Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria
Mar. 5th, 2017 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroSilmeria is one of the Valkyries tasked with collecting the souls of brave warriors and delivering them to Valhalla. She’s on the outs with Odin, and now she’s sharing the body of Alicia, the Princess of Dipan; and the curreny Valkyrie Hrist is trying to hunt them down. And isn’t above starting a war to lure them out.
I’ve had a copy of this sitting on my shelf for years with the intention of trying it out. I had some free time this weekend, so I opted to do that. I wasn’t enthused.
My initial reaction can probably be summed up by the opening credits: "Square-Enix" Yay! "Tri-Ace" Boo! Tri-Ace games have reliably hard and unforgiving action-oriented combat, and this is no exception.
The main screen is essentially 2D, with an ability to walk “in” and “out” through various doors. There’s a bunch of puzzle platforming via the “photon” ability, which allows you to freeze enemies and either use them as platforms or swap places via teleporting. Which is clever for a dungeon or so, but the enemies don’t stay frozen for nearly long enough to solve most puzzles. (They’ll remain as “remnants” after the you fight the actual enemy, which you can still freeze and manipulate, but those stop moving and are easy to lodge into impossible spots, forcing you to restart the room and likely re-fight the battle.)
The battle system is in 3D, in which you move your party around, trying to stay out of the red “attack zone” of enemies and get into a position to attack them. When you launch an attack, you can have all four party members launch as many attacks as their weapons allow, and doing so depletes your energy meter. Then you need to run around and let that meter recharge before you attack again. You can also trigger “break mode” (when you break off a piece of the enemy that you get as vendortrash) which allows you to attack like crazy for a brief time. Not only did I find the strategy in this system incredibly limited (you’ve basically got four attacks assigned, one for each character, and you need to spam them all regardless of what they are), but the enemy-dodging is a painful system with a really bad visual radius and far too much brown-on-brown. And if you aren’t good at it, you’ll get murderated very quickly.
There’s a FF12-esque crafting system based on selling vendortrash in certain combinations to unlock new items you can buy. I didn’t even get into exploring it because I didn’t want to grind for the necessary vendortrash.
The plot centers around Silmeria and Alicia sharing a body, and their interactions with a few regular humans and a lot of revived warriors (Einherjar) who can join your team. But neither the characters nor the mythology were enough to hold my attention, especially when I wasn’t enjoying the gameplay.
(For the record, apparently this game has significant anti-cheat measures built in, and there are no useable Action Replay codes I could find.)
Overall: The story doesn't grab me and the battle/puzzle system isn't fun. But other than that…
I’ve had a copy of this sitting on my shelf for years with the intention of trying it out. I had some free time this weekend, so I opted to do that. I wasn’t enthused.
My initial reaction can probably be summed up by the opening credits: "Square-Enix" Yay! "Tri-Ace" Boo! Tri-Ace games have reliably hard and unforgiving action-oriented combat, and this is no exception.
The main screen is essentially 2D, with an ability to walk “in” and “out” through various doors. There’s a bunch of puzzle platforming via the “photon” ability, which allows you to freeze enemies and either use them as platforms or swap places via teleporting. Which is clever for a dungeon or so, but the enemies don’t stay frozen for nearly long enough to solve most puzzles. (They’ll remain as “remnants” after the you fight the actual enemy, which you can still freeze and manipulate, but those stop moving and are easy to lodge into impossible spots, forcing you to restart the room and likely re-fight the battle.)
The battle system is in 3D, in which you move your party around, trying to stay out of the red “attack zone” of enemies and get into a position to attack them. When you launch an attack, you can have all four party members launch as many attacks as their weapons allow, and doing so depletes your energy meter. Then you need to run around and let that meter recharge before you attack again. You can also trigger “break mode” (when you break off a piece of the enemy that you get as vendortrash) which allows you to attack like crazy for a brief time. Not only did I find the strategy in this system incredibly limited (you’ve basically got four attacks assigned, one for each character, and you need to spam them all regardless of what they are), but the enemy-dodging is a painful system with a really bad visual radius and far too much brown-on-brown. And if you aren’t good at it, you’ll get murderated very quickly.
There’s a FF12-esque crafting system based on selling vendortrash in certain combinations to unlock new items you can buy. I didn’t even get into exploring it because I didn’t want to grind for the necessary vendortrash.
The plot centers around Silmeria and Alicia sharing a body, and their interactions with a few regular humans and a lot of revived warriors (Einherjar) who can join your team. But neither the characters nor the mythology were enough to hold my attention, especially when I wasn’t enjoying the gameplay.
(For the record, apparently this game has significant anti-cheat measures built in, and there are no useable Action Replay codes I could find.)
Overall: The story doesn't grab me and the battle/puzzle system isn't fun. But other than that…
