I said I was going to play Princess Maker 3 last time, but then I thought I’d try Valkyrie Profile
Early thoughts? It’s not bad so far. The mood isn’t as grim as I thought a game about gathering dead souls would be. It’s like a less bleak Zill O’ll Infinite, the way you go from city to city meeting all kinds of people and there’s all this politics and people dropping dead left and right and stuff. Not much has happened by way of story so far though, plus there’s the sense that nothing that happens on Midgard matters because the world is going to end anyway.
The game doesn’t encourage you to focus on story too much either. For example there’s this character called Arngrim and he dies and joins my party. Then his buddy Lawfer is like “Nooooo, Arngrim! What happened?!” Then Lawfer dies too, we aren’t even told how. I didn’t even know he’d died and joined my party until I checked the Party menu. So, like, you’d expect Lawfer and Arngrim to have a conversation and talk about all kinds of stuff, right? Wrong. They haven’t even acknowledged each others’ existence yet, not even in a “Hey, buddy” kind of way. It’s bizarre but as I said Valkyrie Profile doesn’t seem like a very story-heavy game so far.
So far my activities have been going like this: Start the chapter. Find out Freya’s requirements. Press the START button until no new events show up. Do all the events that showed up. Clear all the dungeons that showed up (just finished Nethov Swamp). Keep all the Artifacts that show up because Odin needs to learn to take better care of his stuff. Send up a character that fits Freya’s requirements. Send another character if I’m feeling generous (just sent Belenus, getting ready to send Nanami up). Rest till end of chapter.
Maybe I’m supposed to wander around the cities and talk to people every chapter and stuff, but that’s just so boring. There’s barely anything in any of the cities, the townspeople hardly ever say anything, you can’t shop, you can’t play mini-games, nothing. Besides I’m playing on Normal so I’m not getting the best ending anyway, so there’s no need to worry about missing anything.
The battles and dungeons are cool, though. Maybe a teensy-bit easy, but it’s only chapter 2 so they’re probably saving the hard-hitting stuff for later. Oh wait, the Cave of Oblivion. I am NEVER GOING THERE AGAIN!!!! For now. I could do without the added platforming aspect to dungeons, but it’s not too bad. Even when I get lost and wander around for a bit I eventually make my way to the boss somehow. And after the insane encounter rate in Star Ocean 2 it is really refreshing to play something without random battles.
With the battle system, it took me an hour or two to fully get the hang of what does what and who should go first/second/third. I explored the system for a while (i.e. I pressed buttons at random and observed what happened) and I think I’ve got it down now. The only thing I haven’t quite mastered is the art of getting enemies to drop magic crystals, but I’m not really grinding right now so it’s not a big deal. Btw, hanging on to the Emerald Necklace artifact is a great move. It gives you an extra 100 CP when a character levels up, so when I realize all my characters are near leveling up I put it on them in turn, use Bonus EXP to push them over the edge (I love BEXP) and reap the rewards~ Yay.
So it’s early days yet but I’ve found ways of enjoying Valkyrie Profile Lenneth. The story and characters aren’t much and the music is very loud and ‘platform game-ish’ but the fighting is okay so that’s enough for me. For now.
I think it’s pretty story heavy for its length, but it has a Fire Emblem thing going on where it’s hard to write “party member specific” interactions because at any time you can send them to Asgard as slave labour for the gods and not have them any more.
Incidentally, most of the party member interactions sort of comes from there. You get some special specific scenes if you send certain combinations of party members up at certain times. Not super satisfying but still.
You got it right that most of the towns are “empty” and there’s no reason to really explore them. I think there is like ONE time where there’s an NPC that gives you an item after the recruitment of a particular character, but it’s just a bonus “sorta helpful” item rather than some kind of Best Ending requirement Key Item.
It’s very Tri-Ace in that sense of “man, they really left half of this game incomplete, didn’t they?”
It’s very early days for me, so maybe the story will show up later. I get the point about the characters not being able to interact, but it should really be possible to have a script like “If X joins the party and Y is already in the party, play dialogue ABC.” I mean, what’s the point of showing all these character relationships if they aren’t actually going to relate?
Anyway, whatevs, at least the battles are fun.
It’s technically possible, but game developers seem to have a fear of writing stuff that the player may not see or miss in the game. The one surprising departure is probably Tactics Ogre, where you have special speech for bringing characters to battlefields, having combinations of specials on the field, and even letting them get perma-death earlier in the game can lead to special conversations later. It was probably quite the vanity project.
Oh, forgot to bring it up earlier, about Lawfer, he’s probably the only character in the game with that weird vague non-ending to his plotline and then suddenly being in your party. Either they somehow ran out of money there or they were trying to be artsy. The manga adaptation has him get killed by vampires but that seems really random and non-canon. My personal interpretation considering his speech about Law was that he died trying to break Arngrim’s brother out of jail.
And yet if you go back to Artolia nobody has anything to say about the whole affair… The towns in this game are a real waste of time.
I’ve played this game like 15 years ago. i’ve played it on hard by a friends recommendation , its not hard at all, i dont know the difference playing in other difficulties but i think i never lost and never had to grind or something.
the catch to play on hard its to see the ending, you have to send a specific character to asgard before certain chapter so he can have a conversation with odin or freya
and maybe do a dungeon to get an specific item, thats it, you got the requirements for the ending. (for the normal playthru there is just no ending , just credits)
as i recall the only story is that of a stupidly annoying princess brat and it took like two hours to develop before she died , then some random character dying/joining your party and thats it.
and the event that trigger the true ending wich i found very interesting (this encompasses 50% of the story present in the game). then again it has a very enjoyable game mechanics and fast paced battles so its not that important. I think Freya joins you in the hard difficulty , shes the coolest =)
and ,
long time no read Kina. =D
glad to came back to your rantviews
Regards
Welcome back 😀 I’m surprised you remember that much after 15 years. I haven’t even finished the game yet and I’ve forgotten most of the backstories already, they’re so irrelevant. I don’t know why they bothered.