KaiTenSatsuma
10-01-2006, 06:00 PM
I usually make it a business of mine to review games only after i finish them, but this is one exception since i would love to review this game.
keep in mind this is from the 3rd chapter of the game out of 10, ill add a "Looking back" review after i finish, or somone else will.
Since i missed Valkyrie Profile (indeed, i had never heard of the game untill summer) for the PSX, and looked at some screenshots, viable reviews (the average score is usually the most trustable, people who rate a game 4/10... and are the only people who rate a game that low out of about 12 people, usually dont know what the hell theyre talking about, then again some people cant help but give every game they review a perfect 10, regardless of that little 7/10 they had somewhere, and all of those other 8/10s., and the one 6/10, but forget it! 10/10 it is!, see my meaning?) and a healthy amount of trailers, i couldnt help but be excited about the prelude to the end of the world! (i happen to know norse mythology fairly well, Ragnarok is the beginning of the end to the new beginning, seriously, look it up.)
Reviews in magazines looked good too, and the graphics were nearly next gen! As pre-order day arrived upon me i rehooked my PS2 and warmed it up with a quick game of Disgaea and Disgaea 2 (#2 mainly for the music of course) and i got "the call", rushing down to my Gamestop on a thursday, i picked up my Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria!
ok, drama is off, down to the meat and potatoes of the first look.
Graphics: amazing, nice effects, cool particle effects (not at all lame like in FFX/X-2, you know those little soul peice things..) and for once they have really nice looking light! caves are darkened like they should in areas, lava is a bright red that lights the ground in a magma cave, ect. Interestingly enough towns, dungeons, and feilds are moved upon in 2D like a platformer, this in interesting since for once in an RPG you can actually JUMP! tresures are hidden behind pillars, out of the way locations and so on. while im on the subject of movement out of battle, you can shoot a niftly little thing called a "photon", this freezes enemies, objects on the 1st shot, on the second shot you switch spots with the object! this makes for quick movement/avoidment of enemies.
10/10, and i doubt it will change.
Sound: Music isnt too bad, could use a better battle music, somthing to get the blood pumping a bit, but very nice, voice work isnt bad either, ill pass deeper judgement on this later,
8/10.
Gameplay: this is what dissapointed me, nearly all magazines and reviews in said magazined ranted about how much strategy you need, attacking from the sides, dividing and conquering, so on and so forth, while it is true that you can avoid enemy attacks by dashing out of their visable attack range (be warned, enemies can change their attacks!) you very very rarely ever need to break your groups up, only once did i have to do it, and it was to use one of my characters as a meat sheild, she died, and i promptly revived the unconsious character, and killed the boss. The problem is primarily this: killing the leader ends the battle, with you winning. and leaders are only marginally stronger than other monsters, while early on monsters with armor/weapons are hard to kill, as soon as you get a caster that can lift the enemy with a single spell, :starts singing "its all over" :clap, clap, clap-clap-clap: you dont even need to tactically string combos, bashing the buttons is faster, more effective, and you actually know what youre doing. The heart of this problem is that you arent really limited in your attacks, youd actually care about your attack placement if there were string combos, or if your action point bar was smaller, hell, even attack effects OTHER than lift (turning your opponent to strategically attack points to break limbs off, and get those hard to find accessories for example) would have been a good idea, other than that battle is generally OK. Equipment is an integral part of your characters, as are attacks and runes. Equipment is like this : Weapon, Foot, Head, Arm and 4 accessories. Weapons and body armor have set runes, all corrosponding with what weapon/body part it is for, accessories on the other hand are different, mixing and matching accessories gives stat bonuses, matching equipment colors (blue, red and green) further gives stat bonuses, there are grey equipments with usually better bonuses, but dont give color bonuses, runes, and dont stack. New is the rune system, by having certain runes equipped on your character, you can start learning abilities to boost your preformance, these range from a 20% boost to attack, to a 5000 damage sheild (which i hope to find the last rune for soon!) for each battle, a % of a bar for the skill fills, when it reaches 100% you can use the skill (skill limits are based on points, point limits increase every 10 or so levels), oh right, you are limited to the number of attacks you can do in one battle round by your weapon, up to 3 attacks, to as low as 1 attack (mages dont count, 1 attack always) and special attacks : some weapons let your characters use them, some wont.
7/10 - wish they actually made battles more strategic, oh by the way : its Really Turn Based (my way of saying a blend of realtime with turn based, mainly since things stop when you do, they move when you do, ect.) this will probably change since im still early in the game, and things are bound to get tougher.
gameplay, graphics, sound.. Story?
Story: well ill put it this way: when you start, you see a girl.. who hears voices in her head, they throw you into this, and give you a little background in the manual and her chacter descrption, you never actually PLAY as Valkyrie Silmeria, you play as her host.
did i mention that she was being chased by another Valkyrie? oh well. A weak point of the story is that it pretty much jumps around, leaving you confused in some spots, with little to back you up with, and throwing in strange information, which characters for some reason basically automatically accept, or hell, even knew before it was reveiled. HOW?! HOW DID THEY KNOW SILMERIA WAS INSIDE OF THE GIRL?! EXPLAIN DAMN YOU! THE GIRL IS THOUGHT TO BE LONG DEAD DAMMIT see what i mean? Unforunatly they didnt go and give you good stories on the Einherjar this time around, somthing i dearly wish they did, it adds personality to the souls you are freeing. Did i mention that you free our einherjar into the living? i could have sworn i did...
and im still curious to see how people react to see a long dead historical figure walking around...
6/10, might change... not sure yet, lots of walking, Clerks 2 depiction of LOTR i mean.
cant do replayability.
keep in mind this is from the 3rd chapter of the game out of 10, ill add a "Looking back" review after i finish, or somone else will.
Since i missed Valkyrie Profile (indeed, i had never heard of the game untill summer) for the PSX, and looked at some screenshots, viable reviews (the average score is usually the most trustable, people who rate a game 4/10... and are the only people who rate a game that low out of about 12 people, usually dont know what the hell theyre talking about, then again some people cant help but give every game they review a perfect 10, regardless of that little 7/10 they had somewhere, and all of those other 8/10s., and the one 6/10, but forget it! 10/10 it is!, see my meaning?) and a healthy amount of trailers, i couldnt help but be excited about the prelude to the end of the world! (i happen to know norse mythology fairly well, Ragnarok is the beginning of the end to the new beginning, seriously, look it up.)
Reviews in magazines looked good too, and the graphics were nearly next gen! As pre-order day arrived upon me i rehooked my PS2 and warmed it up with a quick game of Disgaea and Disgaea 2 (#2 mainly for the music of course) and i got "the call", rushing down to my Gamestop on a thursday, i picked up my Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria!
ok, drama is off, down to the meat and potatoes of the first look.
Graphics: amazing, nice effects, cool particle effects (not at all lame like in FFX/X-2, you know those little soul peice things..) and for once they have really nice looking light! caves are darkened like they should in areas, lava is a bright red that lights the ground in a magma cave, ect. Interestingly enough towns, dungeons, and feilds are moved upon in 2D like a platformer, this in interesting since for once in an RPG you can actually JUMP! tresures are hidden behind pillars, out of the way locations and so on. while im on the subject of movement out of battle, you can shoot a niftly little thing called a "photon", this freezes enemies, objects on the 1st shot, on the second shot you switch spots with the object! this makes for quick movement/avoidment of enemies.
10/10, and i doubt it will change.
Sound: Music isnt too bad, could use a better battle music, somthing to get the blood pumping a bit, but very nice, voice work isnt bad either, ill pass deeper judgement on this later,
8/10.
Gameplay: this is what dissapointed me, nearly all magazines and reviews in said magazined ranted about how much strategy you need, attacking from the sides, dividing and conquering, so on and so forth, while it is true that you can avoid enemy attacks by dashing out of their visable attack range (be warned, enemies can change their attacks!) you very very rarely ever need to break your groups up, only once did i have to do it, and it was to use one of my characters as a meat sheild, she died, and i promptly revived the unconsious character, and killed the boss. The problem is primarily this: killing the leader ends the battle, with you winning. and leaders are only marginally stronger than other monsters, while early on monsters with armor/weapons are hard to kill, as soon as you get a caster that can lift the enemy with a single spell, :starts singing "its all over" :clap, clap, clap-clap-clap: you dont even need to tactically string combos, bashing the buttons is faster, more effective, and you actually know what youre doing. The heart of this problem is that you arent really limited in your attacks, youd actually care about your attack placement if there were string combos, or if your action point bar was smaller, hell, even attack effects OTHER than lift (turning your opponent to strategically attack points to break limbs off, and get those hard to find accessories for example) would have been a good idea, other than that battle is generally OK. Equipment is an integral part of your characters, as are attacks and runes. Equipment is like this : Weapon, Foot, Head, Arm and 4 accessories. Weapons and body armor have set runes, all corrosponding with what weapon/body part it is for, accessories on the other hand are different, mixing and matching accessories gives stat bonuses, matching equipment colors (blue, red and green) further gives stat bonuses, there are grey equipments with usually better bonuses, but dont give color bonuses, runes, and dont stack. New is the rune system, by having certain runes equipped on your character, you can start learning abilities to boost your preformance, these range from a 20% boost to attack, to a 5000 damage sheild (which i hope to find the last rune for soon!) for each battle, a % of a bar for the skill fills, when it reaches 100% you can use the skill (skill limits are based on points, point limits increase every 10 or so levels), oh right, you are limited to the number of attacks you can do in one battle round by your weapon, up to 3 attacks, to as low as 1 attack (mages dont count, 1 attack always) and special attacks : some weapons let your characters use them, some wont.
7/10 - wish they actually made battles more strategic, oh by the way : its Really Turn Based (my way of saying a blend of realtime with turn based, mainly since things stop when you do, they move when you do, ect.) this will probably change since im still early in the game, and things are bound to get tougher.
gameplay, graphics, sound.. Story?
Story: well ill put it this way: when you start, you see a girl.. who hears voices in her head, they throw you into this, and give you a little background in the manual and her chacter descrption, you never actually PLAY as Valkyrie Silmeria, you play as her host.
did i mention that she was being chased by another Valkyrie? oh well. A weak point of the story is that it pretty much jumps around, leaving you confused in some spots, with little to back you up with, and throwing in strange information, which characters for some reason basically automatically accept, or hell, even knew before it was reveiled. HOW?! HOW DID THEY KNOW SILMERIA WAS INSIDE OF THE GIRL?! EXPLAIN DAMN YOU! THE GIRL IS THOUGHT TO BE LONG DEAD DAMMIT see what i mean? Unforunatly they didnt go and give you good stories on the Einherjar this time around, somthing i dearly wish they did, it adds personality to the souls you are freeing. Did i mention that you free our einherjar into the living? i could have sworn i did...
and im still curious to see how people react to see a long dead historical figure walking around...
6/10, might change... not sure yet, lots of walking, Clerks 2 depiction of LOTR i mean.
cant do replayability.