A Battle Maiden Asgard (Valkyrie Profile 2 Silmeria (PS2))

Member Name: scream4bruce

Product:	Valkyrie Profile 2 Silmeria (PS2)
Date:	27/07/08 (49 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Intriguing story, fairly solid battle system

Disadvantages: Next - gen lighting? Somewhat slow levelling up

For rebelling against him, Odin transmigrates Silmeria's soul with the Sovereign's Rite. However, the spell is incomplete, and Silmeria awakens within Alicia, the princess of Dipan. Realising Silmeria has awakened, Odin seeks to bring divine intervention down upon her.

I like how the story of Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria pans out, the twists are intriguing. The voice-acting is okay but the lip-synching for the FMV sequences are not. Also, the cut scenes seem to suffer from excessive blur - I would attribute this to compression perhaps rather than the shots being out-of-focus. And as detailed as the graphics are, light appears artificial and white, and there are fake shadow effects.

Despite being a 3D game, the towns and dungeons are explored in a 2D manner. Buying/selling goods is all done in the Armory of each town, but the interface for item management could have been handled better. In the dungeons, how a battle begins depends on the contact with an enemy; fights can be avoided by sealing the enemies inside crystals, whereby not only can they be used as platforms, but you can switch places with them. This yields the puzzle aspect to Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria. Giving both the dungeons and battles some depth are the Sealstones which grant special effects to the bearer - this can be the party or the area (which would affect nearby enemies).

On the battlefield, enemies move only when you do; I felt tank-like controls could have been adopted to ensure efficiency of movements. Working in your favour in the fight however, is a dash manouvre for passing by enemy attack ranges (at the cost of AP) and only the leader need be taken out to emerge victorious in the battle. Also, up to four characters can assist an attack. This does mean that as many can take damage as well as have status ailments inflicted upon them, which can be a nuisance since the player has to endure a turn before being able to use a spell or item again - the majority where the effects affect only a single character. There are ways to overcome these! Of note, there are enemies whom have a move whereby they would bring about another enemy to the battlefield, without penalty (that is, your party does not recover AP). Yet this is not exploited (luckily).

Moving around the battlefield can be messy, but the actual fighting can be fun. Each of the symbol buttons correspond to individual character attacks - continuously connecting these fills up a gauge which, when full, allows for Special Attacks to be added on. Often, the enemy is composed of numerous parts, and should a part break then there is likely to be an item reward. Not only that, but there is a chance of there being a 'Break Mode', whereby it becomes a free-for-all all-out attack on the enemy!

In the game, many Einherjar can be recruited then released when they reach a certain level. There are rewards for doing this. Whilst there is not a lot of attention paid to these characters, it's a shame that the levelling up is on the somewhat slow side, so there's not much focus on having different character combinations. Of note, I was disappointed to find there was no quick reset during battles.

The game supports 2-players but this is to set up characters to be controlled by a second player. It took me around 35 hours to complete Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria. A sole side-quest does become available late on, and the game notches up the difficulty on subsequent play throughs - as if the game was not already rather tough! I would recommend this to RPG fans, but only if they are up for the challenge.

Summary: Valkyrie Profile 2 Silmeria for PlayStation 2