This is aimed at people who are familiar with the first Valkyrie Profile game who might be curious about the new one. There won't be any spoilers in this entry - well, unless you consider reading about the battle or stat systems to be a spoiler.

There are a lot of returning locations, and a few returning characters as well, though you know that if you've been paying attention to the preview news. Those won't be discussed here, or in the comments if there are any, just to keep this accessible to everyone.

Or, everyone who actually asked, anyway. :p Feel free to pass it along and/or correct me - gameplay is my weak point.

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Character Stats, Items, Customization

The normal array of items, weapons, armor, and accessories are available, this time for real currency instead of a finite number of Materialize Points. (There's a change I can get behind!) Each store has a list of items that aren't yet available, which you can acquire by selling enough of the right materials to the vendor. This list is visible if you highlight the item in question, and you can get the materials from battle.

Occasionally an item will require you to sell an old weapon or accessory - for instance, I want a mage staff that can only be made with a combination of various items and a ruby mace. (I sold all of mine, so I'll have to trudge back to Solde and get one. That's kind of inconvenient, so save your items.)

Each weapon, piece of armor, and accessory has a corresponding rune and (for lack of a better term) type. Red runes are attack types, blue are status types, and so on. The color determines the kind of skill you'll learn.

In order to learn a skill (we'll use 'Iron Fist' as our example), you have to figure out the right combination of runes. You can hit the triangle button to see a skill list and what's available to learn; sometimes it'll tell you which combinations you need, sometimes not. As in other games, once you find that combination, you'll earn a certain percentage toward learning that skill after each battle, and when you reach 100 it's yours. As far as I know, all characters can learn all skills, but can't actually USE all of them. A mage would have no use for Iron Fist, which ups physical attack by 20% in battle.

You equip them with AP. Currently Alisha has six available AP; First Aid requires three, Iron Fist requires two. Hopefully her AP will increase eventually so I can equip more than two skills.

Like before, there are three basic classes of character: swordsman, archer, and mage. This hasn't changed much since the last game. I've heard that you can change Alisha's class, but I haven't actually tried looking for an option. However, some characters kind of cross over - Alisha is learning recovery and support skills, and Rufus has learned similar skills. I'll have to train a few einjerhar to see if this applies to all characters, or just the major ones.


Addendum 07/17/06: It should be noted that some einherjar come with skills that would otherwise take a while to find or learn. It seemed Woltar and my... uh, generic archer couldn't learn a few skills, but I forgot to check their list of starting abilities. Will do that soon.

Also, in order to learn a different type of skill (ie: red, green, blue), I think you have to equip your core armor pieces in that color - so to learn skills from red runes, you have to find head gear, armor, gauntlets, and greaves that also have red runes before the accessories will trigger an ability.

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World Map, Towns

Aside from the fact that you aren't flying, Midgard is pretty much the same. You don't have the entire world at your fingertips - rather, if you're in Villnore, all of Villnore's towns will be available to you, and to visit Solde, you have to take the road to Dipan's territory, and then you'll have access to all of the cities there. Etc.

Visually, the game and character models are 3D. The environment layouts are basically the same, but... well, prettier. The roads curve, and the camera takes you along for the ride, so it doesn't feel at all like a side-scroller.

It might just be me, but the townspeople talk a lot more in this game! There are also more of them, walking around and interacting with their environments. You can examine objects to learn more about the world, and there are always characters hanging out at inns or bars that will give you the rundown of game mechanics, as in every game. Sometimes talking to townspeople will open up optional areas, and people will pay you for completing them.

The story is linear, but the gameplay is not. And this time, there's no time limit, so you can mess around as much as you want.


07/17/06: It's possible to forget the einherjar (certainly, to miss them when you're dungeon crawling) and to bypass optional dungeons, which would make this game very short. The first three chapters moved quickly.

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Dungeons, Environments

Dungeons are basically the same as in the first game, with a few major additions and minor changes. Visually, they're similar to towns in the way you control Alisha, how the camera moves, etc. You still strike at enemies to initiate battle, dodge traps in treasure chests, and occasionally hack at walls or columns to open new areas.

The photon crystal has changed a bit. You still use it to immobilize enemies, and when you eradicate a group of monsters, they'll leave behind a misty spiritual residue that can also be encased in crystal for a time. It'll break if you strike it with your weapon, but if you hit it with another crystal, you'll switch places with it. There are a lot of puzzles that force you to take advantage of this ability to get past barriers or up to difficult ledges.

Then there are the Sealing Orbs, which I personally loathe. :D Each dungeon has a different collection of orbs, and their altars are scattered throughout different rooms. Each stone has a different attribute that will either give you or your enemy the advantage in battle. In the last dungeon I cleared, there was an orb that gave the enemy the initial advantage in every battle, and that's really inconvenient! More on that below.

You can pick up these sealing stones and carry them around to add to your own advantage, or at least deprive the enemy of one. There are also fountains within each dungeon where you can expend soul crystals (covered along with the battle system) to eradicate them for good.

There are also rooms termed 'no protection zones' - usually just one at a time, although there may be more than one room like it in a given dungeon - where you can't use your crystal to freeze enemies. I think the Sealing Stones are nil in these rooms as well, so neither you nor the enemy will have an unfair advantage.

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Battle System

The battle system is a mix of familiar and totally new elements. The stuff they added makes it more strategic, and a lot more fun - just my oipnion. The button/formation configuration is the same.

The first and most basic detail is the AP gauge: each attack requires a certain amount of AP (not to be confused with the AP necessary to equip skills), so in that way it's no different than the CP gauge of the previous game. But within that one hundred points, you can have characters attack multiple times, and mages are no longer restricted with just one attack and then four turns of downtime.

Moving around on the battle screen will charge your AP a little bit; pressing the left analog stick down gives you a quick charge, but during that time enemies can close in on you and start attacking. Each hit you take will also charge the gauge, but that's really not the ideal way to do it, especially in areas with powerful monsters. Starting a battle with an enemy advantage means you start with zero AP, and have to charge.

Again, like in the last game, different weapons have a different number of available hits, and the harder you hit the monster, the more soul crystals you'll knock out of them, which increases the worth of your experience. It's also really easy to beat items out of monsters, so finding materials for the item shops really isn't that difficult. The soul crystals can be used in conjunction with the fountains in dungeons to take care of sealing stones, but I'm not clear on that - I'll have to go back and pick at the text.

Also new to this battle system is the dash command - it requires AP to pull off, but when you dash toward an enemy, it can't move at all. It's very useful for getting out of range of spells or attacks that your characters can't withstand.

My favorite addition is the ability to end a battle quickly by going straight for the leader of the enemy pack. Kill it, and the battle ends immediately. This is also VERY useful if you're in over your head. :D There's an indicator on screen that tells you what your own attack range is; there'll also be a red arrow pointing in the general direction of the leader, a green one pointing at the nearest target, and a yellow one pointing toward the escape route, if you need it.

Battle grounds will change depending on the dungeon you're in - some are even multi-leveled, which can be good or... not.

Placing characters in the "back row" doesn't really make a difference anymore, now that you can move around the battlefield. It can help, but if you're surrounded, you're screwed no matter where you put your weaklings.

You have the option of dividing your party and leaving some of your companions behind while you attack monsters - something that comes in especially handy during some boss battles. It's also possible to switch leading characters. Characters who die stay where they are, and to revive them, you have to run back to the corpse, which can put you at a disadvantage. On the other hand, Alisha can die without any negative consequences (aside from a loss of experience).

I've noticed that, after using an item or a spell from the menu, there's a set amount of time before you can do either again - you have to be attacked, your AP gauge has to be filled again; one or both. It can be a problem when more than one character has gone down, but you can get around this by dividing the party, I find. The only problem with that is that you probably won't be able to pull off a special attack.

Purify Weird Soul = Soul Crush, in this game. Same thing, really. It works the same way. I've noticed Lezard's special attack doesn't change when I switch his default attack spell, so they may have limited it for the magic users. There's also a Break Mode - which I'm not sure how you activate, except by pulling off a particularly devastating series of attacks without missing - which gives you about thirty seconds to get in as many hits as you can with all of your characters, no holds barred.

Now, I don't know the ratio, but the numbers you get for experience at the end of battle are not the numbers actually applied to your experience count for gaining levels. I think you get half, but I'm not positive. That's another tutorial I'll have to pick through with a fine-tooth comb (and a kanji dictionary).

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Einherjar

You gather allies by materializing spirits that linger in dungeons. Their presence is always given away by a weapon leaning in a corner. The game'll prompt you to examine it, and then give you the option of materializing the spirit or not. If you do, they'll join automatically. If you don't, you can leave it behind. I'm not sure how many you can hold at one time, or even if there's a limit, but I think I'm going on ten now.

Each one has to be trained five levels past where they are when they enter your party - so someone coming in at level five can't be released until they hit level ten. Once you release them, you can find them hanging out in different towns, and they'll give you items or money. I don't know what impact they have, if any, but if you look at their history screens, you can learn a lot of interesting things about the einherjar and where they're from. It's a really interesting way to go about world-building in a game.


07/17/06: The order of their appearance is random as far as I know. It's unclear yet if you will be able to get all of them in every playthrough, or if some won't show up.

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As you can see, this is a lot to explain. I'm not an authority (and in fact, I really suck at this sort of thing - have you noticed? :D), but these are my impressions after twenty-something hours of playing. While I don't mind answering questions when people ask, it'll be a lot easier to just point them over here for the whole story.

If only I could take screenshots! It would be great to illustrate this.

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