Valkyrie Profile

—by Keith Rhee

What's more important to you in a role-playing game? Stunning presentation? An epic story? Or solid game play?
While the rest of the world has been waiting (and waiting, and waiting...) for DRAGON QUEST VII, Squaresoft released two FF games and is getting ready to release FINAL FANTASY IX. But Square's rival hasn't been completely idle. Together with developer Tri-Ace, Enix published the decent STAR OCEAN: THE SECOND STORY, and now the excellent VALKYRIE PROFILE. If you felt that FINAL FANTASY VIII was more story than game, and want to be more actively involved in the game, then Enix's latest offering just might be for you.
The setting is based on Norse mythology—the Earth gods are at war with the Van gods, and the apocalypse "Ragnarok" is nigh. As the war goddess Valkyrie, you are ordered by the goddess Frei to recruit souls to join the fight. This provides a slight twist to the story: most of the characters in your party are already dead. The game consists in large part of Valkyrie witnessing the often tragic deaths of the characters, then collecting their souls.
These souls can be materialized for enemy battles, and those with a strong hero possibility can be sent up to Valhalla to fight in Odin's army. And there are a lot of characters to pick from, over twenty in fact. Most characters only get about five to ten minutes of screen time, but the brief cut scenes, the battle animation and the voice acting all help to define each soul and personality.
The environment is a 2.5D setup, consisting of beautifully drawn 2D backdrops, some parallax scrolling and the ability to walk in/out of the screen to new locations. The artwork is absolutely gorgeous, and makes a strong case for the continued use of hand-drawn artwork in this age of polygon-crunching next-gen consoles. On the few occasions where rendered 3D cutscenes are used, they are kept brief and to the point, serving to add and not to detract from the experience.
Dungeons are navigated like a platform game: climb ladders, jump platforms and interact with objects in the environment. The player can access a nifty 3D map of the environment, which you can zoom and rotate to get a better overall idea of place and location. Valkyrie also has the nifty ability to form crystals on a floor or a wall, which can be used as steppingstones to access places otherwise out of reach. Some of the puzzles do require some dexterity and timing, and if you're not as adept at this kind of thing, you may find yourself stuck in a few places.
You can also see the monsters wandering around the dungeon, and it's up to you to avoid them by jumping out of their way, or freezing them using Valkyrie's crystal-forming ability. If they sneak up on you, or if you slash them with a sword, you enter battle mode, and herein lies VALKYRIE PROFILE'S strongest selling point.
Each of the main four buttons on the PlayStation pad correspond to a character in your party. Pressing each button unleashes a string of attacks depending on the character and equipped weapon or magic. This setup turns the role-playing battle into an intense street fighting game, complete with timing, combos, guards, counters and special attacks. As with any decent fighting game, blindly mashing the buttons won't get you far—you'll want to sequence your attacks into combos to charge the special attack meter, then unleash specials that further punish the enemy. And if the opponents are carrying treasure, they won't simply drop it after you vanquish them—you literally have to beat that out of them as well.
On the issue of game balance, your party's firepower is restricted by a small "break" factor in some of the more powerful weapons. For instance, the Dragon Slayer sword, which can kill dragons in 1-2 hits, has a 5% chance of breaking in battle. This forces the player to use the more powerful weapons sparingly (such as saving them for boss battles), and make do with the more common items most of the time.
Last but not least, Valkyrie carries a rating that depends on her performance, such as recruiting heroes for Valhalla and sending key items called "artifacts" to her master Odin. The game has three possible endings, and the outcome is determined by Valkyrie's performance rating and a few key events. A few special characters, locations and items are also available only in "hard" mode, which further adds to the replayability of the game (as if the addictive street fighting aspect of the battles weren't enough to keep you coming back for more.)
Squaresoft may have established itself as the master of computer graphics and presentation, but Enix's VALKYRIE PROFILE is much better balanced as a "game." You may not get the sense that something over-the-top is going to happen, but the game keeps the player involved at all times, and merging elements of the fighting game genre into the battles was a stroke of genius. If you enjoy both fighting games and RPGs, or want to be more than just a "spectator" and be more involved with your game, then VALKYRIE PROFILE is for you. Now if Enix would only release DRAGON QUEST VII already...

Rating: 9 / 10

Enix
Available on the Sony Playstation
RPG
1 Player
Dual Shock, Requires 2 Memory Blocks
SLPM 86379-80
¥6800
Available Now in Japan
Where to buy