A look back at: Valkyrie Profile

Valkyrie Profile is the telling tale of a valkyrie finding dead souls to fight for the sake of Valhalla, or is it?

This ended up being one of my favorite games in a similar vein that Lufia II had, in that basically everything about it is good. Sure, the dungeons turn into side-scrolling platformers, but have the right enemies and traps to get over. The game's unique combat system sticks out over many others, utilizing the buttons for good attacks, plus the combos that can be done, oh yes, and mages tend to be useful too. Sure, you can use the menu for things as well, and might as well since the game can get quite rough, but it's a worthwhile value of the games battles. The Purify Weird Soul moves are pretty anime-esque but do their job as finishing moves, and can be comboed for extra fun. The MP in this game is actually currency, the DME in this game is essentially the HP, and the EXP ball is so helpful.

Oh yes, and time periods get used up upon entering and doing things. Go to towns, find recruits that end up dying, also train up recruits and then send them over to Valhalla, meaning you can't use them again, yet said warriors are in fact what pleases your superiors. The characters you get all have their unique personalities and how each one of them died and join your entourage. Even the ones that don't join but are still very important plot-wise, like Brahms and Lezard, care to be among the memorable ones. You can obviously expect Asgardians to be rich in power, just look at Loki and you can tell he's gonna be a villain. You can also look at Midgard and realize just how miserable it is. Part of it may be Odin's fault too, considering he took one important thing called a Dragon Orb, which ends up in some destabilization of that area. As far as most interesting character, that's easily Lenneth, a character basically defrosted into an emotionless warrior finder, who in the A ending would end up getting her memories back should you choose. And naturally the B ending doesn't cover any of this at all.

And then there's the prospect of endings and difficulty settings which give this game quite the replay value. Each time, you are liable to get different Einherjar in each game depending on what the RNG provides, and to avoid C ending you gotta get those characters sent up. But the Seal rating is the key to the A ending, and needs to somehow be kept low to unlock those events there. It's quite a balancer. As for difficulty settings, this is one of the reasons why Hard is the best difficulty setting, due to several accessories that boost stats on level-ups, this means that several characters in the game will have it much easier than they would on Normal and especially Easy.

So yes, when the story and gameplay are real good and the characters are interesting, with the main ones growing on the player, it pretty much is a sign the game is gonna be fantastic all around. I really could not recommend this game anymore than I already have, it is excellent and worth a buy.