Valkyrie Profile (1999)

It's winter and I have just finished my first game for the year and it's one of my all time favorites. Valkyrie Profile has always been something that just makes me feel sad. It isn't overly depressing but it's just melancholic. Like winter you will be surrounded by muted colors and reminders of death both figurative and literal in the case of the game. It is a game that really makes me feel the winter and I don't think I'd change anything with how I started the year with this special game.

Valkyrie Profile is one of my favorite JRPG'S where you play as the titular Valkyrie named Lenneth. You are tasked by Odin and Freya to prevent Ragnarok by gathering strong Einherjar who will assist the gods in their war at the end of the world. So you travel around Midgar and find mortals who would join you as you train them up to be worthy for the gods. There is more that is going on to be fair. I know the premise sounds simple and I think for a majority of the time, it is.

I think this game is so beautiful in what it wants to accomplish but I also find a lot of the beauty of this game in its constraints. You have so many Einherjar to collect and so many cities to go to that it makes sense why things feel empty and desolate in these towns. It adds to the feel of the coming apocalypse, like Midgar is just stuck in waiting mode for the new rebirth to take place. It cannot oppose fate or move forward.

Even all of the Einharjar are a part of this. After all, they can only be recruited through death so you will see a lot of these characters die. Most of these stories I think are well done. Especially given how limited the screen time is with them. There are some that just get the point across effectively and you feel for them. Then there are others that Lenneth clearly doesn't like but she is under Odin’s orders to acquire strong souls. All in all the game works well within the constraints of when it was released.

Lenneth herself clearly has a lot more going on as well. You see it from the jump how she feels nostalgic from a memory she is having before walking across a dreary field in Asgard. You do get to learn a lot about Lenneth through the game so I won't spoil anything except to say that the story isn't completely linear and I kind of love how the story is handled in the game that way. It can be non-linear that you won't understand what's going on if you don't know that and aren't aware that there are multiple endings, it is easy to stumble across scenes and be left wondering what it all means. I would say for this right here that if you want to play this, pick normal for a first playthrough and just mess around. I'll talk about game structure in a second but I really had the best nostalgic experience fumbling my way through this game. If you need to see the whole picture and get the best ending there are plenty of guides for that and it will be hard to know what you are missing because some of the requirements are a little strict.

The game structure goes as follows, after your very brief tutorial in the beginning you are given a time limit of 180 periods to gather forces and face Ragnarok. It might sound like a lot because searching for souls, exploring dungeons, resting and visiting towns all take time away. I want to reassure people who might hear that and feel pressure or anxiety from something like having a countdown clock that I had so much extra time. The game is pretty generous and if you do follow a guide you should have no trouble. I do want to add that one of the endings that happens is if you intentionally do a bad job.

After you reach certain points you get a progress report from Freya about the battle going on during your time in Midgard. It is here that you get to check in on the Einherjar you send after they meet certain requirements. I know that mostly after you recruit them, their stories are done but it is very nice to have little updates about them as they converse with the gods. You learn how they regret and change or who they miss from their old life. It's another spot where I feel like there would be more here because none of the guides aside from Odin Freya and a couple of others are voiced and I would have loved to see or hear more interactions.

Thankfully though the game is just about always gorgeous with the pixel art characters and pre rendered background images. I loved walking around the towns and flying over the map in the overworld. I always think about the cutscene imagery in particular. It is very good and wonderfully handled. I'm sure this is nostalgia speaking but the game still looks great and I wouldn't change a thing. The other thing I would not change is Motoi Sakuraba’s score. It just fits here well. There is just something about it that helps add to the melancholy. I wouldn't call it depressing but I just felt down while playing.

It's a good thing then that the feelings of melancholy gets obliterated by the constant serotonin of the combat system. Before I go more in depth here I want to say that I am so happy that enemies are clearly marked in dungeon and it is up to you to engage in combat. No random encounters here. Once you do initiate battle you will get to play around with a system I really admire. You still take it in turns but each party member is tied to a face button and it is your job to execute combos with them to break off big finishing moves. It is really cool that all of the recruitable characters have their own super moves. One thing to keep in mind which can be a tad frustrating is that move animations have hit boxes, it is like you are playing a fighting game. So if you aren't sure how to use the character or figure out how to combo, it can feel frustrating to see your characters whiff. I do want to also mention that you don't have to be a fighting game guru to beat this game. The game is pretty responsive for something from 1999. I just wish there was something like this again because now Valkyrie is just an action game and that makes me sad because there was something special here that very easily could have been refined and iterated on.

So where does that leave me? I talked about winter because it's normally a sad time for me. I don't always love the holidays with my family and I also just get sad. Playing Valkyrie Profile really just helped me see winter evoked in a video game. I don't want to sound like I'm crying for help here or anything but it just helped me be sad and be okay with being sad for a bit. Valkyrie Profile really does feel like a one of a kind series that just pulls a lot of design choices that feel chaotic when isolated but it somehow forms something greater than itself. It's why it was one of my favorite games to play in my childhood and even now all these years later, why I know I will come back to it again. So please, if you love JRPG's and really want something that is unique and really not like anything else, give this game a chance.

At the time of writing this, Valkyrie Profile may well be one of my favorite PS1 era JRPGs. While it isn't quite perfect, it is almost perfect.

The story is excellent. You're introduced to your protagonist, Lenneth who has to gather souls of deceased warriors to fight for Odin in the war against the Vanir, preparing for the ever-present Ragnarok. From there, you enter a somewhat episodic sequence of recruiting party members, who all have interesting stories preceding their imminent deaths. Even the more generic stories are engaging, but there's no lack of stories that are enjoyable. From there, you will uncover conspiracies about the world and Lenneth herself. How far you go in that direction fully depends on whether or not you get the A or B endings.

The game is very open ended and has a lot of replayability; from the three difficulties that have completely different dungeons, to the three different endings that also vary greatly. There are 24 playable characters, so each playthrough can be something unique. The game gives you a time limit that varies slightly depending on the difficulty to go to dungeons and recruit characters, but you can skip some of both. Sending warriors to Valhalla is voluntary and allows you to net rewards depending on whether or not you meet certain criteria.

Valkyrie Profile has one of the most engaging battle systems. The player uses a party of 4 characters that are assigned to four buttons. Clicking a button will make your character attack. If the weapon permits, clicking multiple times allows for multiple hits. This is important for when you want to land the very important combos, which allows the characters to fill a meter that allows them to use special attacks or it may cause the enemies to drop gems or crystals, which recharges special moves/magic or multiplies experience, respectively. This system made grinding enjoyable, as it never felt old, and I've always felt compelled to try to get as many experience crystals as possible against tougher enemies.

The various items that can be found add to this. Spells that can be given to mages can be found as book items, while other general skill books can permanently teach every party member a useful skill, which can add new fighting techniques or boost stats. There breakable and unbreakable weapons, the former of which are usually more powerful, but will sometimes break, as the name implies. The transmutation system allows the player to change one item to another, which allows for further customization and experimentation with certain items.

The art direction is top notch. The spritework is really well done, as is the character art. The pre-rendered backgrounds are very nice to look at, and each town and dungeon has it's own personality and is very memorable. The game is filled with a soundtrack that will leave you humming some of the tunes.

The voice acting can be very hit or miss. Many of the characters are actually voiced by VAs who appeared in the Pokemon dub of all things, so that isn't all that surprising. Hearing Mystina speak in general can be a real treat, but then characters like Lucian really reveal their acting ability, or lack thereof, at dramatic moments.

Some of the flaws of this game includes the under-utilization of characters. Apart from Lenneth, Freya and Lezard, most characters only get about two appearances at most, which is a real shame because many of them are established very well, and you will grow to like them more as you use them in battle. Even the true main villain is only given a handful of appearances.

Which brings me to the other, commonly cited issue that the game suffers from: the very obtuse requirement for getting the best ending. In the context of the story, it makes sense that you have to do what's required, but nowhere in the game does it make an reference to what's required. It was one of the few instances where I turned to a walkthrough, and I don't know if I would have been able to figure it out without one.

Incidentally, the other instances where a walkthrough was needed was a handful of the hard mode puzzles. Most of the hard mode dungeons have at least one annoying gimmick, from rotating rooms, to bottomless pits that boot your ass to the world map (wasting two periods in the process.)

One more positive is that the game has a legitimately satisfying post-game dungeon, a huge labyrinth that not only push your put your abilities to the ultimate test, but allows you to recruit some god-tier party members that cannot be recruited in the main game.

Ultimately, this is a game that I would highly recommend for people looking for a classic, but timeless, JRPG, a good story, or just someone looking for something different. Hell, I'd recommend to pretty much anyone who is reading this, even by accident.

This is a tricky one. I'd heard so much about this game back in the day, and picked it up in 2008 when I bought a PSP. Sadly due to life circumstances it fell by the wayside, and only now, during my 2020 backlog project (because what the hell else am I going to do to while away the pandemic), did I finally get to it. And...

I feel like if I had played this back when it first came out I might feel differently, but I bounced pretty hard off this. It's -gorgeous- to look at, and the soundtrack is pretty great, but its story and storytelling is weak as all hell. The writing is definitely of its time, but that makes it quite difficult to go through now without nostalgia or pre-existing affection guiding my hand and helping me through.

It's also obtuse AF and about as monotonous. I heard so much about its unique combat system, and yes, it is unique, but it's also quite dull and lacking in strategy. Or, I should say, lacking in the sort of strategy that I find interesting in most RPGs. In the end, it left me about as cold as Star Ocean: Second Story, which I also found to look quite beautiful (at the time) but played terribly.

In the end, I made it to chapter two or three but was getting nothing from it. Not one character's story evoked any degree of emotion or interest, and the overall plot is very loose and not terribly involved. Even for its time this is weak storytelling. It's clearly more interested in the individual vignettes, but unfortunately none of the vignettes themselves are well written or all that interesting.

Cool concept overall, and gorgeous visuals, but where I am these days that's just not enough to carry me through. I either need to be emotionally invested in the story/characters or I need to feel like the gameplay is actually requiring something of me, and I felt neither of those here.

Jeanne D'arc is next, and then I can finally say I'm done with the PSP portion of this backlog...