I never played the PS1 version. I’d love to get another game for the PSP. What’s the verdict? Anyone played it? Are the play mechanics still interesting or will I find the five-year-old+ gamepay jaundiced?
VP is one of those games that I hear people say is both amazing and wretched. I’m hoping it’s just an artifact of nerdcore backlash against a popular, beloved game. Am I right?
The original game itself is good, and some claim it’s great. The port is supposed to be plagued with load times and blurred characters and text, and they didn’t change a thing in the game besides adding a few FMV’s. Buying the port probably beats paying up the ass for the original on Ebay, but there are better RPG’s out there (just not on the PSP).
You’re right, it’s just nerdcore backlash (I love that term!) Valkyrie Profile is also a beast quite removed from the other monsters in the genre.
You have a strict time limit measured in major “turns” and there are only so many turns you can use in each chapter to do things like search for spirits, go to dungeons or towns and towns are not used for the typical RPG things, nor are they all that focused on. Many people misunderstood this and wanted a game where you could explore as much as you like. People who actually tried to play the game the way the developers intended and not force the usual dynamics on it, found they always had more than enough turns to get everything they wanted done and in fact, usually ended up purposely wasting a few just to get a chapter over.
Another thing is that the first part of the game has an unusually long cutscene, no other part of the game is like it, so people think its going to be like Xenosaga, but it isn’t, it settles down after that, indeed, a lot wanted a more conventional story, since it comes in chunks of the stories of the dead and what happens them in Ragnarok. Again, that’s like asking that X-Com should play like Grand Theft Auto.
The last thing is the battle system, which is terribly unique and based on a mechanic that looks like it would be shallow from the beginning. But after the game lets you get bearings down, it introduces all sorts of nuances and shadows and the battle system comes its own as one the deepest there is.
So mostly reactions were of a misunderstanding of its uniqueness. Technically, there are very few flaws in VP, and there aren’t terribly important ones either, much like any other classic.
I’ve not played the port, but I did replay the game before Silmeria came out and I can say that the only thing that has aged is that the sprites get a little pixellized when the zoom functions in the battle system. That’s about it. It’s an ageless classic, especially since its mostly 2D. I’ve heard some people complain about the port, but most of it seems to be the kind of shallow, nitpicky, fanboyish criticism like one pixel is off on the second screen of the third town or “Duurrr! They changed which button does which in Mega Man Anniversary Collection! How will I live?” variety. Even if its somehow not as good as the console version, you’d have to do a lot of mangling to VP to tarnish it.
No worries, VP will forever be one of the shining lights of console RPGs and still holds its hallowed place in the pantheon of classics with aplumb.
Also ignore Moggraider. “Some” do not “claim” it’s great. It is excellent in the same way that Super Mario Bros. is unimpeachably a classic. It has been decided without consulting him, by hundreds of thousands who have had their say and is regarded by a huge majority to be that way.
-Kitsune
I’m curious what changes (if any) were made to the game before its US release. A review of the Japanese version (link) mentions some pretty specific criticisms:
… rather than erase all the text bubbles and replace text with font according to the PSP resolution like every other rpg on the system, TOSE decided to just leave the original text alone and stretch it to fill the PSP screen while blurring it to remove pixels. The overall result is that every time one’s eyes fix on the text, everything becomes blurry and just looks terrible.
While the PS original wasn’t free of loading, the PSP has made it even worse and at times doubled or tripled the original load times. This is incredibly unforgivable considering the game is now on a handheld where it will often be played while on the go and those playing it won’t have time to sit through long load sections. One example of TOSE’s poor programming is the standard menu screen that’s used for everything from equipping weapons to saving one’s game. In the original VP, hitting triangle would instantly bring up the menu, but now in TOSE’s Lenneth, hitting triangle results in a 2-3 second black screen until finally a horribly stretched menu appears and then finally when exiting out of the menu and back to the game players must sit through another 2-3 second black screen before finally returning to the game. Considering how vital menu usage is in rpgs, this is just inexcusable and just another example of TOSE’s poor programming abilities.
The 1UP review just mentions the load times but not the blurriness.
The 1Up review barely mentions the load times, and certainly not in any critical fashion. Talk about soft-talking it …
So do the load times suck or not? Gamebrink says yes, 1Up says … I dunno …
I preordered this and Blade Dancer … since I’m a PC & handheld guy I never played any of this stuff, and am looking forward to it! Hopefully the review isn’t ‘fanboy afterglow’.
Mike
Hahaha. You must be joking, Kitsune. Give it a rest. I am saying the game is good, but not great, and pretty much the entire US reviewer community at the time of the original’s release agrees with me. Maybe this is just one more of those RPG’s that are “too Japanese” to attract a good fanbase in the US. A small contingent of fanboys does not constitute a “huge majority” (which is impossible to achieve due to a small US print run). I paid :bigbuxx: for the game on Ebay just like everyone else, so I’m just as psychologically invested as the fanboys, but I can admit the game has flaws.
I just replayed the game last month, so I will give you a good summary of them.
-The game’s central story is poor. The central character has a bit of a love story going (though there’s not much basis for it), but it’s only fully realized if you go through hoops and fulfill a number of esoteric steps to get the “good” ending (the “normal” ending is quite poor; you kill the bad guy and literally, the credits just roll).
-The rest of the story is fragmented. Each character you recruit gets a story cutscene before you recruit him, but aside from a few characters having relationships with each other (i.e. partners in crime or mercenaries in the same group), each cutscene is unrelated to the others and doesn’t have much in the way of emotional impact. Once you have sent your characters away to heaven, you only get to follow up on them with randomized bits of text placed in each character’s profile.
-This game has some of the worst voice acting I have ever heard, which really robs the story of any kind of resonance. Only Star Ocean 2’s voice work beats it in terms of atrociousness. I imagine Kitsune played the game in the original Japanese, so he never realized how much of a downer this is for the rest of us.
With that said, the game is still going to be the best RPG on the PSP, but only because all the others suck. The chapter system of time management is cool, and should be put to good effect for the sequel. It even allows you to skip most of the game if you really want to, just by “resting” through their passage. The battle system is the game’s saving grace, the one thing that’s really fun about the whole experience.
In conclusion, the game deserves the 7’s and low 8’s it got from reviewers, and anything higher is unwarranted, despite Kitsune’s claims. I know I’m looking forward to VP 2, though. With the merged Squenix’s big budgets, they should be able to do the storytelling right this time.
Thanks for the input, guys. I think I’m going to give it a pass.
After three pages of rambling that had my eyes rolling back into my head, IGN pronounced the game an 8.5.
Mike
It’s a wonderful game marred only by a heapful of exposition. Morbidly entertaining stuff for the most part, but be prepared for a solid 45m-1hour of textbox insanity after the title screen alone. I’d leave the PSP jacked into an outlet to avoid the dangers of battery drain without a quicksave.
Seriously though, the game is quite unique and deserving of a play despite some gimped technicalities.
If this wasn’t a known-quantity good/great game, that statement alone would likely be enough to earn it universal scorn and sub-5/10 scores …
My biggest worry is the turn / time limit, given how I tend to play these things.
It single handedly held me off of multiple replay’s. The original console game never included a skip function, even on replay, thus making it difficult to sacrifice so much gametime revisiting bloated cutscenes I’ve seen before. Shame because the dungeons and combat are mostly fantastic.
ALso, playing on each difficulty offers exclusive scenarios and dungeons that only pushes for replay, but again…
Beware because the true ending(8 or so hours of tacked on gameplay and direction) has hefty requirements easilly missed without a nudge from a faq check.
Anyone considering this game should keep in that Moggraider’s opinion is wrong and that he is suffering Swelled Opinion Syndrome, that malady in which the person believes so heartily that opinions our like snowflakes and no opinion can be wrong. A person who tries and tries to flaunt the conventional wisdom and the accepted norm of more subjective tastes by insisting, over and over, that no, Shakespeare and Monet and Beethoven were hacks and are terribly dull and we have it all wrong and they have it all right.
To this poor, misguided soul who feels they must at all costs bravely rail against the established practice, we can only repeat the truth and hope someday they learn it.
-Kitsune
This would mean a lot more if you weren’t the only person in this thread acting like VP is the second coming of goddam jesus. VP is a fine game, but it’s not even the best RPG of its generation, let alone some shining pinnacle of the genre.
Precisely.
Kitsune - while the game may or may not be great in general, any portable game that forces you to play through 45 - 60 uninterruptable minutes without save is not a portable game, and therefore seriously flaws before you flap your first wing.
Mike
Yeah, I’m the only one in this thread (so far), nice try. As if the number of people in a thread liking it has any relevance as the overall quality of a game.
Go ahead and not like Valkyrie Profile. Fine with me.
But by asserting that you can ascertain whether or not the game deserves it classic status, you are giving yourself a level of authority you do not have. The fact is, it already has attained that level. You don’t have a say in this, and neither do I. It’s already been decided. It matters not whether AMERICA approves because you are not the center of the world. No one had to know of the Tale of Genji outside of Japan for hundreds of years in order for it to be a classic either. And Dragon Quest games retain their recognized standard for quality as classics even without the recognition they earn in Japan.
The game need not have an equal reception from all parts of the world (and besides manipulating who thinks what about the game, generalizing it and then attributing the opposite opinion to a minority is a cowardly thing you do because you know you don’t have a leg to stand on).
I most certainly did not attribute godlike status to VP, even in this thread, as you can see from the very first post I made which attributes why some people don’t understand the game and that it has flaws, as does any work, classic or not. So if you are done being thoroughly unintelligent in every way, you can go back to failing to even criticize the consistency of the drool that is slobbering from your cretinous mouths.
txa, it certainly is a turn-off, but I’m not sure it’s quite that long and there a couple of interactive portions in between, so if the game allows for soft saves (which it certainly should on a portable) then you’ll be okay.
-Kitsune
Hopefully you’re right.
I can’t speak to the actual game, but I pre-ordered it sight-unseen based on recommendations of people who I respect. So I have fairly high expectations.
Since I’ve not gotten my copy yet and haven’t heard anything authoritative from the three reviews I don’t know, and I won’t pass final judgement until I get through it myself (since I am reviewing it, after all).
Mike
Calm down, Kitsune. Let’s put the comparisons to classic myths, composers, and playwrights to rest :). Maybe the game was wonderful in its original form, but after it came to the US it suffered considerably in translation, and its being ported to the PSP mars it still more.
Remember, he absolutely raved about Bumpy Trot.