Valkyrie Profile

"Review from an European gamer"

This is the first review I have ever written and I come from The Netherlands so please forgive me if I make any spelling mistakes. Here in the Netherlands most of the good RPG's aren't even released. The great RPG's like Xenogears, FF Tactics, Lunar and even Chrono Cross are not known to exist by the casual gamer. So I have to buy a lot of games on import which is much more expensive than buying European versions. So when I buy a RPG I want it to be a good one. That's why I regret I bought Valkyrie Profile let me explain why in this review.

Graphics

The graphics in this game are all spritebased and usually I love that in a RPG, I just love the graphics of Legend of Mana and Saga Frontier 2. But in this game, it's a different story. The rendered backgrounds have almost no color in them, everything is grey and grainy and the characters are usually not much better. This is a real throwback after playing Starocean (which is from the same company) and Chrono Cross which feature a lot of color. In the fights the graphics get a lot better and I find them to be quite good and at times spectacular.
Graphics:6

Sound/Music

I don't really like the music in this game. It sounds very 8-bit, composed of just bleeps and tweeps mostly. Some of the music is above average but I'm definateley not impressed by it.
The voice acting is a lot better than the music, the voices seem to fit the characters quite well and it is not used to much which can become irritating due to the slow pace of the conversations. I do think that the voices are a bit emotionless, and sometimes sound like they are being read up. The sounds in the batlles are good with swords and magic spells sounding like they should and the combat taunts are good too.
music:6
sounds:7

Story

Although the story is kind of original it lacks plot twists and really mayor events. You are a goddess who is sent to the earth to recruit fighters who will participate in the wars raging in heaven. In every chapter (there are eight) you have to send at least one member of your party to heaven in order to continue your quest. You can get a character after they die so a sad sequence is seen as introduction of every character. The story is not nearly as epic as the story in Xenogears or Chrono Trigger (Cross).

Gameplay

The gameplay in this game is quite good, at least in the dungeons, but what I really, really dislike of this game is that you can only go left or right in the screen. It gave me a feeling of claustrophobia not being able to go where I want to go especially in the towns and villages where everything looks really fake because of this. The dungeons are pretty good and you must make innovative use of your special skills to get further in them. What I also found a good feature is that you can't buy any items but you must find them in the dungeons. This forces you to explore them. There are three difficulty levels which is a good thing, but the easy level really should have been more difficult. The battles in the game are good and pretty fast-paced but become repetitive quite quick.
Gameplay:7

Replayability

This is the best part of the game because of the difficulty levels and the many characters.
In the Hard mode the dungeons are different too. So there is a lot of replay valeu, probably enough for a second playtrough.
replayability:8

Buy or Rent?

You should definetley rent this game first, unless you can pick it up at a low price. You really love tggis game or not, and I don't. All the reviews of this game gave way too high ratings. That's why I bought this game because I thought it would be almost as good as Xenogears or Chrono Cross. But don't be fooled. It is not. I think Starocean was a much better game and it's a shame Enix couldn't make a better product of this game.

Overall score: 6

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/07/00, Updated 09/07/00