MAX MCGEE'S PLAYLIST

author=Max McGee
VALKYRIE STORIES REVIEW (71.25)The most animu thing I have played in ages.

Valkyrie Stories: Escallion Rising (a title that has literally nothing to do with the game whatsoever, and yes, I took off points for that) is a very, very pretty game with plenty of reviews. Not my usual target, but after seeing how impressed some--for want of better words, "easy to please"--members of the community were with it, I thought I'd try my hand at it.

Much has been made of the fact this game is a 'tech demo', but it really isn't. Anyone who says that either has no idea what a tech demo is or is willfully lying. There is plenty of non-tech content on display for review here.

Story

There is really no story in the first ~20 minutes of Valkyrie Stores - Escallion Rising. There are no Valkyries, no person, place, or thing named Escallion, no Rising (unless you count one or two points at which the main character wakes up from bed), and not even any regular scallions. What there is, however, is dialogue and characters.

The way these are rendered is almost preposterously animu. If HanzoKimura is an actual Japanese person living in Japan or anything close to it, then this really requires no further comment. If HanzoKimura is just another American Weeaboo, however, then just to get it out of the way: die, die, a thousand times die.

Anyway, this game is written in the EXACT manner of a badly translated Anime. The dialogue has that exact cadence and rhythm and style. All of the same tropes, some more obnoxious than others, are used, and the game even suffers from parts that are pretty much Engrish.

Okay, so they've got it from Japanese to Engrish. If DreamCore needs any help translating this the rest of the way from Engrish to English, I'd be happy to help them out for a translation credit. This game shows more than enough promise for that.

That said, there was a certain consistency to this that was kind of charming; the way they game looked, read, and played were all animu. There was no internal dichotomy here. Bombastic animations, pop up bubble icons and over-the-top faceset emotion portraits are the order of the day.

The main character Vance (who I was disappointed did not have a skill called 'Lance Vance Dance') and his much-better-than-you brother Vein (short for Veinhart) were well drawn, in a stereotypical anime cliche sense, as was their relationship. It was believable and even slightly interesting. However, most other characters, like Raye (sp?) whose stupidity ranged from unbelievable to obnoxious and Cerina who was just as saccharine sweet as the kawaii!!!!! sounds made by her little pet monster thingy, I just wanted to kill with a flamethrower. The same is true of all the standard animu jokes and cliches that accompanied these characters.

There are more reasons than this that this game fails at storytelling, however. After the Credits/Logo break, which for some reason is Vance falling comically into a river rather any of the more dramatic moments preceding that, there is a lengthy and preposterously beautiful montage of highly emotional cutscenes which took the ambitious step of including no dialogue and trying to carry the narrative through visuals alone. They were obviously meant to be telling an important piece of the story--the problem is, I had absolutely no idea what was going on or what bearing it had on anything I had seen before or after.

SCORE: 45/100

Gameplay

"When your character flashes, you have gained control of him!" informs the game's first popup tutorial message. In spite of a brief flicker of hope where you briefly gain control just 90 seconds into the intro, don't expect to see that telltale flash very often. Most of what you're going to do here is watch cutscenes.

The game starts with a puzzle, during which some very awesome rock & roll type music is playing, as though the puzzle were in fact an epic fight. I was able to solve the puzzle, so that's good, although it was primarily by random guessing.

The game's field gameplay features some neat innovations, like the way that doors and hallways are handled (with the hero becoming partially translucent but still visible when obscured behind a wall or pillar) and on-touch encounters.

Battles? In spite of all of the elaborate customization to the battle and menu scenes mentioned in other reviews, these might as well have not existed.

Ah, RM games. Well at least they're being honest about it this time. : )

Every enemy can be killed simply by attacking. Your skills (one per character) are not interesting, and you won't be required to use them; enemies die easily to regular attacks. It's a shame, because so much effort has been one to customize the aesthetics of the battle system and menu scenes. Yet as of right now that customization supports not one whit of unique or even interesting functionality.

Judging by the speed of Vance's basic fire attack animation, the Battle System also seems like it could be a bit on the slow side.

In spite of no lack of evidence of obvious programming talent, it is too early to judge this category. I'm assigning it a perfectly average score based on this and on all of the above.

SCORE: 50/100

Visuals

Flawlessly beautiful; though I hated the hyper-animu facesets, that's a matter of personal preference.

Cerina would probably be a much better archer if she would stop being uber-chibi long enough to ever OPEN HER FUCKING EYES.

Seriously, though: flawlessly beautiful. A startling level of detail put into not just every map and character animation and special effect but the everpresent environmental effects like rain and falling leaves.

Anyone who thinks this game is not pretty enough really needs to lower their standards, or stop playing 2D games. I'm hardpressed to think of anything from the SNES or even PS1 era that was anywhere near as gorgeous as this game.

The title screen alone is a fucking work of art. You should see it in action.

SCORE: 120/100

Audio

I remain biased in favor of this category in general just because I'm playing games with headphones which isn't something I usually do; everything sounds better when it's not pouring from my shitty laptop speakers.

The music in this game was hit and miss. Some things seemed a bit overwrought and smothering, while others seemed ill-placed (like the above puzzle music). Overall, though, I liked the tunes. The sound effects served to support the overall animu feel described above, especially the random ass Japanese voices in battle.

SCORE: 70/100

FINAL SCORE: 71.25/100

BOTTOM LINE:
Valkyrie Stories is a beautiful game, but you knew that before you read this review. Really, if you like anime, used to like anime, or have any feelings left for anime but utter seething hatred, this is well worth checking out. And it may be fair to replace 'anime' in the foregoing sentence with 'generic jRPGs from actual Japan'.

author=chana
You know that those tiny letters are very simple to read ???!!A little late, maybe?