Retro Gaming - Valkyrie Profile

Valkyrie Profile was one of my favorite JRPG games of my teens, and, with recently being able to work from home, it's given me back a few hours each day with which to enjoy some hobbies I've been sorely missing. One of which, is playing (or re-playing) retro games.

So, when I realized an old orphaned hard-drive that I've had sitting in a closet for years contained a working PSX emulator and Valkyrie Profile, I knew what I wanted to sink some hours into.

For those of you unfamiliar with the title, it follows a Valkyrie preparing for Ragnarok by collecting and training the souls of dead humans, which you sort of... scry for by listening for their souls as you fly over the earth.

Each character you collect (there are 24 possible playable characters) has a unique scene that sets up how they died and a bit about their character. The first that you encounter - a princess - gets turned into a monster and is slain.

There are bits of voice acting, but much of the dialogue is delivered via the typical late-90s/early-00's style of a face-plate with a dialogue box.

The party menu reminds me a bit of a weird mix between like... Final Fantasy and something like... Tactics Ogre. The 'Divine Item' option, which is basically 'craft item', is particularly reminiscent of games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre for me.

Your actions in battle are limited at the start - basically only giving you an attack option - but you can get skills that allow things like counter attacks.

I'm not very far into my re-play, but I'm definitely really enjoying it! If you like old-school JRPG's and you haven't tried this title - I highly recommend it. If you have, maybe its time for a replay!

Collect souls. Send them to Valhalla. Fight in the end of the world, Ragnarok. See which of the 3 possible endings you get!