Stranger of Paradise, Valkyrie Profile edition.
The plot is not as incomprehensible as the one in Stranger of Paradise, I'll give it that much, but it isn't very interesting or original, and every twist you'll see coming a mile away. The way it's told leaves a lot to be desired as well, both Valkyrie and her four Einherjar are pretty boring.
As for the game itself, it plays like a PS2 game but looks like a PS3 game. I say this as praise, as it feels nostalgic, plus, I'm fine with a modern game not having the mandatory crafting mechanics or the dopamine chest checklists. Sadly, it doesn't play like a good PS2 game.
Valkyrie has access to about 6 different weapons, being able to equip two at a time on the digital pad. You can perform different combos by using Square and Triangle, and as you upgrade your weapons you gain access to more attacks. You can dodge and block as well, dodging and block at the last moment does confer some benefits to the player, as you'd expect. Holding down R2 and pressing any face button performs Divine Arts, which consume crystals from the Arts gauge, which refills as you attack enemies, while holding down R1 and pressing any face button summons whichever Einherjar is slotted to that button for a short while, these run on the Summon Gauge, that refills when picking up blue souls. Lastly, Valkyrie can use L2 to grapple on to an enemy, this can even be done from the air!
The thing is... combat isn't very satisfying. Valkyrie's attacks and animations feel slow and weak, and as far as I could tell, there wasn't much fun stuff you could do with the combat system. The PS4 version at least even suffers from some framerate issues. There's a weakness system at play here too, locking onto enemies will tell you what they are weak to, attacking them with the right element Art will fill a gauge, that once full leaves them incapacitated for a spell. There are two ways to use the right element, either use the right Einherjar, who will install their element on Valkyrie's weapon for as long as they are active, or by using an Art.
There are a few problems with this system. First of all, you can eventually unlock situational summons, such as summoning an Einherjar when you are downed on when you break an enemy gauge. You can have up to two Einherjar active at the same time, but you can just summon another one and it will cancel the last one. Here's the thing, say you are fighting an enemy weak to fire... if a situational summon triggers, the element of your weapon will change, and it's not like you can change it at any moment, if you are in the middle of a combo.... tough luck, your element changed. It's very annoying, and sure, you can turn off situational summons, but I shouldn't need to. Another issue is that there are about six different elements, but you only have four Divine Art Slots... so be ready to pause the game to swap Arts every now and then, at least if you want to maximize the combat system. Haven't some sort of way to toggle between builds would've been amazing, since this could mean that you'd have another pair of weapons and items at the ready.
Mind you, it's that the combat is bad, it simply is average. It's a beat'em up with nothing of note. In game like Dynasty Warriors, you feel powerful as you easily and explosively mow down hundreds of enemies. Devil May Cry is more about being creative with how you defeat your enemies. Here... it's just about mashing buttons to bring down enemies. And that's the only thing it has. You can use Arts to expedite the whole process, but that means losing on Proficiency XP for your weapons, so you do you. Combat feels super slow, since Valkyrie moves and attacks very slowly. It doesn't help that the first sword you start the game with is easily the best weapon in the game, as the other ones feel slow or clunky.
There's this weird "CP" system at play, even though you unlock different abilities, some of them have different CP cost, and you can't go above 500, so you might have to turn some of them off.... but why would you? 500 is the most CP you can have. Well, turns out this change on Hard Mode... to 430. Yeah, I don't get it. Maybe they'll add more abilities or difficulty settings via updates? I don't know, but it's one of the most superfluous systems I've seen in recent times.
When I said the game is a beat'em up, I meant it. The closest thing to puzzles is pressing switches, which are next to the door they open, selecting an Einherjar to clear an obstacle, or finding a key, which is never farther away than two-rooms distance. Sometimes you might need to press L2 to use your soul grappling hook. So why explore? To find Sad Flowers! Sad Flowers is one of the dumbest collectible, because all they grant you is a single sentence of someone's laments, sometimes it's just the sad neigh of a horse, and I am not making that up. That said, you need to collect all green Sad Flowers if you want the good ending. It's not a very involved game, as you see.
The game does Sidequests in a very weird way too. While you might 'find' them during a main chapter, do not be deluded, you didn't activate it. On the very first chapter you find a Soul that mentions a ring near the church. So I searched. And searched. And gave up. Well... you can only properly engage sidequests from the Hub, in-between chapters. And every sidequest transports you to the location, so you must do them 1-by-1 even though they take place in reduced versions of the maps from the main game. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can feel a bit tedious since loading times in the game are a bit longer than I would've liked.
Valkyrie Elysium is an incredibly basic beat'em up, and look, there's nothing bad about that, I like basic beat'em ups like Final Fight. However, Final Fight is two hours long at most, this is a 15 hour game, so if it doesn't want to wear out its welcome it'd better have some sort of hook to keep you interested, or at least some very satisfying combat, so that even though I'm mashing square, I'm getting some sort of dopamine reward. This game has neither. Using the soul hook to grapple on to enemies is cute... at first, but there really isn't much to the game. It's not bad, but you could do much better. And I'm sad, 'cause they decided to bring back Valkyrie Profile with this, and it will quite obviously sink the series, a series it's barely connected to.
5.5
No comments:
Post a Comment