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»Valhalla Knights
"Level-grind this, asshole!"
If you’ve ever played Diablo and gotten bored of the game BEFORE you
got to level 100, don’t even give this game a second look. As for the
rest of you, have a seat right there and let me tell you about XSEED’s
first entry for the PSP.
As I mentioned above, this game has its fair share of level-grinding
goodness. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that is one of its
biggest drawbacks. Why this is a drawback is due to the fact that you
have not one, not two, but three classes/jobs for each of your six
characters. Each one levels separately and all progress at an
excruciatingly slow rate. Furthermore, you will reach a point in the
game where you will get your ass handed to you for being too weak
offensively and defensively if you haven’t leveled up your entire party
as best you can. It can cause a real drag on a player when you get
further in the game story than you can physically handle. This is where
the excessive grind comes into play. You’ll find yourself going back
through the same old weak enemies for hours just to get a few more
levels. Even then, if you haven’t leveled all three of your character’s
class levels to the same point, the enemies may still prove to be too
difficult for you, so you’ll have to go back and choose a second/third
class/job and start all over again at level one just to have enough
defense to handle the bigger foes you come across. To avoid this, you
may want to start backtracking early on in the game and only going up
two or three levels before changing jobs again and doing the same.
Now that I’ve gotten the game’s most notorious failing out of the way,
I can begin my praises. Let’s first begin with the game’s story. Yep!
You guessed it. You’re another amnesia victim who’s trying to figure
out the what, why, and who. There’s a random ghost who wanders around
helping you out, instilling in you that you’ll figure out who you are
if you kill some guy who defeated you last. Of course, this doesn’t do
the job so he suggests that you…you know, help him out and maybe your
memory will return as you adventure together. Okay, so the story isn’t
that great either, but what is great is the battle system.
The battle system is real-time action, but you have up to 6 party
members. How does that work? Well, actually it works pretty well. You
control one character and the AI controls the others according to how
you have their Thought Points set up. You can switch between characters
at almost any time by hitting the select button. I say almost any time
because when you cast a spell, you have to wait for it to finish before
you can switch to another character. I would have liked being able to
do a little micro managing of my team, but it seems that you’re stuck
watching the AI abuse and misuse special attacks unnecessarily.
You caught me. I did, in fact say something about special attacks, but
let’s hold on that for a second and talk about the regular attacks.
These are performed by hitting the attack button which is whatever you
set it as – every button is customizable. If you find yourself missing
too often, you can target the enemies by hitting whatever you set your
target button as (R is default). Depending on the weapon you’re using,
you may have string attacks or just a single, powerful attack. Each
attack you land adds to your special attack reserve. Once this fills
up, you can unleash your weapon specific special attack. My favorite is
the bow as it shoots a hail of arrows that usually refill or get close
to refilling your special reserve while damaging all your foes at the
same time. The problem with this special is that it causes drastic
slow-down when using a full party. There are a bunch of others, but to
list them all would take far too long.
Battles begin when you run into an enemy or they run into you. Catching
them off guard deals damage to each enemy at the beginning of the
battle as if you landed a preemptive strike. While the battles are
real-time, whenever you cast a spell or need to use an item, the game
pauses to allow you to select your spell/item of choice. It’s also
worth noting that enemy attacks won’t hit you if you’re not in range.
You can move around the battlefield to avoid being struck or to get a
better vantage point.
I mentioned earlier the concept of Thought Points. You get these every
few levels for each character. With them, you can decide how your
party’s AI works when you’re not controlling them. There are 6 AI paths
you can put your points into: Weapon Attack, Magic Attack, Use Item,
Healing, Defensive Magic, and Curing Ailments. You may relocate your
points whenever you choose so it’s not as if it’s a one shot deal. If
you’re a little uncertain of how this works, I’ll give an example. My
main healer has a Priest as his main with Mage and Fighter as his 2nd
and 3rd classes. He has 10 Thought Points. Since his main job is to
heal, I put 5 points into his healing ability. He has 3 points in
defensive magic, 1 point in using items, and 1 point in curing
ailments. This makes the AI know that its primary task is to heal, but
that if anyone is poisoned, he’ll take care of them as long as there
aren’t people in need of healing. He will also try to conserve mana by
buffing my tanks with defensive spells and use the mana potions in his
inventory when his mana is too low to cast spells. It really works
well, but I wish the points were more frequently doled out to better
customize your AI earlier on.
Article by: Bloodspoor
Posted on: Apr. 12th, 2007 |
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Review Recap |
| Gameplay |
| Leveling up proves to be more tasking than it should be, but at least the battle system is pretty engaging and fun. |
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Graphics |
| Just about everything about this game screams adequate except for the robust variety of equipment that shows up on each and every character. |
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Sound |
| I’m a fan of the music in this game, but the sound effects are pretty generic throughout. |
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Replay Value |
| Versus sucks, but playing with a friend of a similar level is pretty fun. Likewise, the option of beefing up the baddies adds to the replay once you’ve finished the game. However, you may grow tired of the grind before that. |
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