Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Chris Miller

In some circles, the original Valkyrie Profile on PS1 is considered somewhat of a “holy grail” of RPG’s.  It is spoken of with near-reverance, and is considered one of those games that truly defines the genre for an entire generation.  I, however, do not travel in those circles.  For me, the original VP game was a semi-decent action RPG with a cool story and a few unique gameplay mechanics.

Go ahead, flame away.  I put on my asbestos underwear this morning

While I may have commited the ultimate act of RPG heresy with that admission, I am always a sucker for a SquareEnix developed SRPG, regardless of its pedigree or background.  These guys typically know how to get everything just right, and have yet to miss on a game in this particular genre.  I figure that even though I might be rather ‘meh’ about the VP license, there’s no way Squeenix and Tri-Ace will screw up what should be a slam dunk title.  Right?  Here goes…

VP: CotP tells the story of Wyl, who apparently lives in a world that was constructed solely from clay and mud.  Nearly every level will consist of some shade of dull browns, greys, and greens, and there is very little color to spruce up the proceedings.  Given the developer’s pedigree, I was quite surprised at how mediocre the graphics were.  Most of what you see would have been right at home on the GBA, and many of the sprites look they were copy/paste jobs from the last couple Final Fantasy Tactics games.   There’s plenty of different tile sets available, but each one is as dull and lifeless as the last.  Maybe they were shooting for “gritty and realistic”, but they unfortunately overshot the mark and landed squarely in “boring”.  Even the super-special combo attacks – huge anime inspired aerial assaults – look very rough and lo-res pixels abound.  It’s worth noting that while you can hit the A button to skip the bulk of these drawn out attacks, you’ll still catch about 5 seconds of the beginning and the end.  This isn’t bad the first few times, but since the gameplay requires you to use these huge attacks for every…single…enemy, it does get a bit old.

All the dialog is delivered via talking head portraits, and these fare a little bit better in the detail department.  The animators did a great job of rendering multiple portraits to convey different emotions, and the artwork in these is typically very well done.  The detailed backgrounds for these dialog segments are also pretty sharp.

Sadly, most of the sound designers took their cue from the artists and decided boring and generic would be the way to go.   All the music is completely forgettable.   I understand a few pieces were versions of tracks from the original game, which doesn't say much for that game's sountrack either.  There is some voice acting, but it is limited to either short post-battle quips or hollering the name of the super-attacks as they happen.  There’s not much variety here either, so be prepared to hear the same one-liners over and over and over again.

There are plenty of DS games that provide full voice-over work for dialog segments, and I’m a little surprised Tri Ace didn’t go this route.  There is a significant amount of high-minded dialog (lots of “thee”, “thou”, and “forthwith”), and even a tiny bit of voice over work would have gone a long way towards connecting the player with the characters.

The control scheme is standard SRPG fare.  Use the D-pad to move around the battle grid, and buttons to initiate attacks.  During each attack sequence, the characters involved in the attack are mapped to the face buttons.  Similar to previous VP games, the player uses a sequence of timed button presses to continue attack combos, cause more damage, and gain extra XP.  It takes a while, but once you figure the combo timing, it’s possible to cause massive amounts of damage simply by knowing when to press which button.  The early game will feel a bit button-mashy, but you’ll be an attack combo, enemy juggling machine by the end of the game.  Everything else - world map, shops, menus, etc - are laid out well and function exactly like you'd expect.  It was a bit frustrating not being able to see if you already had a particular item or weapon when shopping, but that's a pretty minor gripe.

It’s worth noting that Tri Ace didn’t try to shoehorn in any touch screen controls, which is a welcome change.  VP: COTP works just fine without ever touching the stylus.

The story set-up for VP:COTN is very strong, and one of the more intriguing aspects of the game.  Rather than focus on Lenneth (the titular Valkyrie), it instead tells the story of Wyl.  When Wyl’s father was killed in battle, Lenneth descended onto the battlefield and took his soul to Valhalla - which is typically the highest honor a soldier can receive.  In the aftermath, however, Wyl’s mother went insane, his sister starved to death, and his family essentially fell apart.  In typical emo fashion, Wyl decides this is all Lenneth’s fault, swears revenge on her, and vows that he will one day kill her.  When he nearly dies in battle, the dark forces of the underworld Hel (yes, that’s how it’s spelled) make him a deal:  We’ll help you kill Lenneth, but your soul will be ours for eternity once the deed is done.  Wyl agrees and sets out to complete his grim task.  Along the way, he gets sucked into a clash between warring nations that is very reminiscent of the original Final Fantasy Tactics storyline.  Sadly, while the story set-up is strong and the first few hours are extremely interesting, it all unravels pretty quickly through rushed and shoddy storytelling.  VP: COTN is an extremely short game by SRPG standards (I finished in just over 13 hours), and it feels like they simply didn’t have enough time to tell the story properly.

VP:COTN’s gameplay forces the player to rethink their gaming paradigms.  While it appears to be a pretty standard grid-based SRPG at first glance, playing it as such will get you killed – and frustrated – in a hurry.  There are some unique gameplay mechanics that completely change the way you need to approach the game. Some of these are good, but most of them fall pretty flat.

Let’s start with the good.  I touched on this in the “Controls” section, but instead of simply trading blows with opponents, each attack switches over to a short cut-scene showing your characters and the enemy.   Each character has a set number of attacks (depending on their equipped skills or weapons), and you manually trigger these attacks with the face buttons.  Each attack adds to a battle meter, and once this meter hits 100, you unleash a super-duper Soul Crush attack for major damage.  Good planning will allow you to string these Soul Crush’s together for some serious carnage.  Careful use of your attacks can also knock loose crystals for extra XP or gems for additional attacks.  Once you get the hang of it, timing these attacks is quite fun, and a fresh take on the “press X to attack” systems in most games. 

Unfortunately, the timed combat is really derailed by two other mechanics.  The first is the Siege System.  Sieges are triggered by how your four characters are positioned around enemies, and can provide some major bonuses.  If you surround an enemy on 2 sides, you receive a slight bonus, attacking from 3 sides gives a bit larger bonus, and walling an enemy in on all 4 sides gives you a huge advantage in terms of extra damage and additional attacks.  Unfortunately, the game practically forces you to get all 4 party members involved in every single attack, since most enemies are incredibly strong and will lay a beat-down on you if you don’t manage to kill them in a single turn.  This mechanic eliminates the need for real tactics when the only real strategy you need to be concerned about is, “is everyone in range for this attack?”. 

Compounding this problem is the Overkill system.  In Wyl’s deal with the devil, he was given a Plume (hence the title).  This Plume is designed to gather “sin” during battles, which is gained by doing additional damage to opponents after they hit 0 hit points.  There is a sin allotment for every battle, and if you reach it, you will receive some extra loot.  Double the Sin requirement, and you’ll get even cooler loot.  Fail to reach it, however, and a super-tough Hel minion will be waiting for you on the next level.  So not only are you required to kill all the bad guys, you essentially need to kill them twice in order to gain enough sin to get the good weapons and items.   

The combination of the Overkill and Siege mechanics mean every battle will be nearly identical:

1. Slowly advance the entire group (one square at a time) until you get into a single enemy's range.
2.  Once this single enemy is within range, surround them with all 4 characters.
3.  Do a couple super-duper-ultra-combo attacks to "overkill" them and gain max sin.
4.  Creep up (one square at a time) to the next enemy until you get in range.
5.  Go to 2.  Repeat until all enemies are dead.

The last unique feature is using the Plume itself.  Once during every battle, Wyl can use the Plume to unlock the abilities of a party member.  This will boost their stats by 10X (or more), and basically gives you a free pass for that particular battle.  Wyl also learns a typically powerful skill from them as well.  The catch is that once the fight is over, that character is gone for good.  In theory, this sounds like a cool idea, and forces the player to think about whether or not they are willing to permanently sacrifice a party member in order to win a fight.  Personally, however, I found that I spent so much time and effort developing my party, that there was no way I was just going to throw them to the dogs.  So I ended up with a base party of 4 characters that I used 90% of the time, then simply tossed in one of the multiple throw-away characters if I ever wanted to use the plume and automatically win.

VP: COFP is a completely linear game, and is probably the only SRPG I’ve every played that did not include any sort of random battles.  There are maybe 6-7 side missions, but your party is marched straight through the story without any real opportunities to a) gain additional levels, or b) practice the intricacies of the complex combat system.  This would have been OK if the game had been well-balanced, but it varied between ridiculously easy and incredibly difficult.   It doesn’t help that the AI is completely brain dead.  It’s a little annoying to know that if they were programmed with any common sense at all, most enemy troops could easily wipe the party in a turn or two.  Instead, they typically just stand there until you enter attack range, then charge headlong towards you until you pick them off.  And don’t even get me started on the missions where you need to escort or protect NPC characters.

There were also ridiculously long stretches with no save points, which made me wonder if Tri Ace simply forgot they were creating a game for a portable system.  At one point they strung 3 battles together with no save points in between, then tacked the crazy-difficult boss at the very end.  It took me over 3 hours just to reach the boss, and he damn near wiped my party in a single turn.  I came awfully close to having a DS-sized dent in my wall after that little exchange.

CP: COTP was designed with the idea that players would play through it more than once.  As with other Valkyrie Profile titles, it provides multiple endings depending on the order you complete the missions and which characters you decide to kill with the Plume.  When you finish a game and restart, your characters keep all the skills, items, and weapons from your previous game.  With it’s short length, there is quite a bit of incentive to play through again and see how the story might unfold differently.  I’ll give Tri Ace credit for stepping outside the box and trying to bring something a little different to the SRPG mix.  Unfortunately, this effort fell rather flat.  The potentially epic story fizzles because it was rushed, combat ends up feeling very monotonous, the game mechanics remove most of the actual strategy from battles, and the moronic AI makes everything either far easier or far harder than it needs to be.   All that being said, the combo-based combat system was enjoyable enough that I played through to the end, and I got about halfway through a second playthrough as well.   I think there’s a good game and some interesting ideas buried in there, but everthing is hamstrung by poor execution and balancing issues.   In the end, Valkyrie Profile series completists will probably enjoy it, but I'd tell most other people to steer clear.

Gaming Trend Score

70

1. Graphics: 67
2. Audio: 61
3. Controls: 88
4. Gameplay: 63
5. Value/Replay: 80
6. OVERALL:70