[kael]

Anyone played this yet? I finally beat it (after about 12 tries at the last boss) and got the 'A Ending' today, and messed around with a second playthrough a bit.

This game is *strange*. Good strange, mostly, but still - really weird.

At first, it seems like a typical strategy RPG. You've got the standard FFT-style isometric map and character sprites, with the rotating camera and per-character turns, characters each have their own attack and movement ranges, there's terrain restrictions on movement, all that sort of stuff. Then they pile a bunch of weird stuff on top, and it's hard to tell whether all of it works.

For example, like in a standard SRPG, if you run up to a guy, you can attack him. But it's a little strange - it cuts away to a higher-res screen where you can see your characters fighting, instead of doing it on the main map. Then you move in another character to attack the same guy, and you realize that both of your characters are now on that cutaway screen, and they can both attack the foe at the same time.

You are now in the Valkyrie Profile battle system, not to be confused with the FFT battle system. The two are basically separate, with one exception. This is really, really bizarre. I don't think I've seen something like it in a game before, which is all the more strange since it actually works pretty well.

As a result of the ability to do group attacks, all of the stuff from previous VP games basically comes back: You can combo enemies, you can knock them into the air, you can daze them, you can dodge attacks, you can counterattack, etc. One interesting twist as a result of this is that enemies get most of the perks that players do in VP games: If an enemy gets enough hits in a row, they can use a soul crush. If multiple enemies attack one of your party members at once, they can break his guard and knock him out, including getting red orbs to grant them extra attacks. To put it simply, enemies can fuck your shit up and there's not much you can do about it.

Despite being able to wipe you out pretty easily if you let them gang up, the enemies are oddly pretty dumb. In most fights more than half of the foes on the field will be idle at any time, since their AI apparently does not turn on until you get within a certain number of spaces. It's a little unnerving, but may be necessary to keep the game balanced, since I can't imagine it being possible to beat some of the fights if all 10+ enemies came rushing at you at a time. It sucks regardless, though, since it's often not obvious whether a foe is a threat and makes it harder to figure out how you're expected to navigate the battlefield.

When ganging up on enemies, if you're positioned around them in formation, you get bonuses like extra experience or more soul crushes. It's a minor detail, but it does make fights against powerful enemies like bosses more interesting, since you have to weigh the cost of 'better' positioning versus potentially losing turns or opening yourself up to area attacks. I feel like this mechanic was ultimately underutilized, though, and badly explained.

The story is arguably better than either of the previous games'. They tell it in a manner close to the original's, where there are numerous characters brought in and out of the main story arc with introductions, dialogue, fights, and deaths. The game branches at various points based on where you choose to go and how you use the plume (i'll get to this later) and the storytelling changes similarly. The dialogue is better written than VP1's and the story is easier to follow.

In VP1 the 'branching' aspects of the story felt weak and disconnected from the main plot, but VPDS has a much more coherent story so these little optional story segments integrate much better, and sometimes they actually retell the same events in different ways, based on your actions. A character who dies in a cutscene in your first playthrough may survive in your second playthrough and join your party.

Other than the oddball battle system, though, typical SRPG fare. There are a couple subtly brilliant systems that were added in, though, and I think they're what plant the game firmly in 'strange' territory. I'm still not sure if I like either of them.

So, first. The 'Destiny Plume' system. The game is named after this, since it ties into the plot and how you use it actually affects how the game's plot and missions branch out. To summarize: The main character has an ability that lets him sacrifice his allies on any given turn. Sacrificing an ally pumps up their stats tremendously, and grants a bonus based on their identity.

If you use the plume on the archer chick you get early in the game, it paralyzes every enemy on the field for 3 turns in addition to cranking up her stats; other characters have different effects like drawing enemy attacks or silencing foes. It's powerful, and if you use it correctly you can overcome pretty much any difficult fight.

Two problems here, really: Giving up party members sucks. You rarely have more than a couple 'extras', and sacrificing them requires dragging them into battle. If they're a character you don't like, they're probably underlevelled and undergeared, which means dragging them into battle is a liability.

Furthermore, the characters die at the end of the fight, with a sad death sequence, and they're no longer available to you for levelling up, etc. I found that I was very unwilling to sacrifice characters I liked just to get past a tough fight, especially since I was thinking about using them in future playthroughs. This may actually be an example of how a New Game + mode can suck some of the fun out of the first time through a game.

A couple other notes: Using the Plume too much apparently can end your game. This was unclear to me in my first playthrough, but I also didn't run into it (since I actually never used the Plume.)
Using the Plume will also completely fill up your Sin meter. This can be pretty helpful, so I should explain what the Sin meter is.

The second system is not quite as complicated: There's a 'Sin' meter shown onscreen in battles. Each battle has a quota you have to meet. If you don't meet the quota, you risk being punished by Hel - she'll make your next fight harder, or withhold valuable items. If you vastly exceed the quota, you get valuable equipment and items, some of which is the best in the game or can't be acquired any other way.

The way you accumulate Sin is by doing damage to enemies after they've died. You were able to do this in VP1 and VP2 by continuing to smash the face buttons or use soul crushes, but now it actually matters - all hits after a foe's death boost his health bar in the reverse direction, displaying 'Overkill' on screen and filling up your sin meter. If you deal twice the enemy's total HP in damage, you fill the sin meter all the way up and get 100 Sin for your kill.

This makes it important to think strategically about *how* you will kill an enemy - attempting to do it all at once may mean you just barely do enough damage to kill him, and only net a few sin points. Doing this repeatedly will mean you fall far short of the quota. Trying to kill him in two volleys means he gets an opportunity to counter-attack, and against foes in later fights this can mean the death of one of your party members, causing you to lose multiple turns resurrecting him in battle before finishing off the enemy.

You also end up having to choose *not* to use soul crushes or counter-attacks if they mean that a foe will die without generating Sin, which is an odd choice to make in a game like this. The game punishes indecisiveness by not letting you abandon a counter-attack once you've begun - the first time you hit a face button, your character is committed to battle and the round won't end until he's out of attacks. More than a few times, I thought 'well maybe I'll just hit him once', then realized I was losing out on 100 Goddamn Sin Points and, to my horror, could not back out. Oops.

After a while the Sin system starts to feel a little tedious, though, since it becomes straightforward to rack up 100 Sin on every kill by surrounding enemies with your entire party. The biggest downside is that in parts of the game where you get thrown into multiple battles in a row without getting to save, a minor mistake can rob you of the Sin necessary to hit the quota, giving you three equally awful choices:

1. Beat the fight and get punished by Hel for missing your sin quota
2. Reload your save to try again, but have to replay the previous fights
3. Use the plume to fill up your sin meter, which means getting rid of an important character and possibly even ending your game

In my first playthrough, I never used the Plume (except for in the one fight where you're required to), but I still managed to easily meet the Sin quota in almost every fight. The exceptions were the few encounters where your objective is to 'Rescue' someone. These encounters sucked so hard that they merit a paragraph:

In the Rescue encounters, a would-be ally is trapped behind enemy lines, usually 2-4 turns of movement away from your party and in imminent danger. If you do not move as fast as fucking humanly possible, they will die before you reach them. Even if you do move as fast as possible, bending the laws of space-time, they will probably still die. They are fucking pussies.

Okay, another paragraph - the would-be allies without exception spend every turn attacking foes for 5-10 damage per hit (utterly worthless), and getting counter-attacked every time for huge chunks of their health bar. They almost always die due to their own stupidity instead of due to your mistakes. What's worse, the game fails to make it clear how you are intended to rescue them - in some cases, even casting a heal on them is insufficient, so you will have to replay the rescue missions multiple times.

One particular rescue mission is particularly offensive in that it expects you to notice that by having a magician stand on a ledge, you will get an opportunity to heal your would-be ally in about 3 more turns. This is impossible to notice without playing through (and losing) the mission at least once, and is impossible to exploit if you don't have a magician. Utterly moronic; I really don't understand how this made it into the game.

Enough about rescue missions; there are only a few of them, and you can always use a plume skill or something if you have to. A large, but forgettable speed-bump.

Between missions, you have the opportunity to visit towns. Towns have taverns where you can read blurbs about the story and the world, which are fairly well written and tend to either be interesting or utterly boring. Occasionally you will find lore in a tavern that unlocks an optional side mission, where you can kill strong monsters in exchange for XP and loot (thankfully, no Sin system in these missions). This is pretty similar to the structure of the FFT games I've played, nothing special here.

Towns have shops where you can buy and sell equipment. Most of the items you need to heal and remove status effects are there, along with a few assorted bits of equipment and accessories you can use to fill in gaps in your characters' loadouts. Money is fairly plentiful in this game, so I usually found myself with just enough OTH to buy upgrades for all my preferred characters and a few extra items for the worthless layabouts.

The game is item-heavy, far more so than I remember the previous VP games being. This is mostly due to the importance of Action Points in this game, compared to how they worked in VP1 and VP2 - every turn, every available action will either consume action points (usually at least a third of your maximum, if not all of it) or regenerate a tiny amount (10 by default, 20 if you pass your turn).

This means that once you've exhausted your AP (by using a powerful spell, or a couple items/abilities), you don't have any, and you won't have enough to use spells for another 3-4 turns. It's very easy to fuck yourself over by spending all your AP and not having enough left to use a resurrection or healing item. Ultimately, I think this system makes fights more challenging, but I was constantly hitting myself for wasting AP without thinking about the consequences.

Also, buy tons of curative items. You will get absolutely covered in status effects and go through your entire stock of items in the span of one or two battles, and if you forget to buy more, your party members will get utterly destroyed. Status effects are easier to inflict than in previous VP games, and are more powerful due to the tactical nature of the game (since about half of them prevent characters from moving or acting).

I was extremely satisfied by the difficulty level despite my complaints about the AI. It's a little uneven, but overall mistakes can cause you to lose almost any of the battles in the game, even on a second playthrough. I never needed to use the Plume skills to win a fight, despite needing to try some of them multiple times, so I think they struck a good balance here.

The different character classes are balanced pretty well. Mages make good all-around support fighters, with lots of useful spells, while archers have extremely good range making it easy to combo with them, and melee attackers do great damage/combos but are troublesome to get into position for attacks. The game does a good job of encouraging you to mix and match classes instead of relying on the single 'best' class for all of your party slots.

Um, what else... The music is pretty weak. Mostly remixes of VP1 songs, and they sound like ass on the DS's pitiful synth and tiny speakers. That, and I don't think some of the songs they picked are particularly good examples of Sakuraba's 'best' work. He tends to 'phone it in' on games and this is definitely one of them. It's acceptable, at least.

The voice work is fairly good, with a couple exceptions. The dialogue helps here, even though most of it isn't voiced. The sound effects are crunchy and distinctive and not too repetitive.

The art is quite good, considering the genre and restrictions. The battle environments look nice, though the tiles are a bit too low-res and reused too much. The character portraits are *great*, though a little stereotypical, and the character sprites are fluidly animated and very detailed. The on-map sprites are a little bit derivative in the sense that they all remind me of recolored FFT sprites, but the in-battle ones are extremely good.

Anyway, what do you guys think? I hadn't even realized this game was coming out until a friend mentioned he bought it, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn't regret spending $40, especially since I rarely play games in this genre.

[dark steve]

I uh, think you covered everything, actually
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[dark steve]

okay a little more

I really do like how giving the opposing side your combo system gives the game the whole "double-risk, double-reward" thing, which is definitely a positive trend in jrpgs right now. Although yeah, there's definitely a rough element in how the game systems synergize. Maybe it would have been better to focus on slightly smaller, more tactically intricate levels.
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[Deets]

Thanks for the writeup, kael. This game sounds, well... it sounds amazingly hateful.

[dark steve]

Well, the stages are fairly quick (at least as far as I've been in the game), is the one thing he doesn't quite touch on. The things that will actually slow you down the most are pausing to shuffle the cursor around and think about your next move and replaying the first couple turns of battles, especially early on, while you experiment with enemy behavior and the like. It's sort of telling that the first two skills available for purchase are to make your characters more or less desirable targets for enemy units.
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[BenoitRen]

Thank you for the great, informative review. :)
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[Gironika]

I expected the game to be a bit more like VP1, so after reading this I'll have to think twice about whether I want this now ... TWEWY still needs to be finished (well, at least some minor details) that have kept me playing since ... well, nearly a year ago, huh. And then there's FFCC:RoF that is still waiting to be finished due to my time spent with TWEWY. Maybe it'll be 30 bucks then, which would make it easier for me to take the risk.
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[kael]

[Talbain]

I enjoy it, mostly because it's different. But then, the Valkyrie Profile games are notorious for their strangeness. Except for Valkyrie Profile 2 I guess, which was just tedious. I'm very much liking Covenant of the Plume. This battle system works well in an SRPG, adding more layers to the otherwise straightforward "move to enemy to kill." Now it's closer to "move to enemy to kill... but be careful or your shit will get fucked up." Even on the first battle I wasn't just charging in and attacking, I was thinking at least a bit about each move, and I think that's a good thing. The claimed point about SRPGs is the strategy. The story is also pretty creepy and weird. If I didn't have so much background in the VP games I would probably find it even more creepy. Also, the voice actors are actually pretty good!
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[leoboiko]

Ok so here's the thing. Valkyrie Profile is great, Valkyrie Profile 2 sucks, and Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume is also great.

WHY COVENANT IS GREAT LIKE VP1 AND NOT TERRIBLE LIKE VP2:

It reuses VP1 soundtrack.

Wait that's not what I was going to say at all.

WHY COVENANT IS GREAT LIKE VP1 AND NOT TERRIBLE LIKE VP2 #RELOAD:

1. In Japanese RPGs, storytelling matters.
2. Japanese RPGs are (arguably) videogames.
3. Therefore, Japanese RPGs should tell the story not just with the game but through the game.

Now in VP1 you play a valkyrie, which everyone knows is a servant of Odin. And Odin is the father-figure who gives you a mission, and your character wants to follow it faithfully. But if you do so, as most people will if they don't read strategy guides (and you shouldn't), you get a bad ending — well not as much a "bad" ending as a "no" ending. Nothing much happens and the player is like "wtf, is that all?".

There's only a few subtle hints that you should actually disobey Odin: some text in-between the lines, the game subtitle ("should deny the divine destiny of the destinies"), etc. You're supposed to notice these hints and rebel against the father-king. I suspect most guideless people will do it in their second playthrough.

So far that's not really impressive. What's impressive is that you don't defy Odin by selecting "no" instead of "yes" in a textbox. The means to do so are completely integrated in-game. For example, when you get an artifact, a big warning pops up saying all artifacts belong to Odin and do you really want to keep it and if you do a loyalty rating goes down. No tutorial or other game gimmick tells you what's the decision you "should" make or what's the possible consequences. The game has a very autumnal feeling, a sense of urgency — Ragnarök is coming, your turns are limited — but you can visit places outside of your mission, and if you choose to do so another loyalty score will decrease. Nowhere does the game explain these ratings to you, nor that you're supposed to zero one of then (the "seal value", representing Odin's mental block on Valkyrie's memories). You have to make the choice. You have to deny the divine destiny. The story and game are one.

Valkyrie Profile 2 sucks. And not only for time-travel and for ruining the story. VP2 completely misses the strengths of VP1 and doesn't tie story to game at all. In the game you're some whiny princess who's also a host to another Valkyrie; but no game element plays with the dualism of Alicia and Silmeria sharing the same body. You can summon the spirits of long-dead warriors via prized objects; but this has no bearing at all in the story, they don't make any effort to tell their personal tales or to make you emotionally attached, and they even reuse voices and finishing strikes. One of the characters is a half-elf, which makes him a suitable vessel for a god —how does that translate in gameplay? Nothing. One is one of those resurrected souls, only he's actually a major VP1 char; in the game? Nothing. You got the idea.

IF YOU'RE SKIMMING THIS IS WHERE I START TALKING ABOUT COVENANT:

In Covenant you're not a Valkyrie, not a mother-figure, and not even a female. You're the bad guy, kind of. You hate Valkyries, particularly the first one, and sell your soul to Hel (the death deity) for revenge. Hel empowers you with her cursed feather, a sinister take on the Union Plumes: it allows you to get amazingly powerful skills at the cost of one of your friends' life (permanently, not videogamely).

Is that related to gameplay, like VP1? Or is it irrelevant background noise, like VP2?

Consider.

Unless you're one of those weird people that actually play Japanese RPGs as games, Covenant is hair-tearing difficult — difficult, and unfair, and frustrating. As you commented above, there are large sections without saving; and there's a large amount of luck involved, and the game can point the finger of death to you at the worst possible moments.

If you sacrifice your friends, it becomes so easy it's almost not fun. It's like the game has two modes, Very Easy and Very Hard.

You can't just sacrifice anyone who's in your party. To earn Hel's powers you have to "betray those who trust you". Characters generally join as guests, and only after some dense emotional event they become party. Invariably they deposit deep trust in you as they join.

You can point Hel's plume at friends at any time. And when you do, you can see what power you would gain, were you to sacrifice them.

It's like the game is begging you to go Very Easy.

Many characters join in pairs, like father and daughter, or wife and husband. If you sacrifice one of them, not only you have to watch a sad event when they die, you also have to face their beloved ones as they question the unfairness of fate.

Of course, no one knows you're the one killing them.

If you want the power to avenge your father, you have to sacrifice people. If you sacrifice people, even a single one, you get a bad ending —which, like VP1, is a no-ending.

To get the good ending, you have to defy your character's motivations and seek a truth beyond revenge.

If you don't read guides, you don't know this. The game never tells you that you should or shouldn't betray your friends. Given its difficulty, it's likely you will. Given there's a New Game+, it's likely you won't in your second playthrough.

You have to choose between power and loyalty. The game never tells you which one you're supposed to choose. The way the choice is made is deeply significant to the game, not a "no" in a text box —that makes you feel you're choosing.

Covenant is awesome.

[ionustron]

the premise sounds interesting, the part about the hard mode ending. Honestly, I played VP2 without removing people (I only did the first time, assuming I'd get them back at the end, which I didn't,) so naturally I'd prolly do hard mode.

But I won't be doing that. Some weeks ago I watched some gameplay video, long after seeing concepts and that promo video (I remember facepalming real hard as it showed off reflective plastic armor CG!!!! coming soon! .. . . . to NINTENDO DS~~~!) and I was like what the heck is with the lazy sprites and sound patches!? ick!

Waaaaay back when VP2 was just an impossible pipedream thought, playing through VP1 for the first time, what I really yearned for was a blistering fast, party-based Actraiser/Quintet homage! I want to say tactical, but that to me would just imply slow-planning. VP2 was too damn slow, even with direct assaulting, focusing on one guy all the way down the same weavy, very conceptually wasted corridor again and again. Christ, they even slowed down all the music in the game, really ruined it.

I mean Motoi Sakuraba was completely shameless in VP1 - just chucked whatever prog came to mind with whatever the fuck looping sound sample trax mish mashed into the themes, and it all worked wonderfully. It was a complete experiment not a sequel or anything. The whole game just sorta hangs out, brack, shity-brown tones everywhere, people dieing depressing deaths then you're in a rainy swamp to hard rock and cartoony vampires and dragonmen! Then you screw Odin and take the spoils and your theme plays as you triumphantly leave to your skypalace.

In VP2, it's like he held back, like the live performers were his crutch or something. Like he wasn't allowed to throw sampled flying harpsichord riffs in that would piss off most people. His late PS1/Saturn era was definitely his height.

If you took the competent rendered environments in VP2, but just gave you control of a Sprite-Valkyrie, had her slash a monster, then BOOM you're team pops up behind you and the brawl just starts then and there - no bluring, load crashes, musical changes (just keep the pulcy stage music, give each area a real good theme again), remove all the pronounced phases, THAT is what I wanted VP1 to be, and dreamed for VP2 to be....

of course, the level design skills of Tri-Ace would stick out there - and I don't think they'd pull it off... At least it would have had charm! Hell even the first game managed that! VP2 felt like a real mmo - the fun was instant in the first one, the second one took hours and hours of work and research before you felt any rewards; on the end of the SECOND PLAYTHROUGH!

(speaking of, has an undub of VP1 ps1 surfaced?)