Valkyrie Profile (1999)

I first seen this game in the early 2000s when my university roommate was playing. I remarked how similar the battle music was to Star Ocean 2, and any game related to that had to be legendary. So this game has been on my wishlist for decades and I only now got around to playing it. I tried to play the playstation version on PSP but it always froze during the opening. Instead I played the PSP version on Hard.

In the beginning I did not know about the shop in the menu so I was using the breakable weapons. I used Arngrim and Jelanda for the entire game while the last slot was Belenus at first. I transferred the archer Llewellyn and gave Bel the indestructible sword Valkyrie started with. Bel was actually using fists for a while until I found a second sword! Soon enough though I found the shop and bought a bow for Valkyrie. In retrospect I should have transferred Bel and just used a 3 person team. Then I got Lawfer and got the spinning spear with 3 attacks and bonus to CP on level up; he kicked ass and kept that spot for the entire game. I wasted periods early on by visiting each town; visiting towns should have been free because otherwise it discouraged checking them out for world building. From then on I transferred 2 characters each chapter with the most basic gear and minimal xp from the xp orb; usually level 3 to 5. It was much easier with the emerald necklace and its CP boost on level up. I used that and the bracelet of zoe to maximize everyone's level ups but it was incredibly obnoxious to constantly monitor the team's xp and swap equipment. Those items really should have been passive boosts for the entire party rather than equipment. I didn't quite understand the artifact and evaluation system so I gave all the beginning ones to Odin like a good Valkyrie. After a few chapters I realized I could save before opening the chests to see what each did and reload to only keep ths good ones. Later I realized that it was best to keep everything because transferring 2 people each chapter gave a massive boost to evaluation.

I spent excess periods grinding xp in the best dungeons available. I did the plant laboratory several times, and Oddrock dungeon many times even up to the final chapter because it only cost 1 period and was the best way to spend the last period. The tower of Lezard had better xp later and I did it so many times, and of course I found the materials to make the creation jewel for overpowered equipment. I used the dragon slayer swords to kill the zombie dragons. Later the Dipan castle had better xp and was much more straightforward. At the end Arianod dungeon had the best xp by far, and navigation was simple with those number levers. I made a simple map and designed an optimal route to hit all enemy floors. By this point I had upgraded to better swords but I had Arngrim go back to the icicle sword for all the ice weak enemies here. I did check a walkthrough several times to help with puzzles because I had better things to do than spend too much time figuring them out. The only time I had real trouble in battle was the wraith boss in chapter 6. Gravity blessing one shot everyone except Valkyrie but she did manage to solo the boss afterwards by chugging healing potions. It helped that she had lightning resist armor and helm. Afterwards I reloaded and checked the walkthrough how to win properly. Oh yeah that holy water artifact could kill it instantly. I ended up using the 2nd holy water towards the end game on a similar regular enemy that I let get powered up by posses; it did not even kill it in 1 hit and I was worried I might wipe. I got the B ending and was very overpowered for the final boss, since I had been using learning rings and coins of fortune to boost xp gain. Jelanda was the only one not wearing a leaning ring regularly because the combo of magic bangle + fairy ring was too good. I saved the xp in the xp orb to manually level up characters that were close to minimize the level ups without the bracelet hp boost. Near the end I dumped the entire orb on Valkyrie, then what I got in the final dungeon on Jelanda. All 4 had completely maxed out skills and traits, even useless stuff.

Final stats

Valkyrie: level 82, 74397 hp, 96 seal, levantine sword, mask of the dead king, mithril plate, glare guard, valiant greaves, power bangle, mighty check, mirror of pleiades, coin of fortune, timer ring (treasure ring for dungeons, enemy ring for farming xp).

Skills: guts, auto item 100% revive, reverie, dark. She used bows for most of the game until the sweet creation jewel swords. I gave her every stat upgrade item and focused on her survival because of how the others would automatically die in 3 turns after she did. Though the auto revive probably would work better on the other characters for this purpose since I thought it was self only. I hated how her skills unequipped when switching between bow and sword, and I had to change her move order with 3 hit swords to have the slide be first. Otherwise it missed too much.

Arngrim: level 74, 78757 hp, gram, valiant helm, armor of aleph, glare guard, valiant greaves, power bangle, crack ring.

Skills: guts, first aid, reverie, dark. He used cure condition for most of the game instead of guts. I often used him to attack first due to his higher hit chance and found his 2 sword move list better than the 3 sword; the middle hit with the 3 sword was slow and often fooled up the timing. I wanted him to do the same as the 2 sword with the slower swing tagged on the end but there was no way to order that. His special attack was guaranteed to fill up the energy bar.

Lawfer: level 83, 71485 hp, dinosaur spear, dragon faith, reflect armor, glare guard, valiant greaves, power bangle, mighty check.

Skills: guts, first aid, reverie, dark. Again he used cure condition for most of the game. I found him to do the most damage of the 3 fighters while having the most trouble landing hits due to the delay between his first and second attacks. He worked best attacking stunned and frozen targets. At end game his special attack was by far the most powerful but did not build up much energy.

Jelanda: level 78, 49817 hp, unicorn horn, supreme Garland, sylphan robe, glare guard, elven boots, magic bangle, fairy ring, coin of fortune.

Skills: guts, adept illusion, stun magic, wait reaction. Spells: fire storm, heal, poison blow, icicle edge, sacred javelin, mystic cross, reflect sorcery, sap guard, might reinforce, guard reinforce. She actually used first aid and cure condition for most of the game, but by late game it was more important to keep her alive. She used fire lance for most of the game as her main attack, which later was set to javelin. She devastated regular enemies with spells cast from the menu; I preferred ice for the chance of freezing enemies, but poison and holy did better when the enemies were weak to that. I never used lightning magic, sap guard or guard reinforce. I only used might once during the final battle and it nearly doubled the damage of each hit; definitely should have used it for other bosses. Heal was used often. I usually had her attack first to put the enemy off guard.

This was truly a legendary masterpiece, one of the best Jrpgs and playstation games of all time. Excellent battle system with significant tactical depth and plenty of opportunity for skillful timing. It was incredibly innovative to assign each character to a different button, and this was far more engaging than the traditional menu based combat. The platforming and puzzles were creative, though I did not like how there seemed to be acceleration on jumping. It was like the distance she jumped changed drastically depending on how long or hard the direction buttons were pressed. It made the platforming more difficult than necessary but at least the penalty for failure was almost non existent, except for that one annoying part of the celestial palace. The little side stories for each character were better than the main stories of many full games. The main story was less interesting but I imagine it gets better on ending A. I was getting some Ogre Battle, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Fire Emblem vibes from the way you recruit people and send them up to fight in the god war. It was all done abstractly but I could definitely see a spin off strategy rpg expanding on that aspect of the game. The music and voice acting were phenomenal. I especially loved the high energy forceful conviction of Valkyrie; the actress totally nailed being a paladin/goddess of battle. There were not many flaws at all. It did become tedious grinding the same dungeons over and over, but that was optional. The final dungeon had a sweet 100k xp enemy that respawned so all that grinding I did to optimize periods was not really needed. My only other complaints were the inability to sort items and spell lists, inability to skip cutscenes and special animations.

Then I played through again to get ending A. It was largely the same except I had a better idea of the mechanics and what to do. Most of the differences were around how I used the mage. She used the higher power breakable wands since they could only break during special attacks, and never even used the unicorn horn. I foolishly sold the wand of apocalypse last playthrough because I mistakenly thought it could not do great magic, so I made sure to use it this time. Most regular battles until chapter 6 were 1 shot by casting magic from the menu. Poison shot and mystic cross did the most damage, and I added dark saviour for those annoying suicide wisps in Lezard's tower, and lighting bolt for Dipan castle. I kept every artifact, which gave me 3 bracelets of zoe for less fuss micromanaging the hp gain on level up. The early emerald necklace gave a head start early on but having 2 was pointless. In chapter 1 I did not waste time visiting all the towns and thus had more time to farm the dungeon. I sent both Llewellyn and Belenus, who were over leveled a bit. Chapters 2 and 3 went pretty much the same as last time. Chapter 4 was where I had to follow the guide to get the A ending, which meant fewer times farming Lezard's tower, which was A ok to me. I had all the xp farming dungeons pretty much memorized from doing them so many times. I cleared the tower once without killing the boss so I could get Lorenta and exited to send her and Aelia. Made a backup save just in case but it all worked out well; transferred the 2 at 100 seal value then did the tower and all events to drop the seal. During chapter 5 I only sent up Yumei for her swimming, then by chapter 6 the seal value was as low as 2 and I sent up 2 people. I might have even been able to send up 2 during chapter 5. I maxed out their traits and even bought the otherwise pointless accessories to boost hero value as much as possible, which earned me more money than last playthrough. This time I bought Valkyrie's best armor and helm and gave the mask of the dead king to Arngrim. The rest of the late game was mostly farming dungeons again. I still bought a gram and made sure to get another as random reward. The many times farming Arianod dungeon seen me swap between gram, icicle blade and daemon slayers to best exploit the enemies. I could not believe that neither slayer sword broke. At the end of chapter 8 I sent Lawfer and Jelanda figuring I would get them back in Asgard like on ending B; nope so I had to watch that 30 to 40 minutes of scenes again.

Ending stats:

Valkyrie: level 90 with 83186 hp

Arngrim: level 74 with 80628 hp

Lawfer: level 75 with 70196 hp

Jelanda: level 85 with 55697 hp

I mostly put the coins of fortune on the girls, which was why they were so higher level. Otherwise same as last playthrough. The story on this ending was much better though there was a plothole that bothered me. I was under the impression that valkyrie's power was in allowing human souls to manifest in Midgard as physical entities able to fight. So how could the dead characters that saved her manipulate the environment without her? I also found the idea behind her and previously Odin's power made no sense; that gods were powerful but static while humans were weak with potential to grow, so combing them would give extreme power. Especially that anything in the physical world would affect the divine in any way, like the artificial body they made for her. This nonsense reminded me of the Falcie in FF13, only more ridiculous because the Falcie were essentially portrayed like machines made by gods. It would make more sense if the Aesir, Vanir etc used to be human long ago; that gods and human souls were essentially the same thing only those few with power keep the others down by forcing them to reincarnate in the physical world. Then I did the Seraphic gate using dimension slip to skip all regular battles. I did not do well against Lezard; I killed him quickly but the damn beholders revived him, then he nuked the entire party for more than 99,999 hp each. So this was where the guts, auto revive, angel curios shenanigans started. I had everyone set up with guts, first aid and damage boosting accessories. Though only valkyrie failed guts and I probably could have struggled to victory, I reloaded, changed loadouts and took out the eyes first. Freya and Brahms were easier. Then I beat Gabriel and the queen back to back without going back to save. Gabriel cost me 1 angel curio while the queen cost 4. Everyone had 2 curios equipped, except Jelanda who had 1 with a fairy ring as I used her more for support with might and guard buffs, power and guard debuffs, and healing. Valkyrie did the most damage by far with upwards of 80,000 damage just from the final explosion of her special attack. Not many games are good enough to beat twice back to back, and I would like to try out Easy mode in the future because it is supposed to be far more difficult due to the lack of powerful items. I think it will be interesting to see how my party line up would change without new recruits starting at measly level 1.

9.5+/10

I don't particularly want to buy Valkyrie Elysium to get a copy of this, it is listed separately on the PS store, albeit without a price, but there's no telling if this will come to PS+ Premium as a PSP game or if it will be sold separately.

Yet, none of that matters. I want a physical copy and I wonder if that will happen. It won't in North America, but it might in Asia. Here's hoping for a regional version from Asia with English.