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PSP | RPG | Valhalla Knights

Boxart for Valhalla Knights
Valhalla Knights 39 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 4.25
  • SOUND: 3.50
  • CONTROL: 3.50
  • FUN FACTOR 3.25
  • AVG USER SCORE n/a
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 3.1

Review: Valhalla Knights

Review by T3hPanda | 04/17/2007 | 16:46:40 PM PST

With the miserable lack of RPGs on the PSP, Valhalla Knights has appeared from the mists with promises of great graphics and enough nuanced hacking and slashing to satisfy any RPGer.

Be Who You Want To Be

The concept behind Valhalla Knights is great: it's an action RPG where you are given complete control over your character, all the way from their appearance to their class, skills, gender and stats. You can customize your characters to be whatever you want them to be, then change them almost at will. Want a fighter or a mage? Change your mind and need a priest or a thief? You've got it.

Even better; when you level up, you're allotted some bonus stat points with which you can upgrade whichever aspect of your character you think needs the most help. For instance, if enemies take forever to kill, you can level up your strength, but if you find yourself being knocked out with one hit, then you can boost your vitality. This is the kind of complete control that micromanaging RPGers (yours truly included) have been waiting for.

It's apparent that a lot of effort went into the character customization and battles as they are engaging and require a good amount of strategy and situational awareness of the entire battlefield. You can instantly switch from character to character in order to optimize attacks, cast support magic, or escape from danger.

Overused Plot Device #423

That's why it's all the more disappointing that there isn't anything more that holds the game together. The background plot involving your attempts at regaining your memory is thin and quickly lost among the side stories you come across during your adventures. And while it seems like there's a ton of content with almost forty different quests, none of them are particularly flavorful.

Valhalla Knights is fun enough at the first; but after spending countless hours running across the same terrain over and over again, the fun factor just kept dropping. You see, after a certain point in the game, there are no more warp points, which means if your team is completely KOed--which will happen often, I assure you--you have to run from the inn, to the last warp point, and then run from winding dungeon to winding dungeon in order to pick up where you left off. It's long, it's tedius, and your thumb will definitely cramp on the analog nub.

Despite the beautiful visuals and nuanced details, there's more tedium here than anything else. After a while, even die-hard RPG fans would be hard-pressed to enjoy the mindless sprints through the endless dungeons.

Pros: Deep character customization and combat system. Top-notch graphics.
Cons: Keep runnin' Forrest. Keep runnin'.


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