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By | mollipen |
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| Filed Under | B, Japan, PlayStation Portable, Review, RPG, Video Games | ||
| Tags | jrpg, k2, marvelous, xseed |
Though survival horror may have swept into my life and stole away my heart, there is no genre of video game that I have loved longer or more completely than Japanese RPGs. Almost twenty years ago I first set out into the world of Phantasy Star, and from that moment on, I knew the genre was for me. Unfortunately, the love affair has been a bit rocky as the years have gone on. I still love JRPGs, but there’s just no getting around it; the genre, in my eyes, just hasn’t seen the kind of gameplay progression that other genres have seen, and has suffered because of that.
The evolution of the Japanese RPG is a topic so near and dear to my heart that for years I’ve contemplated its future, poured over ideas for how I think gameplay could improve and evolve, and written far more on those topics than any one human being should write. I say all this because, in Valhalla Knights, I see some shining examples of the kind of evolution I’ve been wanting from the Japanese RPG genre for so long.
When I first started playing Valhalla Knights, I knew absolutely nothing about it. The game is a dungeon crawler, where you spend most of your time trudging through a variety of dungeon areas, occasionally warping back to town to restock your items or heal up. To be honest, I probably never would have checked it out on my own time had I not been doing a review for the game, but that is the beauty of this line of work: when you play games not just as a hobby but for your actual job, you’ll end up being exposed to titles you wouldn’t otherwise have been exposed to.
While it wasn’t the first element of the game that I ended up being impressed with, probably the biggest component of any dungeon crawler is the combat. Like many other games of this type, the actual storyline and character interaction in Valhalla Knights is rather minimal throughout, so at the end of the day the game would live or die depending on how enthralling battles ended up being. As picky as I am about the quality level of this portion of Japanese RPGs, Valhalla Knights’s combat engine completely clicked with me. Combat reminded me quite a bit of Star Ocean 3, with real-time action taking the place of turn-based menu selection, and party members backing you up on their own based off of A.I. settings that you have complete control over. Battles were no longer an annoying distraction that I tried to avoid in order to get back to the parts of the game I preferred to experience, but instead something I actively and eagerly engaged. I’m also a big supporter of the move to computer-controlled party members, but fear not: if you aren’t so hot on the idea, or for those times when the A.I. is acting a bit wonky (and it occasionally will), you can switch to a different party member and instead control them directly.
It is before you even get whisked away into battle that one of the game’s best combat-related features reveals itself. I have been very vocal about my dislike of the concept of “random” battles in RPGs for years now, and not only does Valhalla Knights do away with that idea in exchange for visible monsters that must be touched before combat comes about, but it also allows you to sneak past those monsters and their field of vision in a very Metal Gear Solid-esque fashion. This is a feature I’ve specifically wanted to see an RPG attempt, and while the execution here isn’t quite as advanced as I would liked to have seen, it is a small step that ends up having big results.
The other area in which Valhalla Knights really impressed me was in the wide range of customization the game offers to the player. Right from the start, your main character is up to you, as you choose their name, sex, and starting character class. What you become from there is also your choice, as you can change at any time to another class (the basics at first, more as you unlock them), and then mix and match their strong points and abilities to suit your preferences. For example, I’ve always been partial to the paladin-type of character, enjoying both the ability to jump head first into melee combat, but also being able to back off and provide support for my party members. While there is no specific paladin class in the game, through working to level my character as both a fighter and priest, I was able to come up with a final character type that played pretty much how I wanted them to. Party members work in a similar fashion; while you can find and recruit pre-created characters that exist in the game’s world, you can also start from scratch and put together the exact party that you want. The difference between working with a pre-set selection of support that you’re given and tailoring your back-up squad to perfectly compliment your personal play style just makes all the difference in the world for this type of game.
There’s another element of the game that I specifically wanted to point out; it’s a small factor, and doesn’t affect how the game plays, but it again is something that I think we need to see more of in games like this. Weapons and armor are displayed on your character when equipped, much like World of Warcraft or other similar games, instead of the often-used method of having one specific character design and then not having that character change as their equipment does. One of my complaints about this type of system, though, is that I often times find myself having to equip armor or weapons I don’t like visually because they are the better choice stats wise. In Valhalla Knights, there are “levels” to weapons and armor, and at any given level there are at least a few different options for what can be used, providing you with the chance to not just choose your new equipment based on rating, but also on looks.
I think the overall experience that Valhalla Knights presents is something that can be enjoyed even by those of you who typically aren’t fans of the dungeon crawling sub-genre of RPGs. There is a bit of hesitation in my recommendation, however; this game can be quite difficult. Monsters at first will have no problem making quick work of you, and even as your characters level up and you get a hang for the game, they can still pose quite the challenge. The quests provided you by the Guild House–an important but completely options portion of the game–don’t tell you exactly where to go and what to do, so you’ll have to put out a decent amount of effort in order to complete many of them. And all of that customization that I loved so much: for some, it’ll be completely overwhelming.
For those of you who aren’t afraid of a bit of challenge, and relish the thought of having ample amounts of options presented to you at every corner, Valhalla Knights is a fabulous game. The game was a wonderful surprise for me, filled with enjoyable combat and gameplay enhancements that other RPGs need to blatantly steal as soon as possible. Even if you aren’t sure if this all sounds like your kind of game or not, at least give it a try, because otherwise you could be missing out on a very nice surprise. I almost did.
P.S. Marvelous Interactive / K2 – please take the game engine you’ve built here, and expand it into a full-length, storyline and cinema-filled, epic RPG title. Seriously.
Rating: B
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 2:22 am and is filed under B, Japan, PlayStation Portable, Review, RPG, Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
