Valkyrie Profile

"A game of great originality and depth"

Valkyrie Profile is a game of many features. This includes in-depth character development, great battle system, awesome graphics, great sound effects and music, and one of the most fascinating gameplay and story concepts to ever hit a console in a VERY long time.

Graphics:
The graphics are a very mixed bag. These are beautiful, pre-rendered backgrounds. The twist is that these are parascrolling, paralaxing, side-scrolling backgrounds. What this basically means is that the backgrounds are flat and only go side to side and up and down; and they are composed of layer upon layer of different backgrounds to create an amazing effect. These backgrounds are backgrounds that I favor over the Final Fantasy series!
The characters and battles are sprite based. These are quite possible the coolest looking sprites ever since the times of SNES. They are highly detailed and move extremely fluidly (they aren't missing any frames like Lunar). The battle creatures and characters look nice, and there are several 3D effects in the battles to give it an edge.

Sound:
The music in this game is top-notch. Others may beg to differ, (yes, they loop) but I believe that they all give a great effect to the areas that they are based in. For instance, if a town is dark and dreary there will be sad and mellow music, and a colorful town will have cheery music, etc (nothing new but its still cool).
The voice acting is pretty good. The only complaint that I have with the voices is that they go way too slow. At times, the slow pace of the voices gets to the point where it detracts from the overall mood of the event. The acting gets better towards the end, and the battles have pretty good acting as well.
The sound effects in the enviornments are nice, but not that noticeable. The battle sounds are great too, with great sword clashing and spells.

Gameplay:
This is where the originality factor jumps in and takes teh spotlight. The battle system is very nice. Each character is assigned to a button (triangle, circle, etc). You can select a monster and do different combos on them(pressing the buttons rapidly, or choosing a different monster per character). If u get enough hits at a time, you can do a characters special move (Purify Weird Soul) which tends to do major damage. Another thing is that you dont always have to do combos. When its your turn, you can re-equip, cast a different spell, use items, and things of that sort. Re-equipping is important because human weapons may break in battle (making your character do 1/50th of the damage) and u might have to equip a weapon that you bought from the main menu.
This is another nice feature. You can buy items using Materialze Points (the currency of VP) to buy new weapons and items each chapter. The weapons you buy DON'T break, but weapons found on the field are likely to break quickly. From this menu, you can distribute skill points to all of your characters. When each character gains a new level, you are given points to distribute to their skills and traits (thus raising their hero level) and making them more fit to fight in the heavens. There is MUCH MORE TO SAY, but these are the basics.

Replayability factor: great
You are going to want to play again to see which levels (easy normal hard) have different events, challenges, items, and dungeons for you to sought after. Another great reason is the Seraphic Gate, but I wont get into that....

Rent or buy: This game will take you a good month or two to finish-but new people on the RPG scene who are used to Final Fantasy might want to rent it to see if it fits their tastes. Otherwise, spend the 50 dollars! Yes, it's overpriced, but it's worth it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/10/01, Updated 05/10/01