What is it with smaller JRPG names being dragged through the dirt recently? Star Ocean hasn’t had a good game in years, and the reveal trailer for The Divine Force looked awful. Its characters were uninspired, its performance dire, and the overall vibe exuding a level of carelessness I wish the genre wasn’t so accustomed to.
Unless you’re Final Fantasy, Persona, Tales, or one of a select few niche properties, you’re often left to fade into obscurity. That’s understandable, it’s a saturated genre filled with all manner of melodramatic anime nonsense that only a few legends ever shine through. Valkyrie Profile has always occupied a middle ground, failing to ever penetrate the mainstream but maintaining a cult classic status thanks to its brilliant characters and original combat system.
It inspired plentiful indie games and even a handful of triple-A titles, quietly influencing the wider genre while never receiving the attention it deserved. You can even consider it on a similar level to Nier, except Valkyrie is yet to receive its unexpected million-seller sequel that hurls it into the stratosphere. Following the reveal of Valkyrie Elysium at this week’s State of Play, I’m not sure if we’ll be seeing that game emerge anytime soon.
Elysium finds itself in a similar position to Exoprimal. It's the return of a fan favourite IP (if we take Exoprimal as a stand-in for Dino Crisis) but not in the way any of us either imagined nor wanted. The gorgeously detailed environments of past games have been swapped out for an aesthetic that washes out all semblance of colour, leaving characters and locales to feel bland and lifeless in a way I’m not sure was intended. The Profile games had me curious to explore its worlds in search of conversations and mysteries, while this one just makes me feel sleepy. For much of the trailer I wasn’t convinced it was Valkyrie at all. The gameplay and characters were so different that I expected it to be a B-Tier Final Fantasy spin-off or something new entirely.
But here we are, Valkyrie Elysium is coming our way later this year, and I’m not sure what to think. It could be a sleeper hit, but it seems so fundamentally different to what came before it that I’m not sure Square Enix understands the beast it’s dealing with. The combat throughout the trailer feels more reminiscent to Devil May Cry or Nier Automata than past Valkyrie games, which often put thoughtful tactics above the sheer firepower of your arsenal. Valkyrie is such a niche experience that changing something so drastic about its gameplay feels like a surefire way to drive away hardcore fans instead of attracting new ones, even more so when you’re skimping on the visuals and storytelling. Goodness this is a weird one.
Granted it has been 15 years since the release of Valkyrie Profile 2, with two portable titles emerging in the years since with limited success. So maybe we can consider Valkyrie Elysium as a complete reboot or different interpretation of the beloved property. I’m happy to jump aboard that train, and it will make the drastic changes to gameplay and visual execution far easier to swallow. It could sink or swim, and right now I’m conflicted.
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