Valkyrie Profile Lenneth is one of the best games Square-Enix has ever made.
Valkyrie Profile is a rare game because rather than just throwing out the storyline you are made to sit through some pretty emotional scenes. The basic premise of the game is that you are the Valkyrie Lenneth and it is your job to recruit the fallen souls of noble warriors into your entourage called the Einherjar. Yeah, try saying that five times fast… or pronouncing it correctly once. In either case Lenneth must scour the world and find those warriors who are in the process of dying and recruit them to fight for the side of Asgard in their war with the Vanir. It is the hopes of Lord Odin, Lenneth's superior and top dog of the pantheon of gods, that the Einherjar can make the difference in the upcoming war to end all wars, Ragnarok.
This sounds like a weird premise and it is. Take one-cup Norse mythology, one-cup artistic license and a whole lot of people dying and you get this game. It's kind of weird to know that for someone to join your party they have to die and in many cases the Valkyrie stands by, watches them die and then scoops them up. I can't really explain how bizarre this is other than to say this: however weird this might sound reading this, its at least five times worse when playing. But it is an interesting angle and gives this game a really fresh dose of originality to it.
Another pretty original thing about the game is the gameplay itself. When you are on the world map you can “channel” to seek out people you can recruit or dungeons that you can explore. Once you enter a location to seek someone to recruit you will get to watch an in-game cutscene that shows how that persons life ended and how Lenneth recruits them. After you recruit someone a dungeon will typically be opened for access. As opposed to the 3-D nature of most dungeon crawls these are strictly 2-D view with lots of platforming. Enemies are represented by generic sprites that walk around the map and you can initiate a fight with them either by touching them, this usually grants them first attack in a fight, or by swinging at them with your sword, which gets you first attack. The Valkyrie can also create ice crystals; these can be used to freeze enemies to avoid a fight or, more often, you will use it to help you platform. There are plenty of places in dungeons where you will need to create steps out of these easily broken crystals to get to hard to reach treasure chests or to simply proceed further into a dungeon. While sparse at first these sections get incredibly tricky towards the end of the game.
Lastly, is the fights themselves. In most turn based RPGs your turns are decided by the speed of your characters compared to the enemies and when your turn arrives you select your action from a menu that pops up. Well in this game they mix turn based RPGs with an almost fighting game combo system. Each face button on the PSP corresponds to one of your characters and by pressing it you will make them attack, or cast a spell if they are a mage. To add to that depending on what weapon they have equipped they may get as many as three attacks. By using all of your characters and their multiple attacks you will be able to build up your combo meter.
What is important about this combo meter is that when you fill it up with strings of attacks, or added spells, you will gain the ability to use super attacks called PWS's. These attacks, Purify Weird Soul as the game calls them, are the most powerful attacks at your disposal. Mastering the fighting system consists of learning how to use each of your characters attacks, making sure that they hit and building up combos properly to unleash as many PWS's as you can. The game is really good about weaning you into this and not just throwing it down on top of you. You will learn how to harness it with time.
When you level up you are given a specific number of points to use to increase your combat abilities, skills, combat techniques or for your Einherjar to increase their Hero Value. There are a number of various abilities and techniques to maximize the usefulness of your fighters but that isn't all there is to these points.
The whole point of recruiting Einherjar is to send them up to Valhalla to aid in the war. At the beginning of each chapter Freya, Odin's wife, will request a particular sort of warrior, such as someone who is an archer, a mage or has a certain skill you must train up. During that chapter you have to get someone like that, or have them from a previous chapter, and then train them to the desired levels. By granting them these skills and increasing their hero value, done by spending skill points on increasing their good virtues, including traits like Courageous, Heroic or Drinker (?!), while such things as Cowardly will penalize their Hero Value and you must spend points to lessen the hit these flaws give them. It sounds complicated but its really simple. The best part is the better Hero Value they have and the more you meet Freya's requests the more Divine Materialize Points you get.
Since you don't shop in this game Divine Materialize Points are like your gold. You can use them at dungeon save points or on the world map to create items, weapons, armor and other equipment that your party needs. Should you run low on these points you can even convert your other equipment back into these points. Its an interesting approach to the money system that I found a bit hard to manage at times but quite enjoyable.
The sprite based graphics of this game are pretty good especially many of the enemies. However they aren't that much better as compared to the original PS One release of this game (titled simply Valkyrie Profile back then). Then again, looking at many PSP games out there, this game looks better than most of them out there. Replacing the basic cutscenes from the old game are anime styled cutscenes for certain big moments in the game. These look really good even if they are a bit short and sparse.
The game is pretty much entirely voice acted, for all the main characters anyways. When going through cutscenes and getting into fights with boss enemies it is all voice acted and a fair bit better than most other games have. The story can be a bit hard to follow but this is more of a quirk of the screwy storyline than it is a failure of the game itself. The music is nice as well, setting the mood for most of the sad death scenes or the crazy boss fights you will find yourself in.
Overall, I will say that Valkyrie Profile Lenneth is definitely on my top 10 list for favorite games. This has easily usurped some of Square's earlier works to take a firm place in my heart. By mixing Norse mythology, RPG and real time elements into one awesome game they have made a real winner here. This game is a must own with very few weaknesses to mar this great game.