First let me say, in my opinion this is a game that didn’t get the PROPS it deserved, it is very well designed and can have very addictive gameplay. I can understand some issues that people would have with it, but the overall experience here is a good one. I will attempt to entice you PSP owners to give this game a try with my review. So here goes…
Story:
You are a hero who wakes up in a strange land and has no idea of his identity. You set off on a journey to recover your memories, knowing only one thing: the blood of a legendary hero flows through you. The story starts off kind of slow, but doesn\'t suck, but it may not be enough to keep hardcore story-driven gamers interested, but luckily the addictive Game play makes up for it. I will say though that towards the middle of this game the story really improves a lot, and with a very interesting twist.
Graphics:
In my opinion this game looks absolutely great; not amazing but simply great. The backgrounds, and characters look clean and crisp!! No jagged edges period!! No hang ups or slow downs of any kind running through dungeons or in battles. I would definitely have to say this is one of the best looking PSP Games out, graphically speaking.
Sound:
The game sounds okay, some voice over would have been nice, but really not missed too much. Battle music gets repetitive, but never gets too annoying, I usually played with the sound off anyway, and it really wasn’t missed.
Controls/Gameplay:
First, let me inform you all that this game is only a Dungeon Crawler PERIOD, no large landscapes to traverse, no distant lands to visit. You do get teleported to two different lands, but all you will get to see are a map and a dotted line showing your current traveling position, then it is right back into a dungeon. Battles are initiated by running in to an enemy that you can see on screen, no blind running and then all of sudden BAM!! You are in a battle. You will also have an option to confront an enemy head on or you could even try sneaking up behind an enemy to gain an advantage once the battle starts. Battles in the game are usually six heroes against six enemies and kind of plays like Final Fantasy XII, where you set what behaviors you want your party to do in battle, sit back, and watch them carry out their orders. NO battle menu button pressing (TG), but at any time you can control any one of your 6 party members manually (recommended for bosses and tough enemies). There will be, however, times where your main character will have to do a one on one battle with a BOSS, so make sure you keep him stronger than the others.
Then there is the lack of other towns in this game, which again might discourage most RPG fans. There is only one town PERIOD. Not to give too much of the story away, but I thought it was really cool to see the change in the town from Past to Present. Ooops, did I forget to mention there is a little time travel in the story? Sound more interesting to you yet? Anyway back to what I was saying this one town is where you save, rest, get missions, equipment, etc.; also this is where I disagree with other reviewers of this game. Don’t get me wrong I have played numerous amounts of traditional RPG\'s and loved them, but so many times I wished I didn\'t have to run back and forth from one town to the next trying to find the right villager to talk to, just to make the story progress. So having only one town to visit and almost no one to really talk to in town but the guild master before you progress to the next step made me really enjoy this game. This game relied more on action than dialogue and I loved it. There were times though that the guild master had no jobs/missions for you and you have to figure out what to do next on your which was frustrating at times. Not frustrating enough to quit though.
Next is my favorite part of this whole game, the character customization. The character customization in this game is OUTSTANDING! The characters you create can be the race of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings or Machines. Once you have chosen a race then you will choose a job class for them to level up in. Each job class and race has it’s own unique ability that is brought to the table. Starting Job Classes are Fighters, Mages, Priests, and Thieves. Once you have leveled up in those classes, there are advanced job classes of Knights, Ninjas, Samurais, and Anchors, so the customization can get very deep. To make it even deeper there are soo many different types of equipment, weapons and great magic spells to help you in this game. Character customization works sort of like Monster Hunter Freedom; whatever you buy and equip you will actually see your character wearing... sweet!! There are items like Samurai swords with petrify and paralysis attributes (Hint) which are extremely helpful when fighting tough enemies. Then there is the armor and helmets that can add HP and resist many of negative attributes enemies can throw at you. All these items are dropped by defeating enemies and as long as you keep a Thief in the party and keep everyone’s luck up, you will get lots of dropped items.
Replay:
I seriously doubt that after you spend 50+ hours on this game defeating some of the most difficult enemies, that you’ll want to go another round. As much as I enjoyed this game the first time, I really don’t want to go through it again. So there is hardly any replay value in my opinion, but like I stated you will spend 50+ hours beating so it is still worth the money.
Bottom Line:
I am an avid handheld RPG fan, I just love them. With that said I will also say that I almost traded this game in twice!! I thought it was too difficult at first, but it wasn\'t the game, it was just me trying to be selfish and go through the first few dungeons alone. What made me stick with it was the graphics and the battle system, but once I really got into it, the gameplay, character customization with outstanding weapons and eventually the story had me hooked. If you are looking for a challenging game, with great graphics and a style of game play that hasn\'t been done well on this system yet, then I highly recommend this game. Once I realized I couldn’t venture into the dungeon alone and I had to change job classes frequently, this game became a great experience that I was glad I didn’t trade away.
"Valhalla Knights (PSP)" is on sale April 17, 2007 and is rated E. Action.
