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review :: valhalla knights
Valhalla Knights
Reviewed on: Playstation PortableAvailable on: Playstation Portable
Woo, another JRPG. Fairly average. Don’t be misled by the "fully customisable characters".
Players: 1 Player
Genre:
Release: 2007-08-30
Genre:
Release: 2007-08-30
Developer: K2 LLC
Distributor: Rising Star
Distributor: Rising Star
“Fully customisable” my arse! Your main character, Rastul, is strictly male. Other add on characters can be female but it means nothing. You are Rastul in the same way you are Ash in the original Pokémon series. You can give it a female name, but you’re still a fully equipped male avatar.
Despite that, it’s a very pretty game. The opening scenes were very slick and nice to watch. Even running around is quite fun – it’s not as clunky as you would expect and the loading times are bearable, which was a bit of a surprise. Environments are nice, buildings are nice and characters are nice. In fact, it’s a very nice game overall when it comes to graphics.
Well, establishing that it’s pretty and nice doesn’t really say much about the game itself. It’s a pretty stock standard Japanese RPG – you’re a hero who wakes up with very little memory of who you are, what you’re doing. You have a corporeal assistant and you soon find out you have to defeat the ‘Dark Lord’ who has cursed the land with a blight of monsters and goodness knows what else that I’m sure you’ll come up against in battle at some point in the near future. Of course, you have little money when you wake up – but don’t worry! There’s a plethora of quests just waiting for you to complete them and collect the rewards.
My what big swords you all have.
Soon enough you get to a castle that is full of lovely dungeons to explore, monsters to fight and quests to complete. Lots of fun there. The town you wake up in has a shop and a guild. The guild allows you to create your own party members at an ever increasing cost. Creating your party members needs to be taken into deep consideration – not using it properly means you can die pretty quickly once you enter the dungeons. Your party can make up no more than six members at a time. The customisation itself is pretty impressive once you get past your initial character – you can play around with a fair bit and the inclusion of Halflings, dwarves, elves and machines can make your party a bit more exciting than just a Fighter/Mage/Thief combo.
The camera is a bit annoying, as I’ve come to find in a lot of PSP games lately. Often it can make a battle all the more confusing and a tad more frustrating – especially when you’re up against a boss and you keep dying because your camera won’t swing around and let you see what’s happening in front of you. But there’s only so much you can do about this quirk. Just try not to get into too many confined spaces and tap R in battle to try and swing the camera back around behind your chosen party member. Many a time I found myself looking at a wall from the other side instead of from my character’s point of view.
In the battles, you actually control one of your party members individually, moving and slashing your way against up to six enemies, rather than choosing an action from a list for each as was once customary in most JRPGs. Makes for a more engaging battle but since every time you encounter a monster/group of monsters in the dungeons, you have to engage them – it soon gets pretty tiring. Battles can slow the frame rate as well when you’ve got the maximum number of 12 characters on screen, which can frustrating and slows an already repetitive dungeon crawl.
Are they dead?
Following the main quest will get repetitive – just like me harping on about how games need more female avatars. There’s a fair amount of backtracking and when you get to boss fights, you might find yourself repeating the same areas to get to a boss that will kill you quite easily to make you start all over again. Not only that, you might find yourself travelling in the same dungeons with the same monsters several times over as you wade through what is the main quest. There are side quests that can sometimes distract you but often never for long enough.
It’s a pretty stock standard RPG that will entertain the few that can’t get enough of this genre – but for the rest of us, it might seem a bit repetitive and dull. There’s only so many times you want to fight the same boss. You might have noticed the length of this review being a bit shorter than usual. It’s mainly because if I went into any real depth for this game, you’d end up applying it to any other review of a JRPG on the site. Sure, the formula works – but only for so long.
Despite that, it’s a very pretty game. The opening scenes were very slick and nice to watch. Even running around is quite fun – it’s not as clunky as you would expect and the loading times are bearable, which was a bit of a surprise. Environments are nice, buildings are nice and characters are nice. In fact, it’s a very nice game overall when it comes to graphics.
Well, establishing that it’s pretty and nice doesn’t really say much about the game itself. It’s a pretty stock standard Japanese RPG – you’re a hero who wakes up with very little memory of who you are, what you’re doing. You have a corporeal assistant and you soon find out you have to defeat the ‘Dark Lord’ who has cursed the land with a blight of monsters and goodness knows what else that I’m sure you’ll come up against in battle at some point in the near future. Of course, you have little money when you wake up – but don’t worry! There’s a plethora of quests just waiting for you to complete them and collect the rewards.
My what big swords you all have.
Soon enough you get to a castle that is full of lovely dungeons to explore, monsters to fight and quests to complete. Lots of fun there. The town you wake up in has a shop and a guild. The guild allows you to create your own party members at an ever increasing cost. Creating your party members needs to be taken into deep consideration – not using it properly means you can die pretty quickly once you enter the dungeons. Your party can make up no more than six members at a time. The customisation itself is pretty impressive once you get past your initial character – you can play around with a fair bit and the inclusion of Halflings, dwarves, elves and machines can make your party a bit more exciting than just a Fighter/Mage/Thief combo.
The camera is a bit annoying, as I’ve come to find in a lot of PSP games lately. Often it can make a battle all the more confusing and a tad more frustrating – especially when you’re up against a boss and you keep dying because your camera won’t swing around and let you see what’s happening in front of you. But there’s only so much you can do about this quirk. Just try not to get into too many confined spaces and tap R in battle to try and swing the camera back around behind your chosen party member. Many a time I found myself looking at a wall from the other side instead of from my character’s point of view.
In the battles, you actually control one of your party members individually, moving and slashing your way against up to six enemies, rather than choosing an action from a list for each as was once customary in most JRPGs. Makes for a more engaging battle but since every time you encounter a monster/group of monsters in the dungeons, you have to engage them – it soon gets pretty tiring. Battles can slow the frame rate as well when you’ve got the maximum number of 12 characters on screen, which can frustrating and slows an already repetitive dungeon crawl.
Are they dead?
Following the main quest will get repetitive – just like me harping on about how games need more female avatars. There’s a fair amount of backtracking and when you get to boss fights, you might find yourself repeating the same areas to get to a boss that will kill you quite easily to make you start all over again. Not only that, you might find yourself travelling in the same dungeons with the same monsters several times over as you wade through what is the main quest. There are side quests that can sometimes distract you but often never for long enough.
It’s a pretty stock standard RPG that will entertain the few that can’t get enough of this genre – but for the rest of us, it might seem a bit repetitive and dull. There’s only so many times you want to fight the same boss. You might have noticed the length of this review being a bit shorter than usual. It’s mainly because if I went into any real depth for this game, you’d end up applying it to any other review of a JRPG on the site. Sure, the formula works – but only for so long.
Final Verdict
A fairly average RPG to tide you over until Crisis Core comes out in Australia… maybe. I wasn’t particularly impressed. If you want more JRPGs on your system, then this one isn’t too bad.Pros
Pretty graphics, cool battles, interesting customisation.
Cons
More or less a dungeon crawl, story quite tame and predictable. Annoying camera.