Check out Part 1, Earthbound, here.
In the late ’90s and early 2000s, I was part of a now-defunct website called Gamesages. They had monthly contests such as submitting the most cheat codes in a month, and I won once. The prize was getting to choose your own video game that they would send to your address, so I chose this game, Valkyrie Profile, and it was the best choice I could have made, considering how popular it’s gotten since its release. Although it’s also part of one of my biggest videogame-related regrets when I sold it years later in University for some money to party.
This is a character-driven game with lengthy stories introducing each one. Characters and dungeons are found through spiritual concentration, which takes up one of the 24 periods. These characters are valuable not just for fighting but to be sent up to Valhalla at the end of each chapter to help Odin in the war of the gods. But what is the point of sending characters? Don’t you just want to keep them? Well, if the character meets the requirements stated at the beginning of each chapter, you can get some fantastic rewards.
You gain CP throughout the game, which can be used to purchase skills for your character or level up their hero value so they are more worthy of Valhalla. One important detail is that unless you are going to send up a character to Odin, hero value is of no use. However, it’s easy to gain a lot of CP, and by level 30, Valkyrie had every skill maxed in my playthrough. Some skills are invaluable, such as Auto-item and Guts. I kept those on every character for the duration of the game, so there are plenty of other skills that go unused because of how useful those two are. Also, note that it’s only necessary to send up one character for each chapter, even though it says that you can send up two. I still got the A ending sending up one per chapter.
In my most recent playthrough, I played the PS4 version, which is just a port of the old PSP version, and while I understand it wasn’t a remaster, I still think there could have been a few quality-of-life improvements or changes to make the experience better. The Dungeon map, for instance, is manageable in the first few chapters, but later in the game, as the dungeons get larger, it just feels like a mess and is hard to follow. I don’t know if there are any fast and hard rules regarding ports or if they have to stay the same as the original, but I think the map could have been changed for the better.
The music being melancholy makes sense because one of the major plot themes is death and redemption. You take the role of Valkyrie, who guides warriors through the afterlife. While the game can be accused of being melodramatic at times, every character is well-written and has solid backstories, even some of the most despicable, like Badrach. I also enjoyed the representation of Norse mythology and Nordic folklore.
There are three endings in the game, and the one you’re most likely to see is the B ending. Getting ending A is where the game becomes too obtuse, and it’s very hard to achieve unless you have a guide by your side. There are several factors that you have to keep in mind as you go through the game if you want to achieve the A ending. First is the evaluation score, which increases when you send up the right characters in each chapter and send up specific items found at the end of each dungeon after beating the boss. You only have to send up one character, and it’s pretty self-explanatory to choose the proper person to send up.
However, it gets more confusing with items. You might think that just sending them up is the best way to go, after all, it makes Odin happy, and increases evaluation, but some of the items are very useful, and you can’t obtain them in any other way. I would recommend looking up a walk-through or finding a list that recommends items to send up and keep. Because you can deal with a ding to your evaluation to some extent by keeping some of the items, as the evaluation score doesn’t have to be that high. Second is the even more cryptic seal level. This has to be lower, under 38, to get the A ending, and if playing blind and/or for the first time, it’s not obvious how to lower it. If you’re gunning for the A ending, it’s certainly recommended to check out a walk-through, but if you only care about the B ending, then you don’t have to worry.
As is the case with most Tri-Ace games from the mid-90s and early 2000s, the music is phenomenal. Like Star Ocean: Second Story, the music has a very ethereal tone to it, and it hits heavy. The tracks are very somber, which fits the overall solemn tone. Visually, the game hasn’t aged as well, and dungeons are mostly dull. The character portraits, on the other hand, are excellent and expressive.
One annoyance for people who don’t like this mechanic is that weapons break quite frequently. Thankfully, weapons are fairly common, and they can be purchased with ease with Materialize Points, which is the game’s currency. You get a lot of them after each chapter from Odin for doing the right thing, like sending up useful Warriors to help in the war of the Gods or sending specific items. Some enemies can be killed in one hit with certain weapons, such as the Dragon Slayer, defeating demons in one hit. However, the game still maintains a decent level of difficulty, especially in the second half.
You can get extra rewards by performing ‘purify weird souls’, which are extra-strong finishing blows. It’s important to try to do those as much as possible, even though it greatly lengthens each battle and starts to feel redundant by the end of the game. Otherwise, battles are fairly straightforward turn-based affairs. Four characters can go to battle and are assigned square, triangle, X, or O. Timing presses properly can stun enemies, break shields, or do extra damage.
Outside of battles, dungeons are interesting because they are shown in a 2D platforming style. However, the platforming sections in the dungeons are probably the worst part of the game. Jumping takes a lot of time to get used to and feels clumsy. Valkyrie also freezes enemies, which is useful when you don’t want to fight anymore, and this makes it possible to get some very powerful items and weapons early on by going into late-game dungeons. Just be aware that enemies don’t stay frozen for long, so you risk getting into unwanted fights because they unfreeze so quickly.
Upon starting, the time mechanic might feel stressful to some players, but it isn’t as big a deal as it might seem. The game is split into eight chapters, each chapter having 24 periods. But with every chapter, I had several periods left over. In fact, in a few of them, I had as many as 10, where I had nothing else that I needed to do. Granted, I played this on medium difficulty, and hard difficulty has at least one extra dungeon per chapter. Still, time management shouldn’t be too much of a concern.
What was interesting was finding my saved file on GameFAQs from over 25 years ago and seeing how different my playstyles were from when I was a teen compared to my most recent playthrough. For instance, on my 25-year-old save, I pretty much overpowered everything by leveling up Valkyrie to level 69, and in my second playthrough (June 2024), I barely passed level 30 (level 31). But that’s what’s so great about this game, there are so many different ways to tackle it, and there isn’t only one way to beat each boss. Interestingly enough, I use the same mage in both playthroughs, Mystina, but otherwise, my parties and who I sent up were vastly different.
In the end, I’m sad to have sold this game all those years ago, but delighted to have found it on sale in the PS Store because I got to revisit an old favorite. Valkyrie Profile has aged fairly well, but it didn’t come with any notable enhancements that might have pushed this to the level of excellence like Star Ocean 2. I certainly liked it a lot more as a teenager. Still, flaws and all, this is a game that’s easy to recommend with its compelling storyline and unique, though sometimes frustrating gameplay mechanics, so give it a shot, and there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself replaying it on different difficulties to uncover another ending with new characters!
Wayback Wednesday Volume 1: Final Fantasy 7 and Chrono Trigger.
Wayback Wednesday Volume 2: Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
Wayback Wednesday Volume 3: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete
Wayback Wednesday Volume 4: Secret of Mana and Wild Arms
Wayback Wednesday Volume 5: Illusion of Gaia and Grandia
Wayback Wednesday Volume 6: Breath of Fire 3 and X-Men Legends
Wayback Wednesday Volume 7: Star Ocean: The Second Story and Super Mario RPG
Wayback Wednesday Volume 8: Demon's Crest and Dragon Quest VI
Wayback Wednesday Volume 9: Suikoden I and Jeanne d'Arc
Wayback Wednesday Volume 10: Ranking the first 6 Final Fantasy games