Battle of the Valkyries

This week we’ve got a very special double header. I’m going to do the Battle of the Valkyries, and compare Odin Sphere to Valkyrie Profile! As a result, we’re going to run a little long, so I’d like you to consider this two weeks worth of JRPG Corner. Don’t look so glum! These two are both highly rated games! Just sit back and enjoy the show. Ragnarok will be here all too soon…

Valkyrie Profile is the story about Lenneth Valkyrie, who was incarnated into the world of Midgard by All-father Odin while she was not needed in Valhalla. When the final battle approached, she died in Midgard, and ascended to Asgard, forgetful of all her time as a mortal. But what of those still alive in the realm of men who still remember the girl Platina, Lenneth’s mortal shell? I’m not going to say any more, but most of the story revolves around the various einherjär that Lenneth recruits to fight in the war with the Vanir. Treated as individual stories, some of them are pretty moving. Especially Yumei’s and Gray’s. Or at least, those are my favorites. The overarching plot is not so great, and it takes a bit of work to make it actually appear.

Odin Sphere tells the story of the end of the world, as seen by five young people. Gwendolyn learns to accept the love of another while sacrificing everything for her father, Demon Lord Odin. Cornelius tries to regain his human form after a wretched curse turns him into a pooka, all the while making sure that his beloved remains safe from the shadows. Mercedes learns how to govern the faerie people, having to deal with a civil war as well as the loss of the magical cauldron that is the key to the apocalypse. Oswald finds meaning in his own existence through is love for another, defeating all who get in his way. And Velvet puzzles out the meaning behind a prophecy foretelling the end of the world. Each tale is a fully fleshed out story in itself, and together they create a metaplot that has some of the grandeur of Wagner’s famous opera, upon which the story is loosely based.

On the story front, the point has to go to Odin Sphere. Valkyrie Profile has some great moments, but the metaplot is fairly obscure, and isn’t even strictly necessary to play the game. In striking contrast, Odin Sphere’s metaplot is intricately linked with the individual stories of the actors.

Looking at the characters of Odin Sphere is obviously what you’re expected to do when playing the game. The whole of each chapter is devoted to looking at one of the characters and evolving them. Gwendolyn’s arc is excellent, but Cornelius’s is only so-so. Mercedes has some pretty interesting points, as does Oswald’s. Velvet’s is actually pretty lame. Some of the supporting cast is pretty cool, like Demon Lord Odin, Ingway, and Inferno King Onyx have their especially sneaky and excellent moments. Some characters aren’t as fleshed out, but the ones who are make pretty cool characters.

The characters in Valkyrie Profile are also the focus of that game, but there are some problems. It’s actually pretty rare to have them interacting with each other, and so a lot of the characterization comes out of the initial sketch involving them. A lot of these sketches are pretty good, but there’s not a lot of development, though how they fare once they have been sent to Valhalla ameliorates this problem slightly. There’s a few side characters that are pretty awesome, like Lezard Valeth and Loki, that magnificent bastard.

Again, the point goes to Odin Sphere, though by a smaller margin. There’s just a few more interesting characters, and more characters gain some development in Odin Sphere than in Valkyrie Profile.

Well, enough dwelling on story and other aspects. The G in RPG is game, right? So how good is the game play in Valkyrie Profile? Well, frankly, it’s excellent. In dungeons, you play a side scrolling platformer, with enemies that you can hit to gain the advantage in battle. There’s also crystals you can fire, which can freeze enemies or, if fired at a wall, create a step that you can jump on. Almost all of the puzzles in the game revolve around the crystal shooting, but beyond the simple uses listed above, you can make showers of crystals to jump on, crystal fragments that float in water, and combinations of these with other crystals to reach significant heights. The puzzles generally aren’t too hard, though tome take a little bit of thinking and a lot of experimentation. There’s a number of other good puzzles not based on the crystals too.

The battles in Valkyrie Profile are very different from in other RPGs. Instead of selecting the attack, magic, or whatever command for each character from the character’s menu, you just get one of the four shape buttons assigned to each character. Pressing that button causes the character to attack. By combining character attacks, you can juggle the enemy, or break its guard, or pound it into the ground. It is possible to cast extra powerful magic spells and use items from the menu, but that’s not the main way that battles are carried out. Still, the system is turn based, because you attack until none of your characters have attack actions left, and then the enemy attacks.

Odin Sphere has some interesting gameplay as well. Dungeons take the form of connected circles. Each of these areas loops back on itself, but has at least one exit leading to another such area. Most of them have enemies, which you fight in a real time style. You jump, fly, swing, and spin to avoid enemy attacks, and attack with the weapon of whatever character you’re playing. However, each attack depletes the Power bar, so some pauses are necessary to fight effectively. Plus, each character has a list of psypher skills, which are essentially magics that do various things, like turn your character invisible or release a powerful attack. There’s also a ton of items that you’re going to use. After you’ve defeated all the enemies in an area for the first time, you get a grade. This is directly based on how long you took to defeat the enemies, and how much damage you took. The less time, the better the score, and the less damage, the better the score. With a good score, you get more items as a bonus for completing the level.

The way you level up in Odin Sphere is pretty novel. Instead of experience, each enemy releases phozons when it dies. By pressing a certain button, you can suck them into your weapon, which increases the attack power of the weapon as well as charging the gauge from which psypher skill uses are deducted. Or, you can plant seeds that grow from a certain number of phozons into a fruit or sheep (yes, sheep grow on trees. Vegan mutton!). These foodstuffs level up your hit points as well as restoring hp.

The overall gameplay point goes to Valkyrie Profile. Odin Sphere has its charms, and the level up system is pretty cool, but Valkyrie Profile has more variety of experience, from puzzling to platforming to battling. Odin Sphere has a little platforming near the end, but no real puzzles.

Both Odin Sphere and Valkyrie Profile have item creation sections, so I’m going to take a quick look at these. In Odin Sphere, by mixing special alchemical base materials with living plant creatures called mandragoras, you can create potions that can be used to improve performance or damage enemies. But first, you have to have the proper recipe. Some of the most useful recipes are revealed early on in the game, but a few don’t show up until quite late. In Valkyrie Profile, you can transmute one item into another. By equipping one of two specific accessories on Lenneth, you can change what the transmuted item will be from the base. The basic transmutations are less powerful, the ones bestowed by the Creation Gem are moderately useful, and the ones opened up by the Creation Jewel are incredibly powerful. Some things can only be transmuted at one of the three level though. It’s a tough call, but I’d say Odin Sphere’s system is a little bit better. Creating the proper material takes a little bit of thought, and it progresses relatively evenly throughout the course of the game, whereas there is a big leap halfway through Valkyrie Profile from basic transmutations all the way to Creation Jewel transmutations.

Well, it’s down to replay value. Valkyrie Profile has three modes of difficulty, easy, normal, and hard. Easy’s kinda crummy, with limited characters, dungeons and endings, but normal and hard have different dungeons, and there are two different endings (three if you count the “game over” ending). With more characters than you can use in one play through, and an optional bonus dungeon after the end of the game, replay value for this game gets somewhere around “two times through and a bit more.” You’ll want to play through both hard and normal, and get both the normal and good endings.

Odin Sphere has four difficulties, though you have to unlock the final level. There isn’t much difference between easy, normal, and hard, except minor enemy power ups. But in the highest difficulty, Heroic, unlocked by beating the game and getting the good ending, your hp never increases. This means that you have to get really good at dodging attack patterns. It’s fun to try out, just to figure out the best way to beat the game without relying on higher hp totals. Oh, and if you unlock all of the apocalypse scenes, you’ll get a special extra scene. The end result is that this game gets “beat it once, then go for the challenge of Heroic mode.”

Valkyrie Profile wins the replay value point, just because there’s actually good story reasons to enjoy a second playthrough of the game. Odin Sphere is fun, and you can pick it up and fool around for an hour or two, but there’s nothing new to the game on a second playthrough except higher difficulty.

On to numerical ratings! Valkyrie Profile, despite its issues, is a very fun game to play. The overarching story may be mostly irrelevant, but the way some characters’ stories intertwine is very interesting. Plus, there’s a deep item creation system, lots of choices to make each playthrough, tons of characters that handle differently, and some pretty good puzzles. I’m going to have to give this game a 9.3 out of 10. It’s truly an excellent game. There’s occasional issues with sound errors or freezing, but it’s not too frequent. Also, didn’t mention it, earlier, but the voice acting is excellent. That’s relatively rare in RPGs, so savor it.

Fun Fact: Most of the characters are voiced by the same voice acting cast as the American dub of Pokémon. Meowth’s voice actress also does Arngrim. 0_0

Quick Tip: Keep every artifact. If you send a good einherjär to Valhalla each chapter, you’ll be fine, and the artifacts are frequently pretty good (though some are absolutely useless).

If you liked Valkyrie Profile, you might try one of these games. Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, is great for nostalgia for the first game, though it’s not as good a game on the whole. Odin Sphere because it’s Norse themed and surprisingly similar. Star Ocean: The Second Story is also by Tri-Ace, and has similar item creation and action elements.

Now for Odin Sphere. It’s a really fun action RPG, with lots of complex storytelling techniques deployed in its execution. You know how I usually say that graphics are irrelevant to RPGs? This is an exception. The graphics in Odin Sphere are gorgeous. Hand drawn, vibrantly colored, and well animated, looking at this game does in fact enhance the play experience. Well, the overall rating for this game is 8.7 out of 10. Pretty good, but there’s some load time issues involved in this game. Also, when there’s a lot of enemies and effects on screen, the game experiences significant slowdown. I happened to like that feature, because it made for a method acting approach to the game. The characters are reluctant to go to the underworld, and so are you, because you know there’s a painfully slow boss fight at the end. But, objectively speaking, it is a problem with the game. Also, it’s a fairly repetitive game in terms of battles. One of my favorites, but it does have issues.

Quick Tip: Napalm is your best friend. Keep lots of it around, it kills bosses dead.

How I Broke Game: Well, I don’t know if this really counts, but I’ve beaten the game on Heroic mode. It was pretty easy, truth be told.

If you liked Odin Sphere, you might like one of these games. Valkyrie Profile, because, well, duh, it’s based on Norse mythology. Grim Grimoire, I guess;  it’s also made by Vanillaware, and thus pretty. Tales of Destiny, because it’s a 2d action RPG, though there’s less strategy involved in that game.