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Different

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

There's certainly a lot to do in Valkyrie Profile 2. Although the meat of the gameplay is kept to quite a strict path (and not a very long one at that), the level of depth and customization is immense. It's quite a challenging game simply because there is so much to take in. But if you are the type who loves menus, equipment and stats, then you're going to go cross-eyed with excitment at this game, and I recommend you take the plunge immediately.

The story of VP2 is a little obscure. A young princess called Alicia seems to hold the personality of a Valkyrie goddess inside her body, one who is guiding her towards a destiny that will save/change/destroy the world (I forget which). The princess meets up with a few team-mates and together they explore the world, venturing into many dungeons in search of mystical treasure and sacred items which are required to defeat some all powerful evil, etc etc. Enough of that, although as plots go, the story is quite basic although the amount of characters you have to meet and get to grips with can be quite bewildering.

Anyway, lets get the basics out on the table. Firstly - be prepared for the rather unusual step this game has taken of making everything SIDE -SCROLLING! Yes that's right, in nearly every part of gameplay exploration, its strictly left-to-right action against a scrolling backdrop, with jumps and leaps across gaps or up and down the terrain. You know, the type of thing you would have done on a SNES or Megadrive 1o years ago? Of course the graphics look absolutely gorgeous but it's still quite a shock when you first try and make your character (Alicia) move about. So that will take some getting used to. But, despite the lack of 3 dimensional screen depth, the game has instead made it's other apects far more full of depth to make up for it. And once you are used to it, you'll soon forget that as a drawback anyway. But it's still very odd to see Alicia running through a town in constant left to right motion as the streets and houses peel past her.
Anyway, let's talk about the battles, because that's what we need to know. I like to explain the combat in all RPGs I review because for me it's often make-or-break in a game if the fighting is done well. And here it pretty much is. Fighting is done anytime you bump into an enemy on screen. You can run into them, or let them run into you...side-scrolling, of course! If you want to avoid one you have to make a well timed jump over it, or run back in the other direction. You can also slash at it to ensure you get the first move, but whatever happens, as soon as you touch it, the screen goes WOOSH (as they do) and you are in battle mode. The slash to get the first go reminded me a bit of Breath of Fire - Dragon Quarter, if that helps (but thats the only similarity).
Once you are on the battlefield, things change drastically. The arena is in full 3D (hooray!) with slopes and obstacles and everything! Enemies are dotted around semi-randomly, and you need to knock 'em out to survive. Now here are the main facts about fighting:
Fighting is real time. Characters have a button each - you get four to a team max, so each of the right hand side controller buttons is assigned to a team mate. Characters have up to three attacks, so what you do is rush up close to an enemy, and start pressing the buttons. Once you start, you can go mad, as each press makes a character attack with their own special moves and they might have up to three goes each...or as many as you can get in before you run out of attack bar. The attack bar starts at a maximum of 100 and runs out as each attack is carried out, and it takes around 10-30 points to do an attack, depending on its power. Points are re-gained for clever chaining, critical blows and bits of enemies breaking off. Once the whole bar is empty, it's kind of the "end of your turn" and you have to run around to build the bar back up again. You can only attack with sufficient attack points, and so attacking is always best when the bar is at full 100 points, because if you chain attacks well enough you can gain a special "limit break" move called a Soul Crush (great name!) which does mega damage. The enemy will attack you too of course...usually when you have zero attack bar left of course. But being hit also makes it go back up again so a nice balance is kept.

Now you could go through the whole game just doing that, but there is A LOT more to it than just that. Fighting can give you more rewards than just experience points and money if you are skillful. By attacking certain enemy body parts (how you aim is quite difficult to work out, but certain attacks seem to point at various levels, and you can also run around to the back or side of an enemy), you can break them off, and this gives two important bonuses - special item drops that can be traded to make rare equipment, and extra points in the form of crystals that can be spent later on in the complicated "Sealstone" system (more on that later).

Now to make these fights easier there is a HUGE array of equipment available in the game. Some can just be bought in shops, some can only be found, and some can only be made as a trade for rare found (or battle-drop) items. Each piece of weaponry, equipment, armour or clothing will affect your stats, strength, resistance and HP totals, and wearing certain combinations allows your characters to learn skills, which are only learned if the combination is kept in place for a fixed amount of battles (a bit like in Final Fantasy IX). After the skill is learned, you can swap all the accessories around and learn the next lot of skills...phew! There's all sorts of things like this, so menu navigation can get very time consuming. There's an absurd amount of customization, and because everything can potentially be traded to make something else, you will never sell anthing just for cash so your inventory will very quickly spiral out of control. As I said, this game is going to be heaven for stat-geeks but it can be quite a chore if that aspect's not particularly interesting for you. I just about managed it, despite the actual menu screens being very hard to navigate - check the screen closely to see where all the options are because several sub screens are within other sub screens and you do need to know them all to get the full benefit of all the stuff you are accumulating.

Anyway all that takes some getting used to and there's really no easy way to undertand it right away so you will just have to be patient if you want to play this game to the maximum.

So, now back to the dungeons, and the designers have put in several fiendish puzzles, a lot of which revolve around jumping. Alicia can fire "photons" which immobilize enemies. These can then be jumped on or pushed around, or switched places with. In such ways, Alicia can do very complicated jumps and mid air warps to hard-to reach places, which is of course where treasure chests often are. This photon warping/jumping can be teeth-grittingly hard and you may not have the patience to reach every secret place in the dungeons, but most of the time it's fun. The other thing about the dungeons is Sealstones. Put simply, all the main dungeons contain one or more Sealstones in them. They have either a positive or negative effect, and it's up to you to get the good ones and leave the bad ones alone. Let me try and put this simply...somewhere in a tough dungeon there may be a Sealstone that grants the holder double attack power. While you are not carrying it, all the enemies are attacking you with double power. Now, you may find another Sealstone early on in the dungeon that cuts the holders defence in half. Carrying it gives you a big negative effect in battles, but you need survive the dungeon with this impediment long enough to seek it out the good one, grab it and replace it with the bad one and turn the tables on the enemy, so that by the time you reach the boss, all the favourable effects are held by your party and all the bad ones are affecting the enemies. Sometimes a well planned set of Sealstones is the only way to beat a boss. Are you starting to see how much you have to do in this game yet? There's more...any Sealstone can be bought and owned permanently, so you can use the ones you like a lot in later dungeons, but they can only be bought with the special crystals that you get awarded after battles, and these crystals take a LOT of skill to earn. Phew!

Well that's a taster for you. There's loads to do, so chances are you could be wrapped up in this for weeks. I don't really have any big gripes except for the character system which rather cruelly takes characters out of the game and brings in new ones at most unexpected times, so you could level up your favourites only to lose them all of a sudden due to the plot. And there are a lot of them...for a game that lets you use a team of just four to fight with, there are an absurd amount of temporary characters to choose from...it's very hard to stick with a winning combination. Especially towards the end when new characters come at you thick and fast...!

Everything else is standard RPG fare. Lots of plot twists. Lots of mean status effects in battle. Side quests in the shape of optional dungeons that only appear after talking to the right people - actually you really need to do these as they have vital rewards that make the main game much easier, so make sure not to miss any.

I really liked this game. I spent a lot of time on it, and even though I got frustrated trying to do double and triple jumps onto secret platforms for treasure, or repeat fighting enemies in the hope of breaking the right body part for a rare item drop, I still had fun. Recommended, and even if you don't know what a Valkyrie is or what "Nibelung Valesti!" means, you will still find this one addictive and rewarding.

An Absolute Atrocity

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: May 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Despite the fact that so much time has passed since I got this game, there are still no one star reviews that truly do justice in describing how truly awful the game is. So let's get to the bad points

Lack of Strategy/Ridiculous jumps in enemy levels
As mentioned in other reviews the levels incredible amounts from area to area, making the game very difficult. The problem is you might think "No problem, I like difficult games, I'll just use strategy to overcome the difficulty." Well, here's the thing, you can't use strategy in this game. While at first the sealstones make a huge difference, eventually you'll reach an area where you can't use them. Even if you take your time to set up very complex combos and execute them properly you will do minimal damage. Just so there is no confusion about what complex means- maximizing your gear, attacks, and passive abilities (the dangerous ones that can carry negative consequences) and executing them with perfect timing- is not enough to win a battle by a long shot. Only absurd amount of leveling will do the trick.

Building Items/Armor/Weapons/etc.
In stores if you sell specific items, you can unlock new things you can buy. Naturally, these things are better than normal equipment. The problem comes is that these specific items that have to be sold are a huge pain to gather. First, you have to get a specific monster to appear in battle, something that may not happen every battle. Next you have to break off a specific part of a monster before or when it dies. Here is where the problem sets in. Due to the specific locations of certain parts, you will have a minimal number of attacks, as few as one between your whole party, that can actually target that part. This means you have to stand at a very specific place relative of a monster and use the same attack over and over again in order to have a chance for the part to drop. The monster can move while you do this, so just using the right attack is not enough. Finally, on top of all this, even if you brake off the proper part, there is still a rather large probability the item you need won't drop. When you combine all these things, (actually probability works multiplicatively) getting this item is a chore that takes so much precision that it won't double up for you leveling, since that just revolves around killing monsters as quickly as possible.

Characters
Wait, did I just say you only have one attack that targets a specific area? This couldn't possibly be. I must have messed something up. Well, not really, The thing is just most of the characters you get are random. So if you randomly get characters that lack low attacks, I hope you're not planning on getting any hooves in any reasonable amount of time. The other annoying part is that certain characters can give you very helpful items, but if you didn't get that character, I guess you're just out of luck.

Other people may complain that it has 2D sidescroller elements or that in battle you have to run to a specific part to escape. I really didn't mind all that. I actually found it to be kind of refreshing, but there is no way anything could make up for the fact that the game absolutely lacks tactics, requires grinding that makes Everquest grinding look soft, and boils completely down to luck in certain points.

In short the combat system is seriously flawed, the itemization is horrendous, and most characters are poorly thought out and are completely irrelevant to the story.

Has the same problem as Star Ocean

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I'll make this a short one since I didn't finish the game. The game itself looks great and has good detail. The story was interesting enough to keep me going till I found out that this game shares the same problem with the other tri-ace game I played. The battles are a real time affair with you being able to dash (this is a slightly annoying feature in that one can sometimes get stuck on the scenery and then get whacked with that attack one really thought was going to miss) at the enemy and then hit one of the controller buttons to attack it hopefully knocking off a bit of the monster that you can then take to a shop to get special items. There is also a lot of stuff to find in the dungeons and a lot of items that you can "craft" that are better than the normal fare you get from the shops. Since this process takes a lot of time it is useful for leveling up and gaining skills for your characters. Which brings me to my problem with this game and the Star Ocean game. I like to spend time leveling up my characters and getting their skills and such. In this game you get regular old humans who stick around and eienjhar (ghosts of the fallen, picked by the valkyrie to participate in ragnarork or whatever battles the gods choose) which you level until a certain point and let them go back to being human. After these characters become human they usually give you stuff that makes the game easier (i.e. a ton of experience and a really cool sword were two i got), which is cool go track down character get cool stuff. The only problem is (to me anyway) is that apparently even though you level these guys up, you need to keep some of them. Along the way you manage to lose a good two or three humans out of what I thought was a permanet reserve. If you let all of your eienjhar go then at certain parts of the game your out of luck until you find more of them with their only being 20 or so objects in the game apparently, this can be a bit of a problem if you don't know this. Star Ocean:TTEOT did this to an extent with your choices during the course of the game determining which characters you could finish the game with. Make the wrong choices and you may be at lv.60 while the rest of your party is at level 20 while that next dungeon you have to clear has level 80 monsters in it. Not fun. If it was explained in the game it wouldn't be that bad or if the characters weren't around afterward saying have a nice trip (leaving you to trudge for the 90th time back to town restock on revives because that darn lvl 80 monster sneezed on most of your party again, it even said excuse me.)and then going back to pruning roses or whatever. To anyone who wants to play this game, it is fun and if you know going in that you have to have some team management you'll proably make it through the game just fine. Monster bashing is great stress relief, and its fun going back to shops to see if you finally got that elusive monster bit to get that really cool armor. Just get a game walkthrough somewhere before you spend 35 some hours backing yourself into a corner like I did.
m.a.c

...Boring game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: May 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Dont buy it please... you will regret. This not a Square-Enix game just logo.

Story - not so interesting
Battle mode - Difficult and boring
Graphic - Good for ps2

;_; It was a present for Christmas... I wished have decided for another game at that time.

Time travel always ruins a story

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: April 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Valkyrie Profile 2 is an RPG developed by action RPG all stars, Tri-Ace and put out by the repacking and re-releasing monster Squeenix. It is a prequel, that ends up being a sequel, to a the famous PSX title. The overall story is about one or more of the three goddesses of fate, Valkyries, as they collect souls for Odin, until they each become disillusioned with him and choose to take a different path.

Being an RPG, perhaps the most important element is the story of the game and how it is told. In VP1 the story mostly told in the beginning and end of the "chapters" while the chapters themselves revolved around new characters you were recruiting. In VP2 it's the direct opposite. The characters you get have very little to nothing to do with the overall plot, and follows the main character very closely. This would be a good thing if it weren't such a bad, horrible, cliche story. A horrible heroine, with a lackluster love interest and enemies who are boringly 2 dimensional. Later in the game time travel shows its ugly head only to add to the absurdity of the whole thing.

Not only is the story rancid, it's told in the worst way; with lazy programing. During all voiced cut scenes, characters will have mouth animations far too minimal for the amount of words being said, then they'll take a long pause so the camera can focus on the person being spoken to so we no longer see or think about the horrible voice synch.

The upside the horrible story is that you can skip most of the sequences and go straight into battle, where all the meat is for this baby. Battle's range from extremely fun to really broken and frustrating. They are really original and flashy. But you may get tired of some of the battle quotes when you have to hear them over and over because you have to teach new party members all the skills you spent 4 hours teaching old ones.

Lezard Valeth

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Lezard makes this game. That is the best voice-acting I remember hearing in a game ever. I love his voice. And it just gets better near the end. Most of the other voices are decent to good as well.

The story and dialogue are nice, using elements from Norse mythology.
There are many interesting cutscenes, but unfortunately the characters' movements and expressions in them look unnatural.

In fact, compared to the lovely looking environments, the character models are rather horrible. And it's a bit silly how they made Rufus look like captain Jack Sparrow and Lezard like evil Harry Potter.

Some people might complain about the 2D-scrolling, but it doesn't bother me. In dungeons enemies appear on screen (no random battles) and the ability to turn them into crystals to use as platforms is interesting. It's a nice change of pace trying to figure how to reach treasure chests using those platforms and the teleportative ability.

The battle system is a refreshing deviation from the standard. I much rather have the option of walking around the field and mash buttons, watching different kinds of attacks, until my hands/wrists literally hurt, than have my characters stand in a stupid row and repeatedly choose the attack command watching the characters perform that boring same slash through the game. That's been done since NES.

I don't know if I'd give this game 5 stars unless I laughed at Lezard all the time. But it's a really good game and quite original. And it doesn't fizzle in the end like so many other RPGs (it actually gets better I think).

not 3d gameplay

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: January 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The artwork is stunning.

Characters have hair that float in the breeze. Water backdrops, medieval style taverns! But, it sacrifices the 3d world. You can't explore the taverns, you can only talk to characters in your X plane.

She only goes left and right, it's like playing Donkey Kong. I'm still in denial, so I keep hitting the down and up directional. Hitting down, she kneels, too bad she doesn't slap the ground for bananas. (No 'primary targets' to slap, it would have added some much needed humor.)

In combat mode, you can finally do a little 3d running. Your group of fighters hop around in a huddle. You can zip up to a baddie, and ... freeze. I mash the attack buttons, waiting for them to start reacting. The special attack goes so fast all I see is a blur of light and a crystal exploding.

Experience points go to only the active party members. I spent lots and lots of hours doing the same dungeon screens over and over, swapping out party members to level them up. After 12 hours (up to Ch 3) I had to ask myself why I was playing this game.

The power of the Square Enix logo will never again draw me on name alone.

One of the best RPGs on the Playstation 2.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

When I first ordered this game based on everyone else's reviews (I know, not always a good idea, but sometimes you got to gamble, right?) I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm a big fan of the original Valkyrie Profile, but from all of the reviews I read, it didn't seem like the developers were going to be true to the original in either gameplay or storyline. Well to my surprise, they were, and this sequel (or prequel, I should say) has actually surpassed the original on many different levels.

Story 4/5: Okay, the story is pretty hard to follow. This is the first game I've ever played where the story has made me go, "huh?" I'm not sure if it was because I got so engrossed in the gameplay and lost track of it, or if the story is just that convoluted. I had to ask a friend of mine about it to figure out what was going on. When I got back on track, I thought it was a neat story. Nothing spectacular, but cool. For those of you who are expecting the depressing themes of the first game, you might be disappointed. Whereas the original Valkyrie Profile had a very mature storyline that deviated from traditional RPGs, Valkyrie Profile 2 has a story that pretty much defines "traditional RPG." This is why so many people said this game has lost the "feel" of the original. It has in some ways, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Gameplay 5/5: Amazing! I was skeptical about the battle system at first, but after a few battles, I was in love! You don't need to have studied Sun Tzu to win fights in this game, but you do need to plan your attacks out carefully. One thing, though. I was led to believe this game was incredibly hard - it wasn't. In fact, compared to the original Valkyrie Profile and other games by these developers, such as Star Ocean 2, this game is very easy. I'm guessing a lot of people having trouble with it are rushing through it and not taking their time; to those people I ask, what's the rush? There are a couple of times where you do need to level up, but not for more than a couple levels. Dungeon crawling is pretty standard for the series; the puzzles are basically freeze enemy-stand on it-jump to higher ground-get treasure chest. Not at all hard.

Graphics 5/5: This is as good at it's going to get for the PS2, folks. These graphics top even Resident Evil 4. The level of detail is so amazing, in fact, my little 13" television couldn't handle it and everything came up choppy, so I had to switch to a larger television set.

Sound 4/5: Motoi Sakuraba's music has changed so much over the years that I have mixed feelings about it. The soundtrack fits, but it's completely forgettable. Since it's Motoi Sakuraba, you get your egotistical progressive rock music with pseudo-intellectual titles. The soundtrack is above average at best, but not because the music is really good, but because the music fits so perfectly. Don't expect this to live up to the original, though. Voice acting is professional. It was nice hearing familiar voices in the game, such as Johnny Yong Bosch, who also played Vash the Stampede in Trigun.

Overall 5/5: Why 5/5 instead of 4/5? Because I'm partial to this game. I love the characters, I love the acting, I love the battles, and I love the dungeon crawling. The story serves its purpose too, and it's nice seeing Arngrim getting more attention. Want a good RPG? Get this.

One of the best RPGs for the PS2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: August 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is one of the best RPGs for the PS2. I wish I would've bought the first game, Valkyrie Profile for PS one.

A Lesson in Frustration

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: August 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

While aesthetically pleasing I found VP2 to be one of the most frustrating and annoying games that I've had the misfortune to come across. Aside from finding the characters flat and uninteresting, the story mediocre, and the music passable, it was almost impossible to progress through the game at a reasonable pace. The dungeons get progressively harder which is understandable and acceptable, what isn't is how it's nearly impossible to even set foot in the next dungeon without returning to the previous one to "level up" but a lot of good that does you. At best you'll earn more hit points and hopefully the skills that you're trying to learn, but the core part, the amount of damage you deal, is tied to the weapon that you're using.

But guess what. You can only get the really good weapons that give you half a chance by having them "made" for you. Weapons are made by acquiring different items from battle and selling them at various armories to have the desired weapons placed in stock. This in and of itself isn't such a bad thing, what is is that some of the items you need are nearly impossible to acquire. I'm not the type of person who normally memorizes where I was when I got a particular item and what it was that dropped a it. I dash, strike, and hope for a direct assault. Therefore I'm completely at a loss as to where I acquired that charged tail feather from or if I happened to remember which area and which monster, it was a trial and error method to determine just which body part provided which item, and then again which attack actually targeted said body part. In the end I left it up to luck, got what I could, and did the best that I could do with what I had.

The item situation left me irritated to the point where I questioned if I even wanted to finish the game. But I did and was rewarded with a rather unsatisfying ending. Theoretically after beating VP2 I should have wanted to play VP1, but you know what? I don't. In fact I don't want anything else to do with Dipan, the valkyrie sisters, and whatever other pseudo mythology they manage to come up with. I wasn't expecting much from the game and on that end it didn't disappoint.

If pretty graphics are enough to offset a mediocre story and a frustrating item system, then by all means get Valkyrie Profile 2 and enjoy it for what it has to offer.

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