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cloned and old concepts

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 15
Date: March 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Am sorry, but I have never been more disappointed in a game. The art work seemed cloned from older games, no free movement, just follow the path. Just terrible. When I spend almost $50 for a game I expect something for my money. Doubt I will throw cash at another game created by this source again any time soon.

Huge disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: June 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The graphics are nice. There, I've said about the only good thing I can think of about this game.

The gameplay is silly, unintuitive, and devoid of strategy. The story is alternately trite and forced, as it tries to make sense of nonsensical gameplay elements. The heroine is a complete twit, and I hope she ends up dead (although I'm sure she won't).

Sorry, but I have come to expect far better from the likes of Square. I bought this game based on their reputation as a maker of quality games. I won't be making that mistake again.

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.

Top Reasons not to Buy this Game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 15
Date: May 11, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have decided to include the top reasons to not buy this game. I have excluded any positive qualities just because the problems with this game are so overbearing, it kills any of the positive qualities. Feel free to skip the conclusion, but I feel each reason makes an important point.

Top Reasons to never buy this game:

1) Absurb Difficulty
I'm not against difficult games but I have a distinct feeling they increased the difficulty just to make the game last longer. Every time you beat an area/dungeon you get a new area unlocked so you can progress in the game. It follows a very strict guideline, as you do not roam in the world but click on locations that have been unlocked. The issue is that every time you unlock an area and progress you must level for many hours before you can even fight those enemies in the new area. You may be able to easily kill enemies in the last area but when you go to the following area you would be destroyed within one, sometimes two battles. Therefore, you are required to go back into the area you fought in and bored of and re-level up for about another 4 or so hours just to continue. Most games have a progressive difficulty increase, this game does not. If this happens once in while that fine, but with every new location unlocked it gets tiring, very quickly.

2) Side Scrolling, 2d design
The first thing you notice when you play the game is that the characters move in 2d, meaning only to the side, not up or down. Awkardly enough, all the other non-playable characters in the game do move up and down so talking to them require you to align your body in a straight line with them so you can talk. Even more confusing is the fact that they made the battles in 3d. Why would you make the battles 3d, the non-playable characters move in 3d, but not your party?

3) Cheating Bosses
Have you ever spent a 10-15 minutes fighting an end boss to get them half way to being dead and then they suddenly kill your whole party with one new spell? You will if you play this game. For some reason once you start doing a lot of damage, near half way of the boss health gone, many of the boss enemies suddenly develop a new spell or attack. These are extremely cheap, such a water spell that will hit everyone know matter where they are on the battlefield and do huge amounts of damage, enough to kill everyone in the party depending on your level. The thing is the rest of the time in the game you can only hit enemies within there attack range. Why the new spell, why did they throw out the attack range for no logical reason, and why can these spells wipe out a whole party? Worst of all it happens after the enemy taken a lot of damage meaning you waste a ton of time, maybe 10 minutes fighting them, only to die over and over half way through. Seems like it would be pretty annoying? Well it is.

4) The little things

Running from Battle
In a normal game you can just press a run command and they attempt to run. In this game, you have to actually move to an area where you can escape. Often this area far away and blocked by many enemies. Sometimes you have to run to a different floor if there is stairs and there are often many objects in your way you have to navigate around. All the while enemies will attack you constantly. Even when you try to run away and get to the area sometimes it will deny you from leaving, even if enemies are not right near you, so you will have to re-try to escape several times.

You can be cheap to
This game is designed so your whole party has one attack meter and one menu spell (such as heal) can be cast per period of time. The problem is that when you fight an enemy in an party, your whole team may be wiped out because they all are hit and you can`t heal them fast enough. However, by using your strongest character you can send them alone to fight the enemy and leave the rest of your team far away which will allow them to stay alive and gain experience too. All you do is send in one character, heal that person one time per turn and use the remaining attack meter to continually attack until the turn ends. The enemy attacks, then you repeat the healing and are back to full health with the rest of the attack meter to spend. You would understand better if you played the game, it not complicated at all once you play the game a little while. There is a reason why normal RPG's have one attack per person and there a reason why that system is used and not this one.

There are many other little things that seem like they should have been tweaked, but never were. One example is the lack of save points in dungeons and often there is only one, right before the boss enemy, so if you die you have to restart and re-obtain all the items in the area. For the sake of your time I'll save you the rest of the details.

Conclusion
There is a underlining theme in this game, that they tried to change things that worked before and replaced it with a far worse replacement. I also get the strong feeling that they tried to save time with game production by cutting certain things. Absurd difficulty level, 2d scrolling world, and not being able to roam freely to key locations (therefore not creating a world) are some examples. There certain things in the game where I wonder if someone tested it because it very annoying. If a good game has one or two quirks that comes with the territory but in this game it just another thing to add in the list of problems. In playing this game I just get the feeling that it not very fun to play, there is to many annoying issues with this game. Overall all the problems and design failures make for an experience that you should easily pass up.

...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.

Solid, but contains the pitfalls of most tri-ace games...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 37 / 41
Date: October 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

My experience with developer tri-ace's games dates back to the original Playstation era with Star Ocean:The 2nd Story. Like most gamers on this side of the world, this was probably the one of the first tri-ace titles that had and created enough of a buzz to form a niche of fans. The other game, which is credited with a simular yet even bigger buzz, was the original Valkyrie Profile.

Unfortunately, the yield from the initial pressing run of that game was so low (so tri-ace wouldn't lose to much if the game didn't sell or catch on) by the time I had heard the hype surrounding VP and wanted to give the game a try it was much too late... copies of the game were selling at astronomical prices on e-bay much like how sealed copies of Final Fantasy VII are selling now. Because of this I was ecstatic when a sequel - which in this case is actually a prequel - was announced so I could finally experience what I had missed out on the first time in one form or another. Granted, VP2 is not a complete carbon copy of the original, but the majority of the gameplay elements cross the game/generation gap, so in essence this game should probably give you an idea of what the original itself was like.

So, would I say that I was blown away or impressed by what I missed out with missing the original VP? Not really.

To start with, the game is simply beautiful. There are some dazzling effects, from leaves and grass waving in the breeze to various types of weather pounding some of the locals. This is what one should expect from a last generation PS2 title. Sure, every once in a while the battle camera might clip some polygons so it looks like your characters are standing on air, but that is so minor it doesn't matter. The only gripe I have is I wish the characters weapons changed depending on what they currently have equipped. However, since the character designs are so dependant on the default look of the weaponry, the above simply wouldn't work very well.

Combat is Valkyrie's claim to fame, much like it is in other tri-ace games like Star Ocean. This is a good thing, considering the amount of time you'll spend in battle mode leveling up the game's massive number of characters (of which only a handful are actually involved in the story, the others just seem to be there). At a quick glance, the battle system seems to be a button mashers dream, but like a good 3D fighting series (Soul Caliber or Tekken) those who know what their doing will always get further or have less difficulty as things can be difficult enough. Other combat related issues also sprout up: reviving an ally requires you to be near the ally's body and status effects are so not your friend - especially when the whole party is inflicted at once (especially with poison) *shutter* .

As fun as combat is, there are quite a few hitches to be aware of, such as wasting AP on a dash and getting nowhere because your party is caught on the edge of "something" in the environment or when party members become separated for the same reason, limiting your attack options until you take the time and go back and get them. This becomes especially aggravating when you're trying to finish battles as quickly and efficiently as possible to receive experience and crystal bonuses. The change from a 2D fighting environment in VP to a 3D one in VP2 works, but the above issues make you yearn for 2D battles of the original which would probably be devoid of these problems.

The game's skill system is another area that initially seems interesting and clever but quickly becomes quite cumbersome. You'll form rune words with your equipment and accessories to unlock new "potential" skills. Note the word "potential" in the previous sentence. Unlocking a new skill doesn't grant the character the skill automatically - only though battle can the skill be used and permanently learned. At first glance this is a good thing since it prevents abuse (think FFIX skill system here), but the player then quickly finds out it "may" (well, usually) take a long to learn said skill. Instead of being awarded a set amount of points towards your skills after an enemy defeat like in most normal RPGs, a percentage earned towards potential skills based on the average level of your current party and that of the enemy(s). Because of this you'll constantly be seeking out stronger and stronger enemies and you'll hardly ever find an "undeniable great place" to level up. You'll also be contending with the never ending equipping and unequipping of equipment while doing this and often means your party is usually far from wearing the strongest available equipment at all times - something that is usually a given in most RPGs.

Traversing dungeons is probably the most noteworthy aspect of VP2 after the battle system. The first few are a complete cakewalk and teach you the ropes, the later ones can really test you sanity and your brainpower. Correct sealstone usage and photon know-how go a long way towards completely clearing them of all their contents. Kudos to tri-ace for the awesome auto map feature - features like this need to become an industry/genre standard!

In the sound department, Motoi Sakuraba makes a rather subdued yet solid entrance, seeming to ditch his rather unique yet unorthodox style of composing. It's not until much later until you hear a piece and you know "yeah, that's Sakuraba, no doubt". The voice-overs are good, but at the same time just a few tiers above decent.

Valkyrie Profile 2 also falls victim to problems that are prevalent in other tri-ace games. Some moments of unbalanced gameplay creep up on the player as the difficulty goes up a few notches without much warning. The story is once again slow to start (is this even a surprise anymore with tri-ace games?), and some of the story twists you can see coming a mile away (the one revelation at the end of Chapter 3 was so freaking obvious!).

All this said is Valkyrie Profile 2 worth playing if you've never experienced VP? Yes. However, now having experienced it, I honestly think I could have had waited for a price drop instead of buying it on day it came out. Despite this, I still look forward to playing the re-release of the original on the PSP.

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.

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.

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.

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

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