... what did I just play?

No, I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm just... entirely unsure as to what I was playing for the longest time, and then the game ended. I think I understand what was going on, but there's still some questions left to be answered. But that's understandable, given the nature of the game.

See, as I understand it, Death Proclaimed 2: Valerie's Letter is, at most, half the story. The game doesn't so much intertwine with the story of Death Proclaimed 2 as set the whole thing up (to the best of my knowledge; I've yet to try the core Death Proclaimed 2 yet, but it's definitely on my list now).

The game itself is an action game in the vein of Resident Evil or Silent Hill, leaning much more towards Silent Hill is pretty much all ways possible. In fact, several portions of the game feel like they could have been lifted directly from Silent Hill - and not in a bad way. It's done rather well, given the game's created on a now 10-year old 2D engine designed to make standard turn based RPGs.

I should probably say before I get too much further in that I'm not a huge fan of the genre; I've played all the Resident Evils, often only out of having no other games to play at the time, and I've played the original Silent Hill and Silent Hill 4. Generally, the games are a little... slow paced for my taste, with the story often taking a back seat to the scare formula the game has going.

Now, that said, on to the specifics.

Story

As I said, I had never played the original Death Proclaimed 2. When Valerie's Letter begins, I found myself slightly unsure as to what was happening, as you're quickly introduced to some rather fantastical elements and the nagging question of why is Valerie confined to her room and just who is this Leah that's sent her a letter? Over the course of the game's story, while Valerie is trying to understand just what is going on, you'll run into pretty much her entire family, and they're none too pleased she's not in her room. And, to be fair to them, they have a good reason to be none too pleased, as you'll find out during the multi-hour surreal horror romp of Valerie's Letter.

That said, it's just that - a surreal horror romp. Don't expect any masterpiece story, but what's there serves its purpose of keeping you going through the game quite well. There's even a couple twists that I didn't really see coming until the point you're supposed to.

Overall, I'd give the story 7/10, with the adjustment that this is, of course, an action game.

Graphics

One of the first things I noticed is an interesting use of facesets and that there are none. Instead, the character's name is displayed in place of the faceset, using an actual faceset graphic of the character's name. While an interesting choice, it does lead to situations where it seems like there's a lot of wasted space on the screen. At first, I found it odd as you'll find a portrait of Valerie on the menu, but I soon became accustomed to it and found it actually added something to the game to not be able to see the faces of the few characters with whom you interact (and some of them, from the sprites, might not actually have had faces).

And on the subject of that menu, Valerie's Letter uses a custom system for its. It's fairly spartan on a nice leatheresque background, but it does its job. I did notice a small graphical error in the menu itself, with Valerie's sprite reappearing when you exit the menu before the screen fades to black. In addition, the fonts on the text displaying the item options is a little on the difficult side to read at times, but you can still easily understand what each selection is without problem.

For the main gameplay graphics themselves, there's a mixture of RTP and customized tiles, as well as RTP and customized character sets. For the most part, the RTP and customizations go together realtively well. There's a few places (most notably within the Scarborough Mansion) where the tileset seems to be more realistic in style than the characters, which leads it to be a little jarring. For the most part, these differences are forgiven because of the whole surreal tone to the game - and, in truth, they're not majorly off to begin with.

The game makes good use of lighting and screen tones to accomplish setting the mood, although I noticed a few places these took time to come into place, leaving me looking at regularly coloured screen for several moments I wasn't supposed to be. Most notably, there's a red drenched chamber at one point that didn't appropriately bathe itself in red tones until a couple seconds had passed, ruining what would have otherwise been a rather disturbing setup.

For their purpose, the graphics in Valerie's Letter are quite good. They fit together well for the most part and there were few unintentional graphical errors (there's a couple maps where graphical errors are used purposefully to create some twisted effects). I'd give the game's graphics 8/10.

Sound

During the extraction, I noticed the game contains a lot of MP3 and .wav files. Out of a 153mB game size, more than 140mB lies in the sound files.

During the game itself, there's a walk sound effect that changes when you're on different types of tiles. It's kinda cool, but the volume might be adjusted a little bit too loud for my liking; it quickly became annoying and overpowered the music on my headphones (also, there were some tiles, such as those wall tiles that overlap your character, where no sound was setup at all...). This particular annoyance only seemed to originate from the footsteps on wooden boards, as it's much softer and subdued during the sections of carpetting. By the end of the game, I was hardly noticing the footsteps anymore, though continued to notice their absence on sections not setup.

The game itself uses a selection of music and sound effects from various titles - amongst them Silent Hill, Amnesia, and Half-Life 2. This game is a very, very good example of building atmosphere through music and sound. The ventillation crawl section put some pretty good hair raises in, and the first time I ran head first into the enemy in there actually gave me a good jump with the sudden change of sound. I know professional grade games that don't use their sound assets to this level. Even if the music isn't original and is borrowed from sources, the choices throughout Valerie's Letter are top notch.

Overall, I'd give the music 9/10.

Gameplay & Pacing

While playing, I had the difficulty set to Easy and the puzzle difficulty set to Normal. I probably could have had the difficuly set on Normal, as this game seemed a little less tightly tuned than a lot of action games I've played. I had a glance through the files at the higher difficulty puzzles, and while not too difficult, they'll require a bit of thought and critical thinking with the provided information - exactly what I like in a game.

For an example of a puzzle requiring critical thinking, at the very beginning there's a date related puzzle where you need to use information you're given to determine a date to enter into an electronic calendar. The month and day are fairly easy to calculate, but the year is a bit more tricky. But, with a little thinking, it's a good deduction - despite a first glance thought that it might require more information, everything you need is there with some deductive reasoning. (And yes, for those who're wonder, 2000 was the Year of the Dragon, so you're safe to assume - though some of the higher difficulties might need some head scratching.)

The game's pacing felt well done - there was never too much all at once, and it felt that it ramped the difficulty up at just the right moments. The only enemy I ever truly had any difficulty with is one that uses guns and shoots about nine or ten times in a straight line roughly your direction; I got caught in places where I couldn't escape his line of fire and thus died a couple times. I eventually found it easier to just run from him as he pursues you through the village. The only time I ever felt the game was slow was during the opening sequence, before the gameplay even began. Once I started to encounter enemies, however, everything changed.

And those enemies... Oh, those enemies. The enemies themselves have a nice variety with a variety of attacks, everything from slow, plodding, and easy to kill up to invincible, chasing you at full speed Nemesis-styled fights (these ones, you just need to get away from the enemy with your life intact). Similar types of enemies are found together, and I can only recall one fight that had more than one type of enemy at a time (and it was a boss fight).

While I was initially playing through, I thought that perhaps there was too many healing items and not enough ammunition drops. While I still believe the game might benefit from a little bit more ammunition (I only recall three situations where I found ammunition for the shotgun and perhaps a dozen or so clips of ammunition for the handgun), by the end of the game and the last two bosses I had used most of the healing items the game handed out to me. I can only imagine how the higher difficulties would feel with even the same number of healing items.

The combat system itself feels like it plays fairly well, although there were a few small hangups for me, primary among them being hit by an enemy and being turned to face the other direction. One of the melee weapons acquired late in the game, while powerful, is a little on the clumsy side to use because of this, though I did apparently discover you could 'parry' enemy attacks using either your pistol whip (oh, I love this feature) or melee attacks at just the right time. More often than not, though, they happened accidentally while trying to turn back to face the enemy.

Overall, I'd give the gameplay and pacing an 8/10.

Mapping & Design

Mapping and design... where to start in this surreal world? At times, it's hard to tell what's the real world and what's His world. You'll soon learn to recognize the difference, and the mapping to show what elements are the real world and what's the tainted world quickly come to the fore. Seeing the difference between the two and how the real world is reflected and twisted is kind of awesome at some points. Enemies do appear in both 'worlds,' so you're not safe just because you're in the real world. I am, however, still confused as to which world one of the sections of the Gertrude house was in, but it was a brilliant section using fragmented mapping to create some trippy and intriguing maps.

I must say, however, that the mapping also contains one of my greatest pet peeves: at times, you exit a map one direction, and transfer onto the next in another. For example, there's a number of cases where you exit one map through a door at the south end, and start at the south end of the next map. This leads to some situations where I ended up transferring between the two maps a couple times before catching it. This particular directional discrepancy on maps is one of the things that causes a lot of dissonance for me, especially when it occurs on a regular basis (which it does in Valerie's Letter).

There is also a bit of flow problems in the maps at times, with a lot of backtracking within contained areas (I noticed some early on, but during the Scarborough Mansion it became especially prominent). While I don't think it could have really been done any different, it did lead to some cases where I was a little burned out on moving around.

I'd giving mapping and design a 7/10.

Overall Summary

Like I said earlier, I'm not a huge fan of this action horror genre. They tend to do a lot of things that irk me in the intention of sticking to the genre. For the most part, Valerie's Letter is a good entry in the genre, but not to the point where it detracted from the game for me. I actually played this in basically one sitting (I had a small break in the middle after a game over screen in the ventillation section, but that was it). That's saying a lot, given my diminishing ability to focus on a game for long periods of times - and I'd say the game easily gave me at least five to six hours, possibly more (I really lost track of just how long I was playing, oops).

Total Score: In total, the game earns a solid 39/50 or, in more RMN terms, 4/5 Stars, a really solid entry for an RM2k3 game.

Oh, and the best part? The game didn't even require an install of the RTP; so few RM2k3 games hold that distinction anymore.