A battle between Odin, father of all gods, and Fenrir, the she-wolf that will devour the world, leaves them both badly injured and begins the events of Ragnarök, the end of the world. Weakened, Odin decides to create a new Valkyrie to travel through Midgard, the human world, in search of the spirits of fallen warriors, who can help tip the balance towards the gods in the next battle.
Valkyrie Elysium It is available for PS4, PS5 and PC.
to read my first impressions click here
what of Valkyrie Elysium It’s a shame, because many players are inevitably going to be disappointed. Not because it’s a bad game – at least not for me – but because it’s clear that Square Enix (and Soleil, the studio in charge of development) were in a difficult place when deciding what to do with the series. Because of course, we are not in the 90s anymore, and making a JRPG today is exponentially more expensive than it was back then. At the same time, if you do something too different you risk alienating your more hardcore fans who are expecting a traditional sequel..
Although they flirted with different subgenres throughout the deliveries (the last one, Covenant of The Plumewas an SRPG more like Final Fantasy Tactics than either of her two older sisters), Valkyrie Profile It was always first and foremost an RPG. And as much as marketing wants to convince us otherwise, Elysium is not. And a lot of players are going to judge it based on what it’s not, rather than what it is. It’s a tricky balance in this age of AAA games and mega acquisitions, and I don’t envy any company that wants to find it.
What *is* Valkyrie Elysium, then?
Valkyrie Elysium is an action game set in a new continuity of the universe of Valkyrie Profile. No more no less. Square Enix can call this an action RPG all they want but nah. The game consists of nine missions that we select from our main hub in Valhalla and that take about 12 hours to complete, plus a few short side missions. There are no levels, there are no different builds, there is no armor/equipment, there is basically zero customization outside of what order we are going to unlock our skills with the orbs that we are getting chapter by chapter. If this reminds you more of Devil May Cry oa God of War than any previous game in the series, they are not wrong. We even rate our performance at the end of each mission.
In addition to our melee weapons (six in total, some hidden behind side quests) we have a wide variety of elemental magic available at our fingertips, ranging from weak attacks that affect a single target to more powerful ones with excellent area effects to deal with. groups of enemies.
All enemies in the game, including bosses, have an icon showing their elemental weakness at all times, and repeatedly attacking them with this element temporarily paralyzes them. Combat, then, is almost always about juggling groups of enemies with different weaknesses by switching between different weapons, magic, and Einherjar on the fly, using our grappling hook to jump from one enemy to another at full speed, or to extend our combo by grabbing someone. poor monster that flew away to continue giving him a little more. Our Einherjar also have elemental affinities and automatically attack the enemy that we have locked when summoning them. Although we can’t control them directly like in previous games, we can customize their movesets or even decide if we want them to be automatically invoked after performing a specific action like dodging an attack at the right time or performing a parry, to give a few examples.
As I said in my previous note, I would have liked bosses to at least hide their elemental weaknesses and have to be deduced during combat (especially since that’s the case with weapons that enemies are weak to) but hey, that’s what there are. The bosses are quite varied visually – at least until we start seeing them repeated in side quests – and by far the most fun part of the game.
I also would have liked more than four Einherjar, especially since when we get the last member of our party there is little left to finish the story. They all have unique designs and personalities that I would have liked to see more expanded and in more relevant roles in the narrative.
Our upgrades are divided into three different categories: Attack, Defense and Support, in mostly linear trees that only very occasionally branch (two options first, three later) and require different colored orbs to unlock. Extra colors are enabled throughout the story, ensuring that we can’t over farm to improve our Valkyrie beyond a certain point at any given time. Some upgrades also require reaching a certain level of affinity with a specific weapon, which doesn’t seem to have any use outside of this, as it doesn’t increase our damage or the speed of our attacks.
the problem with Valkyrie Elysium is that if the combat does not close you, it does not have much more to offer. The graphics are just okay and don’t do justice to the beautiful artwork, plus they don’t justify the performance issues. The maps are visually varied, but there are very few in total. The story is… there, far from the long-lasting epics to which the series has accustomed us, and although there are more cinematics than the demo threatened, their quality differs drastically. Enjoyable? Sure, but more because of the interactions between Valkyrie and her Einherjar than because of its plot quality. Sakuraba’s music is more than correct and takes me back to the classics of the series, but nobody is going to smoke a gameplay that they are not enjoying just because of the soundtrack.
In my first impressions of the demo I had included a list of things that worried me or made me noise about the final release, and it seemed like a good idea to make a comparison and see how much some of them have changed (or not) since then. In order:
-The technical performance on PS5 leaves a lot to be desired, with that feeling of playing at 60-fps-that-is-never-really-60 that we had already seen in Elden Ringfor instance.
This remained pretty much the same on the way out. The performance in general is a bit above what was seen in the demo but it never gives the impression of maintaining a constant 60 fps.
-Enemy density feels low, more like what you’d expect in a soulslike with slower, heavier combat. It is normal to spend long moments without encountering enemies and even when we do, they are usually small groups of no more than three or four at a time.
Here I am pleased to report that the density of enemies increases as we go along and there are many more arenas in the full game, plus many of the side quests are basically gauntlets with waves of enemies and bosses (almost always recycled from the story) . This on the other hand had the adverse effect of exposing the lack of variety of enemies in general, most consisting of the same types repeated over and over again but with different elemental affinities. Perhaps the poorest variety of common enemies I’ve seen since Tales of Arise.
-Flowers scattered throughout the map that reveal optional dialogue. They don’t seem to serve any purpose at the moment, and I already see some unbearable trophy coming that requires collecting them all.
I hate that I was right here. Not only is there a trophy that requires collecting them all, but one of the alternate endings is hidden behind doing so. I hope you like to replay the missions over and over again (or use a guide), because for everything we did during a mission to count, you have to finish it no matter what. Nothing to go back to look for the things that we missed and leave the level.
Valkyrie Elysium it lives and dies by its excellent combat, and while all the rest of the package seems to have received less love, it is still worth it. A hypothetical sequel that is an authentic RPG with these same combat mechanics could be something really special, but knowing Square Enix, the lukewarm reception to this game will most likely mean the second end of the series, which would be a shame with how solid is the foundation that this first installment laid.
In an ideal world, the lesson that should be taken from Elysium it would be to take what worked and expand and improve the rest, but we don’t live in that world, do we?