that is all? No! Destroying every body part of the enemy gives you a chance to get a trophy – an item for weapon creation or a useful accessory. And these accessories worth a lot, you can equip up to 4 of them. Why? Every accessory carries a so-called Rune. Having equipped a number of different runes, you can learn any skill in the game. These skills are very useful and sometimes essential for your survival. Remember I said before that you can skip almost all the fighting? It is possible but not necessary, because you can't escape boring grinding here (if you want to beat the game completely, that is). Developers of tri-Ace made another feature – you can simply win the battle if you kill the enemy leader. Yes, each group of enemies has a leader. Thus the battle can be ended quite fast. A handy invention, isn't it?

Depending on how fast you like to play, Valkyrie Profile 2 gives you about 30-50 hours of playing time. If that's not enough for you, tri-Ace gives you a bonus dungeon (which is similar to the ones from Star Ocean or Radiata Stories) called Seraphic Gate. This dungeon has a bunch of super hard enemies and bosses from other tri-Ace games - Gabriel Celeste and co., as well as upgraded versions of bosses from this game. Well, if you are still not satisfied, you can beat the game again 50 (!) times. And each time the difficulty of the game will increase. It took me 70 hours to beat the game AND the Seraphic Gate once, by the way. This game has a good soundtrack, but I can't say it's a masterpiece. It's just pretty solid.

All of this allows me to say that Valkyrie Profile 2 is one of the most beautiful and innovative games on Playstation 2. Yeah, it has some flaws, but still remains a classic Japanese role-playing adventure.

Final Score: 8.5 out of 10
Reviewer: Damage_dealer

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/07/09

Game Release: Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria (US, 09/26/06)