Despite being 100% linear, the hack-and-slash features in Valkyrie Elysium make it seem like it belongs in the souls genre, regardless of the game’s action RPG label.
Since 1999, the Valkyrie Profile series has had a long history of producing excellent classic role-playing games. Such accomplishments will never be forgotten, but in this latest edition, an attempt was made to create something new to rejuvenate the fame. So, for a fresh start, Soleil was tasked to bring the series back with a new episode and shift the game’s focus towards action role-playing in Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs).
Revamp the series; it stresses action so much that fans of the Valkyrie series won’t recognize the gameplay. While it’s essential to remember that many successful series have flourished by expanding their options over time, in the case of Valkyrie Elysium, it just didn’t seem to be the case.
The Valkyrie Elysium starts with the events of Ragnarok, a recently ended conflict between Odin and the wolf Fenrir. Valkyrie Maria finds herself in a field of bluebells with no recollection of her previous life. A voice that seems perhaps familiar to her can be heard out in the distance. The caller’s identity, eventually revealed in a tutorial, is as follows.
When the Valkyrie arrives in Odin’s majestic royal chamber, the god’s father will be there to see her immediately. The Valkyrie’s bond to her creator requires her to obey his every command; therefore, she has to fight the hordes of invading monsters and recover crucial objects that might avert calamity at the last minute.
The scenario is having a hard time getting off the ground, and we will encounter some unfriendly NPCs and traveling partners with varied concerns. Even after the game progressed for a third of its duration, the consequences continued to seem insignificant and monotonous.
The journey in Valkyrie Elysium gets a bit irritating in the end when you realize the pursuit of multiple possible endings. In fifteen hours, you can experience the game’s four possible conclusions. Some players may go to great lengths to see all four possible endings to the game’s plot, while others will focus on getting the best possible score after each mission.
When an action game’s story fails to live up to the quality of the gameplay, it’s a nightmare. Now that we know what we’re doing and have completed the little instructions, we can dive headfirst into the action. You’ll feel a genuine soul-like energy as soon as we begin performing. Even if it’s only a coincidence that the dark environments in Valkyrie Profile are full of destructible items, it’s impossible to avoid drawing parallels between the two while playing in 3D.
Valkyrie Elysium does not have an open universe. The title has a rating system broken up into missions, and as you go through the game’s nine major chapters, you’ll come across optional tasks that may be chosen from the side quests menu. These missions are simple, usually requiring you to go from one location to another on the map to get a certain item. The vast number of environments is one of the game’s flaws in Valkyrie Elysium. To break it down even further, the game has a total of five distinct settings, each of which is represented by two separate chapters.
While this sense of isolation is compelling in games where exploration leads you across a vast and complex environment, it falls flat in Valkyrie Elysium, where all progression is strictly linear. Therefore, we may only look for treasures and flowers in clearly demarcated areas. Only a handful of the flowers have any real bearing on the game’s conclusion; the rest only serve to extend the length of time spent on the game unnecessarily; they aren’t required to complete it, and they don’t give you anything in return.
Valkyrie Elysium‘s fighting is the game’s highlight, if not the plot. Gameplay-wise, this game has many familiar elements, such as regular attacks, powerful attacks, dodging, parrying, and, most notably, a grappling hook called soul chaining. It lets you get closer to an enemy on the ground or in the air so you may strike them. Built on a firm base, the game has a variety of combinations that may be performed by combining the two kinds of attacks at our disposal.
So, when you level up or upgrade your weapon, you can access additional techniques that activate after a certain number of dodging, jumping, parrying, etc. When combined with the unique combinations of each of the Valkyrie’s weapons, all of these factors provide us with a great deal of freedom in creating interesting attacks with our Valkyrie.
The role-playing features of Valkyrie Elysium are kept admirably straightforward: there are just three skill trees for Attack, Defense, and Support, and you upgrade them with crystals of various colors that you get by killing enemies and opening chests. Powerful magical assaults, known as divine arts, are also acquired; initially, only four divine arts are available for equipping, but as time progresses, you get access to many more. Choosing the right divine arts at the right time is a big part of the strategic intricacy of Valkyrie Elysium, particularly in the complex but ultimately rewarding boss fights.
In each fight, the most effective strategy is to utilize Arts or an Einherjar to strike an enemy with their elemental weakness until they reach the crushing phase; at this point, you can swiftly take down their health bar with your melee weapon. Theoretically, it seems to have the makings of a profound and exciting framework.
However, in reality, the battles you face in one chapter are not all that dissimilar to the battles you face in another. The combat in Valkyrie Elysium is simply too simplistic to be thrilling, despite introducing new enemies and many weaknesses to explore. I still cannot recall a single instance where I felt like I was enjoying myself, since the experience was mostly repetitive.
However, several technological problems might sometimes make battling more difficult than it has to be. Particularly in confined spaces or during finishers, the camera may zoom in so much that it obscures the action on the field. The lock-on mechanism was the sole annoyance; it didn’t always work as intended, and it took too long to cycle between enemies before I could latch on to the one I wanted. This becomes more of a problem for numerous larger enemies since different weapons may latch onto different sections of their bodies.
When several targets or opponents have weak places, the lock-on mechanism may become cumbersome, and the abundance of particle effects can obscure the blue lock-on target. The game’s failure to properly spawn adversaries on two separate occasions also contributed to my having to restart and start again.
Different weapons have different damage outputs; choose the one that suits your playstyle best. Since physical weapons can deal with elemental damage, you’ll want to call upon an Einherjar (the summons) to bind your element to your blade. Unless otherwise specified, if more than one is called at once, the game will be assigned to the most recently called one. A Skill Tree with Offense, Defense, and Magic nodes allows you to spend points and gems on Valkyrie upgrades.
Some gems come in various sizes, colors, and rarities and can be found in various places throughout the game. As Valkyrie evolves, she has access to new combinations, increased health, magic, and even handy actions like double dodge or double jump etc. The same kinds of elements are required to upgrade the weapons into new combinations of them.
The Valkyrie can be upgraded anytime; however, weaponry can only be upgraded at Save Points. Once you’ve upgraded your weapon’s skills and elemental damage, you can also perform the chain of souls action during combats, which acts as a tie that draws us closer to the enemies to make our assaults last a little longer. The outcome isn’t thrilling but adds an impact, particularly when employing spells and abilities that enhance weapon damage.
By role-playing game standards, Valkyrie Elysium is rather short. If you don’t bother with side quests, the game will only take approximately 15 hours to finish the main story. If you are attempting to do everything and uncover all the hidden flowers, that number may be closer to 25. There are four possible endings to Valkyrie Elysium.
All three endings are playable from the same save file since the clean save data will restart the game after the game. The actual ending can only be unlocked by collecting all nine Verdant Blossoms. To view all four endings without going through the game four times, you simply need to delay picking up the ninth Verdant Blossom until after you have unlocked the other three endings.
It’s a pity that there isn’t much to get excited about in Valyrie Elysium outside the combat. Most places you visit feel dull, and when you do have the chance to explore, you will likely be disappointed by what you find. If you’re bored with the main objective, you can do a few side tasks, but they’re not that exciting. Poor lip-syncing, clunky animations, etc., give the game an amateurish vibe that keeps it from reaching its full potential. Visually, the game is a little inconsistent, with some stunningly lovely landscapes and others bland, barren rooms and minor visual flaws.
Sadly, Valyrie Elysium recycles the same decorations across the region, which becomes an issue when tied to the same handful of enemy types. The game’s monster design is perhaps the only way Valkyrie Elysium stays loyal to its JRPG heritage. The enemies provide some much-needed spice. Some monsters, like the Naglfar, show a lot of originality and innovation in their design, while many others just use various color palettes. Voice acting is good, but the non-Scandinavian accents were distracting, and Odin’s design seemed too trendy. However, it’s hard to overlook how light the levels are overall, especially given the absence of life in each scenario.
To rejuvenate the series, Valkyrie Elysium gave up a part of who she was during the transformation. Despite being 100% linear, the hack-and-slash features in Valkyrie Elysium make it seem like it belongs in the Souls genre, regardless of the game’s action RPG label. The game suffers from clear production restrictions, even though there is nothing fundamentally wrong or terrible to describe it. The problem is that the entire experience is just tiresome.
We can only expect that in the future, Square Enix will devote more energy and resources to the plot and the personalities of the characters. Despite all the makings of a classic, Valkyrie Elysium delivers an inconsistent experience with its mix of good gameplay, uninspiring plot, and level design. This remake is an admirable effort at a fresh start, but it won’t go down in history as a classic.
