Back during the first Playstation days, Valkyrie Profile was considered a surprise hit. Back in those days even a game that is set up as a 2-D side to side scroll format was considered outdated.
But despite its limitation on a 2-D format, the game actually managed to garner quite a fan base due to its fun combat system and storyline. Although you really need to get the good ending to appreciate the story of Valkyrie Profile. With this fact, it's not a far fetch to say that it really was a pleasant surprise to a lot of Valkyrie Profile fans when SquareEnix announced Valkyrie Profile 2 for the Playstation 2. With the excitement and anticipation of Valkyrie Profile 2 released out of the way, we're going to take a closer look at this sequel or prequel depending on how you look at it to the first Valkyrie Profile. Will Valkyrie Profile 2 manage to capture the essence and special ness of the first Valkyrie Profile? Well know soon enough.
STORY
Cat fight! Valkyrie vs Valkyrie.
This isn't Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth?
Over a century before the time of the first Valkyrie Profile, one of Odin's Valkyrie, Silmeria, had been stripped of her powers and reincarnated into the body of Princess Alicia for slumber until Odin can decide on Silmeria fate. However for an unknown reason, Silmeria soul awakens in Alicia body early causing Alicia body to have two souls and two personalities. Unable to understand what is happening to Alicia and why her personality changes ever so often, Alicia's father, the King, had her imprisoned in a far away castle thinking Alicia was possessed by a demon. At the same time Odin had learned that Silmeria had awaken early without his consent and sends the current Valkyrie, Hrist, to dispose of Alicia and send Silmeria back to Valhalla. Alicia/Silmeria however manages to escape the grasps of Hrist as they ran toward the wilderness. The danger of current events however does not pass as Alicia soon finds out that Odin plans to wage war on Midgar, the land of the mortals, for displeasing him and defying the gods. On the other hand, Midgar too plans to wage war on the gods as the mortals no longer want to be beholden to the gods. Alicia must race to her father to try and stop him from causing an all out war with the gods and Silmeria must travel to Asgard in hopes of stopping Odin from destroying the mortals. Can these heroines with the help of some unlikely allies be able to stop a catastrophe from happening? Only by entering the world of Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria can you find out for yourself.
There are a few problems with this story other than the fact that it is somewhat boring and uninteresting despite the fact that the main story is centered on a plot of a possible war between mortals and gods. The first problem is that the characters in the story aren't very interesting. More details about the cast can be found in its own section below. But to get straight to the point, having a good cast of characters where they are interesting make the story more interesting. That's not the case here. The second problem with the story is the lack of background developments involving the overall plot of the story and its environments. Let's put it this way, in order for gamers or in this case the readers to understand the current events and the situations of the events, they need to understand how things got to the way it is now. In this story Odin who is the father of the gods is said to be an evil god who hold absolute grip over mortals. The problem here is that even though the story tells us that Odin is a big bad evil god, the story itself doesn't show us or give us any evidence as to why he's a bad god. All we see from Odin is him sitting in his chair slouching over and giving orders and being arrogant. We just don't see any actions or past actions that would indicate to us why Odin is bad or evil that mortals need to rise up against him. On the flip side of things, the story doesn't really show us anything or give us any evidence on why or how mortals are being suppressed by the gods for them to rebel against the gods. Most of the town folks in various towns or villages barely give any references to the gods at all. And you really don't see any evidence on how the gods of Asgard affect their lives. All the story shows is that the King of Dipan and his servants want to create a weapon or power to fight and destroy the gods because they no longer want to be under the grips of the gods. Looking at both sides of the story, you don't understand enough of the issues from either side to care or root for them in any way whatsoever. You can't root for the mortals or want to help them fight against Odin because the story gave us no evidences that he's evil. And you really don't understand why Odin is so mad at the mortals that he wants them punish or feel his wrath because the story never shows us what the mortals did wrong that got Odin mad. It all adds up to a big nothing. It feels like you are on a journey without a cause for the most part. An image of something can come a long way. Saying there is atrocity happening around the world isn't enough. Showing us an image of the atrocity can give the full visual impact of how bad things are. A picture is worth more than what words can describe alone. This is where the story fails. There's no visual or evidence on the relationship between mortals and gods for us to even care. Just telling us the gods are bad doesn't do it. We need to know or see the reason why the gods are bad. In the end we just don't care about the war between mortals and gods. The last problem is that there's not much of a story. There are 6 chapters in the story but most of the chapters really just involve you trekking through different dungeons and fighting some weird dungeon boss. You have a small story cut scene as you enter a dungeon, a small story cut scene at the mid way point of the dungeon and lastly a story cut scene after the dungeon boss fight. Some of these dungeon boss fights have no point in the story too. Other major story scenes take place at the beginning and end of the chapters. But for the most part this is mostly a pure gameplay game as oppose to a story driven game. The story sadly in itself lack depth, history orientation, characterization of the characters, and a deep plotline. If you take away the massive hours of gameplay time, you sadly would only get about a little over an hour of story in this game. Of course you could say the same time about the first Valkyrie Profile story but with that story there was emotion in it. Here you just don't feel anything from the story. But it's not completely lost as things do pick up in interest once you are on the last chapter. But waiting for the last chapter in the story before things get interesting is not the way to go.
Score 6/10
CHARACTERS
Lenneth with new heroes in action.
There are a few main characters in this game as well as quite a lot of non major role characters.
The story mainly focuses on Alicia, Silmeria, Rufus, Arngrim, Lezard, Dylan, and Leone as the main characters for most of the chapters. Other main characters are introduced later on in chapter 5 and chapter 6. For the most part any real background development for these characters are concentrated mostly on Alicia and Rufus. Even then the story doesn't really go too much into their history. The other main characters are just mainly introduced into the story line as part of a group of people that decided to join the party base on a common goal. This leaves little character development for the entire cast of characters. Without good character backgrounds to let us know more about these characters, we are left with their personalities to try and warm us up to them. Unfortunately this too is weak. Most of these characters have personalities of a solid rock. They aren't very cheerful and mostly grim in personalities. Alicia is too timid which at times comes off very annoying. It's hard to believe that she's a main character that can even beat up bosses and monsters when she barely can hold a sword right. Silmeria is more harden and straight forward in personality but she doesn't appear enough in story scenes to make a full impact. Arngrim and Dylan barely talk much and when they do, they only say a few words at a time. Those two are what you would call the big brooding characters that let their strength and action speak for them. Leone is a bit more natural in terms of personality but she's like Silmeria, where her role is limited during scenes. Lezard is the more mysterious type and doesn't say much unless it's needed. His personality too is somewhat a bit plain and this is on purpose so we don't know who he is and what his motives are. Rufus is actually the only character that seems normal in personality. He talks enough and expresses his views like any regular person. The only problem is that there's nothing about his personality that is special. This overall makes this cast of characters to be plain and boring. A good cast of characters should be friends who come together for a common goal. They should have chemistry with one another and you can feel their love for each other as they kid around with one another. You just don't have any sense of emotions from these characters. You won't get joy, laughter, and sadness for these characters. And this is what hurt this story so much, is that the characters are very flat in an already flat story. Other so called semi-supporting characters such as the Einherjars don't have any speaking roles in this story or any scenes. If fact these Einherjars are basically nameless sprite characters that have no effect in the game or story at all. You can easily take out the Einherjars and there be no effect on the story or gameplay since you can use the main characters all the way from the beginning to the end of the game. There's just one character that can be considered interesting but that character is more like a special guest star than anything else. You think on the surface with a storyline of a war between mortals and gods there be great characters here. It's too bad that's not the case.
Score: 6/10
GRAPHICS
Hmmf, I'm still the hottest babe here.
Visually speaking this is the biggest improvement in the game. Despite the fact that the game is design in a 2-D side to side scroll environment, the graphics are rendered in 3-D mode. What's impressive is that the environments and characters are designs with exceptionally great details that are comparable to CG mode of the story cut scenes. A few things do stop the graphics from being totally outstanding. First thing is that the game does have a bit of anti-alias problem in the game. You probably notice this when you are traveling through a village or scenery. The other problem is that some of the sceneries or environments are a bit dull in color and in designs. This is due to the fact that most of the game tends to take place in dungeons and town explorations are very limited. The game doesn't really get a chance to show off some of its beautiful 3-D rendered graphics. There are certain areas in the game where you can just sit back and just admire the view of the surrounding areas and be at awe at the graphical designs. An example of this is when you enter Asgard for the first time. The game developer really made sure that the home of the gods is a place to be at awe with. Graphics in battle mode is surprisingly done in a 3-D environment. The character design remains very detailed like as when you see them in none battle modes. The monster designs in this game seemed a bit too simplistic compare to the rest of the graphics in the game. But really the game seems just a bit dull in color when it should have been brighter and more colorful is what really hurt the overall effect of what is an excellent graphical game.
Score: 8/10
MUSIC
This is the Sound Room?
The soundtrack for this game seems adequate at best for what you need to keep things from sounding too dull as you play this game. Most of the tracks are confined to themes base on dungeons, villages, and battles. None of these tracks really stand out or even are memorable once you finish this game. It's now even hard to recall any particular Valkyrie Profile 2 track from the game as I write this review. You can listen to all the tracks in the Sound Room of the extra bonus dungeon in the Seraphic Gate. On the bright side the voice acting in this game are pretty good and done in a professional manner. The sound effects from dungeon explorations such as footsteps running or water dripping are also quite good and realistic. It's just too bad overall there's nothing really great to hold you over in the long term as you play the game more and more.
Score: 7/10
GAMEPLAY
Like oh my god, Freya is so cool!
I shall not forgive, "Nibelung Valesti".
Game Information
Genre: Action RPG
Publisher: Square Enix
Disc: 1 DVD Disc
Memory: 67 KB
Players: 1-2 Player Mode
Analog Control: Yes
Digital Control: Yes
Vibration Function: Yes
Rating: Teen
Release: September 2006
Valkyrie Profile 2 gameplay is similar to the first Valkyrie Profile but there are some changes and new features involve of course. Let us overview the overall set up of the gameplay and some of their features before we go into details of each key features. Unlike most of today's rpg game, Valkyrie Profile 2 is set up as a 2-D side to side scroll game. Moving in this world whether you are in a town, field, or dungeon is base solely on going left to right. This is very similar to the first Valkyrie Profile. It will take some time getting used to since by now most of every game out there is base around 3-D mode. Visiting villages or towns are basically the same as in any other rpg game. You can sleep at Inns to restore your health and shop for new equipment and items at the nearest Armory shop. You can also talk to residents in these villages to open up access to nearby dungeons for your next destination. In terms of where to go next and what to do, the game is pretty linear for that purpose, for the most part its visit a village than go explore a dungeon than repeat the process to get the story moving. This is basically a dungeon crawling rpg game since most of the time you be spending your time exploring dungeons. There are no field maps or world map for you to explore in. There's a world map but it just points you to the next village or dungeon and you just click to go there. And there aren't many villages in this game to begin with, maybe a total of 4 villages in the entire world. In terms of dungeon exploration it's pretty much like most regular dungeons except it's done in 2-D mode. As you explore the dungeon you can access the dungeon map at any time in case you get lost or need to track where you are. Like with most dungeons, treasure chests can be found in various parts. Enemies also roam dungeons and upon touching them, you'll be brought into battle. Sometimes you are required to use your photon to make platform from enemies so you can use them to jump and reach certain areas. Sealstones are also found in most dungeons. Explanation of photon and sealstones can be found in the key features section. Like with most rpgs, at the end of each dungeon you'll be facing a boss fight. Most of these boss fights aren't very hard if you are on the correct level and even use and place sealstones in areas to your advantage. The battle system in this game is a mix of 3-D mode and 2-D mode. Movements and the environment of the battlefield is actually in 3-D mode but once you attack or start to attack a monster, the game switches to a 2-D side to side mode. You can pretty much move anywhere on the battle field by controlling the party leader and the rest of the team will follow him/her. The interesting thing here is that you can actually divide your team into 2 groups and move them in separate direction. This dividing your team into 2 groups can be used as a tactic to flank an enemy or use one team to distract an enemy while the other team attack it. Your party and the enemy will have an Attack Range around them. Your party attack range is normally in a radius. The size of the radius depends on the number of people in the group. The enemy attack range can be in different shape though. Some are in radius form while others are in a narrow straight line. If you enter an enemy attack range they can attack you and if an enemy is inside your attack range you can attack it. The way combat is set up is pretty much identical to the first Valkyrie Profile. You assign each of the four controller buttons: Square, Triangle, Circle, and Cross to each party member. By pressing each of these buttons you are directing which party member to attack. The type of attacks they do depends on the attacks that you have set up in their individual attack menu. You can assign and set up three different type of attacks for each party member. This way by repeatedly pressing and calling a party member to attack over and over, you are having that party member combo their attacks together with the different types of attacks you have assigned to them. Also by pressing each of the four controller buttons in a particular order you are also getting your various party members to attack together in a sequence to line up for combo attacks.
This type of battle format is actually quite fun and easy to get used to. Of course learning and understanding how and when to get each of your party member to attack and doing a follow up attack is the key to achieving the best result than simply smashing the four controller buttons together. One of the new things in this game is that as your party members attack a monster they have various chances of breaking off the body parts of a monster if they continue to target those body parts. The idea behind this is that certain body parts will drop materials, weapons, and accessories that you can sell to stores to be used to create your own weapons and accessories. Of course which body parts that your party members will target and attack depends on the type of attack you have assigned to them. Battle can end in two different ways. The first way and fastest way is simply targeting the Leader and killing it. Once the leader is dead then the battle ends when the other monsters retreat. The longer version of ending a battle is to kill all the enemies on the battlefield. Of course the first rule of battle ending whenever the leader dies applies to this long version too. So even if you kill three or more monsters, as soon as the leader dies than the battle is over. The basic mechanics of the gameplay and the battle system isn't that hard at all to learn and understand. You just need a bit of time getting used to it. Now let's go over some of the key features in this game.
Value Customer: This is a new shop feature in the game. When shopping at the Armory shop, not all items will be for sale right away. You have to reach Value Customer status to unlock these items for sale. Reaching Value Customer status is easy. Just buy lots of stuff from the shop. The true purpose of being a Value Customer is that you can start to buy your own customized gear from the shop owners. However in order for a shop keeper to create and sell a customize gear, they need the right materials. You're need to farm these materials from monsters and then sell them to the shop keepers. Once the shop keeper have the right materials, you can than buy the customize gear from them. Sealstones: Sealstones are now introduced into dungeons. Each sealstone will give an area effect in some areas of the dungeons. These effects can hamper you or give you benefits depending on the effects. Sealstones that you carry on you will affect your party members while sealstones that are placed in Dias in dungeons will affect the enemies in the dungeons. The point in all this is that you need to try and maximize the usage of these sealstones to the point where your party members can benefit from the effects of these sealstones while at the same time the enemies will be hampered by the effects of these sealstones. You can call it a bit of a puzzle solving element where you need to run around the dungeon grabbing certain sealstones and placing them in certain areas of the dungeon where the effect of the sealstones will hamper the enemies in the surrounding areas to give you an advantage over them. At the same time you want to be carrying sealstones that will give your party an advantage too. Learning how to take advantage of these sealstones is the key to making this game go from hard difficulty to normal difficulty. Einherjar: Like with the first game, you can recruit various Einherjars to your party. Consider Einherjars as nothing more than extra party members that work alongside with your main characters. Once an Einherjar reaches a certain level, you can free their souls by releasing them. Once you release them, they in return will give various items back to you. What items you get back depends on their level and the equipment they were equipped with. Runes: This is one of the more interesting new feature that the game uses for party members to learn their skills. Each equipment whether it be weapon, armor, or accessory comes in the form of a color rune. When you equip these gears, the runes will start to line up. And some will even link up. By linking up certain color runes, you in turn will unlock and activate a skill for a party member to learn. As you fight in battle with the runes link, your skill learned percentage will increase. Once it reaches 100% than that skill is leaned. Once you learn a skill you can than break the rune link. Skills: Once a party member learned a skill they can equip them from the Skill menu. Each skill however does require or consume an allocated amount of skill points so it's not like you can equip a godly amount of skills to your party members. Each party member is given 12 maximum skill points that can be used to be allocated to certain skills. From there you need to decide which skills to equip base on the situation at hand. Photon: The use of Photon in this game has expanded to what was done in
the first game. Here when you fire a photon at an enemy, it not only freezes them
so you can use the frozen enemies as platforms but you can also switch places
with them by teleporting to the position where they were and they in turn will
teleport to the position where you were when you fired the Photon. The point of
freezing enemies and switching places with them is that this game now has lots
of Photon puzzle solving elements where you need to use your Photon to reach certain
areas to gain further access to a dungeon or to reach a treasure chest. Action Points: AP is the building block of this game. All actions in combat requires AP. Each time you attack, dash, or use the Menu option you consume AP. Once your AP gauge reaches 0 from 100 or reaches to the point where the amount of AP left isn't sufficient for anything than your turn is basically up. You restore a few amount of AP after you have been attacked or when battle time flows forward as you move around in the battlefield. Combos: Racking up major combo hits is one of the coolest feature in this game. Each time you are able to have party members link up and attack a monster back to back in succession where the monster can't attack back or recover, you are creating a combo. The higher your combos, the more damage you will inflict on the enemy. Not to mention each time you perform a combo, you are filling up the Special Attack gauge. Soul Crush: Soul Crush is similar to what was seen or done in the first Valkyrie Profile.
After repeatedly doing successful consecutive hits to a monster where your Special Attack gauge reaches 100 or fills up to maximum, you enter Soul Crush mode. In Soul Crush mode you can have each of your party members do a Special Attack or Great Magic attack as a finishing move on the monster. You can even chain Soul Crush together if a Special Attack or Great Magic Attack also fills up the Special Attack gauge again. Break Mode: Break Mode can occur at any time when you are able to break off a body part of a monster. Once Break Mode takes place, you can attack the monster for a short limited amount of time without expending any AP. This in turn allows you to do some major extra damage to the monster. Magic: Magic in this game work a bit different than other rpg games. There are two ways to access or use magic. The normal way is if you require using magic, especially magic that does area damage you'll need to access them through the Menu mode. The problem with this is that once you use the Menu option, it becomes unusable for a few seconds to almost a half a minute. And this can be a problem if you need to use the Menu for something else right after using Magic. Another way for magic to be used and this normally just applies to the pure mages of your party is that you can set up one of their single magic attack as their normal attack. This way you can call them to attack with that magic over and over as part of their regular attack sequence. The problem with this is that the game doesn't really give you the flexibility of changing that magic attack during combat. So sometimes you may have a fire type magic as your mage normal attack and you are facing a monster that absorb fire. And since you can't change the type of attack during combat, you are faced with fighting handicap till combat is over. Not being able to change to different types of magic attacks can get annoying at times when there are various different monsters in combat that have weaknesses and strength to certain types of elements.
There are mix feelings when it comes to judging the gameplay overall. There are certain elements that are really good and fun to play while there are certain elements that definitely take away the fun from the game. Just like with the first Valkyrie Profile, the thing I like about this sequel or prequel is the battle system on how fights are done. I love the idea of having each button on your controller assign to a party member to unleash their attacks and follow up attacks. I love the idea of ranking up high massive hit chain combos and following those up with massive Soul Crush combos for Over Attack damage. The fact that the battlefield is now in 3-D as oppose to 2-D like the first the game is also a good improvement. The only problem I have with the battle system is that using magic and item both means you have to access the Menu option during battle. The problem with that is whenever you use the Menu option; it becomes unusable for about 20 seconds of battle time. This can be quite annoying and frustrating at times as you may need to use both magic and an item in back to back instances. But I guess on the flipside of things some people may say this is what makes battles more challenging. For the rest of the gameplay elements things are fairly average. Exploration of dungeons aren't hard at all but the one thing I think that is a major drawback to the gameplay is the introduction of the photon puzzle solving element. While you really don't need to do much puzzle solving in terms of making it to the end of a dungeon or even clearing a dungeon, it's the areas where you need to reach certain treasure chests that contain some really good items that have these hard puzzle solving elements with the photon. And let me tell you, these are very hard puzzles to solve to the point where you either give up or be so frustrated that you end up pissed at the game itself.
It's nice to have puzzle solving element in the game but if you make them too hard where people either give up or get so frustrated in trying to solve them that it takes away the fun of playing the game then this is where the gameplay fails. Unfortunately the puzzle solving elements definitely takes away a couple of points from the gameplay. Another bad factor is the farming for materials to make certain weapons, armors, and accessories. It's not the fact that you hope these materials or accessories drop from a monster as you kill it that is causing the headache, it's the fact that you have to chop off certain specific body parts of a monster that becomes so annoying.
This means you have to stand in the right position before you attack the monster and it also means you have to use the right specific attack to make sure you are attack the right body parts.
And at most time you are left to guessing and hoping you are in the right position and using the right attacks to chop off the right body part. This so called farming for materials becomes more of a chore than something fun in the game. The end result of all this is when you add everything up about the game, the only really fun time I had playing the game is during the actual combat. All the other elements of the gameplay just ended up annoying the heck out of me to my dissatisfaction. I didn't like spending idiotic hours trying to solve puzzles, I didn't like having to waste time running back and forth in dungeons grabbing different sealstones and placing them in the right dias, and I sure as heck didn't like wasting time chopping off body parts of monsters in hopes of getting the right materials so I can get a customize equipment from a store. The gameplay ended up annoying me and frustrating me more than giving me enjoyment from playing it. And that's just how it is with this game.
Score: 7/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
I'm from Star Ocean 3, wanna fight me?
For extra side quests, there aren't a whole lot to do. There are a few mini sub bosses that you can fight to gain prizes but nothing too major. Most of the extras come from the huge 5 floor bonus dungeon called the Seraphic Gate. Despite the Gate being only 5 floors it literally will take you hours to complete it as you need to be in the very high level range to face some of the toughest extra bosses in the game. Add into the fact that the Gate also hold some of the hardest puzzle solving elements that you need to complete in order to reach and obtain some of the best items and gears in the game. But that's not all. If you want to complete the Seraphic Gate fully you'll need to redo the Seraphic Gate at least ten times. Redoing the gate doesn't actually require you to replay the game ten times though. It just means you need to talk to a particular character at the Gate to reset the Gate and the difficulty of the Gate on each clearing attempt. This means that each time you retry the Seraphic Gate again, the difficulty of the Seraphic Gate increases, making this one of the most challenging extra bonus dungeon around.
A New Game+ feature is available in the game for those looking to replay Valkyrie Profile 2 again. The interesting thing about this New Game+ feature is that each time you replay the game under this setting, the difficulty of the game goes up. The difficulty level of the game continues to go up till a maximum of your 50th attempt at replaying the game again. How's that for a challenge? And are you willing to actually replay this game 50 times too? LOL.
Score: 9/10
Despite the high profile attention that Valkyrie Profile 2 got during its initial release back in the fall of 2006, the game itself just ends up being nothing more than one of the many regular rpgs released on the Playstation 2. The game has its good spots and bad spots but in the end, the game itself didn't offer any great improvements than what was seen in the first Valkyrie Profile other than the graphic upgrade. The game would be much more attractive and appealing to the mass audience out there if it was upgraded into a 3-D world with world exploration as oppose to just the same simple 2-D side to side format in a dungeon crawling environment that was done in the first Valkyrie Profile. All is not lost however despite the lackluster storyline and characters, as by the time you reach near the end of the game, there just might be enough of a surprise for all you original fans of the first Valkyrie Profile that you might just want to pick up this game just for that special moment or re-introduction. But for the most part if you're not a Valkyrie Profile fan or haven't had a chance of playing the original Valkyrie Profile on the Playstation than it's best to just skip this game as you won't miss much.
