Valkyrie Profile

"A unique kind of RPG"

There is no doubt that Valkyrie Profile is a great game. It was worth every penny and I'd give it about a 9.4 if I could use decimals. But, there are some serious flaws many other reviews do not mention. To make this as simple as possible I'll use lists of +'s and -'s.

First, the pluses, not in any order:

+ This game has the most beautiful character artwork I have ever seen. The designs are all very detailed and almost all the characters look very handsome/ beautiful. Large portraits pop up while they are talking and change for different emotions. There portraits look as good as the character designs.

+ The battle system is actually fun. That is amazing for an RPG. The only other RPG's I can think of with fun battles are FFT and Tactics Ogre. In dungeons you jump around to get treasures and travel from room to room.

+ The game is challenging without being impossible or making you frustrated.(I'm playing Hard Mode)

+ English spoken dialog is mostly good, with a few exceptions. One character I know is Ash's voice (yuck!)from Pokemon. Music is nice, though it doesn't make you want to buy the CD.

+You are allowed an option on the menu screen to hear all the music and in- battle voices you have unlocked. You can even set different types of waves to go along with the music.

+ There are a couple of decent anime FMV's and a few nice but short CG FMV sequences. Unfortunately, the CG does not include characters. It shows stuff like water draining from a mermaid fountain. Some nice prerendered backgrounds are included too.

+ The Skill/Traits system is fun and not used in many RPG's. You learn skills by using items and spending CP you get from leveling up. Or you can spend your CP on developing personality traits for each character. Each has their unique set of positive and negative traits that determine their overall Hero Value.

+ The story is unique and light. It's neat how it ties in to Norse mythology. The translation is good enough, without gammatical mistakes or awkward phrases. Though it is not deep, it is interesting.

+ 2-D sprites allow for more detailed and better-looking character animations, such as in battle. (And I just like 2-D games better)There is slight pixelation, though.


And the Minuses:

- It's not nearly as long as advertised, though few games are. I'm in the middle of chapter 6 of 8 and I've played 27 hours exploring every dungeon and getting every item.

- There is no replay even with 3 difficulty level and 3 endings, because the endings are just the bad one, the okay one, and the good one. Just play hard mode and get the best ending the first time around.

- The game can become repetitive. You press Start 5-6 times per chapter to see where to go. There are two variations: watch a scene in which you get a charcter (you can't control anything or do anything) or play a dungeon with no story. This repeats through 8 chapters. Because of this system, once you are finished with a chapter there is absolutely nothing else you can do except gain levels or rest until the next chapter comes along.

- There are 9 tiny towns in Midgard, all of them open from the very begining. There are about 8 people in each town and every single one of them says EXACTLY THE SAME THING throughout the whole game.

- The story is very shallow. Except for a key scene every 2-3 chapters, it completely consists of aquiring characters. In almost all cases the charcter appears out of nowhere (they were never seen or mentioned before), joins you, and is never metioned again. I went through my file and counted (I've gotten all the charcters in chapters 1-6 of 8): I have 18 characters not including Valkyrie. Only three of them appeared in the story before they joined you (Badrach, Mystina, Lucian). Only one of them appeared in the story again(Lucian)after joining you. The complete story and character developement of the other 15 consisted of just one scene.


STORY: B+
MUSIC/SOUND:B+
GRAPHICS/ART: A+
GAMEPLAY/:A
INNOVATION:A+
FUN: A+

Conclusion: Valkyrie Profile is not the best game ever for the Playstaion but it is around #10. You might not agree because I only like RPG's, Strategy and Action games. It's a good idea to get this game, but don't get Legend of Dragoon because it's a worthless peice of crap, a waste of money, and also you would be ecouraging Sony to put out crappy translations by idiots with the writing skills of first graders and who would get 210's on the SAT Verbal.
Voice acting should be going in Valkyrie Profiles direction (though it's not perfect) rather than Legend of Dragoon's. Why doesn't Sony just hire some second graders at $2 an hour to edit their writing?

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/02/00, Updated 03/06/01