"Average at best lost a lot of that VP feel..."

Unlike most of the people on the Gamefaqs boards that merely used Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria as a filler while waiting for Tales of the Abyss or another role playing game to be released.
I actually wanted to play VP2 and once again enjoy the mythical world of the Asgard Gods.
However, after playing and beating VP2 over the course of 2 weeks filler is exactly what I thought of VP2.

I'll tell you all why I think so by splitting my VP2 experience into these categories Presentation, Gameplay, (which includes Grinding despite what you've heard skip ahead and see for your self...) the Story, Replayability and a Final Word.

First lets start off with a little history VP2 was developed by Tri Ace a company that has also developed games such as the Star Ocean series and Valkyrie Profile:Lenneth (as the new generation PSP remake calls the original...) for Enix before and after Enix merged with Sqauresoft who published (or paid Tri Ace to make VP2 in other words the publisher usually calls the shots...). A little fun fact is that the cool Full Motion Video cut scenes for VP2 were evidently outsourced to a company called Shingumi (sp?) as listed in the VP2 instruction manual and seen in the ending credits.

Presentation meaning the graphics, voice acting, music, and other things that make the atmosphere of any game be it RPG or otherwise.

The graphics in this game are simply amazing now while the background graphics in Valkyrie Profile:Lenneth where hand painted pixels over a 2 dimensional landscape the graphics in VP2 are 3D rendered backgrounds while your character walks around in the same 2D format as the first VP game.

In VP2 nothing has been held back as far as the graphic water glistening and splashing on the ground detailed buildings inside and out. The world map is also very very good as the clouds hover over your head outlining the many islands that make up the world of VP2.

The interaction with people in this game is also slightly improved over the original well as they will say different things based on where you are in the game. But there still isn't really much that you can do as far as the towns go you basic-ly just walk around to talk to whoever knows something about the next level that you need to get to in order to make it available on the world map. Buy some equipment if you have the parts for the armory to make them, and talk to the resident cat, dog, or bird and feed it some food if you choose to. Which makes the good looking towns pretty boring after walking through them a couple of times.

This time around you don't have any time limits or the need to level up any Einherjar to send to Asgard (Silmeria/Alicia will now reincarnate them into the world as humans that you can actually chat with...). But you also aren't able to choose where you want to go next making this game more linear than the first VP. This isn't so bad given what the storyline calls for and the fact that you really don't have much of a reason to visit any given place besides stocking up on supplies anyway.

As far as the voice acting even though Lenneth Valkyrie's VA is the only returning one. Some of the voices in VP2 aren't as bad as many said they would be after hearing the main character Alicia speak two lines, although the constant ventriloquism in the mostly silent FMV scene (particularly in the side quests...) may get on your nerves after awhile. In most dubbing projects be it anime or video game the words are usually changed either for translation purposes or to make it "look" better like saying "I will not return to Valhalla" instead of saying "I won't return to Valhalla". I guess they didn't bother with the lip sync at all here you'll see what I mean about the not bothering part in the story area.

As far as the music while there are a few battles and cut scenes that create an atmosphere around any particular moment the music for the most part is pretty bland especially near the end of the game which should have you feeling like "woah this is it do or die time!" The music (and the games final villain in fact the two top God boss fights in Asgard where much better...) just had that average feel to it unlike the first VP which had themes for most of the bosses and events as they unfolded. VP also had a voice collection and sound test at the title screen part of the charm in VP was to fight as many baddies as you could to get the voices for them and you party added to the collection.
I know they didn't want to make a carbon copy of VP but if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Alright, now while taking strolls through the war torn dark mood filled world of VP is only one part of the experience so now lets get to what Tri Ace is known for...

The Gameplay how convenient or frustrating is it going from one battle to another? Are the battles and side quests a pain to get through?

Not really and yes and no, heres why the battle system is now in 3D meaning you can move around a preset arena complete with obstacles like pillars and cliffs that you can be knocked over by the enemy. Just as before your party is made up of four characters that run around the battlefield together in a square formation.

While you still have the same basic shield, sword/staff, and body armor you also have accessories such as crests and trinkets like rings or necklaces that boost different attributes, few very important changes have been made to VP.

Seal stones and Special Skills, Seal stones, Action points and Dashing,.
Seal stones are orbs that are scattered inside of each of the dungeons Seal stones have many attributes that are applied to either the area that the enemy is in or your party. A good example is the Life force blessing stone which doubles the amount of hit points that you can recover by using healing spells or items.

Special Skills are no longer found inside of chests now you have to arrange certain colored crests with certain attributes in the equipment menu. Then, you have to fight in a certain amount of battles before learning that skill finally you have a limited amount of capacity points to activate any given skill(s).

Okay, now while the Seal stones, accessories, and Special skills involve a little bit of strategy it also opens a big can O worms. You see Seal stone cost magic crystals to "restore" into the earth's vein in order for you to be able to transfer them from dungeon to dungeon. While some of these aren't so bad the ones you may really need like the life stone are 2000 purple crystals. You get the crystals when you juggle an enemy in the air by whacking it with a lifting attack and keeping the party going with you other party members. You can also get bonus crystals (30 extra at the most...) for killing the leader or the enemy group and end the battle fast.

However, there will on average be at least 3 seal stones per dungeon that you'll need/want to remove (unless you want a slightly harder boss fight...) that's 3000-4000 crystals per dungeon at maybe 15-30 minutes each even if you try to fight every enemy you walk into with a party of characters like Richelle, Alicia, Leone, Celes, or Rufus in order to juggle knock to the ground and beat the hell out of the enemies and rake in the crystals.

The puzzle solving is dumbed down from the first VP but with all the grinding for crystals and enemy drops you'll be wishing for a hard puzzle in place of running around in circles fighting bats and Hydra's in order to break off certain parts of their body for the town armory to make more powerful weapons and accessories like good old Freeze checks and such.
The pointlessly long Chapter 3 in particular will explain what I mean in vivid detail thankfully the later chapters are not as tedious as chapter 3 is.

While the weapons and accessories part grinding can be avoided by getting the right skills setup you still have to roam around fighting for the right "trinket" to put together the crests for said skill. Most of the better trinket are either in the rather pointless side quests (that you can find of accident by the way...) or in later chapters of the story where the skill your trying to get has been rendered all but obsolete.

If you do play this game do your self a favor and read a skill crests Faq you'll save yourself a lot of running around trouble since the real difficulty of VP2 doesn't lie in the poison and then play ring around the rosie while you hit and dash away boss fights.

Story This is where Tri Ace or that SquareEnix over the shoulder guy really screwed up. There are so many inconsistent details about VP2 that it almost ranks up there with the Inuyasha anime and yet while Inuyasha still has it's good point this game well not so much...

Let's get down to the grit of "must not have bothered" besides the obvious buzz kill of the Einherjar not really having much of a story besides a few paragraphs in their profile. By the way, Tri Ace did put in a few nice touches like having them talk to other Einherjar that they might have known in their former life and the fact that many of them may have had some thing to do with various places in the original VP.

But let's face it that reading about wars can't compare to the feeling actually seeing parts of various wars and people dying while the Gods drank tea and gathered up their souls for grunt soldiers. The linear path of fighting what was explained as being a Guardian of each dungeon is boring, compared to hunting down a creature that turned an entire town into stone because a little girl freed the monster by mistake despite the fact that it has nothing to do with your quest and that you could skip over it if you where cruel enough to. Or a side quest to find the monster who killed one of your Einherjar.

Some of the characters from the first game are back despite VP2 being hundreds of years in the past. While the explanations for some are pretty obvious despite numerous inconsistencies, others are left alone like they just didn't bother to mention it or anything even though they are the plot characters. Some characters also act way out of character like Freya shown concern for Midgard (after she was told that Asgard would be safe no matter what...) when she didn't think much of humans in VP. Add to the fact that Freya who mainly uses Ether energy to attack was flying like Supergirl and kicking like Chun Li in one of VP2's FMV scenes lord o lord I guess even the Goddess of Fertility needs to keep in shape somehow.

By the A ending of VP you felt what the character was going through because of all of the development that occurred even though it had nothing to do with your assigned duty/quest. That Charm is nonexistent in VP2 although the fate of most of the main cast is revealed in the ending they missed the main ones, including Silmeria who not only doesn't really get any character development but doesn't have much of a past besides a few paragraphs in the profile screen.

Silmeria is not the only Valkyrie (or main plot character...) to suffer the one dimension character fate either. VP may have only shown a couple of minutes worth of back story for each character but that was good enough to get things rolling for the plot twists and development of that game.

Replayability
The final nail in what could have been an awesome experience while the structure of the first VP wasn't the best at least you could play the normal level to get a feel for the game and then play the harder level with more dungeons and one of three different endings despite two of them being short. You could at least play through the game three times including the bonus Seraphic Gate dungeon.

In VP2 you do get the Seraphic Gate which gets harder each time you enter it. Plus, the fact that the games enemies will get harder in every new game that you play up to 52 times but only people who like to complete every aspect of the games they play will want to bother with these features.

It also would have been nice to have a movie viewer option that allow you to see the cut scenes again without having to beat the two people at the end of Chapter 4 again.

Final Word
Despite it's many shortcomings Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria is worth renting and playing at least once. Even more so if you still haven't managed to get past the dynamic-ly evil duo of Electronic Bay and his Pay pal to buy the first Valkyrie Profile or don't have a PSP system to buy that version of VP.

But once you do play VP and come back to this one you'll see the many inconsistencies that will dampen the experience for you.

Truth be known this review is only my personal opinion, a heads up to let those who don't already have this game can have a better idea of what to expect.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/30/06