Ragnarok, the battle of the end of the world, between Aesirs — pantheon of gods led by Odin, and the Vanir — fire giants led by Loki, and everything in the universe torn asunder, so that was told in Norse Mythology. Eight months before that, Valkyrie, death goddess is dropped onto Midgard(earth) to harvest souls, humans worthy to join the battle. You play Lenneth, In Valkyrie Profile, as she does the bidding of the gods, she discovers herself, and whether she finds her true self as the world walks slowly towards total annihilation, is really up to the player.
Valkyrie Profile IS the best JRPG ever made and that will probably hold true for the rest of the millennium at the rate things are going (I am probably going to start a few flame wars here). Developed by Tri-Ace and published by Enix (Now Square-Enix), the first Valkyrie Profile was published in 1999 and later remade into a PSP version called Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth in 2006 which left most of the original intact but added extra cut-scenes. As to why I make such a claim on this game, is because it breaks every mold that adheres the JRPG genre together. Its very existence is revolutionary. That it is a game you truly experience by playing but not sitting through endless dialogues and cut-scenes and battles just to see the story unfolds, it is a story you unfold yourself bit by bit like peeling layers of a fine onion.
If you choose to you can finish the game without playing it at all, which can probably be done in 5 minutes. Yes, I am not kidding. You CAN finish the game without playing the game. Since the game ends when Ragnorak comes and it lets you forward the time putting Lenneth to sleep to fast forward to the next phase (there are 8 chapters/months in the game). Not obeying Odin and sending zero Einherjar (chosen souls of the fallen warriors) to Valhalla to fight the war, is simply your choice. Doing nothing until the end comes IS an option. What other game you know will ever let you do that?
The central plot-line is arguably the weakest aspect of Valkyrie Profile which differs it from every other modern JRPG out there because it lacks the backbone that inherently holds every JRPG developed after Final Fantasy IV together. But the rich mythological setting of Valkyrie Profile makes up for the lack of the plot and arguably, the lack of that plot is essential in making this almost perfect game.
If you play the good girl Lenneth, as in you are actually following proper instructions to play the game, then you are going to go around and harvest souls for Asgard. These humans, or Einherjar, become your companions, and each has his/her own background story to tell. Their individual personalities are listed when you visit the status screens, some are stubborn/snobbish but brave, some are cowardly but caring, none of them are true heroes yet until you bring them up as heroes. The side stories add flavor to this Nordic gem but getting to know the stories is a choice. And each month you need to send some of those companions to Odin to fight the war. How the war goes will depend on who you send up. There is a profound choice laid out before you, and this actually makes much more impact than killing or not killing the little girls in Bioshock with a simple click. You may need to give up someone who you have trained and grew to love to Asgard, and once you give them up, you will never see them again.
Aside from that there are 2 ratings in the game that grade your performance. Odin’s evaluation, which goes up and down depending on whether you actually send heroes that meet the basic requirement, and whether you give up Odin’s artifacts when you come across them. The second rating is called the seal rating, which won’t mean much until you play the game in a certain way so that it affects whether you get the true/good ending. In order to find out the sad story behind Lenneth Valkyrie with her sealed memories, you have to play Lenneth like a bad girl, well not truly bad, but disobedient, which means not lisetning to everything Odin tells you to but not straying too far from your original mission. The seal rating goes down when Valkyrie uncover about the truth about herself, and even falls in love.., and Odin’s schemes, and Loki’s treachery unfolds, all depends on how you play the game. Choices are everything in this game…, and choices are what makes a game, a game, and I mean a REAL game.
I usually would skip ahead to some profound conclusion now without touching on the gameplay, but I need to force myself to talk about it here, because Tri-Ace did something revolutionary and paired the meaningful setting and plots with exciting gameplay which also breaks away from the mold of every JRPG out there. While the dungeons and towns are layered in 2D like a Castlevania game, with simple platforming / puzzle solving, the battle system is created in perfect synchronization with the PS2 joypad (and felt right at home on the PSP). There is a fighting-game system embedded inside the combat — 4 buttons, each representing a fighter in Valkyrie’s party, you fight semi-turn-based, but you can chain all your attacks together with button presses, cast your spell with the circle button (which breaks an enemy’s guard), then you press X 3 times because your swordsmen has a 3 hit combo, then u hit sqaure 2 times for your crossbowmen to fire, you mix them together…, then u have a finishing move, if you chained all your attacks correctly…, it’s all about timing. The battles never get in the way of the story, you actually look forward to them, sometimes more than you actually look forward to how the story unfold, and the choices you make.
Two sequels (or prequels, or both) came after Lenneth. Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, a game with a plot I had to force myself to love (and I acknowledge and applaud its genius), but the platforming and combat system didn’t really agree with me, the added 3rd dimension and strategy to the combat simply made things too cumbersome and complicated, but the plot managed to pulled off a major twist to awe me. The game clouded itself from being a sequel in the form of a prequel, and to say anything more I will spoil it. It was worthy a successor for Lenneth, but Silmeria will be forever remembered as that flawed sequel who tried to hard just to be a regular JRPG to please the audience. As for the recent 3rd game, Covenant of the Plum on the DS, it is more a light-hearted strategy game which rides on the success of the VP combat system inserted into a Tactics game and giving the players diversity in which major paths to follow and some choices of sacrificing your companions. At the end of the day, it is a good enough, albeit short, game on the DS and doesn’t disappoint being a VP spin-off but fails to generate any excitement in anticipation of living up to the vision laid before the first Valkyrie Profile.
Ragnorak in Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth birthed perfection in the genre. And if Tri-Ace had the passion, vision, and talent they possessed while creating this game, we wouldn’t have seen the decline in the genre and the rest of the cookie-cutter craps the land of the rising sun is now churning out (Star Ocean 4 and Infinite Undiscovery you should feel ashamed of yourself). Lenneth is a lesson that game developers should take to their hearts, and for the rest of us, the golden age of gaming is always a period of time we look back on, no matter when and where we are.
