Let me preface my review by stating that I have only played about 5-10 hours of the first Valkyrie Profile title, which has been retitled due to the PSP release: Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth.I don't know much about the connection between the two.Besides that some of the playable characters of VP1 reappear in VP2 as playable characters for whatever reason.See: Arngrim as an Einherjar that Silmeria is able to use.Let us know that Silmeria takes place a few hundred years before Lenneth's story.Not that it will matter much in my review.And the review:

You could call me a Tri-Ace fan boy.I generally dig what Tri-Ace does in their games.I think there is an energy about the company that isn't seen in many other RPGs.I like Star Ocean 2, I like Star Ocean 3, but I don't like Star Ocean 1 much.Contributing to my fondness of Tri-Ace, I'm a big fan of Motoi Sakuraba, who has been the composer Tri-Ace usually uses for their RPGs.Sakuraba is known for the Tales series and Star Ocean series, primarily.The first VP's soudntrack sheds some light onto him, as well, due to its cult fanbase.Valkyrie Profile 2 does is not a disappointment from Tri-Ace to me, but there are parts I wish were more reinforced in the game.

You play as Alicia, the princess of Dipan.Alicia has had the spirit of the Valkyrie Silmeria within her since she was a child.Her father (The king of Dipan) shunned her for it most of her life as he realized this burden of hers.And eventually disowns her for it.Because two valkyries cannot exist in Midgard (the human world of VP1,) Odin gets pissed and wants to create war with the nation of Dipan.(Also because Dipan is researching things of Heretic nature, of which upset the gods.)

Silmeria can take control of Alicia, and can speak to her through thoughts.You see most of this happening in cutscenes.So the game starts with Silmeria letting Alicia know about the war that's about to start.

The cutscenes:

All of the dialogue between the main characters is carried out through cutscenes.This is upsetting to me, because there are not enough cutscenes to create enough interaction to truly develop the characters.There is no text-dialogue whatsoever between the main characters.However, Tri-Ace attempts to make these cutscenes cut it for the character developement.You get a sense of what the characters are like right away in the first few cutscenes.There are specific camera directions during the cutscenes to hint on a characters secret intentions, or that maybe they're plotting something.They really try to take advantage of the cutscene method for conveying the air of characters.Tri-Ace is effective here, I think.But it's really a shame there isn't more character dialogue, especially from Tri-Ace.

The graphics:

Top notch for a latter PS2 title.Has an original feel about it.The faces and expressions of characters in cutscenes are about equal if not better than how FFX handled it.The towns and landscapes tend to shimmer with a vibrancy that I really like.Smooth as hell for FPS too.Let me sidetrack from graphics to talk about how the game progress structurally.

The structure:

There are 3 sections of an overworld continent.Each continent normally has a town or two to visit, and an accompanying several dungeons.At each continent you can reach each destination simply by bringing a cursor over the area on the overworld map.The overworld is actually placed ontop of a yellowish map, which is an interesting touch.The overworld moves as if you were way high in the sky, like a God in the sky looking down.

All traveling and dungeon crawling, and town traversing is done via sidescrolling on 3d backgrounds.I really enjoy this touch, a tradition you don't see being brought back much at all.I think it allowed them to create a more visually stunning backdrop, rather if it weren't sidescrolling.Each section of the overworld can be accessed via a sidescrolling area, that takes about a minute to get across.In terms of traveling to locations you need to visit, it takes little to no time to do so in VP2.

When you go to a new section, and visit the town, talking to the villagers allows you to access optional dungeons before advancing the story to the next part.There are roughly 5-6 optional dungeons in the game.Which can be worth going through.

Battle:

Battle is fun, and probably the most rewarding part of the game.You command up to 4 characters on a 3d battleground.The battle progresses only as you move or commit an action using AP (attack points.) Enemies possess a flashing red field at which they can attack you.You want to avoid these fields and dash behind the fow to unleash a stronger attack.The dash technique is vital to master because it allows you to dash past the enemy flashing red fields and gain the right advantage.Dashing costs AP, as well as unleashing an attack.When attacking you press the corresponding button for one of your 4 characters, and they can perform a number of specified attacks depending on the weapon that user carries.There are heavy blade, light blade, archer, and mage classes.It's pretty fun considering you can create a team of whatever mix of classes you wish and still be able to defeat enemies effieciently, (given you can supply the proper equipment to each class)

Midst tearing up foes you can break parts off of them, which are usually accessories or runes.Some of the things you need to break to buy weapons at the shop are friggin' hard to get. Like a bat ear, you just have to get lucky pretty much in the chance that you happen to slice at the bat's ear.Really lucky.You can also enter "break mode" when you have the enemy propped into the air right, where you can enter an unlimited amount of attacks in a limited amount of time, usuaully breaking items off of an enemy.Break Mode is usually fun.

Big complaint about battle is that characters can get snagged on obstacles on the field.It can happen often if you're not careful.It's bothersome, but you live with it.

Shops:

You buy a full set of equipment for your characters.(Head, Chest, Leg, Arm, Feet.)The game has a Valued Customer feature for shops.Where when you buy enough shit at a shop, you're able to buy items that you have to sell materials to the shop, to get them.This isn't particularly useful, but there is some nice stuff you can get if you know how to farm the right items.For example the Paralyze, Poison, Stone Check accessories that prevent these status ailments.

Skills:

I spent a lot of time just messing with creating skills.Skills are created by combining the runes of equipment and accessories to activate skills to learn in battle.For example to learn Toughness (which doubles max HP during battle) you have to have a green leg and armor rune, as well as as a green fire rune linked to those two runes: on this diamond-like rune-equipment grid.There are bunch of different skills to learn, which makes it a fairly diverse system in terms of improvising skills and equipment to advance through the game.

Einherjar:(pronounced EYE'N HAIR-EE-ARE)

In dungeons you find shining swords, staffs, or bows of which you can materialize Einherjar to fight with you.At each Einherjar materailizing location, you have a chance of materializing 1 of 2 or 3 Einherjar, thus increasing the replay value to play with all the Einherjar.They all have their own voices in battle, but the only backstory they get is a little profile description in the status screen of the menu.Kinda crappy there.Einherjar have "free levels" when you can release them for stat raising items, and more stat raising items depending on the calibur of equipment you release them with, and the higher the level you raised them.I found that freeing the Einherjar as soon as possible as I got them was a fruitful way of playing, as it made my battles usually interesting and not as repetetive as they would be using the main characters for the whole game.(Which you could choose to do)Ideally, I think the einherjar are supposed to be used and freed ASAP through out the game as you progress, but if you like one specifically you can keep it.It keeps battle interesting.Einherjar can be switched up every hour or few.

Voice acting:

I really don't have a problem with the voice acting.The voices fit each character quite well.They better!Considering the dialogue issue as mentioned before. Lezard has an especially awesome voice actor."FIRE STORM!"

The battle voices are fun.Really passionate and no annoying characters like Precis from Star Ocean 2 screams that hurt your ears.

Sealstones:

A vital feature of dungeons, a strategic key to success.Sealstones are stones that possess special effects that can inhibit your party (if you carry the sealstone) or a whole area of a dungeon (if placed in Sealstone dais's)They can be stored into a spring using magic crystals recieved in battle, to use sealstones in other dungeons.Sealstones range from "X2 Exp, no OTH (oth is the currency of the game)" "Fire attack 150%, Ice 1/2" "Atk 120%" "Increased mass" "No guard" "Evasion up" etc.

Oh, the story:

The story is decent.There are a couple interesting twists.It's not particularly deep, but what is presented is enough for you to keep going on.It's pretty straight to the point.I don't have a lot to say about it without spoiling it.

MOTOI SAKURABA (the music):

Motoi Sakuraba does it again with this soundtrack.This album is quality Sakuraba, not much like the VP1 soundtrack at all.The town themes are very descriptive of their locations. He does distorted guitar boss themes, which emphasize the importance of the fights.Delicate orchestral arrangements for specific scenarios and the towns.Pressing dungeon themes.A wide instrumentation, and uses this bell sample for the main theme which is quite nice.His stretchiness of expression for each part of the game is astonishing as usual.Organs, piano, crazy synth solos, brass, cello, violins, all types of guitars, ethnic instruments included.He uses about everything.I love Sakuraba =DI'm fond of the soundtrack.Also, a VOICE MIX ARRANGE CD has been made for this game as well.I've yet to listen to it, but his Voice Arranges are usually really good.

Other thoughts:

Given all the outlets to manage your parties effiecency, I find this game an interesting one.To challenge yourself with your options to plow through the game, to focus your attention to buying equipment for everyone.To having just the right accessories at the right dungeon.There is a diversity of ways to slip your party by a situation that I find the replay value to be moderately high on this one.I WILL play this game again.Tri-Ace, being the crazy assholes that they are, gave the game a feature where when you finish it, the game gets harder the next time through.But you can beat it a total of 50 times until it stops getting harder.WHAT THE FUCK TRI-ACE?YOU THINK I'M THAT CRAZY?LIKE YOUR ASBURD BATTLE TROPHES IN STAR OCEAN 3?JESUS FUCK I'M NOT JAPANESE.Supposedly, the first increase of difficulty is the biggest increase.Which is kinda okay.
Also, I shouldn't forget to mention that there is a lengthy bonus dungeon and crazy hard bosses at the end of the game.

I think Tri-Ace achieves one thing special here, while disregarding the lack of character developement, it cuts away from actual gameplay time (You sitting there, sifting through all the text.) The elements that are available for your progression through the game present the player with a variety of options of gameplay for each play through.At least it seems this way to me, having played once.But when I play it again I'll let you know.I'm not sure what Tri-Ace's true intentions are, but I might take a gander that they aim to create the best RPG formula, in which the player WILL play through 50 times.Or the player WILL try to collect all the battle trophes.I think that maybe they are searching for the obsessed gamers, so they can do illegal research on them and tap their minds on what made their RPG so good for him/her.Well, I'm spewing a theory here.Tri-Ace games really intrigue me though, for some reason.NOT STAR OCEAN 1, THAT GAME IS GENERALLY UPSETTING.WHY IS THE PLOT SO MEANINGLESS?

With VP2 I think they are improving how they make games.I am looking forward to the next one.PS3?Wi?XBOX-360 OH NO!

Other thoughts:

I don't write reviews much so I hope I didn't spend too much time explaining about the game, rather than my opinion on stuff.But I think I shed some decent perspective on this here.I generally enjoyed this RPG, and found myself addicted.

AQUAS RATING OF APPROVAL:
4/5