Valkyrie Profile (PSX)

Developer:

tri-Ace

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Release Date:

2000 (JP 1999)

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Systems:

PSX, PSP

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This week on Super Adventures, I've got some screenshots from Nordically-themed PlayStation JRPG Valkyrie Profile for you. Maybe even a couple of GIFs as well! That's the original PlayStation by the way, though you'd forgiven for being confused by this atypically high resolution menu screen. I suppose they needed the extra pixels to fit in all those choices (there are two separate 'play intro' options there!)

The game's by tri-Ace, makers of the Star Ocean series, among other RPGs. I was going to list a few of the ones I've already written about and give you some links to click but when I went looking I couldn't actually find any. 1200+ games on Super Adventures so far and this is my very first tri-Ace title!

I'm sure I must have at least tried the game before, but it would've been in ages past so if I seem like I'm surprised or clueless about something, that's because I am. I really don't know what this game's going to be like. Well okay, it's a platformer with an unusual turn-based JRPG battle system, I know that much. I also know that I have to play the US version because there isn't a European version of it for me to show off. Us Europeans had to wait for the PSP version, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, which came out seven years later. That's an entire console generation!

SPOILER WARNING: JRPGs typically have a fair bit of story in them and I'm going to be going through the first couple of hours of this one, so be aware that I will reveal and ruin any twists up to that point. There's still 30 or 40 hours of it I won't be spoiling though.

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The game begins with a young girl called Platina with plaited platinum hair picking up a pail of water from the river and accidentally splashing it on these men in black.

They've really gone the extra mile with the pixel animations here; there are so many and they're so expressive that this cutscene's like a tiny pixelled cartoon. There's a horrific art mismatch here with pixel characters, 3D rendered backgrounds, and illustrated portraits, but it actually sort of works I think. Though I'm surprised by how anime the illustrations aren't.

Platina is visited that night by another kid who tells her that her mother's sold her to the men in black! I mean I think he's supposed to be a kid; he has the voice of a 30 year old so it's hard to be sure.

The voice acting is pretty much what you'd expect from the PlayStation era (not that I expected it to have voice acting at all). All the actors sound like they've got a few anime episodes under their belt, but they give the performance of people who only had one take and barely any direction. At first I thought the translated dialogue was awkward, but now I'm thinking it's mostly the way they're reading it.

This intro has been fairly bleak so far, without even a catchy JRPG tune to lighten the mood, but it takes a really dark turn here when Platina decides she's going to stay right here, in a field of beautiful deadly flowers. It's a pretty scene, with the leaves swaying and petals blowing in the breeze, but the ending is miserable, as she gives up on life and dies in her friend's arms. I guess he's immune then?

Cut to the standard JRPG animated opening! The game's suddenly gone full anime, though there's no upbeat J-pop song and no vocals. In fact the music sounds more like a battle theme.

The title screen mentioned Production I.G, and I expect this was their contribution to the game. It definitely looks like it was made by people who know what they're doing.

Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (PSP)

They took all the anime out of the PSP port though, replacing it with CGI. I suppose to give people a reason to buy it twice. I wish I could go on a rant here about how they've ruined it for no good reason, but this video's pretty good too.

Both cutscenes are mostly made up from clips of warriors showing off special moves, but the new one isn't just a straight up copy. Except for the times when it is.

They both share this shot of a guy picking up an unconscious woman off a bed, kissing her, and then giving the camera a sly grin. The first question that's jumped to my mind is "What?"

The original game also has a shot of a Valkyrie standing next to Platina in the field of deadly flowers, and I wonder if I'm supposed to assume they're the same person. Because their hair looks almost identical, and how else are you supposed to recognise anime characters?

Right, I've made it through the prologue and the opening movie, so now I've earned the right to choose my difficulty level. And for once I can actually tell what my decision is going to affect, because they went to the trouble of telling me! I'm not keen on it locking out endings, but at least it's letting me know in advance instead of surprising me with it.

The screen mentions that easy mode is "a good choice for a quick look at the game"; it's like it was put there just for me! But I always stick with normal mode when I'm writing about a game, to see how difficult they consider normal to be, so no easy mode for me.

Okay, now I'm onto intro #3, with the camera slowly panning down a church until it reaches this bride standing at the altar alone.

Just when I thought this might be going somewhere, the image faded to reveal a woman standing in another field of deadly flowers, somewhere up in the clouds. You know, I don't think these flowers are actually dangerous, as no one else seems affected by them. Then she goes for a walk as the credits come on screen.

These cutscenes are all unskippable by the way, even on the updated PSP version, so it seems the developers considered it to be an absolutely crucial part of the experience. Even for a second playthrough. Fortunately they can't stop you from going off and making a sandwich while it's playing.

That's a great idle animation.

Hang on, am I controlling a character now? Fifteen minutes in and I finally get to play the game!

Nope, false alarm. I made it as far as the edge of the screen before the game yanked control back off me for more cutscene. Well what was the bloody point of that then? I remember a couple of other games doing this to me in the past and it made no sense back then either.

Oh damn. Well that seems a bit... final. Probably explains why the rest of the games in the series are all prequels.

Turns out that I'm playing as a Valkyrie called Lenneth, who's weirdly clueless considering she's the greatest of the three goddesses who govern destiny. Fortunately Freya's here to run through the basics for her (and me).

We need to go to Midgard (Earth) and claim the souls of warriors to fight as einherjar in our war. You'd think a Valkyrie would have some experience with this seeing as it's their entire job (well that and serving drinks, according to Wikipedia), but I guess not! The first step will be finding someone near death.

Oh hey there's one. That was easy. I just had to press 'start' to do a bit of spiritual concentration and the dot appeared on my map.

So far all the game's required me to do is hold 'left' for just under one second and press the 'start' button. Maybe I should've put it on hard mode?

I suppose one of these guys is the hero I'm here to claim.

Oh damn, I'm controlling one of them now! Actual gameplay at last!

This time I had to hold 'right' for just under a second to get him from the left of the screen to the side with the monster on it. Then it was time for battle.

They're letting me do the fight myself! I'm barely 25 minutes in and I already get to hit something. One question: how do I play this?

I tried pressing 'square' and Arngrim stepped forward to give the harpy a smack with his sword. Not sure why he bothered with the step, as that sword's so long he could be sitting on his couch back home with a beer and still hit the thing. It was still my turn afterwards and only one button was available so I pressed 'X' to let Lawfer inflict some hurt as well. Once I'd pressed my two buttons the harpy took its turn, then it was my go again.

On my third turn I decided to see what happened if I pressed both 'square' and 'X' at the same time, and both my characters ran over to attack together, finishing the harpy off. Man, I had to press six buttons in that fight, it was pretty intense. Fortunately the game's gone back to cutscene mode so I can chill out for a bit.

I kind of expected Arngrim to die in that fight so I could claim his soul, but instead he's gone home to hang out with his brother.

Okay, that's fine. Makes sense to give the guy a little bit of backstory before he's recruited. The voice acting's gone now, by the way. It's a bit inconsistent but I'm fine with that.

What? We're switching characters again? 

To be fair things started to make more sense when Arngrim showed up in her flashback and insulted her dad, and it wasn't long before the cutscene switched back to him and his brother. In fact the game actually let me play as Arngrim again... for as long as it took me to reach his front door, then it was back to cutscene mode.

I think the developers are deliberately messing with me now. It's like a 'choose your own adventure' movie which pauses every 20 minutes to let you make a choice, but there's only ever one option and it's always 'walk to the door'.


Anyway, Princess Jelanda is angry, so she puts on a disguise and the most obvious fake name and heads to a Japanese restaurant. It's all part of her cunning plan to hire Arngrim and send him wandering into the jaws of horrible revenge to pay him back for being rude to her dad.

Unfortunately she has no idea what Japanese food is like, so she spends a few minutes criticising everything she ordered, like the spoiled princess she is, and then passes out after her first drink.

I'm something like 40 minutes in now and the cutscenes just keep coming. Seems like I could've saved myself some trouble and just watched a longplay on YouTube instead. I realise that I'm being a spoiled princess myself by whining about a Japanese RPG being too much like a Japanese RPG, but this is bloody ridiculous. I've had one fight so far where I had to press four buttons! I did get to control my character directly three times, but each time I barely made it a screen before control was yanked away from me again. At least it's finally let me save the game.

Alright, Princess Jelanda had to postpone her revenge, so after a short cutscene featuring some entirely different people, Arngrim is now free to walk around the city! The game forgot to tell me where to go though.

I was thinking of showing off the PSP version but there's not really any point. It's the same except you can see a bit more on the sides due to the wider aspect ratio.

The game gave me choice between the chapel, the restaurant, a private residence, another private residence, or home. So I went right back home and it turns out that's exactly where I needed to be to trigger the next cutscene. Guess I'll never know what's in those houses now.

(It's NPCs who say one line to you).

There's something really strange about two people walking in front of a horse. I know humans and horses walk at a similar speed, but it would really save their legs if they had a proper cart to ride in.

Princess Jelanda was too unconscious to hire Arngrim in the end, so she eventually went home and he was hired to protect this cargo instead. But he made the mistake of not asking what's inside and he ends up looking just a little bit guilty when they stop for an inspection and the soldiers find Jelanda inside the box.

She's unconscious (again) so the soldiers give her a drug to bring her around, but they've got the potion that wakes up princesses mixed up with the one that turns them into vicious demons, so she kind of slaughters them. It's not an overly cheerful game.

Fortunately Lenneth and Freya are on hand to kill the inhuman creature before she can make any more restaurant staff feel bad.

By the way, check out Lenneth's weird floating shields. They're weird.

This was a lot like the last fight, except I had three characters this time, so there were three buttons to press!

Only two buttons now though.

I didn't skip any gameplay here, it really did go from boss battle to cutscene to boss battle. I haven't really got anything to say about this fight as I'm just mashing the buttons each turn; I just wanted to show off his cape really. If you ever want to animate an old guy in a wind tunnel, this would make an excellent example.

The battle is won and Arngrim effortlessly swats all the soldiers that come to apprehend him, but he eventually comes up against a man he can't bring himself to kill. So he throws his ridiculously oversized sword to the ground, as it is far too big for him to stab himself in the gut with it.

Bloody hell this game is dark! I suppose you'd expect that considering that the whole point is to collect the souls of dead warriors, but I just assumed people would be going out a bit more heroically. On the plus side, Arngrim is now on team Valkyrie... and so is Princess Jelanda! Her body was turned into a monster but her soul is doing just fine.

Now that I've got my team together it's spiritual concentration time again, except this time I get to fly to my destination myself. I've only got the one place to go but it's nice to swoop around this 3D landscape. Well okay I can't swoop, I can only turn around, but it's better than pressing a button to skip to the next dialogue box. Nice music too.

My next destination is the Artolian Mountain Ruins as my team needs XP so they can last more than five minutes during Ragnarok. That's the actual reason for it, we're grinding monsters for experience.

I found a save point right outside the entrance! Not that I needed the save point to bring up this menu, but I did have to bring up the menu to save in it. Don't look at the play time.

The main function of the menu seem to be to confuse me, as I can't work out what half the stuff in each section means. I'm not asking for a tutorial that goes over everything, I'd never take in all that information in one go, but some pop up descriptions might have helped.

I have at least figured out that I can give everyone a 'First Aid' skill at the cost of some 'capacity', so I did that. I'm just assuming capacity is a measure of how many skills I can give to a character, and I'm also assuming higher level skills take more room.

I've found another confusing screen full of numbers and I'm starting to think I don't actually know a thing about capacity after all.

Also Arngrim's got a crappy hero value, but I've no idea what impact that has on combat. It must mean something, or else they wouldn't have done the work to put all this here. But what?

Anyway, I'm in a dungeon now, so I guess I'll go walk to the right of the screen and get the next cutscene started.

Huh? It's letting me walk around the dungeon by myself! It's a bloody miracle! Though Lenneth is actually running everywhere (with her arms at her sides), as the default controls are set so I have to double tap a direction to walk. So that's different.

The game's a 2D platformer while I'm making my way around a dungeon, though I can soon get back to the battle screen by hitting that enemy over there. Enemies don't come back once they're dead, so I have to hunt them all down to get my levels up instead of grinding.

I wonder if they put the word 'profile' in the title because the game's viewed from the side. It's not entirely flat though as I can duck into doors in the background when this helpful text comes up on screen. If I'm very lucky there'll be a pot inside with an item in.

A FEW FIGHTS LATER

I've been getting into a few fights, but they've all been resolved quickly enough by carefully mashing every face button on the controller.

This bit tripped me up the first few times it flashed on screen though, because the text always disappeared before I could read it. I should've known it just said 'mash a face button on the controller'.

Enemies don't like it when you mash that button though.

It doesn't seem like I'm running off limited mana so I can unleash special attacks whenever the game gives me an option, which is often (I guess my Technical Arts Energy has been filling up). Though using a special move does mean I have to sit through the animation, every single time, so maybe I should save them for special occasions.

I haven't been entirely left to my own devices without cutscenes or guidance, as Freya occasionally pops up to tell me how to play the game.

For instance, it turns out that Valkyries can shoot ice crystals at walls and then use them as steps to get extra height, a bit like that GLOO gun in Prey (2017). The crystals shatter pretty easily, but I can still use the shattered bit as a step. It's all very handy as some of these walls are too high for me to jump onto.

I like how Lenneth leaves a trail behind her when she jumps, like she's out of a Castlevania game. It's leaving me only slightly regretful that I'm not playing one of them instead right now.

The game also mentioned how to take items from chests, but most of the time I just pick the damn thing up instead by accident. It's awkward. At least I was able to get out of the way in time when I realised it'd been rigged with a booby trap.

You'd figure that a trapped chest would contain something fairly desirable, and it did... assuming you desire a single vegetable seed. The second box didn't have a trap on it, so its treasure apparently isn't even worth protecting. It's something called the 'Book of Everlasting Life'.

See, I knew the book would be worthless.

The vegetable seeds on the other hand can be transmutated into health-restoring elixirs, at a cost of MP. So basically once I've found my treasure I then have to pay for it.

There's also equipment I can equip, in a typical RPG way. Helmets to keep my head safe, magic rings that do magic things, etc. It's just a shame that the lazy artists couldn't even be bothered to spend a decade or so hand-pixelling all the different kinds of armour onto the character sprites.

I've been in a few fights now and I have to be honest, my strategy hasn't changed. I'm sure the combat is going to get deeper than this eventually, but so far all I do is press all the buttons. They're even casting First Aid by themselves, so there's not really any point to looking at the screen.

The platforming bit is much more interesting to me right now, because it likes to put treasure chests in tricky places and let me figure out how to get to them.

Alright I'm on a floating boat that sails back and forth over a pit of spikes, and I want to get up there to that chest.

The first step of my cunning plan: wait until the boat is underneath the platform and then shoot an ice crystal straight up. I then smash the crystal so it falls into the boat, forming a step for step two!

Unfortunately the second step went wrong when I tried to open the chest and accidentally picked it up instead. So I thought "okay, I'll jump down with it and smash it somewhere safe", and accidentally dropped it in the process of getting back down. Now I have to get back up to it again!

Son of a bitch!

I picked up the chest again and then missed the floating boat when I was jumping back down. Well, I missed the boat, the chest hit it just fine, and now there's bits of it raining down all over this spike pit I'm sitting in. Spikes hurt, in case you were wondering. But they don't kill you outright, so I can just walk back out. But I want my treasure! Where's the quick load button you need it?

Here's a better question: what happened to my ability to fly? I flew to this place over the world map, every time it switches to the battle screen she starts off airborne and then floats to the ground, but during platforming she's flightless.

SOME TIME LATER

Well I broke a pillar, did that do anything? Aside from giving me some bonus XP to manually divide between my characters?

I'm a bit lost to be honest. Every time the path branches I hope that I'm going towards the treasure and the enemies, and not towards the boss fight. But then it turns out that neither path leads to the end. I could do with a proper map really.

EVEN LATER

That almost worked! I'm trying to get over to that treasure on the left side of the screen, but the gap's too big to jump, so I tried a different approach. I've been experimenting with the ice crystals and I've figured out that if I keep firing in the same place they carry on getting bigger until they explode and fling me away, so I decided to see how much distance an explosion in the face would get me.

Turns out it wasn't quite enough and I fell back down to the bottom again. Now I have to shoot more ice crystals at the right hand wall to use as ledges to make my way back up to the platform.

After three minutes I finally figured it out: if I shoot an ice crystal upwards from just below the edge of the platform, I can extend it a little and make the gap short enough to jump across! I just have to make sure I don't use too many ice crystals to get back up to make the leap, as there can only be so many in the world at the same time and I could inadvertently cause my improvised platform extension to vanish.

Oh for fuck's sake!

I actually made it across, but I forgot that some of the treasure chests have traps in them and got flung across the screen by another explosion in the face. Now I have to get all the way back up there again!

The treasure turned out to be a treasure ring which tells me where the treasure is. But I already know where it is, it's in the treasure chests. I'm sure it'll make more sense later.

EVEN LATER STILL

You know it might have helped if I'd remembered I had a map button before finishing the whole dungeon. Look at this beautiful three-dimensional mess! It's a bit Metroidvania looking, but I don't think there'll be any chance of me coming back through here with new abilities to open up new routes.

I've reached a second save point, so by the laws of JRPGs that means the next room's going to have a boss in it. Well I've already killed every regular enemy I could find so there's nothing left for me to do but go fight it.

I did it, I found the evil vampire boss at the end of the dungeon! We're not going after him for anything he's done in particular, we just need the XP and he's evil.

Trouble is he's hiding behind two giant sword-wielding dragons in the front row, and as far as I can tell the dragons can only be hurt if I attack with three characters at once. Doesn't sound like it'd be a problem, but Freya has bailed on me, and the princess can only be bothered to join in every three turns or so.

I knew this would happen the first time I came up against an actual challenge. Every fight so far has been solved by mashing buttons randomly, so I've learned nothing about the combat system, and these guys are wiping the floor with me.

I did manage to find this menu, which lets me use magic and items during battle. Trouble is there's no magic in there and sometimes they don't feel like using a potion. I don't much want them using up all my potions either, but I'm going to have to if I want to survive this.

We won in the end, but it really did cost me every elixir I had. It's lucky I hadn't used any of them to heal up after falling in the spikes and getting blown up by traps. I was holding onto them in the hope that levelling up would give me all my health back, and thankfully it did. Got my level up just in time for the boss fight as well.

Oh now the game tells me how to play it!

Not that this is much help to me, as I'd have to see these things in action to really get how they work and retain the information.

One thing the game hasn't told me about is Hero Value, though Freya did mention that Arngrim's level isn't anywhere near enough right now. So I guess I have to level him up as a person now somehow? Get more capacity to reduce his selfishness stat?

Well the first dungeon is done and now I've got dots all over my map to visit. Perhaps if I dropped in on Arngrim's brother I'd get a quest to make him a better person, I dunno.

I don't want to go exploring though as Chapter 1 has introduced a brand new feature: a time limit! It's not a timer ticking down, but I have 24 periods before the end of the chapter (192 before the end of the world) and visiting a location uses some of them up. Even using spiritual concentration to find new heroes and dungeons uses it up!

There are characters and dungeons I can miss out on permanently if I don't find them during the right chapter, and if I don't visit the right places to get my team together and level them up then I lose. Plus I also have to visit the right places to learn Lenneth's story or else I can't get the good ending. I don't need to get through 30 hours of gameplay only to learn that I'd screwed it all up right at the start! That's not the kind of replay value I'm into.

So I don't dare choose my own destination, but I've come so far on my own that it'd be a shame to resort to GameFAQs now. I guess that makes this as good a place as any to turn the it off.


CONCLUSION

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Valkyrie Profile is one of those kinds of games where you can play it for two or three hours and still feel like you've got no business writing anything in the 'conclusion' section underneath all your screenshots.

It's a platformer/RPG hybrid with a lot of cutscenes, I've figured out that much, but I still haven't gotten my head around the combat. In all this time I've had just one single fight where I had to do anything but mash all the buttons, and that's just because I was taking too much damage and had to keep opening up the item menu to drink my potions. Maybe I was playing it wrong, I have no idea.

I liked the platformery puzzle bits more, because I had a better grasp of what the game was asking me to do. Sure I missed easy jumps all the time and I usually ended up accidentally throwing the treasure away instead of picking it up, but I feel like I was getting better at dealing with its awkwardness. It made me wish the game had been a bit more like a Metroidvania though, as I liked the exploring a lot more than I liked being interrupted all the time for another fight. Still, at least the random encounter rate is mercifully low, as there are no random encounters. You can see all the enemies in the level and freeze them if you can't be bothered fighting them just yet. Or if you want to use them as a step, and get your muddy boots all over their face.

One part of the game I've seen enough of to criticise is the cutscenes. In fact for the first hour or so it seemed like that's all the game was going to be, and now I'm scared to visit another town because I know they're going to be waiting for me. It's not that the story is bad, in fact it's a bit like the What Remains of Edith Finch of JRPGs so far, as you seem to follow each hero through their own short adventure to see how they'll inevitably get killed off. It's just not integrated with the gameplay all that well, and it threw lots of characters at me without giving me a chance to latch onto a protagonist. Plus giving control back to the player so they can take three steps to the right before yanking it back off them is ridiculous, pointless and cruel. It was also cruel to make me progress through the dialogue boxes manually, so I couldn't even read a book or something while I was going through it all again in the PSP version to see if it was different (aside from some CGI cutscenes, it wasn't).

The game's got some randomisation to it and the time system is designed to encourage multiple playthroughs. It even tells you how many different endings are available when you start a new game. But there aren't any dialogue options so it seems like hours of unskippable cutscenes are going to play out the same way every time. You don't just replay the game, you replay every damn line of dialogue.

I can't criticise the graphics though. Well okay I can, they're often dull and miserable, and it's always got two or three different art styles on screen at a time. But somehow it works, for me anyway. Plus I appreciated all the little bits of extra animation in the sprites and 3D backgrounds they threw in. The voice acting's maybe not so great, but the music's exactly what you want. It's what I wanted anyway, which is something that sounded suspiciously similar to Baton Kaitos and the Tales of games. Motoi Sakuraba's pretty good at these JRPG soundtracks.

Overall I think I liked it. Any game that can make me sit through an hour of story before the gameplay starts has to be doing something right, and when the platformer RPG action finally began the game did enough to keep my interest. Even if I didn't understand it.

Plus now I know how to pronounce "einherjar".

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Thanks for reading! If you want to tell me this is your favourite game ever and I'm a monster for saying anything bad about it, why not leave a comment in the box below? While you're there you could also take a guess at what games you're going to see next week. I did that thing again where I play a bunch of games tenuously linked by a theme, so there's seven chances to get one right this time and you can be ultrasmug if you get them all.

(Note: the comment box is also suitable for saying nice things.)