Designer’s Dilemma

One of the better RPG games in the PSP platform, Valkyrie Profile combines the flexibility of choosing your own characters to use in the game while attempting to introduce multiple characters with their respective backgrounds that later on intertwines with the other characters’ lives, which pretty much creates a complex storyline altogether.

The gameplay kind of reminds me of Star Ocean from the PS2 days, as character power-ups are not limited to fighting dungeon monsters. Weapons and items can also be “divined” just like the item creation skill “alchemy” in Star Ocean. What I specifically like about this game is that experience points are not only acquired through fighting alone, but may also be acquired as action-based points like finishing a quest, hitting down a tree, etc. This also gives the player the freedom to level-up a character that was not even used in the party, as action-based experience points are stored up in the menu and can be used anytime during the game.

The fighting, as in most RPG types, is turn-based, although additional attacks and combos may be acquired as the game progress and your character weapons improve.

The downside of the game is that it has too many characters and most of these characters stories are shown in pieces as if just for the sake of having their own character background - in this sense, the complexity of the story did not really work well for the game. Another negative comment is that the game pace is too slow, and if I hadn’t read reviews(mostly positive) by other gamers, I would not have continued playing after an hour or so of total boredom.

Overall, I give this game an 8 out of 10, as the graphics could have been better(though we do have to remember that it’s an RPG and the story is the most important part), the gameplay could have been more original, and the story, a little less complex. Still a great play if you want a game that’s not easy to beat and would require some skill in fighting off the dungeon goons.

Valkyrie Profile: Yet another great game from Square-Enix. Salute!

Filed under: PSP on March 25th, 2008