The Road to Valhalla Is Paved with Tragic Melodrama

After several failures trying to track down a lone Resistance member in eastern Europe in Metal Gear Solid 4, it became clear that I needed something else to do for a while. Continuing the attempt in my frustrated state of mind was only going to result in some kind of violence. Since I was sick at the time, and not exactly energetic, I picked up my PSP, loaded up my copy of Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, and decided to give it another shot.

I had bought the game back in the summer of 2006, after some wild urge had me searching (fruitlessly) for the PS1 version earlier that year. I'd taken a stab at it then, been confused by what I had to do, and set it aside. I recalled hearing nothing but good things about the game, and I had the idea that its outstanding reputation wasn't solely a factor of its Panzer Dragoon Saga-like rarity.

Now, starting it over, I undertand exactly what my problem was the first time around.

I didn't read the manual.

I blame games like Final Fantasy VIII, which actually punish you for reading the manual by presenting you with long, intensely boring and unskippable tutorials covering all the game's various systems. After a while, you get so used to having your hand held that you get thrown for a loop whenever the game expects you to take responsibility for learning how to play it.

I still haven't read the manual. I've skimmed it, but I haven't read it. What I did this time that I didn't do last time was grit my teeth, square my shoulders and experiment with things until the game began to make sense to me. Now that it does, and I've made some progress, I feel like I may be able to talk about it.

Valkyrie Profile is based on Norse mythology. Well, no, that's not quite right. It's less "based on" and more "inspired by" the myths. In that sense, it reminds me of Kid Icarus nearly fifteen years before it, "based on" Greek mythology. It takes names and ideas and runs with them. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I'm saying that if you're interested in Norse mythology, you shouldn't be depending on Valkyrie Profile for an accurate depiction of it.

You play the role of Lenneth, a Valkyrie in the service of Odin, king of the Aesir of Asgard, most powerful of all the gods. He has received word that Ragnarok is soon to begin, and decides to send Lenneth to Midgard, the human realm, in order to gather the spirits of fallen heroes, train them, and send them to Valhalla to fight in the coming war as Einherjar.

As of the early stages, the game mostly breaks down into two parts. The first part consists of using Lenneth's telepathic abilities to detect recently fallen warriors and, upon seeking them out, the the player is subjected to a series of scenes depicting how the newly discovered warrior met his fate. These are (at least so far) completely non-interactive, and give the characters a sense of identity and personality they would otherwise lack. Once Lenneth has a new Einherjar under her command, the character can be put in the active party for the other part of the game: dungeon crawling.

Normally, this would be the point where I put down the game. I'm not a big fan of the grind at all, and when it doesn't bore me to tears, it frustrates the hell out of me. One of the reasons I haven't played many RPGs in the last few years is because I've gotten sick and tired of standard, turn-based combat in the genre. There's a reason I don't read manuals for RPGs anymore, and hand-holding tutorials are only a part of it. These days, the only RPGs I can really get into are the ones like Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter that shake up the formula so much that the game is practically unrecognizable as any kind of "normal" RPG.

Valkyrie Profile shakes up the formula. This is because it was created by Tri-Ace, and those people derive some sort of deep and perverse enjoyment from being deliberately different. Thank God.

The dungeons are side-scrolling action stages, involving a lot of running and jumping and other quick maneuvers to navigate through their passages. Monster encounters are represented by creatures roaming through the dungeon; contact with them initiates a battle.

Battles are another area where Valkyrie Profile shines. Rather than menu-diving, each character in the party is assigned to one of the face buttons. Pressing one of the buttons executes an attack from the assigned character. But this takes more finesse and strategy than you might think. Combos can be performed, depending on the number of attacks a character has available, and stringing together enough hits will allow special high-damage attacks. Correctly performing combos and exploiting weaknesses can allow even some bosses to be toppled in just a couple of rounds.

Because of the streamlined combat interface, battles tend to be both quick and fun. This is helped by the graphical effects used in battle, particularly for special attacks, which are impressive when you consider the limitations of the PS1 hardware the game was originally programmed for.

In fact, the graphics are nice overall, with well-detailed two-dimensional sprites overlaid on equally detailed backgrounds. The PSP also features some fairly impressive CGI cutscenes, replacing the animated cutscenes of the original version.

Unfortunately, the sound is a mixed bag. The music is exceptionally good, don't get me wrong. I have the soundtrack, and I love it. And the sound effects are all appropriate. But the voices...

Some of the characters are at least well-cast. Lenneth Valkyrie is one of those. Her voice fits pretty much exactly what I had imagined, based on her appearance and personality. But none of the voice actors act particularly well. The best that can be said of any of the performances I've heard so far is that they feel sort of stiff and awkward. You can get a sense of the feeling most of the actors are trying for but they can't...quite...reach it.

Mechanically speaking, there are a number of character customization options available to you in order to strengthen your characters. Odin requires heroes of some standing, it turns out, and most of the Einherjar you recruit aren't fit to be sent along to Valhalla the minute you get them. In addition to leveling up the normal way, you also need to modify their personal traits to boost their Hero Status. There are also a number of techniques you can teach to characters, such as counter-attacking and light healing.

Incidentally, this was the part of Valkyrie Profile that had me scratching my head for a little while. None of the character development options are ever really explained in-game, though it does take the time to show you a few of the basics (finding Einherjar and fighting; that's about it). This is what I had to experiment with, or look up in the manual.

A lot of RPGs, I get tired of after a while. Walking around killing monsters - really, the meat of the game, you know? - starts to bore me. Combat stops being an experience to enjoy, and starts being a thing I have to tolerate in order to advance the plot. And when you stop to realize that a lot of RPG plots really aren't terribly original or interesting, well, I'm sure you can see where this complaint is headed.

Valkyrie Profile, by its very nature, avoids that. Because you are constantly in the process of recruiting, building and sending off characters, you never have time to really get into any sort of "groove" with your combat. You are always tweaking your characters, looking for the right equipment, the right techniques, the right combination of moves to allow maximum damage output. Right about the time you get everything figured out and have mastered the current party, someone new comes along, and someone old gets rotated out, maybe sent up to Valhalla, and you get to do it all over again. You have just enough time to really enjoy the results of your work before everything changes.

You are always on your toes.

The only constant in your party is Lenneth, the Valkyrie herself, watching all of these mortal heroes, the tragic victims of a variety of circumstances - honor and loyalty, sacrifice, misplaced trust and the resultant betrayal - seemingly unmoved by the death that surrounds her. Yet she, too, has questions about her past. She was not always a Valkyrie, a blindly loyal servant of Odin and his Aesir. She once had a life, a mortal life, with all its attendant dreams and hopes for the future. She doesn't remember it, but it teases at the back of her mind, maddeningly vague.

Sadly, beyond that, I don't really know much about the story. I'm only two chapters in, and reading spoiler-free plot synopses gives me the impression that most of the really interesting things won't be happening for a while yet. And I'm okay with that, because the game is still interesting enough even as it currently stands. Recruiting the Einherjar involves Lenneth being present at the moment one of them dies, and observing the circumstances surrounding their death. It doesn't do much for the linear progression of the story, but it does help flesh out the world the story takes place in, giving you a sense of how things stand and giving you a view into the relationships between different countries and peoples.

In that sense, it reminded me somewhat of the different quests in Phantasy Star Online, which helped give you a better sense of what was going on in the world around you (Both on Ragol and on Pioneer 2) without actually advancing the plot (such as it was).

Are there things I could complain about? Sure, but they're limited, and mainly a result of the game being ported to the PSP. The loading times can be a pain in the ass occasionally, and the music sounds sort of tinny on account of the system's speakers. And equipment management is sort of a hassle, since you can't touch the equipment of characters who aren't in the party. But these are all pretty minor things. Sure, I've sat through all of them, griping and grousing, and shaking my fist in the general direction of whoever I feel bears the most personal responsibility at the moment - God, Sony, some random programmers at Tri-Ace in Japan. Somebody. But that's only because I get frustrated easily.

In the end, any serious bitching about the issues I mentioned is ridiculous. Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth is an amazing game, and deserves more praise and attention than it's likely to get.