"Almost perfect..."

Valkyrie Profile is one of, if not the rarest game on PS1(that people actually care about). The release of a sequel was anticipated so much by the fans. Then it's finally released....and no one plays it. I honestly don't get it. Maybe everyone's just too busy obsessing over overrated junk like Final Fantasy XII.

The first game was a personal favorite of mine. I played this game as soon as I could, and I was both in awe, and mildly disappointed.

Story: 7/10
This is the reason I was kinda disappointed with this game. The first title had such a unique and engaging storyline, filled with characters you grew to care about so much. Does this game have any of that? Eh...

The plot itself seems interesting at first. Alicia is a princess who is in a town and seems to have a different soul inside her body other than her own. This soul commands her to find a certain character in the town for an unknown reason. Does the story actually get interesting from there? Yes, but it takes a while.

The soul that Alicia has is a Valkyrie, and she tells Alicia that she must gather Enherijar(undead warriors) to fight along side her. This is where the biggest difference between this and the original is noticed. In the original, you learned about the souls, and how they died. You at least got somewhat attached to them. What happens now? Instead of actually going through scenes to get the Einherjar, you simply walk up to an enchanted weapon and release the soul from it. That's it.
You learn nothing about them. You can go into their profiles and read about what happened, but it doesn't go nearly as deep.

The story characters are all pretty generic and show no interesting interaction at all. You have your quiet girl(Alicia), the pretty boy(Rufus), the tough, lazy man(Arngrim,), and the all-knowing mysterious sorcerer(Lezard). The only mildly interesting ones are the Valkyries, but they don't come into the story until the end, leaving you no time to get to know them.

The plot itself isn't very gripping at first. There are six chapters total, and for some reason, chapters one and two take 4 hours total, and chapter three makes up about half of the adventure. Alicia and the rest learn about what they're going after and what has to be done in chapters one and two. For some strange reason, chapter three is about playing cat and mouse with an important item. You go through a difficult dungeon for two hours, get to the end and slay a tough boss, only to learn that you did it all for nothing. On to the next area only to find out it's all in vain!

I'm making the plot seem absolutely horrendous, but really it's not. The second half actually contains some amazing plot twists. EVERY character has some sort of big secret and change in quite a drastic way. The characters still won't show much interaction or anything like that, but at least SOMETHING happens to make plot more interesting. The villians are also entwined with a different fate than expected, too.

Graphics: 10/10
Wow. That's all that came out of my mouth when I first layed on most of the environments scattered throughout the game. Each one is detailed the fullest extent(maybe this why the game took so long to be released), which is accompanied by breathtaking lighting effects. You can see all the ripples in the grass, and every particle going through the layers of lava. Spell effects are also jaw-dropping and make other games pale in comparison. There is also never a drop in frame rate, from what I've seen.

The character models are also among the best I've ever seen. Everyone has different features, and their clothes are brimming with insane amounts of detail. Some of the Einherjars' stances and weapons look similar, but it's understandable given how many of them there are.

Sound: 10/10
Music can make or break a game to me, and this game far exceeded my expectations. Each town has a song that fits it exceptionally well, and some of them I could sit there and listen to countless times. Battles need an engaging song to make them feel truly epic, right? I don't think I've ever heard battle music as good as this. Power leveling isn't even boring due to the breathtaking music in the background. Boss fights can also make you want to throw the controller, but the boss themes negate the frustration.

This game won't win any awards for voice acting, but it still does it well. I can't recall ever hearing any lines that sounded off. They don't put a whole lot of emotion into what's being said, but the job still gets done fine. No complaints here.

Every sound effect is also packs a punch and sounds dead on to what it should sound like. Getting beat down in battle, shooting photons to freeze objects, and no annoying menu/confirm noises are all so pleasant to the ear.

Gameplay: 10/10
A non-based battle system? Yay! Instead off taking turns hitting each other in this game, all four members of your battle party are cluttered together, and you must control a leader and the rest of the group follows. Even though it's in real time, your foes stop moving when you do, and you can see their attack range. Here's how it works...

You see an enemy on screen. You can either run up to him and avoid the attack range, or press R1 and dash around him. Once an opportunity is available to attack, you must form a specific combo with your characters. How do you do this? Well, all of the party members are assigned to a face button, and you must CAREFULLY(DON'T BUTTON MASH) string together a combo so the Special Attack Gauge goes to full. Endlessly hitting the enemy is not allowed, though. You're limited to a combined usage of 100 AP for the entire party.. See, every character can have a max of three attacks in a row. Each one takes up a certain amount of AP and fills the Special Attack Gauge. If you can successfully string together a combo so that the SAG goes to 100, you can use the characters' Soul Crush techniques. These also require AP, but also restore a certain amount. They're much more powerful than regular attacks, and look pretty awesome, too.

Every enemy's attack pattern can change at any time, so be cautious. AP doesn't get restored so easily, either, so make sure you use it wisely. It only gets restored by running around and not attacking and/or using items.

Defeating enemies is no walk in the park, though. They prove to me much more challenging than you face in most other games. I had to power level for a few of the areas, and then the bosses still turned out to be pretty hard. But as I've already stated, the battle music makes it tolerable.

Sealstones add to the strategy that must be used in combat. Scattered throughout the dungeons, there are these "sealstones" which add certain effects to what happens in the battles in the area of the sealstone. There are ones such as "ice based damage 150%,fire damage 50%". Since they affect the enemies as well and give them advantages, you occasionally need to take the seal stone to a place far away so you don't get slaughtered by a boss(much like the volcano). There's also an option to take a seal stone with you, but it's restricted to the area it was found in.

Another thing adds to how well you do in combat is runes and the ability to learn skills from them. Every piece of equipment has a certain color and feature to it, and if you connect these similar items, you can form skills, such as Toughness(Double HP) and First Aid(if you get hit, your health regenerates). But you must acquire enough skill points from defeating opponents, though. There is a limit of six skills that can be on at once, and I imagine utilizing them properly is tough, considering I only used two for my party members...

Enough about the battle system. I want to bring up another interesting point about the game play. Outside of battle, the game takes place in 2D. The game isn't actually 2D, but you side scroll. This makes for some good and interesting platforming and adds depth to dungeons we don't usually see in other RPGS. Photons can be shot out of your hand to freeze enemies and certain objects, making for some pretty unique puzzles.

Replay Value: 9/10
The game itself lasts about 40 hours, and there is a special dungeon, called the Seraphic Gate, to complete once you've gotten close to the final boss. Items, weapons, and levels are obtained like crazy inside the dungeon. Re-hashes of bosses in the main story line are inside the SG and take FOREVER to kill. Once you've finally done everything there is to do in the SG, you can go through again and find treasures that weren't previously there. New Game+'s are always fun too, when a game's this fun.

Conclusion
Perfection. That would be the way to describe this game if the characters were better and the story didn't start off in such a bad way. I strongly suggest picking this game up if you're an RPG fan(hey, you might even like it if you don't like RPGS). I'm guessing this game will be rare in the future, so you should get it while it lasts. RPGS don't get much better than this on the PS2.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/17/07, Updated 01/26/07