Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria
 

Didn't realize we lacked a VP2 thread here. After getting a good look at it, it friggin' reeks of awesome.

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/vp/vp2/index.html

Anyway, for those who haven't been paying attention, the premise is this:

Several hundred years ago, while the Kingdom of Dipan is still under the rule of King Barbarossa, the youngest of the Three Fates, Silmeria, is punished by the All-Father Odin for committing some unknown crime against the gods. Odin has her physical form annihilated, and forcibly places her soul inside that of Alicia, the princess of Dipan. Soon aware of the fact that her body is being shared with the Battle Maiden, she sets off (to find a way to get Silmeria out of her body, I would assume) with Rufus and Dylan; loyal Einherjar tied to Silmeria's soul. Odin becomes aware of this turn of events, and sends Hrist, the oldest of the Fates, to keep an eye on her.

As for the world, it seems that tri-Ace will be bringing back a lot of familiar towns and dungeons, likely meaning the whole of Asgard will be explorable once again. I was worried the entirety of the game was going to take place on the island of Dipan. So far we've seen Dipan, Solde (a town this time, instead of the Catacombs), Coriander, and Villnore.

Okay. Is anyone else excited for this game?

Who wouldn't be excited about the game. Its gorgeous and a near perfect transition from what we loved about the original while other 2D franchises have struggled to find their identity in 3D. The overall story seems slightly anticlimatic since we all know the fate of Dipan but i am sure there is plenty of room to unravel the mysteries of Hrist involvement and hopefully how Silmeria became entrapped. I am just amazed they kept the platforming and frenetic 2d battle fields. Every screen it seems is like a work of art. I only hope this doesn't suffer the fate of Grandia 3 and being just eye candy with the substance of the gameplay length hollowed. Though with Tri-Ace background I highly doubt that will happen.

I thought there was a VP2 thread, kicking around, but it's probably before the crash. I'm about almost done Chapter 5 of the first game, and I don't think I'll be getting A ending this time around. I do have my hopes up for Silmeria and it looks like its coming along nicely. Any word if Sakuraba will be handling the music again?

I am sure about that, there has been no official word about that, though. But a VP without Sakuraba would be unimaginable, imo =o
Anyways, I am really hyped about this one and am going to pre-order it. I love the first one, so I got a good reason to keep an eye on the pre-sequel Silmeria.

I want to pre-order BUT there's no word of its release.

VP:S will be released on June 20 in Japan, according to The Magicbox

I'm not familiar with the interval of time for NA releases, but is 9 months a fair estimate for most RPGs to North America?

Depends on how much text the game has. Something with a shitton of text like a Xenogears would take longer to make it across the lake than something with little text, like say an MMORPG. Add in voice acting and you tack more time on.

This is one that I'd look forward to and will preorder when it gets closer to release. The sequel to my favorite PSX game makes me happy and sad at the same time.

Sakuraba fans might want to check out the intro here;

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/vp/

It's not much, but I think it sounds of the same style the first game had, and we'll have another awesome OST.

The music for that "trailer" certainly does have Sakuraba qualities to it, and I couldn't really think of anyone else to fill his shoes for this particular role.

Official site updated again, 3-24.

Translation thanks to someone over at GFAQs, no idea how accurate it is.

The screens also show some female warrior named "Rishel"... battle shot of her is hot :dopey_love:

Yay, Ruliweb
http://ruliweb.dreamwiz.com/ruliboar...=10922&main=ps

Just to clarify, Aluze was the original name for Arngrim. Hence the exclamation point.

EDIT: Hey, what the hell? In that screen before last, that silver chick has a feathered helmet. Don't feathers indicate the rank of a god/goddess in Asgard?

In the screen before the last, with the girl wearing silver armor, Risheru, is not wearing a feathered helmet. It's a metal band going around the back of her head, as can be seen in her portrait art a few screens above it.

Also, to my knowledge, feathered helmets don't signify anything in Valkyrie Profile, aside from the fact that only the Valkyries wear them (And it could be argued that they are not goddesses). Considering none of the other gods, Æsir or Vanir, wear feathered helms, I don't think they are used a symbol of status.

Also, it has been confirmed Arngrim will be able to join your party, as can be seen in the attached images.

hmm it's weird that he will join our party... does this mean that the warrior that Silmeria recrute are not dead? because I can't see how he could be dead and died again in Lenneth...

It's also impossible that he'd be alive for over 100 years.

The Arngrim in Silmeria is a past incarnation of the Arngrim in Valkyrie Profile. Whether he's dead or not, I don't know. Considering he was an Einherjar with Hrist when Barbarossa is executed, I would imagine he is dead when he joins Silmeria. Though, that does not explain this "Treasure Hunter" connection with Leone. It's tough to say.

Oh, wow. This game looks beautiful. I played the first one only one time through, though I've always inteneded to play through it again. That never happened. But yeah, <3 VP.

What's interesting is I just finished the Dipan quest and "freed" Barbarossa in Chapter 6. I'm still on my first play through on Normal, and it's starting to somewhat come together now. I just noticed that just now, so at least some of the events mentioned in this thread are starting to make sense.

Why in God's name did you start on normal?

Oh yeah, dur. Sorta forgot about after a couple seconds, I guess.

It's actually quite surprising how quickly my images went around. I even saw them posted on someone's fansite, which was quite flattering.

Well I thought it would be a good setting to play the game through for the first time. It's not like I'm not going to replay it again, and plus my seal value's too high to get the A ending this time around. When I play on Hard the next time, I'll have a better idea what's going on.

Not just that. You're also missing out on additional characters and storyline, dungeons, and those flame gems for Seraphic Gate. Part of me wonders why they even have the difficulty option.

I knew Easy would be a waste of time, since the combat configuration was supposed to be easy-auto, or something like that, making your combo attacks not as effective, according to the walkthrough. Yeah I'm missing out on Lezard and Brahms, but I'll be sure to keep strategic saves throughout my next play incase I screw up with the transfer process or seal rating etc. Plus if I already started on hard, then there'd not be much point to revisit/replay VP again. Supposedly if you see ending B first then A, one's appreciation is heightened. But don't spoil the ending for me obviously. I'll probably not be happy about the B ending, which will have some motivation for me to get A on Hard.

Still no damn release date listed on our pre-order list at work. T_T Anyone made a PSP thread yet? If not, should I make one or should we just contain it within this thread?

I guess you could make a seperate thread, but I think it'd be somewhat overkill, since there is bound to be *some* discussion of the original VP, and Lenneth pretty much covers it here. Check with Generic Badass, as he created the thread.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Lenneth is already out in Japan? (Currently checking Magicbox)...

EDIT:
Ah yes, it looks like it's been released.

Elixir already made a Lenneth thread a while back.

http://gamingforce.com/forums/showthread.php?t=885

Those were your images? Heh, how embarassing. Regardless, it's great to see someone with such a good eye. Thank you for sharing and supplying those.


As for the normal setting, when I played the game the first time through, oh so many years ago, that was the setting I picked. Not that Hard mode is much more difficult, I don't regret choosing normal first. As you undoubtedly know, the Einherjar don't start at level 1, and are instead at a preset level, which does help a little bit when you first get them. It was nice for my first play through, since I was still learning about the ability system, traits, and so forth. It's not so bad leveling up your level 1 characters when you have Auto-Item and Guts, but when they're constantly dying your first play through, it's a little more difficult.

Hard mode is definitely more complete, and the game definitely needs to be played through on that mode to get the fullest experience of the game. No argument there.

I'm waiting still for Silmeria which I predict a next year release will hopefully be fulfilled.. stateside.

And I'm also waiting for Lenneth to come out. I mean, it's out already and stuff and I just need a good long RPG on the go.

I liked the difficulty setup for VP, myself. Normal mode was perfect for when you were just picking up the game for the first time, and getting used to the whole setup. Then you replayed the game on hard mode to see the whole thing, get all the flame gems, and most likely have found a guide to getting the good ending. The best part was that it was true replay value, since hard mode has entirely separate dungeons. That was as much a reward as getting to see the rest of the storyline.

Hard Mode is the shit. You have to plan all of your moves out perfectly before you do them in order to ensure that you get the perfect ending. Sadly, my save files always got erased before I was able to beat the game. Does anybody know if Silmeria will have multiple difficulty levels?

That's quite my thoughts exactly. I didn't know how "hard" hard would be, so normal would be good testing grounds.

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/vp/vp2/

Official site updated with Arngrim (Aluzi), 3 dungeons, and 2 wallpapers.

Oh, the site layout was redesigned. What the fuck is with his art? Both "Grrrrr!!" and "I'll suck your cocks!!" come to mind.

And God fucking dammit! Why can we not download this background music?! It's so nice to hear brand new Valkyrie Profile-esque music.

Wow. It would appear that they've added an option to skip the Purify Weird Soul sequences, as we can see from one of the new screenshots in Arngrim's section.

That's a very nice feature, as in the old one, as cool as some of the PWS were to see, some of them tended to drag after the nth view. (Valkyrie comes to mind.)

They also showed this back when we saw the first screens of Alicia's Nibelung Valesti. Trivial fact: they changed it from "Skip" (in English) to katakana.

Ah, I most certainly missed that. My mistake.

Oh...nice.

Anyone that can translate the text displayed at Arngrim's profile?

Goddamn I'm getting more excited by the minute! I truly hope that if this game is released in the US in about 5 years, they'll use the same voice actor for Arngrim. I don't give a fuck what anyone says...that voice suited him perfectly.

I was wondering when the hell you were going to pop up. I made this thread in response to that PM, and nothing!

As for the voice of Arngrim (and Lawfer, and Lezard)... sources tell me it was a woman, and I'm still a little flabbergasted.

Dude, I was flabbergasted at the fact that Arngrim and Lezard had the same voice actor. They sound NOTHING alike, but Jesus christ your right it IS a woman. How the hell can a woman pull off a Arngrim?! I'm scared. =(

And sorry for the late reply. My soul is bound to World of Warcraft at the moment. I'm trying to free myself, but with no luck so far. VP is my only salvation.

http://www.playfrance.com/ps2-Valkyr...-sa-forme.html

Some scans along with an interview. I had a friend translate some of it for me and I'll paste it down here... name & timestamps edited out :P (instant messenger convo...)

-he says the game is pretty much done
-it's now in debug phase
-no difficulty level at start
-there's chapters but time does't progress in them like before
-this time you buy items from the shop with money
-rare items in shops too
-you keep buying from a shop, sometimes you can buy "?" iems
-also there's components that you collect from battles that you can use to make rare stuff
-"monsters can be split into parts like hands, feet, body, tail and so on, and some items can only be gotten by destroying certain parts'
-"for instance if you want to go after the tail you have to change your formation so you attack enemies from behind"
-so the two ways of battling
-1) go after the leader for high bonus points and fast battles
-2) go after the little guys first for parts
-is how he lays it out
-oh cool, when you're travelling you can split your party into two
-do pincer attacks and so on
-basic weapon types
-great sword, one-handed sword, spear, bow, rods
-alicia can only use swords, no bows
-one handed swords are basic, fast attacks, easy to combo
-greatswords not so east to combo, but by holding button down you can blow enemies back or against walls
-spears you can pull enemies in
-so everybody has 3 basic attacks like before
-though with the single AP gauge you can make just one person keep attacking until it's gone
-however if you do that your AP goes down faster
-so he says it's still better to use everybody in the party
-some characters can equip more than one weapon type but they can only do their PWS with a certain type
-ah so einherjar's getting released after reaching a certain level
-you can choose whether to do that or not
-apparently there's rewards for releasing them, but it's up to you on whether the rewards are worth it
-he says it may be difficult to decide whether to get the reward or keep the character, since they're pretty good
-he cites "very powerful weapons" or "game-breaking amounts of money" as possible rewards
-there are these dungeon items called fuuinseki
-special items that have effects both when you carry them and when you place them in altars
-or wait
-no you take them from altars
-so like a dungeon might have the "Sword's Blessing" fuuinseki
-while it's in the altar all undead do 1.2xdamage to you
-but if you manage to take it from the altar your characters do 1.2x damage instead
-you can also take the fuiuinseki out of th edungeons by spending a cost in those mashouseki that you pick up in battle
-skill system is quite complex
-each piece of equipment has a rune
-by combining runes you get certain skills
-llike if you put a triangle and a rod and a circle shaped rune together you might get certain skills
-but you have to keep fighting until the skill gets to 100% to actually learn those skills
-also the skills only happen while the proper runes are equippd
-so if you change equipment the skills you get might also be different
-also each equipment has a color link
-red, green, blue, or colorless
-the more you get of a color the stronger skills becomes
-so he says you should try and equip all of the same color equipment
-that's it
-most of the other stuff in the article is already-known info

No more Item Materialization or MP? Fuck that.

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/vp/vp2/

Official site update.

Ahly a.k.a. Early a.k.a. Arlie a.k.a. Hrist added to the character bios.

More screens/information about the "Photon Action" system.

Screens/info added about treasure chests & traps.

A polearm? In the in-game screen she has a sword at least.

This is getting so interesting. I bet the next character will be Brahms.

Btw...any new on the composer yet? Please tell me it's going to be Sakuraba!

Seeing as Sakuraba is holding a new concert soon to celebrate the release of VP:S, I don't think it can be anyone else. :)

Woot!

<-- Very happy guy!

Though there's no date, it's looking like this is the first confirmation of a North American release for VP:Silmeria. Listed for 2006, even.

http://na.square-enix.com/e306/titles/vp2/

I got a seizure from just looking that! It'll probably be Q4 and then they'll push it back until the point of cancellation. No way we get something this sexy so suddenly~

Whereas we don't have preorders available for VP: Silmeria, we DO have a preorder sku for the remake -- VP: Lenneth. Fuck yeah.

And to further your statement:

http://na.square-enix.com/e306/titles/vp/

Looks we're getting both.

Has there any trailers out for this game yet?

This game will destroy any and every RPG release in 2006 feasible. This includes Final Fantasy XII, Kingdom Hearts II, and Suikoden V. I can only pray to god though that the general public shares that sentiment.

tri-Ace wins again.

I won't quite go that for, Kostaki. VP: Silmeria will destroy some RPGs, sure, but it won't lay a hand on Rogue Galaxy. >_>; Level-5 for teh win.

It still looks fantastic though. I wish GameStop would hurry up and open up preorder slots for it, since it has already been confirmed for the U.S. Hell, we've got VP: Lenneth's preorders open.

Silmeria will destroy all. It has the graphics, it has Sakuraba, it has the gameplay, it has the storyline, it has the controls. The only thing that can stop it now is shitty VA work, which some people can dispute that SO3 was pretty bad.

If Square knows what's good for them, they'll hire the real deal and win the game. It's true.

So the import should be a true winner. Good! :)

I wasn't a huge fan of SO3's English voices, mostly because Maria got shafted pretty hard. Neya Michiko is tough to beat.

Yeah, the import would be a winner to those who have mastered their Japanese written, but for people like me that only have spoken mastered it kinda sucks.

I thought Maria was alright for the most part for SO3, but so long as they can stay away from Michelle Ruff, Lia Sargent, and such, all will be well. Just depends on how serious Square wants to get.

Nah... I've mastered the ability of playing Japanese games without knowing the language. It's not that difficult. (Katakana is all you need)

I'm taking japaneses lessons, but I belive that even knowing how to read, if your vocabulary isn't that good there's nothing you can do.
I got FFXII to see if I could play a bit of it, but so far it's almost the same, since I can't read kanji.

I will keep that in mind when I go through to start learning, which shouldn't be too long from now. My reward for toiling over how to deal with all of those symbols and syllables will be a wealth of games along with the rewarding experience of a fully mastered language.

In the meantime though, I will salivate over this game A LOT.

Katakana is all you need for, like, names, and about 75% of equipment, but there's usually a lot more kanji than anything else. A Tales fan like youself should know this!

.....

CONFUSION. MUDDLED. CHAOS. BEFUDDLE. DAZZLED. SHOCK.

Ok, so I should learn both Katakana and Kanji then? What about Hiragana, it used in this game or any other games?

If you're going to learn kanji, you're just gonna have to learn the whole goddamn thing. It's advanced, and you wouldn't focus on it until you know a good deal of vocabulary and have the kanas down. Hiragana is arguably the most important part of written Japanese, but kanji replaces it where it's applicable.

In short, it's all important, and all are necessary to understand the game. Katakana will get you by if you just want to know who you're talking to, what town to go to and what armor you're wearing, but comprehension requires something more all-encompassing. But anyway, on to what matters.

Holy freaking crap, this game comes out next month. I cry tears of joy.

Well, obviously I'm talking about only knowing enough to get yourself through the game, not really caring about dialogue, descriptions and the like.

Hell, this game should be VERY import friendly. Have you ever seen Japanese VP1?

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/2470/vp12pe.png
http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/81/vp26yg.png
http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/1475/vp39zz.png

I think it had the most amount of English out of all tri-Ace games.

Uh, doesn't that kind of defeat the whole purpose?

Hell, good luck following the story even if you DO know Japanese. I've heard that these games are written in the Japanese equivalent of ye olde English, which was a bitch to translate properly. Probably the reason for the occasionally stilted dialogue in VP. I sure hope they tap the same voice actors from before; Lezard's delivery was a big part of what made the character fun.

Also, whoa there, guys. O_o I'm unreserved in my anticipation for this game too, but wait for the actual game to come out before blowing your loads.

Usually there's a translation guide out there which can help you follow the story, but there's a reason why I only do this with Tales and tri-Ace games: they are heavily gameplay oriented. Yes, I find the battle system & gameplay fun enough to play through the entire game without having any idea what's going on in the story.

I used a guide with a lot of translations when I played Dragon Quest VIII but the game was already in english, so I can't tell how usefull it was.

Back to the game, I had sold my ps2 last year and was playing ps2 games borrowing my friends's playstations sometimes, but when I saw this game was being released I had to buy myself a new one. Since I sold it for 3 times the price I'm buying now I surely did a good deal.

A quick question for those who know katakana, is the use of katakanas similar to hiragana ? I mean, I know it's used for foreign words, but grammatically it's the same, right ?

Exactly the same! Just the letters are different :)
Looking forward to the Japanese Release.

I think I'll be satisfied with the English version, myself. I have a great deal of confidence in Squeenix's localization department. Even if it's not the same actors, I think I can be sure the voice acting won't outright suck.

Yeah, I noticed that too. Pretty much the entire menu was english. Even most of the items had english names. Not entirely, but enough to give you a good idea of what it is. The dialogue is obviously a different story, but if you played the original it shouldn't hold you back one bit.

http://rpg-reich.de/main.php?site=news&id=2055

E3 trailer... downloading now.

EDIT: Damn, that was pretty sexy. Music is great, graphics are looking great, gameplay looks fun as hell.

The execution of Barbarossa eh? I guess she didnt want to do it, and Hrist stept in and did it for her?

Happy to see you can still evade battles by turning them in crystals.

That trailer was pretty awesome. This is definitely one of my most anticipated games of the year. The trailer just solidified it as #1 on my hit list when it gets released.

Trailer definetly is good! Already prepared pre-order money for this game ^ ^

Just a quick Q, do you need to play the origina to understand this one? coz I can't find any copies of the original in stores anymore :(

Probably not. There are bound to be a lot of allusions to the first game, but Silmeria is a prequel, so the game events don't depend on knowledge of the original.

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/vp/vp2/index.html

Official website updated today.

Nothing really new we haven't learned from scans, however if you go under System - Game Scene you get to see two actual gameplay videos.

They take forever to load compared to the video size & length, so be warned. It's still nice to see exactly how battles will work in this game (not totally the same as the original) and to hear some voices/sfx/music.

I only saw the trailer today and it looks great.
Without mentioning the great graphics and everything else, the thing that really shocked me was when they showed the in-game (non fighting) and Valkyrie freezed the monster, just like we did in VP1 but WOW what a difference. I know it seems stupid, with so much to be impressed I'm impressed by the ice.

The thing is I've been playing VP1 recently and finished it yeasterday and looking to this ultra refined version the game is tottally being my espectations for this generation.

Wow it's been a while since I've seen stuff for VP2. After seeing the trailers on the site, I LOVE the new way of how the battle stage is set. It starts out pretty much 3d but then once you've gotten up to the enemy, it switces to 2d and retains that awesome side scrolling type action in VP1. This game goes right up with FFXII on my most wanted RPGs, no doubt.

A new long promo video is out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-_ibTRsp9A

About the first 3:30 of it is new, then it replays the old video.

I'm assuming the Emperor Palpatine guy in the video is one of the three advisors to Barbarossa.

Good find.

Alright, since this place has really been dry of information lately, here's some relatively new things for those who haven't kept up.

Here's a high quality version of the new trailer: http://www.square-enix.co.jp/vp/vp2/movie/vp2_pv2.wmv

Here's the MP3 from the main site:
http://hermann.kayode.free.fr/Valkyrie%20Profile%20Silmeria's%20Theme.mp3

"Einferia Archives":
Farant
Celes
Sha-kon
Adonis
Xehnon
Mitra
Lylia
Ethen
Kanon
Crecent
Dean and Silfield

New Scans:
http://ruliweb4.dreamwiz.com:8080/ru...6/14/13375.jpg
http://ruliweb4.dreamwiz.com:8080/ru...14/13375_2.jpg
http://ruliweb4.dreamwiz.com:8080/ru...14/13375_3.jpg

Showcasing the new Rune system, and three new Einherjar: Arcana, Lwyn, and Alm.

Credits go out to various members at ValhallaOnline.


EDIT: Oh, and "the Emperor Palpatine guy" is most definitely one of the three mages of Dipan. Most probably Walther. He was depicted in an earlier scan with the other two, presumably Dallas and Gyne.

Thanks for the link to the trailer. I was looking for a higher quality version.

The Ruliweb images don't seem to work though.

It's because they've been abbreviated. Copy the link locations and paste them.

I get the feeling there are even more characters this time around. The difference being that most of the "extra" einherjar are being designed by someone else. (I think Kou & You designed all characters for the original game, right?) Either way I still think they look nice.

Whoops, sorry about the scans. Thanks for clearning that up, Generic Badass.

As for the Einherjar, I've heard rumors that there would be around 40 or so characters, but I haven't heard any such confirmation of such things. There do seem to be a lot more, however. Doesn't seem like a bad guess, with images like This One floating around. There're 18 Einherjar right there.

You're right about the art, though. Kou and You Yoshinari did the original game's art, and what seems to be the art for the "main" characters in Silmeria. I've heard that Shunya Yamashita has done the art for the other Einherjar. Shunya Yamashita's site can be found at http://www015.upp.so-net.ne.jp/shunya/


Also, here's the scan of the three Mages of Dipan I had mentioned earlier: http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/2457/newscan11sx.jpg

Huh, that's odd. I'd heard that

Good point, I had heard that as well.




EDIT: Though it might not be noticed, I'll edit instead of double posting.

New "Einferia Archives":

http://images.playfrance.com/3/2229/.../zoom/3198.jpg
http://images.playfrance.com/3/2229/.../zoom/0297.jpg
http://images.playfrance.com/3/2229/.../zoom/7297.jpg

Source: http://www.playfrance.com/news-artwo...tml?xtor=RSS-2

Another scan.

http://ruliweb.dreamwiz.com/ruliboar...s&find=&ftext=

I see a bit of new stuff in there.

This game is so close I can taste it now. 6 days!!

Cool, on the-magicbox.com they have released the game evaluation for VP:S

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria (PS2, Square Enix): 9, 8, 8, 9 - (34/40)

Its looking good so far XD not too high below 30... so its a 'anticipated' game for me for sure :)

Someone on another forum who got that issue of Famitsu said that basically, they said the graphics were good, gameplay good but reviewers thought that there weren't enought tutorials, steep lurning curve and it was difficult.

So it fixed a lot of problems I have with RPGs, nice.

Hmm interesting... I saw the torrent of this game posted in Tokyotosho.com

http://www.meganova.org/download/40c...f4e09b.torrent

I thought the game's official release date is tomorrow or the day after... <_< an early leak perhaps or a fake?

I already ordered mine, so it should arrive soon *fingers crossed*

If that's the SoloPS2 one, then it's actually been out since yesterday. However, they've got some weird ass waiting system, so most people have to wait 48 hours before downloading.

You only have to wait if you don't upload enough, you know ^^.

Or if you have no download history, like myself.

If you are logged into the forum it shouldn't take that long before the tracker recognizes you. I started my download yesterday and I'm enjoying the game today. So far... AWESOME.

Any option to at least have the subtitles or menus in english?

If Arngrim and Lezard is making a comeback.. and the premise is several hundred years ago, will it be their (Arngrim and Lezard's) forefathers?

Reincarnation plays a large role in Valkyrie Profile, and we know that the Arngrim in Silmeria is a past life of his. It's not so clear with Lezard, though I'm sure someone who has the game already can explain it.

Man, I remember back in the day when people would actually WAIT for the game to just come out in the United States. If you're planning on purchasing the English version, why ARE you downloading the game?

Because back in the day when people would wait for the US release, the internet crawled at five bytes an hour.

I'm impatient.

Ok tomorrow the game will be here. Same as it is with FF XII that I almost finished I'll think about VP:S. If anyone know about any translations let me know. Can't wait till tomorrow and big test!

No one's going to put any effort into a translation-- the game'll be out in the US in 90 days or so.

Is a demo coming to the U.S. anytime soon?

If they ever make a demo for it, it might be a good idea to pack it with Dirge of Cerberus. That comes out about a month before, and it's certainly high-profile enough to warrant a demo of their next "big" game.

OMG!! I'm after 1,5 h or playing and my first dungeon and boss fight. Have to say that 2D moving brings back memories.

As for the graphic if FF XII get 10/10 then this one can get 9,5/10 I just love the style and design of dungeons and towns.

Battle system got almost totally rebuild and now it's full 3D field where we can chose witch one to fight and from witch side we want to attack him (useful while first boss).

Music is just awesome!! I'm now scanning my DVD with CMP2 in search for media files and if I will find anything I'll be sure to rip it.

US will get it at September 2006 so it's like 4 months. I think I can't wait that long and start to look for translations like I did with FF XII!! Bring it on!!

Yeah... This game is simply marvelous. It's the new fabric of my wet dreams.

Oh, wait. It does have some "Yuck!"-moments, but that's because of the high difficulty. By high I mean "VP is a joke against that", since it raises rapidly by the end of Chapter 2. You'll be sure to have a good time with the trolls in the forest ruin dungeon in Chapter 3. And with the sorcerers that are supporting it with heal and revive spells. =) Fun stuff indeed.

Oh, plus, in my opinion VP: S beats FFXII in every technical aspect:
Beautiful graphics, sharp textures, bloom effects (!), fluid animations, stable frame rate and next to no loading time. Technical masterpiece, I might say.

I see it a bit different =)
» Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria Vs Final Fantasy XII~!!

Concering the thing withe angrim.
the angrim woh serves lenneth ist the reinkarnation of the angrim of silmeria^^

hmm..do you think there will be a 3rd game about hrist, i think she's quite interesting^^

I fondly remember seeing the concept movie and I fell in love.

Pre-ordered but since I'll be back in school this August, I'll be playing the game at weekends. Which sucks.

Also I'd like to confer if the game (to those who have it imported/downloaded) if it has any English voice option in the Japanese game or the US release will (hopefully but impossible) retain the Japanese voices.

It's unlikely there will be an option for Japanese voices, if for no other reason than storage space considerations. DVDs don't seem as big as they used to these days.

Not that I'm worried, myself. Squeenix is not in the habit of welching on their localization efforts. Enix did a fine job back in the day with Valkyrie Profile, and SE knocked themselves out doing an outstanding job even on an obscure title like Front Mission 4. I just hope they can get back the voice actor for Arngrim/Lezard; it just won't be the same otherwise, even if Lezard isn't an evil sexual predator this time around.

The Japanese voicework isn't great. It's just... there. I would not miss it.

And there is no english audio option.

Silmeria voice is perfect, the other characters are...ok..I guess.

I just started chapter 4 and I'm in love with the game, even if the difficult is just kinda high, but once I started learning the skills and Orbs everything is going normal...except from bosses.

And just to add something: The Soul Crash skills are AWSOME!

I just put down my $5 for VP:S at EB games. I mind as well, since I'll probably have night class then just pick up the game before heading to class, or even skip it, LOL.

This game is beautiful. The music is awesome. I've been waiting for another VP game since the first one.

You're supposed to hit it with a crystal and switch places with it. There's a treasure box or two up there.

The music of VP2 sound great..does anybody know where I can get it?

A thread for the OST was started here. I'm also looking forward to listening to this.

God, I've been watching some videos of in-game scenes and I'm thrilled about this game. I downloaded it this morning and as soon as I get back home I'm going to give it a try.

I'm having great expectations for this game because I finished VP1 this year (finally after a lot of interruptions). Not to mention that the graphics look stunning and there's always a good feel when you watch those old town you visited in VP1 with much better graphics now in VP2.

Okay, I beat the game last night, and I don't know how I feel.

I'm not sure if I should hope for another game to fix the things that bothered me and address the unanswered questions, or if I should pray they go into damage control and just leave the series alone.

I can understand that. Though, I was quite pleased with how the game played out from the mid-point of Chapter 4 up until the ending.

There are some glaring weaknesses when compared to the first game, especially with the Einherjar, but over all I was very pleased with the game.

Though to be fair, I didn't find the actual ending to be all that great, but I found the events which played up to that point to be nothing short of amazing. Though lackluster, the ending really didn't ruin it for me.

Of course, my bias might be showing.

Looking at your title, I'll assume you're up to speed on everything. Didn't you think Lezard acted way too much out of character at the end? It didn't seem like him at all.

Well, yeah, I agree.

Yeah, that's basically what my dilemma is all about. Not sure what I should be hoping for!

I've finally beat VP 2.....next stop is the Seraphic Gate!

This game is kind like a fan service to me...
Names...go figure...

is not a translation for Brahms, and you just gave away two huge spoilers.

sorry...
and thought that all of us here are veterans....already played VP: Lenneth before,you know.

Wait, I'm sorry, but are you claiming that those spoilers are from the original Valkyrie Profile? Not that that makes it any less of a spoiler when you consider that many people haven't played it and are about to get chance to on the PSP, but I'm making sure that that's not what you're saying.

Are those really spoilers? If so, that ruined my expectations or surprises.

Now I have to erase what I glimpsed from recent memory. Goddamn.

And I read the spoilers to add in spoiler tags. .__.

Please use them in the future unless the topic is clearly marked that spoilers exist within. Thanks!

I'll keep that in mind...
~sigh~
and I thought that all veterans will be happy for my report....

still..wandering in the seraphic gate for treasure boxes..

Without spoiling too much, how big of a part does Arngrim play in all this?

I heard the soundtrack is out...so tempted but I won't till I play the game. The soundtrack won't have any meaning to me unless I played it first.

Arngrim plays a... semi-large role. He's not a key player in the larger scheme of things like Alicia, but there's still a lot of him in Chapters 3-5. He also has an important role in the ending, so he never just drops out of the picture.

I think you'll like it.

That's more then enough for me, I can't wait.

I'm not sure if I really want to partake in this discussion...the chances of it coming to the PAL region are virtually zero, right?
The more I think about it, the more I want it... *sigh*

I´m definitely importing the US version. All I need is a PS2. :doh:

I'm still playing JAP version... since there will be no translation for it I don't think I'll be playing it any longer. For FF XII I had full translation and could finish it but now. Can't wait for US version.

Whew, I finished it at the beginning of July. Really great game, lives up to the first one and improves on many points. Also, the storyline is quite a bit different than in VP:L, not as distanced as it used to be.

Reviiiiiive--

Game comes out in six days. Anybody excited? I haven't touched the import since I finished Seraphic Gate, so I think I'm ready for another playthrough. Need to get my hands on a new Dual Shock 2, though.

Oh yeah, and the official website has content now. Those who've not really been paying attention to this game until now would probably want to check it out.

Yep, this Tuesday. Preordered it awhile back.

I've still been playing through the import since I completed the Seraphic Gate, but I've still yet to complete the Gate 10 times.

Something to look forward to doing with the English version, I suppose.

Hard not to get excited after looking at all those screenshots. I just hope I can finish Okami before VP2 comes out.

Saw a review in the new Game Informer, and it actually only gave the game an 8. Said the worst thing about it though was really only the character development being a tad weaker than in the original Valkyrie Profile. I guess that's to be expected since they don't really have to flesh out Freya, Odin, Brahms, Arngrim, and Lezard this time around.

Eh? Every character you listed plays an important role in this game, and subsequently are fleshed out quite a bit.

This game supports widescreen and 480p! I can't wait.

So fast...

I can't pre-order unfortunately. I'll have to import it. I don't expect any big issues with it.

Can't wait the moment that package arrives. Everything will take a backseat the moment that box is in my hands.

Lezards voice actor is changed...fuck. Save to say that means Arngrim's is changed too. That's just great...

I know the Japanese kept the same voice actors. I wish the Americans stayed a bit consistent for fucks sake.

3 more DAYS!!!!! EEEEEEEEEIIIIIIEEE!!

what to do to bide my time until then! :juggler:

Well, that doesn't surprise me. The actor had a sex change, after all.
It annoys me how some of the actors are so emotionless, like "Lightning Bolt."

Just curious, are you guys planning to zip right through this and play non stop till you beat it? By non-stop I mean you still go about with your daily lives of school and work, but other than that, all the spare minutes you can find will be devoted to this?

Also, PSM rated this a 7.0 =/
How respected are they with their ratings?

This game deserves nothing below 8.9 ;_; Are people being insane, or what.

Have you played the Japanese version or something? Just curious.

As much time as my Accounting homework will allow. My plan:

Beat game once with 'average' ending.
Perfect game on second playthrough.

I'm assuming the requirements for a great ending are comparatively similar to VP1.

I expect this game to top Suikoden V this year, so expectations are indeed high.

Sorry to hear about the voice changes...Lezard was one of my favorites from the first game.

I like how I have a Accounting midterm the night it's released :(

But then of course I'll be skipping the next days course for this. Too bad I can't do the same with my work.

But then I did take off 4 working days in reserve for FFXII :tpg:.

Yeah, same here...I have two exams and a crapload of stuff due on the 27th (one of which is an ethics report on the PS3 controller. Immersion and Sony are going to get me an A in Business Ethics :lolsign: ). But VP2 all weekend is a nice reward, since I have to work the next day.

But I think I can pull a 40 hour VP2 weekend. At least...If I cut out sleep...

This game doesn't have multiple endings, so you know. Just one, single, shitty ending.

That was done before Valkyrie Profile. She was referred to as "Addie" (rather than Adam) in the credits.

I just watched the Game Trailers review for Silmeria. What's really reassuring is that they specifically stated for RPG fans waiting out for FFXII SHOULD NOT MISS VP2, which is such a relief. I'd hate to admit it but my gaming instinct want me me to treat VP2 as more of a time killer rather than an Adventure. At any rate, something that sorta bugs me is the lack of character development from the game, as well as short and trite character history profiles that you read, rather than watch cut scenes in VP1.

Well, 3 more days. I've got mine preordered, and will, for sure, get the guide with it.

Double Post:
I was just on youtube and found the making of the VP2 Commercials with the live actors. Sorta interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWH95pUiiUo

Has anyone seen the Intro Movie yet? It looks pretty sweet. I assume thats Hrist after Alicia, and not Lenneth.

The only thing that bothered me about the GT's review was they said the game is a grindfest. So I guess that means theres no more experiance orbs, and that might really suck. On my first playthrough of VP1, I used the same characters until the end, since all new characters start at level 1 on hard mode. I never bothered to level them up just to send them to Asgard, in my opinion that was just a waste of time and it made no difference. I really hope they at least have new characters starting out at a reasonable level.

They make it look like it's Lenneth at first, but then it quickly becomes apparent that it's Hrist. Besides, Lenneth is sleeping during this time period.

It can be a grindfest if you're inefficient. Don't bother levelling until you gain the x2 EXP orb. Don't level anywhere outside of the Palace of the Venerated Dragon (it's the last dungeon before you reach a sort of "point of no return" for special items). You do that, and it's not too bad.

Hmm isn't the game released today?

Yes, today is the game's English release date. However, it is also the ship date for most companies, so I wouldn't expect to see it in stores until tomorrow, unless your stores operate otherwise.

As for grinding, I never had a big problem with that. There are particular areas where the difficulty jumps, but gaining a level or two doesn't take too awfully long and is usually all that is required.

With VP1 I revisted quite a few dungeons (like the one with the 4 dragons) for constant leveling up. What's interesting is that I never got bored since the battle system was so well done. A first for an RPG for me.

Oddrock Caves?

That place is great. Not only is it a 1 period dungeon, but the vampires there drop Broken Spears which you can later transmute in Crimson Edges which in turn convert to 6.7k MP. Getting 3 Grams is easy that way.

I can't remember the name, but you have to enter a town before getting to the dungeon. There are a few dragon slayer swords lying around. Also there are moving statues that freeze and sting you when you touch them. Anyways, I did that level like 30 some times and didn't get sick of it, that much.

That's Oddrock. The town is Camille.

Strangely enough, that region (Artolia) has virtually no importance or representation in Silmeria, but is tied in deeply to the history of a lot of Einherjar.

What...was that? lol

That was the behind the scenes footage for the Japanese VP2 commercials.

Cheesy stuff, but that video's kind of interesting.

I like how they all have that "what the fuck is this shit." look on their faces.

Valkyrie Profile? What's that. Who cares. I get paid and be on Japanese TV (aside from basically having the best "cosplay" costume made by the company themselves).

Ah I see...interesting lol.

So, sorta wondering if any North American fans have gotten their mits on this game yet =0. My EB Games says that the preorders will be distributed tomorrow (Sept 27th), so I hope for the best. I like how I told them to phone me at my work number.

I got the game earlier today, actually. Too bad Disgaea 2 has been taking up all my time. Mindless leveling ftw.

My copy just finished "shipping" over my cable line. I'll play it for 30 mins or so before I leave for class.

Wooot game is out!! XD, you can get it here

Or we could just buy it? Sounds like a plan.

Yes, it's somewhat distressing that people refuse to support the English release of the game, despite the fact that it's a miracle that it was localized in the first place. I know you guys don't need anyone else to play your conscious, but it is really such a shame that you won't support the Valkyrie Profile "brand."

Anyways, I picked up my copy today but won't be able to get into it until this Friday due to classes and work.

It's even more depressing if you were a fan of the first game who actually wanted a sequel. Anyone who pirates this game, and actually waited and salivated over the thought of a sequel should be shot if they aren't willing to pay for it now that it exists. =P

Just got to chapter 2, man this game is awesome and I know there is gonna be a lot more to it later.

i CANT..download it is:)

Damn, I just called the EB and the shipment hasn't arrived yet. They say to call back in an hour, or they'll call me. I dunno. ;___;

Well it just arrived at the store that I work at (GamePower). So I'll be picking up my copy tonight. I have but haven't beaten Lenneth so it should be interesting to play them in chronological order. My friend has beaten Lenneth and he can't wait to get his hands on this one so I should be in for an awesome trip.

Well, actually I just got a call ten minutes ago saying it's in! I'd so be on my way now, but I have to pick up my car from the autoshop first >_>.

Actually, in its own weird way, the chronological order is Lenneth -> Silmeria. You're losing some of the impact of the plot twists by not beating the original first.

I picked this up today, but I'm sort of disappointed in the lack of a guide. The artwork for these games is always so fucking pretty...

Lack of a guide? There was one at EB when I went to get the game today.

From the few hours I've played so far, overall I would say the changes and the increased production value in VP2 has given a lot to the series. I think the only thing I'm having an issue with is the existence of the Bonus Gauge. It has my completist syndrome in conflict with one side screaming "KILL ALL THE ENEMIES" and the other side is tell me to "KILL THE LEADER GET MAX BONUS."

I miss the stories for the einheriar, it feels slightly half-assed this time around. Nothing else in the game bothers me, though I also missed the faster paced music for dungeons from the original game. The music here is still good though, and some of the tracks especially sound really amazing.

What? Everywhere I look, I can't find a single fucking copy.

Maybe I should have picked it up when I got the game...I'm such a guide whore...

Just called, they have one left, off I go...lol.

Godai. Find me proof that this guide exists. I know there's one for VP, I have that. But not VP:2. Bradygames doesn't list it, EB doesn't have it, even fucking ebay doesn't have it.

Heh, just got back. Turns out they were only sent the one guide today, so yeah, I have the one. They said they would get more soon. FYI, I'm in Toronto.

As to proof of it's existence: Valkyrie Profile 2 Simeria Official Strategy Guide.

I've played about an hour and a half of this. All I have to say is it's very different in my mind. I'm still sucky at battle and used 2 union plumes as well as 2 healing items for the first boss battle. Immidiately you know what you have to do and dashing is key, however I freaked out when my party dispersed. It took me a while to find that the number of attacks you can launch is based on your AP before engaging into battle.

Motherfucker. This thing is like a phantom. Even ebay doesn't have it.

If anyone knows where to get a scanned copy of the guide, please post here. Already suffering from the fact that I did/could not play the first game.

And I guess at the same token you do not have a PSP. If you really want it, I just bit the bullet and paid $120 CDN for it like December 2005. Most expensive game I've paid, ever.

Lucky for you, I'd imagine the PSX copy prices have gone down.

Also, holy shit, I haven't even gotten 1 session of the Break Combo or the Purify Weird Soul, whatever you want to call it. Getting 100 hits isn't easy for me ;___;.

From what I remember of the japanese version, only certain weapons have the special attacks. I believe you get Alicia's first one in the second dungeon. Break Combo's seemed to be completely random though...

Man, this game is pretty damn fun so far, I'm loving the battle system. Getting "Niebelung Valesti" helped during the second boss battle. :)

And yes, you do get it from the weapon just before the second boss.

Hey, Godai where in Toronto are you, anyway? I'm up there a lot on business. I might have to come steal that fucking guide.

So I'm telling you where I live so you can rob me? Hmmm...

Rob is such an ugly word. I was thinking more of accost violently and borrow for an indefinite period of time.


You could call it robbing.

Seriously, though. TO is a solid city. Great china town, Kensington and the Dance Cave. What more do you need?

Heh, you go to the Dance Cave, huh? Interesting.

Absolutely. I love that place, man. Indie rock and beer and hot girls that like western boys. Of course I went to the dance cave.

Just to hop back on topic for a moment, a friend of mine tells me the Silmeria guides will be in tomorrow, so I don't have to kill anyone or steal their stuff.

...want to go to the dance cave and mash to some Arctic Monkeys?

You're on.

I just got my copy today. Got home, finished getting the A ending in the first game(I'd beaten it before but that was a couple years back and I wanted to beat it again before playing this). I took a break and watched a wrestling DVD, then I popped this in. I've got to say so far it seems pretty cool, the lack of Einherjiar origins doesn't bother me cause in the overall aspect of things it makes sense. Silmeria is trapped inside Alicia, so it's not like she can fly around finding souls of people as they die. The only thing that bothers me is the strategy rpg feel they gave to the combat, but I'll just deal with it.

I played for about a half hour after work, up to the battle tutorial. Everything but the voice acting seems solid so far, but that doesn't bother me too much. Game is freakin drop dead beautiful. Great first impression, I think I'm dropping Disgaea 2 and going steady with this lovely lady.

I'm currently on chapter 3 and I am addicted just as I thought I would be, the improved battle system is really badass and makes grind leveling actually fun. The story and characters are cool too as well as the Einherjar thing is really fun, I love how you can read the backrounds for each one and some characters actually link up. It ends up being not as half assed as you might think.

Not so much the voice acting, but I'm using headphones. Right before the first dungeon where we get the first einherjar, we have waterfall soundeffects that sound different (left/right channels) everytime the scene changes. Weird. I just wish it was a bit more solid there for background effects.

Other than that, I like how I've beaten the 1st boss about 6 times just to get a better feel for "tougher" battles without heading on too much. Better to level up now.

I bought this game yesterday and I'm currently in chapter 2 just after we see Lezard for the first time and man this game is awesome and SO BEAUTIFUL!

one of the things that I don't really like is the "skill learning system" I hated FFIX system when you have to equip an item to learn the skill and it's even worst int hsi game that you have to amke a good combination for now to be able to learn it but not use it right away >.>

the other things is the lips movement, the lips doesn't move enough for the speech. I know that it's probabl the JP lips sych but even that I still think that when someone is talking it's like we just heard them thinking because we almost can't see the lips moving (and no I'm not talking about Alicia/Silmeria >.>) and they seem to hide this problem by switching the camera to another character that is listening the person talking, so most of the time when it's a long speech you don't see much the person talking. But i'm just 3h in the game so it may be just for the beggining and it may change I don,t know. It's not a big problem too, it doesn't bother me thatmuch, it's just weird sometime.

the alst thing and it may change when I play more, is the music, for now the music is good, but really nothing extraordinary like VP1 was. In VP1 the first and msot of all the music your hear are so good and int his was they are good indeed, but not as good as in VP1, but like I said it may change when I'll hear more of it.

aside of that the game is awesome ^^

Yes. I don't like the lack of work on the lip sync for the English dubs either. It makes me think I'm watching those old martial arts movies with terrible English dubs.

The more I play the battle system now, the more I like it, it's basically taking something great about the old system on VP1 and revamping it for more strategy. The only thing I really don't like is that you can break it into smaller groups. This sounds like a nice idea, however sometimes I don't want to break them off, but accidentally do so, then it's a pain to get them all back in a group even if I press the down arrow, I think.

I'm pretty impressed with the game myself. The cinematics and in-game are both beautiful. And the music is really good too. I do agree that the lip sync isn't even close, but I've played enough Metal Gear to know to look at the other things going on instead of focusing on the one thing in the scene that's done wrong. And in both Silmeria and MGS... there's lots to look at.

Cool game, still getting used to the battlesystem and the voice acting is ok

Okay what the hell, now it's 2 days after the release day and still after calling the EB games for two locations, they still say they don't have the guide. Alright then....

Of course this is my first time getting a walkthrough guide along with the game, and I was hoping to get it today. It looks like its by BradyGames, and I don't know if it's usually for them to release the guide after.

I really hope this isn't the same case with FFXII. I can understand perhaps the lack of a guide with the same release day as the game, since if you compare the hype for this as to the juggernaut of FFXII, then I can "forgive" it this time around.

On the voice acting note, I think it's a great dub. I like the choices they made for the particular characters. About the lip synching, that's always a problem, but it hardly detracts from the game in anyway for me.

And man, maybe I should stock up on guides and sell them at a premium here, hehe. Seems you guys are having a hard time finding them...

Hey what price did you pay for your game in CDN? I got mine for $59.99 (disregarding preorder $5), but futureshop/bestbuy is selling them for $49.99 as a special price for a few days (the website shows $59.99 but the local flyer shows $49.99) DAMN!

Suckered for $59 like you...I never really go to Future Shop for games, guess I should check the flyers more often.

Yeah, I just started playing it in rental - OH MAN, it is good. It actually dragged me off of Okami and Disgaea 2. I might actaully have to buy the damn thing now. It's a lot better than I thought it would be, and I actually like the whole linking equipment thing to get new skills - it's pretty different form any other skill system I've seen. The graphics are awesome, and the voices are actually pretty good. I'm looking forward to seeing how the whole Lezard thing plays out, having seen him in VP:Lenneth...

ike I said it more the lips synch that bothers me than the voice itself because I really like the dub...and am I crazy of Silmeria/Alicia seem to be played by the girl who did Lenneth? if not, i'm sure I heard the voice before (oh maybe the girl who did Freya?)

The GUY that did Freya, LOL... that's awesome (I know it was a typo, but still)

I agree that the VO is REALLY good, and I don't know what GameTrailers was talking about with that "loading sequencs" thing. I think it's time they got a new PS2 if that's the case. (the larger one does have longer loading times and cause some game issues, Ex. Altelier Iris doesn't have VO on alot of the large PS2s but works fine on the slim ones)

And like I said, after you play a few Metal Gears, I expect Japanese to English synching to suck... go Capcom with originally casted voice actors in Dead Rising, Devil May Cry 4, and Lost Planet!!!

Back to the point it's a great sequel, great RPG.
If you don't like it shut up and walk off, otherwise you're gonna get hurt, lol.

Can someone tell me why this game is more addicting than Okami.

No seriously, I LOVE the battle system now.

I like how the first boss, I thought it was impossible to defeat him with any of the bonus orbs remaining. Now, it is IMPOSSIBLE to defeat him without losing a single bonus orb.

Where I am in the game:



Double Post:
Futureshop generally has not very good nor competitive prices, it just so happens that they pick a game and lower it for $10 for a few days. On the website, FS is showing at $59.99, but then the local flyer will have it for $49.99.

This was the same thing with Shadow of Colossus, where I wouldn't have gotten it at $49.99, but managed to snag it at $39.99 only 3 days after its release last year.

This game deserves no less than 9.0. I enjoy the story, I don't know why people say..."this game is for those who don't care about the plot". Sure it's overdone with dudes who want absolute power and the struggle with Odin and the King of Dipan etc. But I don't see how this distracts from the game itself at the moment. I just want to see Lenneth so bad, ;___;

Keep playing, you will see everything you want to happen, happen. This game is awesome fan service but it manages to pull it off in a way where it isn't awkward or fakey. :D

HA! Don't need to tell me! :tpg:

I just feel compelled to continue, where as in Okami I find the thing that makes me go further is to see what other worlds there are, but this is quite different I find.

well actually it's a typo but at the same time it was intentional >.< it's just there's some guy character that are played by women, and I kind of think the other way(by thinking Freya was played by a guy XD) so it's my mistake XD

The person who does Freya is a woman, but her voice actor does several male characters too. So it's kind of the same but at the same time not really. You just got it somewhat backwards.

Bah... I wasn't really trying to point out his typo, because I make mistakes from time to time myself. I just thought it was funny, that's all.

I have a quick question. What are these gold spheres I am able to knock out of enemies at times? The manual doesn't mention them.

Another question, I just finally discovered about learning skills finally, after having to match up accessories to discover a skill, then building up exp to get it. How come I can't choose which skill I want to be learned, rather since I have a few discovered, but I couldn't change which skill to be learned. Right not Lezard is learning the 120% attack skill, which is useless. I got him to do the Mental skill, which boost 120%, but I want him to learn something more useful for a magic user.

I'm at the start of chapter 3, where you're in the dungeon and it introduces to seal spheres or something.

Skill learning is based on what equipment runes you are using. Go to the equipment screen and hit the triangle button. Highlighting skills in the list will show you the required rune combination needed to start learning the skill. Note that so far I have seen red, blue and green colored runes and each skill requires a specific color. You can't use a red earth rune if the skill needs a blue earth rune for example.

So basically you select what skill you learn by arranging the same colored items and when it says "X Skill Formed" then X would be your active skill that you're currently learning right?

Correct, and you can see the progress on learning in the skills list. You can also learn more than one skill at a time as well as overlap runes. Toss on a lighting, earth and water rune on for example and you'll learn Fist of Iron, Mental Boost and Fortify Physique at the same time. Also position of the runes doesn't matter.

How far are you into the game and what level are your guys at? Most of the time I felt pretty good with my team, but when I got to the chapter 3 dungeon where you first start working with spheres, then it gets tricky.

I've clocked in 6.5 hours with level 7/8 characters. I don't have many skills learned but trying to get the First Aid skill.

I actually just finished that dungeon and called it a night. Coming out my characters range from level 5 to level 9. I've also already freed the first three einherjar that you get and have a clock time of 7:42.

I haven't had much trouble with anything in the game as of yet. Learning how to use dash well really helps as well as exploiting the hit zone system. For example learning the right attacks to break off wings of flying creatures with little use of AP made the battles in the area quite a bit easier since they can't move or attack once you ground them.

I'm still trying to figure out how to get past to the first save point. I know obviously that the you'll have to use the seal to activate the globe thing on top of all those jagged steps. Also I broke the wall and got some treasures.
I want to try to figure this out by myself, how to get to the save point. There must be something else I didn't activate yet. It's probably very simple but I'm overlooking something.

I'm about 5 hours in, characters at level 6/7. Have Lezard in my party and all that jazz.

This game is so awesome and addicting, its pulling me away from Okami even thought that game is addicting to, now I gotta find time to juggle both of them.

I got the same roblem when I was at the boss of the first dungeon in chapter three (the one with seal stone) I got my ass kicked pretty bad...I had to come back do some leveling and return...and know just 2min later i'm in another dungeon and the monster are as tough as the boss I just did damn it >.< this game is too hard...

another question: why I can't make a Falchion even if I have all the material to make it? the merchant doesn't one to let me buy want even if I have like 5 of each item needed to make the Falchion...

Wow, I can't believe you guys are in Chapter 3 with such low levels, and short hours. I'm in Chapter 3 with 21:20 hours on the clock and I've freed about 6 or 7 Enherjar. My levels vary but I've been keeping Alicia(22) and Lezard(19) for most of the game, with 2 Einherjars in between. The sad thing is after all this time I just found out how the skill system really works last night. >_>

And if you think the game is hard now, it can actually get up to 50 times harder by replaying New Game+ multiple times. Man I love tri-Ace.

Alicia at level 22? Holy shit you've must done some crazy ass lvling up man. I thought I was ahead of the ball park by doing the 4 panel outside "dungeon" on the fields quite a few times.

Well I just beat the game this morning, clocked in around 28-30 hours at lvl 64 for Alicia. I'm pretty sure I got all the Einhar but I might have missed 1 or 2 not sure. Anyway the game was awesome and I loved every minute, the battle system was addicting so it made grinding even easier and more fun.

Chapter 3 already.

I've mostly read in reviews that the difficulty spikes up when you reach chapter 2. Not quite, since I mad-leveled on chapter 1 alone (about 2 hours gametime when I finished chapter 1) to about level 5 or 6.

Too bad I mostly craved the Soul Crush at chapter 1. I missed the Purify Soul thing on the original game, but this game has strategic value. The area effect (orbs) is something that I will get used to eventually.

I just kept beating the first boss over and over to level up. The third boss is giving me some trouble. I'll probably equip the
so the boss won't knock me around so much. Did you guys get the three "not so secret" passages in the chapter 3 dungeon? Pretty simple and obvious stuff, but some of them you have to do it before proceeding on or the newly opened path will block you from getting the nice stashes.

My only gripe right now is in Coriander. I have all the materials needed to buy the Falchion yet the peddler still won't sell me. Do I have to gain their trust or what?

(I fucking want other's Soul Crushes, like stat. Shit).

Terminus, you can easily get the Falchion in the next dungeon in chapter 3. I won't tell you how, since it's so bloody easy if you look around - it's all on the same screen.

Spatula: Yeah, I just came across one after getting Celes. I'm just wondering how this shit-trust system works so I benefit from it in the future. Tried reading a couple of times the value items in the armory in Solde.

Also tagged about 10 hours playtime last night for massive levelling-up. I'm not so used to it anymore, with studies and career and all.

I finally got the North American version yesterday.

For the love of God, people, if you want to maintain your sanity in Seraphic Gate, switch the control scheme back to "jump = X, slash = O" (the way it was in the Japanese version). It worked fine in the original where the platforming wasn't so dependent on timing, but the post-game requires a ridiculous amount of mid-air enemy freezing and jumping. You'll never get it done if the crystal and jump buttons are on opposing sides.

Have almost 4 hours in, and most of my party is Lv6. I have a question, since i've not played the first one:

When someone hits their Free-Level, should I free them, or do I keep levelling them.

Freeing Einherjar wasn't in the first game. That had transfers, but the bonuses for doing that didn't really work the same way.

Really, there's plenty of reasons to go with either. Freeing them nets you nice stat-up items and gifts from the freed characters when you visit, and also clears out your party list which, after a while, will be filled with no-names that you won't ever bother with again.

However, unlike the first, you don't get released Einherjar back in Seraphic Gate, so when you free them, they're gone for good in that playthrough. Some are also worth keeping for interesting, in-battle conversations with other characters. I, for example, keep Falx for being the only Einherjar that will speak directly to a story-related character. It's also nice to have backup for whatever may arise later on.

Something you could do is wait, and then only release some of them. You get more and better stat-up items if you free Einherjar with good weapons and armor equipped, so delaying gratification for better rewards is usually a solid plan. I wonder what kind of items I'd get if I released an Einherjar with Angel Slayer equipped...

I'm currently doing most of my leveling up at the third boss. He gives you about a good 15-20% increase in your skills, rather than a measly 2% from the normal battles.

Is it just me, or am I REALLY find it difficult to get 100 hits still. I'm trying to get everyone with a weapon that will do at least 2 if not 3 hit combos.

In VP1, when Lenneth used a melee weapon it was easy, but not so much with a ranged weapon.

"I'm currently doing most of my leveling up at the third boss"

You can re-do boss fights? :eyebrow: Im not even remotely into the game yet and I'm already a giant noob... Is there some prompt in the game that i missed with this information? :P

Lenneth with a bow does more hits then with a sword. Bow for her is better in nearly every way. More hits, better for getting crystals, easier to connect.

The only bad thing is that the highest 3 hit bow has like 1300 attack less then the best sword outside SG, so you'll sometimes have mobs where you do 0 or 1 damage, so in the end sword is better.

I really hated that in VP. bows kinda got shit at the very end. Spears and Katanas as well.

Dude, for the first boss, just go past the well and it will have a "go up" arrow, then it will say "DANGEROUS DUDES LURK HERE, WANNA FIGHT HUH PUNK?" and you say yes or no. There are more bosses like this. Of course you don't get UBER experience points for the repeat boss fights, but still better than the regular battles.

I found the sword was much more easier to connect and get 100 for Lenneth. Meh, I'll have to try different weapon combos for the VP2 charas.

Speaking of which, I really wish there was a "testing ground" like in VP1 where you have infinite health, as well as the baddies, and you can just experiment all you want to test out combos. Why did they leave that out, especially when the combat aspect does take some experimenting to nail things down right.

Don't bother leveling up Lezard. You'll thank me later...

Haha thanks for the warning. I've been using him as my main mage.

I had a bit of a problem getting 100 until I got to the Audoula Temple. Figure it this way, if a mage spell connects with all of its attacks it charge 25 points. Second, go into the attacks setup and each attack tells you exactly how much it charges. Set up your attacks to where each person is charging at least 25 points. Note that 3 hits x 5 = 15 charge points for example.

I'll keep that in mind. ;___;

I barely did anything with the other two mages so far. God, and now I have a funny feeling about Rufus. Why does this dude remind me of Vincent from FFVII anyways.

Thanks, I'll also do my math homework and figure it out. Yeah, 100 means you've basically got to have a decent AP (60 plus) to start with and obviously get all the hits to connect. I never really did master the 100 hits in VP1, I got it maybe 60 percent of the time after chapter 5 or 6.

Very minor spoilers...

Do not listen to Manny. You won't be thanking him later; you'll be flaming him to shit. Levelling Lezard to level 45 before a certain point nets you two very nice items. Not something you'd regret, right?

I have a feeling this is what Forsety said, but I'm browsing with only a keyboard and have no idea how to open a tab like that without a mouse.

Leveling that high so early on also kinda kills the entire games difficulty though... so if you really enjoy the gameplay I don't especially recommend doing that because even boss fights will be over in like two attacks. =P

Sigh, alright, I'll keep using Lezard to lvl 45. Is this another "Aries" situation we're dealing with, or he just packs his bags and says to hell with Silmeria/Alicia, I have mystina to hit on.

Whatever, I'll find out sooner or later.

Now I'm at Audoula Temple, I think where you're on the bridge and you see a nice castle in the background. I'm at about level 10 to 12 for my primary characters. My new Einherjar really don't have any experience as of yet, sitting their poor asses at level 1.

Aeris situation as in he'll die? Isn't he appearing in VP1? I mean, since this is a prequel and all so he probably won't die. I've never played 1 but I learned about that from Radiata Story. There is a certain guest character and a special boss fight.

[edit] Also, can anyone scan the guide and upload it? ;_________;

Explaining about Lezard would spoil too much of the game. VP2 is not "just a sequel", though...

I have a question for you guys.

I haven't played VP for the psx, and considering this is a prequel, do you think it would be fine to just play this one first? Or do you recommend me playing the psx one first?

Play the original first, if possible. Like I said before, certain plot twists lose their impact without knowledge from the original game. Plus there's a lot of spoilers about the first in this.

If you can't, though, it won't ruin the experience. It might be kind of interesting to play the first afterwards, just because you can appreciate certain characters a lot more.

Regarding creating Items at the shops, how to deal with them

You have to first sell the materials of the item you wanna make to the shop before they can make them, and then to make the ????? appear with names, you have to buy enough stuff from them and earn a good relationship with the shop before the item names and selections can appear for you.

Just for people who were wondering.

On Gfaqs there's seem to be a list of permanent missable items, anyone know any items that must be gotten in a certain chapter?

More like Aeris where X person will just leave the party under various circumstances for good.

Also, I didn't know you had to see the items to the shops to get the stuff, good thing I know now!

My apologies. Didn't know about that. Either way I hate leveling up a character so much only to have THAT happen... I personally won't bother with the items.

So has anyone been able to get their mits on a copy of the guide yet? I've still pestered quite a few of the EB here and they say they probably will have it next Wednesday - a full week after the release mind you. >_>

Seriously now.

I got mine on Friday, Spats. They had a single copy and WHAM. All Deni's motherfuckers.

God damn, what the hell. OH YEAH PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ABOUT VP2, SO LET'S ONLY STOCK 1 COPY. Fucking EB games.

Also, the lack of pre-orders makes me somewhat sad, I asked how many preorders they got for VP2, six preorders in total, including mine.
Then I asked about FFXII preorders, like fifty fucking preorders. I mean, sure whenever you say “FINAL FANTASY” – then everyone basically goes into RPG orgy mode, but mention VALKYRIE PROFILE, and they might think of some cheap ass action fighter title, makes me sad. It’s like Evangelion (everybody knows this) vs. Patlabor (fucking 10 fold better than Eva, in my mind, but so many ignorant people).

I'm looking forward to FFXII, but then it basically over shadows all that is VP2.
Meh, it's all from SqaureEnix anyways so they'll get revenue either way.

Well, what can we expect?

Also, I’m thinking of trying to hunt for a guide for VP1, but that’s impossible. Would you say it’s wise to get a copy of the VP Lenneth guide for me to use for VP1, since well, they’re essentially the exact same game, minus the cut scenes?

You were right Deni, this guide (both VP1 and 2) is fucking phantom.

I bought the VP1 guide (Lenneth, PSP version) the other day. It works perfectly for the PSX game. I absolutely endorse it.

I've never played VP1, but I'm loving VP2! I'm at some rained out forest temple, and my main party is Alicia, Rufus, Adonis (one of three Einheriar [SP?] that I've bothered to level), and Arngrim, all of whom are level 20+. Leveling them in Chateau Obsession right now, because of the EXPx2 sealstone :)

I'm about 15 hours into the game and still having lots of fun. At first I didn't like the whole mix and match stuff to form new skills, but now it's not so bad, I actually like it!

Deni, man, that's good news, I'll look into that, since I saw a copy the other day for the Lenneth guide!

I'm still at that Audoula Temple and I can't really seem to net any good items from the battles like "get X material". Do you need some special combo attack to net those?

I'm sorry if I sounded rude-- I just wanted to get the point across.

And if it makes you feel any better, your effort levelling him isn't wasted once you beat a certain boss in Seraphic Gate.

After defeating the fourth boss in Audoula Temple, I now have a precious item that supposedly helps me get 100 hits better, and it works! Now, as long as I land all the hits, I can get into Soul Break mode.
Still, it's sad that I haven't taken time to read over the game manual, since I don't know what triggers the Break were all your team goes psycho as much as they can when the AP bar starts flashing. I guess you have to land a critical hit in mid air, because whenever this event occurs, I'm not at 100% yet.

The tutorial said it happens when you break off a certain body part. I dunno if there's certain things that makes this occure more often, but I do know that there's a skill to boost the chance.

Can someone post the stats for the Tri-Emblem? I missed it because I didn't find out about the stupid poem quest until Chapter 5. Why do games keep doing this to me? I try to master them without using guides and theres always some bogus, one-time only sidequest that no normal person would find out about on their own. Also, is it the same Tri-Emblem you get from the Seraphic Gate bosses?

[Progress: Chapter 6, Alicia Lv.54, 39.40H] The two new characters you get in the beginning of Ch.6 aren't going to leave again are they? >_>

Chapter 6? That would be the last chapter, right? The one that starts at the tower.

Heh, four characters join in that chapter, but only one will be around for the final boss.

GenericBadass: Not that I really care all that much but next time could you use spoiler bars when giving details?

Oh what, I just found out I'm already

At any rate, I'm finding some of the seal orbs in Audoula Temple ridicoulous to get. Like take the one just near the save point.

Like with what?

I'll just leave it to Rydia or whoever regardless, just because I don't understand at all what constitutes as a spoiler on these forums. I've been censored and censured on one occasion for mentioning that one game's mini-map becomes more detailed when you progress.

The fact that three of the new characters in chapter 6 die. Unless you meant something else by "only four will be around for the final boss". In which case would not be a spoiler I suppose and therefore... well you can see where I'm going with this. Whatever though, I was just saying, listen to me or not, I can't make you.

Anyhow,

Uh, die? Definitely taken that the wrong way.

Ug, so are all sidequest areas only open for a limited period in the story? It seems the mine area in chapter three is no longer available because I decided to finish the water temple first.

Hm? Well, they are for limited time, but they should still be around until Chapter 5 or so. I think I finished Turgen Mine after Audoula when I played the import.

Hum wonder what I did then. I finished Audoula Temple and planned on going into the mine right after. But instead the next town showed up and the mine area disappeared. I also went back in the tavern and the guy who first talked about the mine is back talking about how they just should hire some professionals now to clear the mine.

Edit: Thinking about it, I did enter the mine before the water temple and promptly got my butt kicked on the first fight so I left and went into the water temple to level up. Wonder if that had something to do with it.

No, that's kind of what happened to me in the import, heh. It might just be locked for a story event or something. Try progressing a little.

Really? I defeated the 4th boss at the water temple but I still got access to the mine.

So I just beat the game.



And I'm very confused. ._.

The enemies in the Turgen mine are TOUGH. They are pretty tough customers and I think this will be a prime place to start levelling up.

As well, if you're having trouble with the bees.

Just got the game yesterday and loved it so far. I'm at the Turgen Mines. It's a little though, but fortunately i can handle it (Nothing compared to the Cave of Oblivion from the previous game).

That doesn't surprise me though,






The game is so beautiful up to now. The only thing that i didn't like much is the difficulty. It doesnt seem very though up to now. I hope the Seraphic Gate is up to it's name.

Oh it gets tougher at chapter 3, don't you worry lol. I'm at the Palace of the Venerated Dragon...and I found a sword that I equipped onto Alicia right away...but then later, I checked her stats out of boredom or something and I saw it was gone...just gone. Luckily I kept a back up sword that works just fine but I'm bummed :/

Can someone tell me why that when I team up with 4 mages including Lezard Valeth as lead, setting all of their attacks to fire storm, it's basically one of the most funnest things? FIRESTORM FIRESTORM FIRESTORM FIRESTORM.

Of course it's hard as hell to even get anywhere close to 100 hits, but that's not the point.
You just see the baddie to UP AND DOWN AND UP AND DOWN. Great fun.

And since I read the post by Manny Biggs, I mind as well power up some back up mages for now. I just finished the Turgen Mines. That place isn't so bad after all. As well, I talked to a little boy in the small sleepy town and then when I went back to the map, a new location opened up.



Cool

Game is fun as hell. Got pretty pissed off in the beginning just because I don't ever adjust to Tri-Ace's unique battle systems very quickly (in any games). After giving it some time though I can say it's up there as one of the best battle systems I've ever experienced in an RPG (same way I felt about SO2, actually).

Midway into chapter 3, I think, I really don't get how THAT character makes a reappearance but it was definitely a nice surprise. Although judging from where everyone else here seems to be i'd say I showed up late to the party.

The skill system is the only thing i'm not crazy about, the game already had enough of a learning curve and it just added to the overall confusion. As cheap as it may sound, I would just about kill for the Bradygame's explanation in the walkthrough to be scanned and put up on here.


Quick question(s) to you folks though, since I don't have the funds to be spending $50 on a strategy guide: Basically I've been sticking with Dylan (it was a close call between using him and Mr. A, still not sure on that one), Lezard, and Rufus. Every review I've read about the game mentions the grinding involved, and as fun as the battle system is, leveling up einherjar to just release them for good seems pretty pointless to me (I'm also somewhat dissapointed at the lack of background for them), do you guys mostly stick with the story-driven characters?

Also, when you get the two new "mercenaries", did you swap out Dylan/Rufus for either of the two?


I am anti-spoiler by the way, so if anything said runs the risk of ruining something for me, just don't even bother.

It isnt just a prequel though, thats why.

Ah man, I'm addicted to this game. I'm just about ready to go play some more. I'm right about to go to Dragonscrpt, but I was collecting items for the Dog, Cat and Bird's Ring.

I really enjoy this game because you can really make it as easy or as challenging as you want. Substituting einheriargh most of the time, manipulating the skills system with equipment. It's really diverse, and when you're deep in a dungeon and your whole party is poisoned and don't have many healing items at all, it's the most fun (for me, this happened while doing the crawsus forest ruins, near the end, luckily the boss was cake.) Man, pools of poision that poison the whole party! Watch out for that in the Forest Ruins! Gah! (lol)

I did not reserve the game myself, but I got it the first day it shipped. Apparently the GameStop I went to had all but a few of their copies on reserve... which surprised me. The clerk was nice enough to just sell me one of the reserved copies, because he was doing a run between stores later and could pick up an extra at the other one. I would have hated to go home without VP2! Ugh!

What chapter does the game end, anyway?

Oh. If you release Richelle (or possibly of the three einheriar Richelle comes packaged with, check gamefaqs) when found at her town (I forgot where she is) she will give you an item that lets you bestow 30,000 experience onto any player. This item is FABULOUS if you know that you can get some nice items with either Leone or Lezard if you have them up to 40 by Chap 4 or whatever. I used this item on Alicia and she went up fricken 8 levels. More importantly, I used it on a fresh level 2 einheriar and he gained 16 levels. What an item!

ALSO: I released Kraad and found him at his house... I think he was in Villnore, and he gave me the "Kraadicator" which is a heavy sword with an ATK rating of about 200! It's frickin' sweet. It only has 2 attacks and no special, however.

My party right before entering Dragonscrypt:

Alicia 26
Falx 19
Circe 16
Seluvia 21

---

Yeah, I'm always using some Einheiriar, I figure those permenent state increase items will be nice for when I finally decide on some certain characters. Don't you think they're worth it, just using them for like a few or four hours of dungeoning to get their gem of +20 +20 stats?

And yeah, I switched in Leone when the mercenaries joined up. She's pretty sweet, and hot. I also used Angrim for a while because I didn't have any heavy bladed characters who could use the Kraadicator.

Is there any real point in releasing Einherjar WITH very nice items? Like the rare accessories? Or can I just equip cheap cheap accessories on the more "dispensible" Einherjar's and still net the same results? So far, I haven't released any as of yet.

Accessories are not accounted for in the releasing process. Equipment is, however. Better equipment in release means higher quantity of stat raising items recieved.

Am I the only person that misses the Skill system from part 1? Not that this one is complicated or anything, but I much preffered the use of CP, and books to learn skills. This whole thing they got here has been done already... I also am not such a big fan of the whole running around thing. I liked the simple yet fun battle system of part 1 more. This game is still awesome though...

YES! I totally agree with Manny Biggz. I loved how you basically learned the skill immediatly, however it was up to you to max it out to level 8. Basically you could have mutliple skills going on at once, such as auto-item (VERY IMPORTANT FOR UNION PLUME etc) and Guts and the like. If you equipped your team correctly, you could take on the toughest bosses without too much trouble. I actually managed to take Brahms out in his castle using Jelanda, while getting the others to continually use potions. The sucky thing is



On a related note about Valkyrie Profile 1, I picked up the LENNETH guide today, brand new. It's sad that I talked to the girl clerk at the counter and said that I had the original PSX version of VP1, and if you wanted the VP1 walkthrough guide, you’d have to go through hell and back and jump through hoops to find that, more so than the original PSX game itself. She just shrugged and said something along the lines that well, since it’s a remix, it should still be useful for me. :tpg:

Well, fortunately for you the Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth guide isn't as bad as the Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria guide. Though I've had both the original Prima guide and the new Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth guide for some time now, I still have not spent the time to go through each of them extensively to determine the differences.

However, upon lite inspection, I can most certainly say the Prima guide is more complete. One thing that the new guide is missing right off the top of my head is that while it lists the groups of enemies that can be found in a dungeon, it does not show their locations on the maps themselves, where as the Prima guide does. There's bound to be more differences as well. Sometime I'll go through both of them and list out what's missing.

Don't get me started on the Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria guide, though. It's downright terrible. I went through and posted on another forum a brief description of one of the problems it has, and I'll share that here as well. Some of it might be a little out of context, but you can get the jist of it from reading it.

"The English guide is another matter all together. I picked up the guide when I bought the game. Though, I hadn't taken a look through it until earlier today after I finished the game, and it really is terrible. Not even just incomplete bad, but inaccurate bad. In leafing through some of the Boss Monsters, I can attest that the incorrect numbers are supplied for the stats. In comparing it to all three of the Japanese guides (The Official Complete, The Master, and the Final Guides) a pattern develops which shows a complete lack of Quality control at Brady Games. The boss stat boxes are laid out in two tables. The Stat-labeled rows vary from monster to monster, but are set up in generally the same manner. I'll use the monster "Lady Cleo" as my example. Her tables are set up as:

Name: Lady Cleo
Species: Unholy Magic
Item: Azure Sealpouch, Supreme Garb
ATK: 200
AVD: 280
MAG: 58
RDM: 50
---------- End Table One
Hit: 10
RST: 50
Fire: None
Ice: None
Lightning: -50%
Earth: 100%
Holy: 50%
---------- End Table Two

Now, this is incorrect. The numbers listed are correct, just not for the particular stats they associate them with. If you go through the columns reading them in this order, you get the correct statistics:

ATK
MAG
HIT
AVD
RDM
RST

This appears to work for the monsters I have checked, but I haven't made a thorough sweep through, so there may be some differences. Also, the element affinities are correct.

I sincerely recommend that you do not buy the English Guide and instead pick up any one of the three Japanese guides. They contain much more information and are not strewn with inaccuracies."

Herm, now I'm debating whether to get it or not now even, but I guess it helps finding out what all the ???????????s are.

You could PM me which town's shop items you wanna check, since I have plenty of cash. Been fighting a hell lot to level certain characters up to level 40 before the end of chapter 3.

How the hell is this even possible. I got the game before YOU!

:: playing VP2 24 hours a day, nerd::

I'm -still- at Chapter 3 since there's about three dungeons I can virtually access at the moment: Turgen, the sunken city, the first location of the dragon orb and the battleground-turned forest. Yes, I consider studying > play since it's a challenging course I'm taking.

So far, I've been meaning to get a second Raptor's Talon since I used one up already in making the Elemental Edge. Any ideas where?

Also with Alicia at level 20 with the clock more or less 18:00:00 and with the others not so far behind, I think I'm beginning to get the grip of what's going on. Also props to Rufus for having a high AP output so I can unleash either Arngrim or Dylan for their final moves, for now anyway. Can't really wait to finish this game. Now I'm just speculating whether to use Khanon or Lezard (poor me, Lezard only at level 10).

Now also at the binge of getting skills for a lot of characters so I stuck to the four dungeons available to me at this time.

Which location do you guys recomend to lvl up in chapter 3? My characters are lvl 20-25 since i spent most of the time lvling the einherier to revive them.

Also, why do you have your party lvl so high by chapter 3? is there a special character or something if you reach that lvl at some point?

Anybody playing the game on a modded PAL PS2? I heard there are problems (freezing and such) with this particular game which would be too bad, I really want to import this one.

There are apprently some good equips to get if you have them 40 before the end of Chap. 3... I'm not really sure, I'm not doing that shit!

I'm where you're at right now, pretty much. The shortcut to the Solde region, the snowy place seems like a good place for leveling your einheriar to about 22 or 23. I was thinking of then heading back to Venerated Dragon Temple or whatever and getting materials, and leveling there with the sealstone bonuses and stuff (because Alicia is so pimped out.)

However, I just noticed that there is an optional boss to do in the Turgen Mine afterwards if you talk to the resident near the bar in Villnore.

Once I almost have these Einheiriar free I'll probably head to the next part.

In terms of story I haven't progressed much, but in terms of powering up Einherjar I've done some work on that. I got rid of the first mage guy with the brown hat. He was getting useless, so OFF WITH HIS HEAD! There's another chick wearing the metal helmet and visor, and has the most annoying battle stance ever, she's next.

I still have brown hat Mithra. I gotta dump his ass. Had him forever.

You know what I wish this game had more of? Dialogue between the main characters. It's so slim, you only get it in cutscenes. In a different perspective, one that imagines that the game time is real time, and that it's okay for the main characters to only talk that much, it might make SOME sense. But you'de think they'd have more to say to each other. It's like based on the cutscenes, Alicia's confidence has grown fuckin' 1/16th since the beginning of the game.

Seriously, there is no main character dialogue besides those in the cutscenes. NONE. What's up with that? Silly Tri-Ace.

Due to this, I think I've automatically chosen not to use the main characters, sorely due to the fact that their personalities don't grow! The cutscenes are very suggestive. In the Crawsus Forest Ruins cutscene you see Arngrim and Dylan chatting in the background, while Leone and Alicia's voices are the only ones audible. Tri-Ace is telling us that Arngrim and Dylan are having some kind of, perhaps manly "shoot the shit" dialogue, but you don't get to know what it is. I don't see any reason than obsession of a specific character to not use a trifecta of Einheriar to feed Alicia stat points. I'm convincing myself that the game actually wants you to feed Alicia the Einheiriar bonuses, and hoping that you find one Einheriar that you do indeed like and would keep longer than their free level.

I finally found one of those Einheriar, Lydia is a pretty stylin' 'n young Archer who has 100% resistances on a lot of stuff. Pretty nice.

Well, the cut scenes certainly aren't the strong point of the game, hence general complaints against the plot and character build up. I sort of wonder if the Einherjar have physical bodies all the time and manifest in a physical life form from their spirit, or if they only come together during battle, like Lenneth's DARK WARRIORS that materialize during battles, but appear as ghosts during the towns. Probably the latter.

Also, is it any real point to keep on uping the level past their level of freeing the Einherjar? I guess this is only worthwhile if you actually want to keep the Einherjar. Like I said, that metallic chick-man is gone come level 10.

Good question. Kinda hard to say, funny to imagine a party of 10-20 of your characters raiding a dungeon. They materialize when you release them, that's fact. As far as I can tell there's no point in keeping them except for if you think having them as backup will be a good help. In some of the earlier dungeons it was cool because my whole party died or was on the virge of dying, so I was forced to bring in some backup Einheriar. I like that style, but I haven't needed to do THAT for a while.

Hardly 24 hours, but I do have plenty of cash. In fact, I unlocked all the ?????????? accessible up to chapter 3. I like how you can fight bosses over and over again.

Guh! I tried doing some item hunting today but I didn't do too successfuly. It's kind of difficult when the guide on gamefaqs has japanese names for most everything. I'm just gonna trudge on, pro'lly though. Yeah, how'd someone beat it already? I thought I was playing it a lot... -_-

Tell me, are there any specific tactics for item-collecting to note? I change my attacks to ones I think will strike that part of the monsters body. But I fear it doesn't make a lot of difference. From what angle I attack monsters does make a difference though. Does sheer strength determine the rate at which items drop? Is it guard breaking?

According to the strategy guide, the strength of the stat booster they give you when you free them is determined by their level and equipment.

I don't have any guide for this, but what I think is; it's based mostly on luck. You can increase your chances by attacking at the right sides of the enemy, so you break certain parts of their body, but it still goes down to luck.

I have to say though, my all 2H swordsman team is pretty good at tearing up enemy parts, compared to bow or 1H sword or magic.

This isn't entirely true. Well, at least not in chapter 5+ with Alicia and Rufus. I think this game really jut focused on them and not really anyone else. They both have a fair share of dialogue between each other at that point onward, and are the only characters truly fleshed out by the end of the game.

I like how Celes (the girl you mentioned) and Jessica (low-level chick) pratically had the SAME finishing move.

I think.


Also on the item-gathering, like said, pure luck. Hell, you may be even lucky if you acquire "Bat ears".

I'm doing some powering up with a few guys, I got rid of that Trylan chick with the metal helmet and visor, with her annoying battle stance and replaced her with the archer women, a much nicer looking female, because we all know VP caters to horny fan boys with super fan service of medival-fantasy dressed battle maidens.

I have to say the "power ups" you get from freed Einherjar are disappointing, however I haven't met any of them yet in the towns.

Trylan hehe. I believe her name was Tyrith. I got rid of her...hmm... I think she's in Solde, but she won't give you anything... I also noticed, however that depending on what point you're at in the game, the released Einheiriar will say different stuff and might be enabled to give you items. You'll find them in various places actually. This Khannon mage guy just chills at the top of a summit in the Sukavia plains. Another one will hang out at the right end of the Kythena Plains. They usually occupy empty houses in the towns.

Yah I have to agree I'm tending more towards the attractive female characters with good voices. What can I say? I can say that Crescent and Xhenon (light sword and mage characters) interact in battle.

Xhenon: Thank you for your services in the <insert some war name>
Crescent: Not at all, I was only following Elle.

or something like that... I believe there were some funny translation to voice recording error there... (As you can see "Not at all" is not exactly a correct response, where "No problem" would suit better.) Not horribly surprised because Star Ocean 2 had some of those funny things. Like Opera would say "I'll turn you into a beehive!"

Good ole Tri-Ace.

According to the Strategy Guide, some freed einherjiar give you an item before the end of chapter 4, some give you an item after chapter 5 starts, some give you an item after you reach the last save point and unlock seraphic gate. Some of them give you an item at 2 or all of those times. That's one of the only parts in the strategy guide I've really read since it's pretty much spoiler free. So if they don't give you an item at first, try again later.

There's an einherjar FAQ over at gamefaqs that explained a lot of it for me.

Just stay the hell away from the forums over there, needless to say.

Quick question: Where's the -best- place to level at around 20? -Still- Chapter 3 and I'm not touching the Turgen Mines yet. Party's more or less level 14s (I mean like 70% of them. I know I divert my attention to them too damn much anyway).

Go complete the mines. I think that is where you get the "added bonus" sealstone, which doubles EXP. Add that with "double check" and you get 4 times the EXP from bosses. Plus, there are 2 more optional areas after the mines. You could always refight a certain squid boss later.

Chapter 3 is far from over by the way.

Should've taken Lwyn instead of Crescent even though she doesn't converse with anyone. Hands down the best looking female sword user in the entire game, and she has the "cute/fun" voice samples too.

Turgen mines is no where near as bad as it seems. Like I said, if the wasps are bugging you, then just cast fire magic/explosion on them. The rest shouldn't be too bad. Sure you got stronger lizard men, but I don't worry about them too much.

Is anyone else actually replaying the game already? I wasn't going to, but for some reason I am easily amused by the ability to control the music. Plus, hearing the original VP battle music is neat. I am too easily amused. =(

WHAT! Control the music? I guess this must be a little surprise after beating the game?

Whooops, that sealstone don't double EXP. It simply extends the bonus gauge time so it reduces at a slower rate.

The desert you come across later is quite a good place to level up. 20k EXP per fight. My level is still at the early 20s, so I'll post any good place to power level if I find it before chapter 4.

Yes, hold L1 for the VP1 battle song and L2 for a random song as you enter the fight.

Can someone tell me where I can find the third rune type for the First Aid skill? What mobs/shops can I get a light rune accessory from? I've been playing the game for over 70 hours now, beat the final boss, Seraphic Gate and got Alicia to Lv.99 but still never unlocked First Aid. She practically solo'd every boss because my party could never stay alive. It's kind of funny that I went all this time without it, but I haven't fought the real boss of SG yet. After maxing her level out, I retired Alicia and replaced her with a certain character that has much more growth potential. ;) So First Aid is definitely a must have skill now.

Ugh, I'm so confused. Why have all of my front liner's weapons dissapeared in the Palace of the Venerated Dragon? It makes no sense. Has this happened to any one else? Some one explain this to me because this handicap is pissin' me off.

Er, are you carrying the sealstone which breaks weapons at 1/5 ratio? 300% attack but 1/5 weapon break rate.

I like how I've basically sent all the newb Einherjars with minimal stats, since I probably won't be using them again. I'm about 19 hours in with Alicia at level 18. She's relatively low compared to you guys since I haven't always had her in my party.

Also, I'm finding Arngrim's somewhat overrated, I think Dylan is a bit better. But of course I like Arngrim's finishing words, "They're probably sorry, I but I don't care". That's so him.

Oh...ya i was...damn -_- is it possible to buy the weapons u find in shops?

Yes, you can buy weapons. For the ones that are ?????? you have to get the appropriate materials and then sell it.

So you have to sell the materials first?

Ok, beat the dragon zombie in Palace of the Venerated Dragon, using the sealstone that gives everyone in and outside the party of four exp (trying to get rid of some Einherjar).

My main party is Alicia (28), Rufus (28), Adonis (28), and Arngrim (28), so I still got a long way to go...which leads me to why I'm posting this: is there any better/faster way to get crap loads of exp? I mean, the dragon zombie is dropping me 100k+ a pop, but he takes too long to beat. I know Chateau Obsession has that exp x2 sealstone, but I dunno' if 30-60k+ a pop is much better than the 100+k a pop I'm getting now. Any suggestions?

PS ~ Is Rufus worth keeping? None of the weapons I've given him so far let him use Soul Crush, which bugs me 'cus everyone else is my party has (not counting any archer Einherjars 'cus they start out with the same if not worse bow as Rufus).

^^ Spoiler tags there please.

oops, right sorry

Yes, the list will show how much of which item is required for you to sell it, and the number in brackets, such as (#) indicate how many you have in your inventory, if you didn't realise as of yet.

Holy crap. Anyone that are still on chapter 3, don't worry about leveling. Complete the 3rd optional dungeon will net you the double EXP sealstone at the cost of zero cash for each battle. Use that in the next dungeon, the forest ruins, and you'll get 80-90k EXP on each normal encounter.

Putting it in spoilers for everyone else, but it shouldn't be a spoiler for you, Vash. There are minor spoilers for chapter 3 here and a minor spoiler for chapter 4 in the last paragraph.

Scarlet, put in spoilers what is the 3rd optional dungeon. I just finished the Ancient Forest and found the seal stone that reduces damage to 1/4. This might come in handy for boss fights, but comes at a cost of 30,000 crystals, not cheap - but I can see why. Also I got another seal pouch, so I can hold two seal stones, sweet!

Thanks so much Cetra. And yes, I have completed all of the optional dungeons so far. Before you posted this, I decided to take everyone out of my party except for Leone and Arngrim, and I was leveling only them with the EXP x 2 sealstone in Chatteau Obsession, totally forgot about the springs. Never once thought about using sealstones from other dungeons -_- *slaps self*

Speaking of Chatteau Obsession, the dragon there is extremely tough to beat.. put down, I mean. I've got two Grand Stings, Supreme Crossbow and the Walloon Sword and still won't go down fast. He damages normal though so it's all good.

Also just wondering how to get a shit-ton of crystals since I need the reduce 1/4 damage as well as turn to fire/ice whatever.

Yeah, getting crystals is a bitch, it takes forever just to amass say 5000 crystals. If you're talking 30,000 0_________0

I don't think anyone can afford those 20-30k Sealstones. If its true that you get more crystals in the harder difficulties, that must be the only way. I mean why/how else could someone make it through the game when its 50 times harder? And who would replay the game that many times anyway.

I'm a little lost as to how I equip skills. In the skill list, I see some that are white and some that are grey, and I've read the Equipping Skills tutorial in the menu a few times and it's still not clicking.

Thinking about it, probably having to re-fight the tough bosses would be less time consuming rather than powering up to get to that stage to take down the tough bosses easily. Plus it's more fun when they do 999 some damage each attack. LOL.

Equip the white, the grey ones cannot be equipped under a skill-point limit, which means if the character has the capacity of 6 CP, you'll must have a 2 CP x 3 (3 slots of 2 CP) or a 3 CP + 2 CP and leave one blank or whatever, any combination to accomodate that 6 CP.

Fortify Physique, Mental Boost, Counter-Attack and Fists of Iron are among those when learnt by equipping certain runes in accessories as well as learned when an acquired party member has one (don't forget that Triangle is your best friend when checking) gives more or less 2 CP. In low-levels, that means 2 skills; the higher, the better.

Experiment and best of luck. Or did I get the question wrong?

Well...I'm just not sure HOW to equip them. I keep tapping the X button on the white skills but nothing's happening, and no matter how many times I win fights they don't increase in percentage (like, they have to be at 100% in order to use them).

Wait.. did you equip the appropriate runes for the skill in the equipment menu and just fight away until it says "Skill learned"?

Well...I don't know how to get them learned. Somehow I learned Observation for Adonis and Survival for Arngrim, but I don't know how to make the white skills in the triangle menu in the Equip menu do anything. How do I get them activated? Because so far they're all at 0% :/ forgive my retardation, I'm sure I'll be kicking myself once I figure it out.

Is 6 CP the max you can get? It's pretty bad, considering now I can only get 3 X 2 slot-block skills or 2 X 3. I've leveled for some time and still my characters have only a max of 6 slots.

Most of my characters have 8 CP and I'm lvl 27 or so. So many skills to use and so little CP, it kinda sucks.

I'm now in a rainy forest full of thunders. Some though boss just kicked my ass, it keeps regenereting constantly. I'll try to do the dungeon first and then deal with that bastard. It was my first Game Over....dammit...

12 CP is the cap.

The white accessories are activated as soon as you equip them. Some of them can be linked to enhance. If you want to activate a skill, hit Triangle in the equipment screen and take a look at what skills you can make. Then use the appropriate color type and listed runes to activate that skill; to activate the skill you have to link those accessories and equipment together. When you can successfully form a skill to learn, the specified runes will bolden and glow in indication. As you fight battles, you can check back the "yellow'd learning skill" in the triangle equipment menu to see how much you've learned.

Those skills come with those characters, by the way.

Today I got my party destroyed from the transferring effect. Where does my party go? The Void?

Same here. Alicia shot up to 30 for me (hurray for eight hours non-stop levelling up yesterday) while Arngrim and Dylan are at 26 while Rufus is 28 (Yeah, they're my main party at the moment, notably because Rufus can be third in line for the Soul Break and still net a 100 for the final person). All of them have 8 CP so far. Still in that Chateau Obssession place while I'm taking care of both Leone and Lezard at the moment with help from an Archer and Dyn.

Okay, I suppose I'll keep it short. Equipment menu -> Take a look at what you're wearing -> Press triangle if you need something to upgrade -> Take a look at your item list so far -> Choose appropriate runes (NOTE: Though others may have the SAME rune, they're inaccessible primarily because the skills needs another type of rune with the SAME symbol.. I think) and equip them -> Fight away until you learn them -> Once learned, go to your Skills menu and take a look at the learned skill (should be written in green) -> Take a look at your maximum CP (let's say it's 6) -> If what you've learned is about 2 CP, great, go ahead. If it's 4, sure. You can also net another skill for 2 CP from the 4 CP you have to make it a 6. Or 3 2-CP skills to make it 6 too -> Skills learned and equipped.

Vash, I really hope that my explaination helped. Kinda hard to write it down.

Do you mean when your characters get knocked off the screen and ejected from battle? I had that one time fighting the winged boss on top of that ledge, and Lezard and someone else went bye bye. After a few rounds they came back. There is some sort of thing/item to cure this, but I forgot what it is.

Man you guys are far ahead.

I’ve only gotten to Surts Volcanic Mountain of MAGMANTIC FUN! Man this place is hard. I want to save up 2000 to get that heal 200% of your curative items, looks useful. Also, this place is full of nasty stuff, like divinity voids, that bridge that I’m not too sure how to cross without falling off (probably use crystals to teleport myself), and some of the monsters are tough!

I’m glad I restored the RMD down 50% and RST down 50% as it’s helping me slice and dice the baddies. The bad thing about lava levels is

1. Lezard is mainly a fire wizard and his great magic, Animate Earth does fire magic, which I discovered that it is in fact a fire element attack, rather than just a non-elemental damage.

2. Furthermore, frigid damsel, his weakest attack (aside from the seal stone negating ice damage) is the only real spell that will harm all enemies. Fire storm is good, however some will absorb it while other will negate any of it’s effects.

Also, I jumped into the lava just for fun. I sorta expected a game over, instead you only take maybe 200 damage if you bathe in there.

Okay. I managed to get the grip of how to do it after falling 10x and battling the same enemies OVER and OVER. Man, my healing items went to dust!

Anyway, what you need to do is look at the bridge itself from the map. You need to avoid the one with gaps because you'll definitely fall. A straight-walking monster patrols the area; wait for it to go to a "stable" (that means no gaps) area (usually the near-farthest in the map screen) then you double crystal. After teleporting (DO NOT JUMP), there is something that will come your way.. a crawling monster type, freeze it and stand on top of it (don't take too long now). Now you'll see a flying one in the distance. Jump and double crystal it while holding the jump button. Switch position and lands you to the next area.

Hope that helps. :)

You are over-complicating it. Just don't jump on the bridge, that's it. Run over it and freeze the flying enemies and switch places with the bugs.

Just elaborating because it took me forever. But alas, what you said sums it up.

Yeah I understand, it took me falling through the ground about 6 times before I figured it out myself. Kept trying to do long distance teleporting because I thought that was the key.

So you mean I can keep going back and forth on the bridge as long as one foot is always on the bridge, ie, not jumping? Man thanks! Just gotta work on my crystal powers then.

Anyone else having a bitch of a time dealing with those wild trolls over in the Crawsus Forest Ruins or whatever? Apparently the key is using the flamberge and hitting them with frailty (which would be nice if that effect actually ever went off).

It's also confusing as hell as to which sealstones to put where, according to the FAQ the boss is an earth monster where as everything else seems to have the lightning element on it, making this confusing as hell.

Fun.

Spat, don't worry about the characters you don't use. Save up 4000 magic crystals to restore the sealstone "Experience friend law" to share EXP for EVERYONE, combine that with "Experience pig law" that doubles EXP, fight in the last dungeon before the end of chapter 3.

Specifically, in the room with the sealstone "Wrath of bread alone" and get 150k EXP per fight. I kept fighting there, and the necessary characters reached level 40+ in no time, plus the other characters I don't use are around level 25 now.

The only catch is, bring plenty of restorative items. And with "Experience pig law", you won't get any money from fights. Pretty damn worth it though. This is what I call power leveling.

[edit] The dungeon I'm refering to is called "Palace of venerated dragon" or something.

I just got to the beginning of Chapter 6 and damn Tri-ace, I love your random plot twists. I think this tops the one from Star Ocean 3.

So, if you don't jump on the bridge you don't fall? Dammit, it took me like 12 tries to cross that thing. Anyways, when you cross the first segment of the bridge (there is only one foe) wait there till you see a flying foe far from the right, just freeze him and teleport and that's it.
By the way, what's the name of the last dungeon of chapter 3?.

Does anyone know where I can find a Green Darkness Rune... so I can make body passage. According to that guide on gamefaqs, I should be able to make one by the time I got to Valhalla But I'm pretty sure I haven't found any green darkness runes.

Thanks for the fun.

Hydras drop the item in the Crawsus Forest Ruins.

Scarlet, what is the LAST dungeon in Chapter 3? I don't want to miss this and I don't want to advance too much. I want to take my sweet time in 3. I just finished the Volcano dungeon with the magma boss, and headed to Crell Mon. The new dungeon, some thunder mountain, just opened up.

Basically yeah, you'll probably have to fight 1 or 2 monsters on the bridge, but that's a hell lot quicker than having to do the whole jog with the divinity void again.

The Experience Pig Law is in Palace of the Venerated Dragon?

I know I may sound like I'm repeating myself, but is this Venerated Dragon that I keep hearing of is on the map with the high mountains with thunder and lightning? Man, I seriously want that walkthrough guide.

I'm 25 hours into and I think Alicia is at 22 or 23, I know that's pretty small, but I haven't had any serious powerup/level up sessions as of late.

Chapter 3 - Starting from Coriander,
you go to Something Mountain Ruins
and then to Optional #1 - Ancient Forest
then Villnore,
Optional #2 - Turgen Mine,
Something Temple On The Lake,
Kalstad,
Sahma Desert,
Something Volcano Cavern,
Crell Monferaigne,
Optional #3 - Chateau Obsession,
Crawsus Forest Ruins,
Dragonscrypt and finally
Palace Of The Venerated Dragon.

Dragonscrypt and Palace of blah blah is linked, so they count as one final place.

And the double EXP sealstone is obtained in Chateau Obsession.

What, how do you activate Chateau Obsession? I never got that, do you talk to one of the villagers or what? Also, chapter 3 is long, now thinking about it. Chapter 1 was just that small little tunnel to Dipan, and chapter 2 was leading up to the Western Hemisphere.

Talk to someone at Crell to activate it. Talk to everyone if you're not sure; including people in the tavern, the inn, etc.

And this is the only long chapter so far. I just completed chapter 4 very soon after I did chapter 3. This game is generally pretty short. I like how Okami is better than VP2.

Honestly the only thing that makes this game "long" is the incessant levelling up (which again is a somewhat good way of making full use of the battle system), but I wish they'd stick more optional dungeons just for kicks so you don't feel like you're doing the same thing again and again. It doesn't even have to do anything with the story. Sometimes I just want to send my "marines" into the battlezone and let them have it. GO GO GO!

If there weren't any end bosses for each chapter, you could probably just crystal most of your way past baddies and go straight through in probably less than 7 hours, I'm guessing.

::LOL final dungeon and all of the party still at lvl 1.::

OH SHI~.

You don't need to level at all... I was severely under-leveled compared to most, and using the double experience orb + Double check in the right boss fights would jump me 3~5 levels at a time, which was plenty honestly. Release the characters you aren't using; the stat boosters give more to your stats than leveling actually does.

Levels = near worthless save for more DME and to reach the proper release levels. Sure, you could wait and "perfect release" for the most boosters at the end, but why make the game unnecessarily more difficult your first time through? Just release them as you are able (but keep two of your favorites for when the story characters leave; Adonis and Phyress for me) and you're levels/stats will be fine to make it through the game.

Just need to make proper use of status effects / Seal Stones and try really hard to hit enemies from behind. I was in the late 30s and early 40s at the end of the game and still didn't have any trouble with the last boss. Toughness+Survival are the only two skills you NEED and learning skills is faster when you are underleveled anyway should you choose to learn more than that. =)

Are you kidding. This game is easy as heck.

I didn't bother much with leveling if not for those super weapons/acc. When those characters leave, the weapons they leave behind has ATK+1200500 and the other has ATK+800. Because of the setup I mentioned in my earlier post, all my characters are around level 40 at the beginning of chapter 4.Of course, the characters that are supposed to be level 45 for those items are already level 50.

Also, don't release characters unless you have difficulties. It's always better to train them a little and give them better equipment before you release them when you really need to. You'll get much better items and stat boosters.

By the way, at my level, everything you fight, including bosses, dies in your first wave of attack if you gave everyone weapons that has special attacks.

Also for my personal opinion, I kept Adonis, because he is cool like that (and good stats) and Xehnon, because he has the highest MAG among the other mages, and he has more spells than the rest. I prefer to use a well balanced team, with all the 4 classes.

[edit] What the hell, 1200

I concurr. The game can be pretty easy if you know what you're doing, especially with the double exp egg and double-check or whatever to mass level up. I find I balance the difficulty by releasing my einherjar relatively quickly as I recieve them. Makes it fun to use new characters as I get them. To attempt to enjoy the game how it should be enjoyed. I frown upon using 3 main characters, I only did that near the beginning of the game when I didn't know much better.

I think Tri-Ace made a nice setup here for the addicted VP2 gamer, with many areas to compensate for the difficulty and fun factor.

I as well praise a well balanced team of all the classes. Xhenon is the shit.

How can you guys defeat bosses the first time with full 5 bonus? I find that pretty hard, take a look at the Magma boss for example. I think I was down to 1 bonus orb and I basically got shit for it >_>.

Maybe if I were to take them down the 2nd or 3rd time they'd be easy, but then they don't net as much experience.

^ High level, tweak your equipments, accessories, equiped skills, and make sure you have special attacks in your weapons. The R1 dash helps considerably to move about while prevents the boss from attacking you. Do remember that you can split up your team members. Make some of them your decoys while the rest goes in for the kill.

Also, that magma thing is weak against ice and absorbs fire if it wasn't obvious enough.

Nah really, fire gets doused by water/ice elements? Get outta town.

I just beat the Crawsus Forest Ruins and it wasn’t so bad, except for falling in those damned poison pools. The boss was probably the easiest, compared to the mini bosses, which the siding mages can be tough to handle.

I got the double EXP sealstone, and carry that with me to basically every boss fight now.

NOW ONTO THE PALACE OF THE HYPERVENTILATING DRAGON!

(Is this where I can find the EXP friend share sealstone?)

Yeah. By the time the two characters leave your party, they'll leave behind 4 items that give you instant 300k EXP for one person. It should make up to some characters you're not using.

I'm guessing the two charas are



I don't want to unnecessarily keep level up.

Uhh no,

OH SHIT.

Particularly, I'm just at 31 with Alicia so this talk about netting equal EXP for all characters interest me a whole damn lot.

Also Rufus wins for his Blinding Blaze (or something) because it allows for a consecutive 4-way combo (just put Alicia second in line).

Yar, you are not really expected to get those special weapons. They really do break the main game entirely and remove any sense of difficulty the game might have otherwise had. I really suggest not bothering with it your first time through the game, but eh, its really up to you.

DAMN! Now here's the decision. Get basically what could be considered VP2's version of the FFX's Celestial Weapons (which basically made the final battle a joke), or go through it the hard way...

Do these SW have any special attacks as well? If so, DAMN SON!

These might come in handy in the Sepheric Gate.

There IS a Sepheric Gate in VP2, amirite?

The BIGGEST Question I have right now, is can you find that sealstone that gives EXP to everyone in your camp ground BEFORE you fight the "final boss" for chapter three? I don't want to loose those 4 guys just yet.

oh god I'm lost XD I stop following this thread just after all the spoiler tag began XD

and now i read that you need to level specific character to get some special item? I'm lost XD

I'm curently in chapter three just after beating the dragon boss and i'm just like lv 8 there and the agme is really difficult to me.

so what I should do now? like use which character... so I start over? (I don't mind) and I still have all the Einherjar now I mainly use Alicia, Lezard, hmm forgot the two others character name...well the first guys to get ine the game the archer and the big guy that is like a "clone" to Arngrim XD

i'll probably start over but I want to have some tips on what to do XD (damn this game seem complicated now XD)

Dylan?

Anyway, blind-rushing to places is suicide in this game. Power-level is EXTREMELY necessary here and I cannot stress that enough. Use Rufus (the archer) and Dylan (the Arny clone) and stick to it for a while until you meet characters you want to level up specifically (Hell, their specials are zip though, they virtually have the SAME soul breaks except the characters relevant to the story).

Tips? Skill hunting. Get the runes needed. Equip weapons that deliver a high payload and not to worry at Chapter one because NONE of them can Soul Break. Another is pan the camera to a good level so you can have a clear view of where you're going; use the dash button OFTEN - Use this to go to the enemy side and hit them hard there. Most of all, repeat a dungeon over and over; Not necessarily a boss but leave an area with an enemy defeated and come back to the same area - Do that A LOT.

And for others, you'll know along the way.

Equipping your characters with the right skills, armor, accessories and learning to use the battle system correctly all help much more than raw levels...

That too, but I found that a good level often helps. Ah well, my bad once more. Just making sure what's equipped is at best too (but hard to earn money AND I don't want to lose EXP in the process. Oh well).

I suggest otherwise. This is not a game worth replaying a second time, and I'm a perfectionist when it come to games. If you're like me, I suggest get those weapons. You play a game to enjoy it, not to challenge yourself. What is there to challenge yourself to begin with. This game is already easy, no harm making it even easier AS A REWARD TO YOUR "HARD WORK".

Double Post:
Yes, and like I said, it's worth it. The reward is really satisfying.

And yes. You gete it in the final dungeon of chapter 3.

WOOT. I got to the Palace of Shanghai Dragon. The monsters are somewhat tough, but I think Leone/Dyland are at 25/26 and Lezard and Arngrim are at 31. I got the EXP Friend Sealstone. Most of the battles I'm avoiding since it's a pain to get in and out of this place. I'm surprised you keep saying this game is easy, Scarlet, what stats do you have for your guys even? Well, I'll give it to you that I haven't had a game over yet. I don't worry too much about money. I usually stick with the EXP only seal spheres and sell off unwanted items, which I can usually get about 40,000-50,000 OTHs.

Also, here's the dungeon theme for PALACE OF THE VENERATED DRAGON - Disturb the Doubtful Sleep by none other than Sakuraba. Such an awesome theme that brings back that VP1 feel to the music and mood of dungeon crawling.

Too bad I only have about 2500 crystals right now, I need 4000 to “buy” that sweet EXP Friend sealstone.

My characters are always over leveled. Loooool
I can't believe it's so hard for you to get sealstones. I only buy sealstones that are beneficial to me, like directly having a positive effect on my stats. Plus, use that item called "tome of something" where it changes all monsters to crystals. Do it right, and it's 100 crystals from that battle.

Also, here's what I normally do. I'll sweep a dungeon clean once, with the double EXP sealstone, then the second time with the double OTH sealstone.

When you get to chapter 4, you'll even get the triple OTH sealstone. Money isn't a problem there.

And that track could be the best track so far. Haven't completed the game yeet so I wouldn't finalize my decision just yet.

ALSO AIM

I like how you post as if you speak for everyone when you really only speak for yourself. Obviously some people ENJOY being challenged, otherwise why would pretty much every tri-Ace RPG to date have multiple levels of difficulty?

Besides that, who are you to say this game is easy? You overleveled your ass off and you used weapons you weren't meant to have. You seriously have about as much a right to call this game easy as someone who sharked themself to level 99.

Well that aside, the monsters in Palace of Chicken Fried Dragon aren't exactly super easy even at level 31 for Arngrim. I don't have very good weapons for him, and I want to get the Zweizigger sword or something. Some of them I can't even put a scratch on. Lezards magic seems to miss them >_>

VP2 has multiple levels of diiffculty? I'm not too sure.

How do you learn Sap Guard? That's the number one skill I need for my mages or other people, it seems only Rufus has learned it. Do I need to equip more of the ruines that have that property?

What do you say, is it best to begin with the psx chapter, or with the ps2 one?

It get's increasingly difficult everytime you beat the game. Same for everytime you beat the Seraphic Gate. The first time everything is about 120% harder with maybe 3X the amount of HP. It has much smaller boosts everytime afterwards, and keeps getting harder up until your 50th time through the game. (Seraphic gate only has 13 levels of increasing difficulty)

I admit, it wouldn't be worth it to play it 50 times through (I've never played a game that many times before...) but the second time has the largest boost anyway and may as well be considered "hard mode". Plus you get lots of cute random music to play with by holding L2; like a 16bit Star Ocean 1 version of incarnation of the devil. Adorable.

Oh I see. I think I'll only play the Seraphic Gate once or something. God, all this time for a second round I think I'll pass. Not too sure still, but I think I'll be sick of leveling everyone up. Oh well, I'm looking forward to these overpowered killer weapons anyways. After that I probably don't have to worry about leveling up.

Why does Alicia in your av look more cute than Alicia in the game! :tpg:

I love this picture too. Dylan looked quite badass in it. Same artist that did a lot of the artwork from the original game. At least the scene style artwork. It definitely reminds me of the groupshots I saw for the original game. Too bad my desktop is widescreen or I'd use the wallpaper I snatched the avatar from. =/

It'll take awhile to level everyone. I did it (or rather, am currently in the process...) in my 2nd run through just cause the completionist in me has to see them at least one time, and it's starting to irritate me. I actually find it's faster to level them solo at the Chateau Obsession since Arngrim, Dylan and Lezard at least can 1 or 2 hit kill the leader enemies there so the fights take like 4 seconds. (150% fire damage, 120% attack sealstones)

I probably wouldn't have been even half as bothered by the earlier comments either, if he hadn't have called the game easy after admitting to using the overpowered weapons. One of the greatswords Dylan drops off has 850 attack power and allows SC. That right there just entirely breaks the game. You will be able to kill pretty much every boss in one chain of SC combos and that's ridiculous.

It's even more ridiculous when you realise, you will probably be spending more time grinding for the weapons than you would have spent going through the rest of the game as normal, too... Especially considering that you would still reach 40+ just leveling casually by the end of the game. If I had stopped to level I could have probably gotten in the mid 50's even but I didn't feel it was necessary since the last boss didn't really put up too much of a fight even at 43 (I think?) so, eh.

I've been playing the game for over 90 hours now. Beat Seraphic Gate 3 times, got 5 characters to 99 and trying to get the 'Broken Sword Tyrhung' from Tiamat on Floor 4. I must say, the game is getting extremely repetative by now, and makes me hardly want to replay it anymore. Most likely due to the fact that I've been using the same characters for too long and I've seen their Soul Crush attacks way too many times. Add that to the fact that the bosses have millions of HP and take 20-40 minutes to kill. If I fight Dirna one more time I'm going to puke.

Anyway, I've been hardly using some of the 'best' characters at all. Like Rufus and Dylan. So theres still a little reason left to keep grinding even after all the work I've done.

Take a look at these: Insane Damage + 999 Hits.

I hope to accomplish one of those soon. lol

Those crazy Japs I tell ya.

They get RPGs down to a science. Doesn't matter which boss it is really. >_>

I'm an idiot, you know why? Because I sold off all 90 some of the Tome of Alchemist which turns baddies into Crystals. Of course I didn't know this and now I'm trying to save up 4000 crystals to get the EXP friend sealstone. GOD!

HOLY SHIT! I thought the guy was just only do 1 dmg ever and over but that really added up, then BOOM with the Soul Break.

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...A/HOLYSHIT.jpg

I just loved the racked up crystals, man I need somethign like that for leveling up now.

How come the Japanese version has them talking more than ours do? I'm jealous now!

the 999 hit combo video isn't from a Japanese person, it's from tri-ace fanboy at gamefaqs. He imported the game and still sticks around answering questions and posting help videos.

Well then, that explains it.

Well, how hard would you say is it to get 1200 cystals, since I'm at 2800 and I need a total of 4000 to get the shared EXP sealstone, I want that! I don't have anymore tome of alchemist or whatever, and killing monsters over and over again is going to take a long time. Which dungeon can I find these things again?

Our version talks just as much in battle. You can use certain Einherjar in battle in conjunction with others to stimulate brief conversations that can (on small occasion) explain a tiny bit more about their histories/backgrounds. Celes and Adonis for example, have a talk which shows he died by her hand when he was alive. =P

Easiest way to get crystals is to air combo to shimmy them out of the enemy. Use whatever attacks you can to get them up in the air and try to keep them there as long as you can.

Woot, I finally got my 4000 now and bought the share EXP stone. Arngrim is at 39, Dyland is at 33, Leone at 30 and Lezard at 38 or something. Still a whiles to go... man!

EDIT:

YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Arngrim 45 - Dylan 40 - Leone 36 (I don't know if I still want to keep at it), and Lezard 43. I think Alicia is at probably 42 or something like that.

Plus the lowest level Einherjar is at like 33. I like how they were at the maximum HP of like 300 way back at like level 5, but now they're level 30's and the life bar is all yellow. :tpg:

If anyone wants to do this, learn the training skill as it gives 150% more experience after battle, but you lose out on battle capabilities, but that's barely anything.

Im at the same spot you are. Alicia:43 - Arngrim:35 - Leone:35 and Lezard 38. I have no Einherier though, i sent them in no time with the experience orb.

Shame the game doesnt have (at least for now) characters that can handle spears.

What, then how are you going to survive with like only Alicia and Rufus in Chapter 4? Like a two man super team? Unless more "permanent" people come.

Hey, this has been bugging me for a while. I'm too lazy to dig out my VP1 game, but what age is Lezard and Arngrim when they die (not really a spoiler for VP1), since Arngrim is 26 in VP2. Doesn't VP2 take place hundreds of years before VP1? Then how did Arngrim and Lezard, who are human, stay basically youthful? Unless they have the fountain of youth LOLOLOL.

Reincarnation is a prominent theme in both games.

Herm, I'll have to check out VP1 again when I want to try the hard difficulty. I'll probably just have to pay more attention for that detail. I just thought the Arngrim we see in VP2 is the exact same in VP1 and didn't die until then, which Lenneth said hello to him.

Fight besides two Valkyries in a "life time", that's a real treat!

I see a shining beacon of light in the distance... BOSS BATTLE!

The chapter 6 unnamed characters that join is a sweet touch to be able to use them.

At the beginning of Chapter 5 now, gotta head back to Dipan (again -_-) for some ghoul powder. The story has gotten really intense and dramatic, im thoroughly enjoying it.

^ in reply:


Well, I beat the game. Clocked in 67 hours, but I probably played only about 50 of those hours, accounting for all the hours I had left my ps2 on.

Now I will discuss a little bit of the ending.

In spoilers, for people who have beat the game ONLY:

Aquas, you left your PS2 on while not playing it? Why?

I'm nearing the end of chapter 3 now...WOW, I'm completely impressed and in love with this. A few minor nitpicks (not sure I like the skill system vs the old point system, need more big attacks, more plot-driven than character driven), but some of the best dungeon crawling and fighting I've done in years. I think the game is making a mistake by trying to introduce too many aspects, but the core gameplay makes them worth adjusting to.

I can see where many people would hate this though. It can be pretty nasty to casual RPG players and a lot of the minor references to VP1 might be missed by someone who hasn't played that yet (not to mention how immensely my familiarity with the original's battle system has eased the learning curve).

I expect it to get better from here, though I need to unload some of the people I've gathered (something that really sucks compared to the original).

I do that too. Bad habit. Sometimes I'll take a break and don't know whether or not I'm through playing, so I leave the machine on. If I am, I'll forget if I saved beforehand and be forced to save with the extra time. Always inflates my playtimes something awful.

By the time those people leave, i'll sure have some new Einherier to train. Plus, I don't think that Rufus and Dylan are the only permament characters in the game. Aelia, where are you!!!!!

Are you kidding. If you plan to get all that in the next game, it'll be much harder because DIFFICULTIES INCREASE in new game+. You speak as if EVERYONE wants a challenge while you're actually speaking for yourself.

It's bloody easy to level up. And this is my reward. Bottomline, this game is EASY. What are you even arguing about. Don't blame me if you have a hard time leveling up and call someone a cheater instead.

[edit] Need I to add that, "used weapons I'm not supposed to have"? Did I use a cheating device to debug this game? I simply used the weapons the GAME GAVE ME at that point. Do I sense jealousy from someone who didn't get those weapons? Think before you speak please. Don't speak in a tone that invokes arguments when you have nothing to base this on.

Lol, okay. You aren't even worth my time to argue with.

You can scream at me in PM if you want, but I'm not gonna let the topic derail into something fitting of the sewers, just because you can't control your tumultuous emo rage.

Wow, you vote me a 1 just because you cant win this arguement. "Not worth my time" should be my line, since obviously you could argue further if you actually have valid points to begin with. That's okay, I gave you a 1 as well. Was already expecting that from someone like you.

Can't we all just get along? Hmm? No more of this in the thread please. =p

[delete]

[delete]edit:I've come to my senses and we both came to an agreement. This never happened. >.>[/delete]

Okay, the start Chapter 6 just made this game for me:

Exactly the reason I do it. I usually stop playing at a save point though. Heh. I find it more convenient at times to just leave it on if I'm not sure if I'm done playing.

Now that I've finished VP2... on to Baten Kaitos Origins... yay more Sakuraba =D!

I was having a "discussion" with Scarletdeath last night which mainly consisted of "LOL NO U" "LOL FFXII SUCKS" "NO U HACK.WHATEVER SUCKS", yeah. Great times.

I don't do that to my PS2, I'm worried the laser is going to burn out or something, especially that I have an older PS2 from like 4 years ago, 2nd generation I think SCPH-39001 or something. Even though PS2 are cheap these days, like $129 Canadian, I don't want to take that unnessary hit if I can avoid it. I don't think I'll be getting back to VP2 until like Friday, which I can finally find time to venture on beyond level grinding.

Looool, that wasn't even a "discussion". We were going "U" "NO U" "MINUS 50 DKP" "USK" :tpg:

To be on topic, I'm still at chapter 5. the game began to feel repetitive for me, so I played Samurai Warriors 2 instead.. >.>

One question to those who finished this though, how long is chapter 5 and 6?

:tpg: Is it like the first one? OH SHIT OICHI WITH HER WEAPON OH GOD SWATHING THROUGH ENEMIES WITH A TOY!~

Also still at level 31. Not only I'm waiting for the guide but hell, like I said, responsibilities. The training skill I have for Alicia ONLY and the others can just sit and look pretty for now. I'm at Dragonscrypt at the moment but levelling up like mad at the Crawsus thing (since my first run with the Hydra there netted me 600,000 EXP with no gold {Experience Pig Law} and willing to do it over and over again. Now I need to have training for the main characters; the einhejar can just look pretty at the side until I touch them.

I still feel envious though. I feel sad >.>

Why do it at Crawsus? Go to Palace of Dragon, find the Halo stone, go 2 rooms to the left where you find one of the baddies that craws on the ground holding a sealstone, something called "Bread", and you fight the giant enemy crab (no really), which doesn't do much damage and gets you like 150k experience if you get the 5 orb bonus. That's a super fast way.

Also, get the Share EXP sealstone in the Palace, so you can get ALL your party members to get some experience, not only the active ones.

They made some major changes in the game actually. No more items this time, they're replaced by "skills" instead. Plus new characters and a new game mode. If you liked the first one, get this one as well.

[edit] Oh, there's now a shop to buy stuff too.

This has been bugging me. The third boss of the game, the dragon that splits in two after so much damage in those ruins, the first time I fought him, he died in one hit. Like, the instant I first struck him. Did the game just glitch up there, I don't understand it at all. I fought him again afterwards and not only did that not happen but he killed everyone off with the transfer effect.

Are you using Celes at all? She comes with an attack (Soul Pierce) that has a chance of causing instant death, including against some bosses.

Transfer effect, is that essentially your guys getting ejected by the natural surroundings, like getting knocked off the platform for the 3rd boss? One time both of my guys got knocked off and I was like OH SHIT! It took a few rounds to get the two back, they just came back!

RING OUT!

Anyone who can answer me?...

If you have the PSX one, start with that. If you don't, start with VP2. That simple.

Finally got the game. Quite emberassing that it took me this long, but hey.

Like 10 hours in the game, got my good friend Arngrim, which of course will be a keeper. I like the battle system and dungeons, but still have to get used to some other things like the skill learning and that orb pickup shit.

Last night I roughly lost a hours work after dying because of one of these orbs. It had a effect that returned some of the damage I did, and before I realized it I killed my own characters. =(

How does that work exactly? when you have it in your hands its a negative effect for your group, but when its on a statue its a negative effect for mobs?

btw what are some good skills to get early on? right now I got the one that boosts RDM by 50% and ATK by 20%, and thats quite handy at the moment.

That skill that absorbs the first 100 damage seems perfect but I cant get it yet.

So, since i don't have any of the 2, i should begin with silmeria?

Go ahead. I don't see why not since this is just a prequel. =\