Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria Talkback

[Ragna "D" BloodEdge]

I'll be picking this up later today and posting some first impressions about the game play.

 

[Ragna "D" BloodEdge]

I should've done this last might, but I got so engrossed.

So far, the game's pretty fun and solid all the way around, except for the voice acting, which is good in some spots, but eh, in others.

First, the gameplay itself: the battles are redesigned in a new 3D format. so you can move and dash around the large battlefields at will, which gives you a tactical advantage, since attacks from the side or the rear of a monster cause much more damage than attacks from the front. Even more complex is the option to splinter your party into one of two groups, giving you the option to use one group as a decoy while the other strikes from behind. Regardless of how you progress through a fight, each action that your party takes is governed by an AP (or action point) meter. If you wind up wasting all of your movement getting into position, you'll yourself open for attack while you try to recharge your AP meter. Another new element are Monster leaders, who direct all the other monsters on the battlefield. If you manage to knock out the leader first, you score an automatic victory, and defeating leaders fast enough gets you extra experience points and money.

The graphics are damned awesome. Square Enix has managed to pull out what seems like every single polygon the PS2 can work with, and the game is amazing because of it. Character models are large and detailed, and you'll notice fine details such as cloth physics or character's hair that will move due to wind or actual movement. What's also nice is to see the game support 16:9 and progressive scan, which just makes the game stand out even more if your TV can handle it.

Another thing you'll be spending a lot of time on is the Skills system. Armor, weapons, accessories, and items you get from enemies all factor into the skills you can learn by combining their Rune properties as certain combinations
lead into learning specific abilities, and it takes time to work through the ones you can and can't learn as they're seperated by character classes.

Speaking of characters, let me bring up the Einherjar, the recriutable characters you gain over the course of the game. Aside from the major characters who come in and out of your party at set chapters, the other Einherjar are handled completely differently than the original game, particularly based on the fact that Silmeria is a fallen valkyrie. Since she can't recruit the souls of the fallen, she can only materialize those spirits that she had at the time of her forced reincarnation. What's more, she can only do that by finding a possession that the spirit may have owned at that particular time. As you go through dungeons and other places, you'll stumble on items like staves, swords and bows, which you can use to resurrect the Einherjar that will be loyal to your cause. You'll then be able to add these characters to your party, using their abilities and skills to kill monsters and clear dungeons of beasts. Once you build up an Einherjar to a certain level, you can release them, thereby making them living beings again, at which point, you'll get some form of reward, like money, rare items and weapons, ect. The only problem with this is that there are so many Einherjar to recruit, and there's no real character development once you get them into your party. The first game did an excellent job of drawing you into the story of every fallen warrior by showing you how they died, what their personal stories were, and why they happened to be the character they were. But here it's so stripped down, it's a little disappointing.

Aside from all that, VP2 is still a pretty good game to me so far, and I've barely gotten through 9 hours of gameplay. I definitely reccomend getting the strategy guide if you wanna get the most out of it.

More to come as I get further in.