wallwalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wallwalker) wrote2008-01-22 08:12 pm
wallwalker) wrote2008-01-22 08:12 pm
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[VP:L] Spoiler-free impressions
Someone asked me a while ago to write up a spoiler-free impression of various games that I like, and why others might want to play them. I'm not good at reviewing games, but I figured, what the heck, I'd give it a shot. Hopefully I succeeded in the spoiler-free part.
First, I will attempt to review Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth. (This is the game that was released as Valkyrie Profile on the PSX, then rebranded later because of the release of Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria.)
Plot Summary: Ragnarok is coming. As a Valkyrie, you must travel across Midgard and find souls to shape into warriors to fight for the gods. Your purpose is simple, but there is more to the war - and to yourself - than there appears to be.
There are three different difficulty levels, and the major differences between them are the characters and the dungeons that are available in each one. I must say that unless you want to play a warm-up/intro game, or unless you want to see what happens if you fail in your mission, there's absolutely no reason to ever play Easy mode. You won't get to see the whole plot under any circumstance, a lot of characters are unavailable, and while I do have a soft spot for some of the dungeons that are available in Easy mode, the same dungeons are also available in Normal mode. It's not even easier than the other modes, because you don't get access to some of the best equipment. But there's a much bigger difference between Easy and Normal, plot-wise, than there is between Normal and Hard. I really do recommend playing Normal at least once, to see the "easy" dungeons, then playing Hard for the challenge.
Gameplay is fun - it's a bit like a cross between a platformer and an RPG, basically. Yes, there are jumping puzzles and their ilk, and some of them are brutal. The battles take place in "profile," so to speak, with up to four characters; each character is assigned a different button on the controller and can have up to three different attacks (except for mages.) The challenge is to learn how to time attacks to successfully hit the enemy and knock them up, down and around, so that you can knock out various treasures and gems. It's quite addictive, once you get the hang of it. Of course, once the difficulty level goes up in the later parts of the game, it's actually difficult to beat the game without resorting to what some people would consider cheap tricks to stay alive.
VP:L is a bit unusual plot-wise, in that the main storyline of the game is very, very simple, and the metaplot is concealed rather well within it. There are three different endings - well, technically one of the endings is the Game Over sequence, but the game considers it an ending. At any rate, It's very difficult to get the "best" ending without a walkthrough, and very possible to miss it even with one. There are a lot of little details in this, character- and plot-wise, even outside of the main storyline - it's definitely a game for those of you who enjoy hunting for tidbits, instead of having everything handed to you. There's quite a lot of meta-info available if you look for it. The game's progression is not very linear at all.
A caution: Those of you who are more familiar with Norse Mythology than others will probably end up boggled by some of the inconsistencies between the game's version of the myths, and the myths themselves. In fact, it's the small differences that confuse me more than the big changes. This probably won't surprise anyone who's played other Japanese RPGs which happened to be inspired by other mythological frameworks, but it's worth mentioning for those of you who haven't.
I really, really love the music for this game; it has a really grandiose feel about it, which fits. The voice-acting... eh. Not bad for the time that it was made, definitely a cut above some of tri-Ace's other games before the time (remember, this was released in 2000,) but not great, either. Graphics were a bit unusual even for the time - it used sprites and pre-rendered backgrounds when most games were using 3-D polygon-based graphics. They were quite pretty, though - the backgrounds were especially nice - so really, it's a matter of taste.
...the most irritating thing about this game is the fact that it's buggy, especially if you're playing the PSX version. This is another thing about tri-Ace's games that I could do without. I personally never had as many problems with VP as I did with, say, Star Ocean: The Second Story, but I did have my share of "disc read errors" and random game freezes. Now, since I've never played the PSP version, I can't say for sure whether or not it's better in that respect, but I have heard that it has its own crop of bugs.
For all of its issues, though, it was a very unique and fresh game, and definitely worth a look. One thing I will say for sure about it, though, is that if you want to play the VP series, play VP:L first if at all possible, as VP:S will spoil you rotten for large portions of it.
I'll post something about VP:S later, as I've been putting off other things for far too long.
First, I will attempt to review Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth. (This is the game that was released as Valkyrie Profile on the PSX, then rebranded later because of the release of Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria.)
Plot Summary: Ragnarok is coming. As a Valkyrie, you must travel across Midgard and find souls to shape into warriors to fight for the gods. Your purpose is simple, but there is more to the war - and to yourself - than there appears to be.
There are three different difficulty levels, and the major differences between them are the characters and the dungeons that are available in each one. I must say that unless you want to play a warm-up/intro game, or unless you want to see what happens if you fail in your mission, there's absolutely no reason to ever play Easy mode. You won't get to see the whole plot under any circumstance, a lot of characters are unavailable, and while I do have a soft spot for some of the dungeons that are available in Easy mode, the same dungeons are also available in Normal mode. It's not even easier than the other modes, because you don't get access to some of the best equipment. But there's a much bigger difference between Easy and Normal, plot-wise, than there is between Normal and Hard. I really do recommend playing Normal at least once, to see the "easy" dungeons, then playing Hard for the challenge.
Gameplay is fun - it's a bit like a cross between a platformer and an RPG, basically. Yes, there are jumping puzzles and their ilk, and some of them are brutal. The battles take place in "profile," so to speak, with up to four characters; each character is assigned a different button on the controller and can have up to three different attacks (except for mages.) The challenge is to learn how to time attacks to successfully hit the enemy and knock them up, down and around, so that you can knock out various treasures and gems. It's quite addictive, once you get the hang of it. Of course, once the difficulty level goes up in the later parts of the game, it's actually difficult to beat the game without resorting to what some people would consider cheap tricks to stay alive.
VP:L is a bit unusual plot-wise, in that the main storyline of the game is very, very simple, and the metaplot is concealed rather well within it. There are three different endings - well, technically one of the endings is the Game Over sequence, but the game considers it an ending. At any rate, It's very difficult to get the "best" ending without a walkthrough, and very possible to miss it even with one. There are a lot of little details in this, character- and plot-wise, even outside of the main storyline - it's definitely a game for those of you who enjoy hunting for tidbits, instead of having everything handed to you. There's quite a lot of meta-info available if you look for it. The game's progression is not very linear at all.
A caution: Those of you who are more familiar with Norse Mythology than others will probably end up boggled by some of the inconsistencies between the game's version of the myths, and the myths themselves. In fact, it's the small differences that confuse me more than the big changes. This probably won't surprise anyone who's played other Japanese RPGs which happened to be inspired by other mythological frameworks, but it's worth mentioning for those of you who haven't.
I really, really love the music for this game; it has a really grandiose feel about it, which fits. The voice-acting... eh. Not bad for the time that it was made, definitely a cut above some of tri-Ace's other games before the time (remember, this was released in 2000,) but not great, either. Graphics were a bit unusual even for the time - it used sprites and pre-rendered backgrounds when most games were using 3-D polygon-based graphics. They were quite pretty, though - the backgrounds were especially nice - so really, it's a matter of taste.
...the most irritating thing about this game is the fact that it's buggy, especially if you're playing the PSX version. This is another thing about tri-Ace's games that I could do without. I personally never had as many problems with VP as I did with, say, Star Ocean: The Second Story, but I did have my share of "disc read errors" and random game freezes. Now, since I've never played the PSP version, I can't say for sure whether or not it's better in that respect, but I have heard that it has its own crop of bugs.
For all of its issues, though, it was a very unique and fresh game, and definitely worth a look. One thing I will say for sure about it, though, is that if you want to play the VP series, play VP:L first if at all possible, as VP:S will spoil you rotten for large portions of it.
I'll post something about VP:S later, as I've been putting off other things for far too long.