Valkyrie Profile

"An Amazing Game, with Beautiful Artwork and Killer Battles"

I had never played any of the Lunar games fully, save a little bit of the Silver Star Story, but I had heard about them and their popularity. Thus, sitting down in my living room, watching the Enix logo come up, I had high expectations for Valkyrie Profile. I just have to say that it is one of the most innovative and interesting RPGs ever created.

The story is a little different than your standard ''Rise from anonymity and save the world'' crap that has plagued many RPGs for a long time. Instead, you are Lenneth Valkyrie, the most powerful of the three goddesses over fate, and you are petitioned by your lord and master, Odin, after many long years of slumber. Your job is to harvest human souls that are worthy to become ranks in the soldiers of your countrymen, the Aseir. In a short while, the end of the world is coming, and only by finding suitable warriors can you defeat this ''Ragnarok''. These ''Eienjeriar'' (pronounced I-nn-hair-ee-are) are human beings that have lead a life, and died. So in essence, you start out with great powers from the start, but you grow as you complete the game.

What immediately grabbed me was the amazing style of the artwork in the game. Every character in the game has a portrait, and although a few are reused(townspeople, for example), they are all beautiful. The main characters have several portraits, with a wide range of emotions. All of the backgrounds are hand drawn, and everything, save some spell effects, is done in beautiful 2D artwork.

The second thing that grabbed me was the great voice acting. I don't know what some people are complaining about because I felt that almost all the characters had awesome voice acting. There are a few exceptions, but in general, the voices fit the characters quite well, and convey convincing emotion.

You start out flying over a world map. Once you press start, you begin to attune yourself to the presence of dying souls, and when you are told where to go, you can investigate the event. This leads to a story sequence. Most of the sequences are very well done, and although some are a bit long winded, they all are sad stories of humans dying. By these sequences, you gain characters in your party. Pressing start can also reveal dungeons to you on the map, which you must visit in order to level up your Eienjeriar, and prepare them for their journey to Valhalla, the world of the Gods.

When not on the world map, the game plays in a 2D style, like a Castlevania platform jumper. Enemies are visible in many forms(although are just black spirits at first). You can brandish your sword, and if you slash an enemy, you enter the battle with first strike. Touching the enemy makes the first strike random. Pushing up and down in front of doors(which ones are paths are told to you by the game), will take you to different areas, much like a platform game. There are treasure boxes in the dungeons, which often house the best stuff in the game, but unlike divine items(which you can create with MP, or materialize points, your basic money), they can break and leave your character without a weapon in battle. This creates a good amount of strategy, in that many of the most powerful weapons ironically tend to be made by humans, especially the most powerful wands for the spell casters. You can also shoot a beam out, which can create crystals if they hit a surface, or freeze an enemy. Many puzzles or treasures require you to use these structures to climb up, and it gets harder as you continue through the game.

I must be honest, the thing that pulled me into the game was the combat. The combat in this game was amazing and truly unique, different than any game I had ever seen in my life. The music is incredible(especially on nice speakers), and I found myself turning it up as I fought battles. Valkyrie will shout, ''To my side, my noble Eienjeriar!'' Out of her transparent wings, her warriors will fly to her side. Each of the characters in the game have several comments and even taunts, which will begin at random. The taunts really added style to the game, Armgrim shouting ''No Mercy!'' before combat made it that much more fun. Combat is unique in that each character is assigned to a button on your PS controller. Pressing X will send out one character, O another, and so on. The enemy has the ability to block your attacks, and only by sending your guys out at the right time, you can break an opponents guard and deal good damage. Each character can attack up to three times with some weapons, and doing massive air combos is great fun. Spell casters don't have MP per say, instead you equip a certain spell that they have memorized(through items), and they will cast the spell when you tell them to attack. Spellcasters are among the most important characters in the game, as they can break an enemy's guard easily. As you attack the enemy, a combo meter rises as you get more consecutive hits on the enemy, and when it fills to 100%, the words ''Putrify Weird Soul'' appear on the screen. Quickly you must select one of your characters, who will then(with great voice acting here as well) unleash a powerful attack on the enemy, like a limit break. Each character, except spellcasters and Valkyrie, has only one limitbreak. Spell casters simply do a more beefed up version of the spell they are currently using for attack, or they use Great Magic, in which a powerful attack using an FMV movie typically obliterates your opponants. Again, each spellcaster has voices for all the spells, and even the great magics, which are cast with a couple lines of text, have unique voice acting for every character. If you can fill the combo meter up through your limit break, more characters can do theirs right after you finish yours. If you do the characters in a certain sequence (some charge the combo meter more than others) you can have all four characters doing a limit break on one enemy, which is quite a sight to see. As Valkyrie says after destroying an enemy with her limit, ''You have no hope of survival!''

On another note, the music and sound rocks. The music tracks are upbeat techno, and they fit the 2D style to a tee. The sound is well done, and only a few of the voices can get annoying, but most of the time it works beautifully. I especially love the boss battle music.

There is so much more to this game. Reading certain tombs in the dungeons can allow your characters to learn certain skills, that you can ''purchase'' with CP, or capacity points earned in dungeons. These skills can do anything from raising your attack power, to resurrecting you from the dead, to healing your friends at certain times. Also, your warriors have traits, that must be molded in ways that will make them suitable warriors. You can send your warriors up when they are requested, and sometimes certain traits are asked for, which are skills you can learn. Sending a warrior up means that's the last you will see of them until the end of the game, except for between chapters, where you can see how they progressed in the upper world and read tales of their accomplishments.

The game is timed in a sense. Visiting places takes periods out of the game. When the periods are up, that marks the end of a chapter, and there are only so many chapters in this game. Many people complained about lacking time to build their characters... but in Normal mode, my characters were very beefed up, so much that I skipped many turns in order to make the game pass more quickly. There are three endings, the best one(Which I haven't gotten) deals with Valkyrie herself and her past. The thing that makes this game unique is the way that the story is told. As you go through the game, you discover that there is more to your existence than you think.

The three difficulty levels are awesome, in that certain characters are only available in hard mode, and the best endings are only available in normal and hard. This drastically improves the replayability of the game. You will only get some of the many characters available the first time around. And on hard difficulty, it is HARD. This game is not easy(unless you are playing on easy), and there will be plenty of times when you will be overwhelmed by the sheer power of some enemies. Training your characters is the key to victory.

There are only a few things I didn't like about this game. Sometimes there are times when there are long bouts of voice acting, and you can't speed up the long pause between voiced phrases. This is only annoying if you have seen it before and you don't want to sit through the story sequence again. Also, I thought some of the characters were drastically weaker than others in terms of combat prowess. Perhaps I didn't strengthen them enough. And also, occasionally it gets boring to see the same limit break a bunch of times in one battle, but it is nowhere as bad as FF8, especially in terms of length.

Overall, I recommend this game wholeheartedly to any fan of RPGs. It is a little different than your average Final Fantasy, however it is still an awesome game. If you are not a huge fan of long bouts of reading, I'd rent first, but I bought it, and I'm happy with it.

9 out of 10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/09/01, Updated 01/09/01