This review contains spoilers.
During the story of the game, you take control of Lenneth Valkyrie. She is one of the three Valkyrie sisters, and is know as the chooser of the slain, and one of the three goddesses of fate. Lenneth is recently brought back after her time spent asleep in the body of a human host, and is given the task to find einherjar to send to help fight during the end of the world, Ragnarok. Lenneth also soon finds that she has no memory of herself or any of her abilities.
The main gameplay basically consists of you using Lenneth's ability of Spiritual Concentration to seek out einherjar to to take with her into battle to prepare them for being sent to battle at Ragnarok. This is also used to help her seek out dungeons with undead that are becoming a threat. When you seek out an einherjar, you usually show up in time to watch how they die, and Lenneth offers to claim them. Each character has a different story that you sit through to see a bit of a background for them before you take them.
There is a time limit to the game, in a sense. There isn't an actual running clock, but you only have so many times you can visit any place you decide to go to. The main story is split into 8 chapters, and each chapter has a set number of periods you can spend. Each time you fly to a town or dungeon on the world map, it will bring up a short explanation of the area after you select it. The amount of periods you will spend by entering the area is also shown during this. Towns take one period, while most dungeon areas take two. Many people complain that this limit in the game makes it so you don't have time to explore on your own, but if you get everything out of the way first, you will almost always have enough time to revisit most areas, and still have time to revisit dungeons to gains some more experience.
The towns don't really have shops or inns like most RPGs. You can heal on the world map by spending one period to recover your health, and two to recover health and status problems. Instead of buying things in a shop, you can just divine the items you want while on the world map, or at any save point. You are given Materialize Points by Freya at the end of each chapter, and the amount will vary depending on how well you met her requests for a new einherjar sent during the last chapter. Most of the time, you can find a new character almost perfectly fit to what she wants you to send in each chapter. The Materialize points are used as a currency in the game since you don't need shops, and you have the option to turn existing items into more Materialize points if you get low or have no use for an item.
The battle system is one is one of my favorites out of any RPG I have ever played. When you pick your party, each character is set to a specific place in a circle formation. Each character's actions in battle is set to a button on the controller based on placement in the formation. So for example, Lenneth starts in the middle left spot, and she is controlled by the square button. Any party member can be move to any button, but Lenneth is the only character that can never be removed from the formation. In battle, your timing of attacks is the most important thing. If you manage to launch an enemy into the air and strike them while like that, hit them after being knocked down, or have multiple hits from separate characters at the same time, you are rewarded with items. This is how you get enemy drops, crystals that raise experience earned at the end of battle by a certain percentage (which also stack), and items to reduce the charge time of a character. The charge time is like a waiting period for your character to recover after using things like magic.
In battle, there is also a heat gauge. The amount of damage you cause in a chain affects how much and how fast this fills. If it does reach it's max, all characters involved in the chain are allowed to perform their Purify Weird Soul attack. These are basically character specific special attacks. Some are of course better than others. Some have a greater amount of hits, and some just do very poor damage overall. Lenneth can also change hers depending on what she has equipped Swords usually allow her to perform the level one version of her PWS, while bows allow her to perform a level two version. A very small amount of weapons she can use allow for her level three version.
The other thing about the game is that levels are almost pointless when it comes to how good your characters' stats can be. You will find books to teach new skills and spells. Each time you use a skill book, it will from that point on be available for anyone who can use it. The base set of skills have their uses, but the ones you find later on will be the most important. These can teach simple things like skills to raise Evasion rates in battle, or can teach skills you need to equip to have an effect. Some are of course more useful than others. Guts, for example, gives a chance to be brought back with a random single digit number of health any time you fall in battle. The rate that this will activate is dependent on how much you leveled up the skill. Every time you level up, you get points to put into whatever skills you want, so it adds strategy to the early parts of the game where this is more vital, since you will have bad equipment and items for a good part of the early chapters.
The music in the game is pretty good. There is a limited number of tracks in the game though. Even if you don't like the music, you don't spend enough time in any one area without getting a break from the song to let any of them get annoying. The sound quality in the game is very good for it's time. The voice acting is better than most from it's time, and is one of the few Playstation game to actually have voices for the entire game. You will probably recognize most of the VAs.
There are also three possible paths in the game you can take. They basically affect the story depending on if you are going to get the A, B, or C endings. The C ending is only possible if you either intentionally mess up enough to cause it to happen, and then do it again after you are warned. It leads to a literally impossible fight with Freya, and is a scenario of the worst possible outcome of Lenneth being brought back. The B ending will honestly make you hate the game. It leaves a ton of unanswered questions about the story and overall plot of what has been happening, and the ending is one of the worst endings I have ever seen in any game. It really feels like you did all the work for no reward. The A ending involves Lenneth getting her memory back, and leads to the true path that helps piece together all the things that might not make sense at first. The A and B paths also lead to a different end game story, area, and boss set.
If you get the A or B endings, you unlock a post game super dungeon known as the Seraphic Gate. This is a non-cannon post game that lets you unlock the most powerful party members and items. The best rewards are locked behind doors that you can only open by finding items that only exist in the Hard mode exclusive dungeons, but it's still possible to play and finish the Seraphic Gate without them. In this dungeon, you can fight the strongest enemies in the game, and find enemies that ar stronger, for a lack of a better word, counter fit versions or the bosses in the main game. They will be powered up versions with higher stats, and allow you to get the voice data for some of the bosses you may have missed that are A path and B path exclusive. An example of this is finding a different version of Hrist, named Dark Valkyrie, with way higher RDM and DEF compared to her easily defeated, ATK focused main game version.
Also, with this being a tri-Ace game, you will eventually meet the Ethereal Queen, known as Iseria Queen back then. If you defeat her ten times, in ten runs of the SG, you unlock the games most powerful weapon, and get a new one for each time you beat her after that. The game limits this to just a maximum of 5 though, since that is the limit for inventory space for this weapon.
Overall, Valkyrie Profile is a very fun, and unique JRPG that many people missed out on back in 1999 and 2000. The story can be a little confusing at times, since they left a lot of it unresolved, but this was done to set up more plot for the second game. Everything that goes unanswered by this game's A path, is eventually answered by the second game, so it can be a little annoying if you don't have access to both, to get the full story.