Gamer's Month - Valkyrie Profile

Valkyrie Profile

Developer: Tri-Ace, tri-Crescendo (soundwork)
Publisher: Enix
Platform: Playstation
Release Year: 2000

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I break out in sweat as I think about what to say about this game in the upcoming review day. I griped at my other half about this. I didn't sign up to do an ESSAY! I thought you would just write a small review and leave it at that. But no, it just cannot be. As my face just fell even further upon reviews and reviews I had seen since. I only wanted to do this review to give this game justice it deserved. And I still do not know if I can step up to the plate. I talked to several friends of mine and they keep on assuring me that if I just talk about why I choose this game, it'll be read. I realized, no I don't want it to be READ, I want it to be played!

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Play it as I heard it. Play it as why one should love gaming besides the experience of gaming. VGM has always been my source of my love for music. When I first heard about this game, I thought ooh, greek mythology, a valiant maiden kicking some serious ass, beautiful backdrops and decent 2D sprite animation, who doesn't LOVE that?

But that's not what blew me away. NO, what made me stop playing it twice since getting the hold of a copy 7 years ago. I'm always a fan of questing music since the golden old days of Dragon Quest overworld music. This track that you're listening to is only isolated to this specific dungeon, the Nethov Swamp I believe. I couldn't leave it. I couldn't push myself any further. I couldn't be hard pressed to care about anything else in the whole game after I listened to that track on streamless loop.

I didn't care about Motoi Sakuraba then. I didn't care about how awesome the battle gameplay was. I only cared about how I can get lost in that track and not budge for hours. A very select few games had done this to me. Panzer Dragoon is one of them.

Finally, just very recently (as in the last month or so), I had gathered enough courage to get this game running again and started over with new knowledge from the internet and the PSP version's guide book. I thought maybe I'll breeze through the game once more with an extra challenge on HARD. I had intended to reach the Seraphic Gate (optional dungeon, separate from the main game which opens up for you after beating the game) to complete the experience of the game.

To my delight, hard mode of the game was actually very easy and much more flexible than I thought (and should had known, considering my previous playthroughs). I was intentionally buffing my party up like mad to prepare for some kind of unfathomable enemy as I battled my way through hard mode. Hard mode allows you to explore more dungeons and more characters to recruit. The upside from normal and easy are the treasures from those dungeons to be very useful and powerful. Most of the breakable weapons for example. Slayer one-hit kill weapons are proven extremely effective against formidable enemies, that lessens the challenge this game has but only to allow much easier trekking through those dungeons to further progress the story.

Not that my party was so buff, those weapons eventually outlived their usefulness towards to the very last chapter. Why, I just enjoyed the battle system so much I didn't mind the grind. The last two chapters, I was slaughtering a group of enemies often in a turn or two! The experience of utilizing your party EFFECTIVELY was very gratifying.

This is also my second reason why I stopped playing it twice before. When I saw that you have to hit an enemy in a certain way, they'd drop magic gems (that rewards you more magic energy to cast magic or PWS (Purify Weird Soul)) or/and magic crystals that rewards you 5% more experience PER. I only realized I'd have to restart eventually once I understood and knew how.

PER crystal, you can accumulate SO much that you can level up a party twice over often. I considered this as a blessing in hard mode when the exp is cut by a third from normal. But that's not what mattered. Those exp crystals you gain from effectively utilizing those Tomes of Alchemy is what broke this game for me. When I say break, I don't mean it to sound negative, but rather change the challenge itself. I do like challenges, but rather the challenge to BREAK the challenge itself. The grind do get tedious and thankfully, you don't have to if you used those tomes of alchemy. And this game wisely gave you Elemental Specters and Ether Specters (which you can transmute into Tomes of Alchemy) in every chapter as a reward for sending up a recruit.

I didn't mind sending up my recruits as I did in my previous playthroughs. I was in the dark you see, I had no clue who to keep and who to buff early on. The mere thought of wasting all exp on a party member who I won't have for long just makes me nervous playing the game at all. But thank god for the internet and the psp guide (which is excellent btw), I learned of the vectors per character.



Vectors. As in direction of how the character will attack. Each character has 3 different moves, each has a different direction, hence vectors. On top of that, while comboing with your other characters, you can effectively create an excellent combo for those magic crystals, which was hitting an enemy while its in mid-air. These gauges and how powerful each character their attacks are by their PWS, energy consumption to effectively hitting the enemy at its weakness. As I researched carefully in choosing my party early on, I kept them as I sent the rest of them up with confidence. The downside is that you don't get some of them til late into the later chapters.

The game is smart enough to include a party exp orb. By doing additional event activities in dungeons from activating switches for doors or finding all of the treasures, you can build that exp orb to a million exp points! You of course can withdraw however amount of exp you wish to a character at anytime in a chapter, granted that the character is alive and with you. A character can level up by 50k by around level 35 to 50 or so. Just imagine that. See why you should go through hard mode anyway? Those extra dungeons provide just as more exp from those activities anyway.

And oh no, it doesn't stop there. There are stat improving items you can find midway in this game on hard mode. You can find DME (hit points) increasing item called Bracelet of Zoe and Coin of Fortune/Ring of Learning to increase exp and more over, Gem of Creation to push those extra magic gems out! Oh yeah, I was nuts about buffing my party up like mad. I wasn't going to let this game push me over. I was becoming more elastic to find that I'm just walking over enemies than having a hard time. I was having a blast! I was fortunate enough to encounter Cave of Oblivion part 8 in Chapter 1! Tome of Alchemy yielded one group of enemies into 7 levels for my party right there.

Without unnecessary breaking down the game in general, but know this, the game has 4 different paths (which alternates which/when recruits and dungeons appear) and Caves of Oblivion have 8 different parts that are RANDOM but determinable to those 4 paths. Typically you'd LIKE to have CoB's part 1 in Chapter 1 to beat through just fine, but that's never the case. That's why the guide is like ESSENTIAL to this game. Not saying you can't beat the game without it, but the odds are you won't get that A ending as you would like without it.

So this game turned out pretty gratifying from having superb music to utilizing the gameplay effectively for me. I was blowing through it much faster as I thought and I was worried about NOTHING. But it proves once more that being prepared and doing research paid off more so in the end. I beaten Bloodbane in 5 rounds. That's just the pinnacle of how powerful my party was. I was so proud.

Bloodbane, the horrible green dragon, is the third from last boss that can really test your party's strength up to that point in the game. He's one of those "endurance" wannabe bosses that will heal himself after 10 rounds, high defense and large amount of hp to speak for. He was just nothing once I knew what to do and pull off those PWS combo.

Midway into the game, you'll learn of the main plot towards to the A ending (if you're doing correctly) and its not really the ending itself that was rewarding the rather the getting to it. The events that happened before the ending is truly noteworthy to check out.

So yeah, this game just threw the two awesome parts at me and they were the music and the battle gameplay. I just don't know how else to glorify this game to you but to see and hear this game someday. Odds are, you great people probably already have.



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