The title says it all, doesn’t it? So that’s the end of this post, good bye, see you all next time. ^_^
Though I suppose if you really want to know what happened I could humor you a bit. I was 27 hours in, deep inside the Jotunheim dungeon. There’s this room with these vanishing ice platforms and some torches with fire in them. You’re supposed to jump up on those platforms, make your way to the torches, grab the fire in them, bring them back to a torch at the bottom etc etc. I struggled and struggled and got one or two of the fires and then something in me just snapped. ENOUGH WITH THE STUPID PLATFORMS ALREADY!
I googled the stage and found out that I was virtually at the end of the game. However instead of making me want to persevere, that just made me realize that it wouldn’t take very long to watch the rest on Youtube. And then I started thinking about why I was actually doing this and what I was hoping to achieve. I couldn’t come up with any satisfactory answers, so that was it for me and Valkyrie Profile Lenneth. I’m going to ‘finish’ the game by reading a Let’s Play and call it a day.
As I mentioned back in my spoiler-filled Final Fantasy Type-0 review, I have a long illustrious history of not finishing Square-Enix RPGs anyway, so the odds were against VP from the start. That doesn’t mean I think it’s a bad game in any way, but it just didn’t make me want to finish it. Especially since I have always sucked at platforming and don’t enjoy that aspect of games at all. The majority of the dungeons were okay on the platforming front and didn’t require too much skill to complete but Cave of Thackus, Arkdain Ruins and Jotunheim were just too painful. I don’t even know if I want to play any more Castlevania now. 
Anyway, so that’s what happened.
As far as the story goes I have no real issues. I wish the character introductions were a little shorter though, because ultimately their backstories don’t really amount to much. Even when you put characters who know each other in the same party they still don’t do or say anything different. Apparently you can get special scenes by sending some people up together but that’s hardly enough. Still there isn’t much overall story on the Normal route and that suits me just fine.
The battles were good in the early days when they actually posed a challenge and getting wiped out was a realistic possibility, but by the 20-hour mark it was pretty hard to get killed for good. With maxed out Guts, maxed out Auto-Item set to 100% Union Plume and at least 1 Angel Curio/Protect Feather on each character the chances of a total party kill are pretty slim. I was also able to transmute my excess Element Scepters and Ether Scepters into Tomes of Alchemy which automatically take care of boss minions and give a healthy boost to EXP as well. There was this time I stumbled into a Cave of Oblivion with these really strong flying creatures. Take that, Tome of Alchemy! 75,000 EXP x the boost from the crystals = 187,500. So that was pretty cool. ^_^
Unfortunately once the game’s challenge went out of the window, any desire to finish it quickly followed. I went through the whole Palace of the Dragon dungeon with the Dimension Slip on… wait, why did I even bother to do that dungeon in the first place? It’s optional isn’t it? I took the Slip off in Jotunheim planning to do a bit of leveling in case the last boss was hard, but every battle is just the same. Start battle -> Lorenta uses Poison Blow -> End battle. So I wasn’t getting much out of the battles anyway. If the annoying platforms hadn’t gotten in the way I would probably have finished it based on sheer inertia alone, but I wasn’t enjoying it enough to press past that obstacle.
Final thoughts on Valkyrie Profile Lenneth? It’s decent. I hear people were paying up to $100 for a copy back when it was only on the PSX and it’s definitely not worth that much, but it’s still worth a playthrough. Just to see what all the fuss is about, I guess. The story isn’t much and the characters aren’t that interesting but I really liked the fat-faced character designs. And the button-press turn-based-with-a-twist gameplay is seriously fun in the early stages. Even the platforming wasn’t so bad early on, and people who are good at platformers and dungeon puzzles should enjoy it. For me…? yeah, decent experience. That’s about it.
Up next: Princess Maker 3. Or since I’m already in the platforming mode, maybe I should man up and play Castlevania? And I haven’t played an otome game in a while. Hmm, decisions, decisions…
Castlevania, at least if you’re talking about SOTN is pretty much a breeze as far as platformers go.
You get tons of mobility tools like flight, super jumps, double jumps etc, there really isn’t any “difficult” timing-type jumps and all that.
Actually the modern ones are just easy in general up until Order of Eccelsia (or however you spell that) so if you need relaxing platforming after VP’s brand of that, I would recommend it.
My own selfish choice would be PM3 though, if only because you’ll find a lot more Castlevania talk on the Internet than PM.
I’m playing Aria of Sorrow and I’m stuck already >__< But yeah, it's not that hard. I have a ton of HP and the enemies don't hit that hard. Now if I can just figure out this jump...
Nice read! I’ve own Valkyrie Profile Lenneth for quite some time now and your posts about it definitely convinced me to play it. That won’t happen any time soon, though, for I have tons of other games waiting in line. But sooner or later, Lenneth’s time will come!
If you’re geared up for platforming action AND yearning for an otome game, you should really play Avalon Code, for you’ll find juicy chunks of both in it. Just saying, hehe.^_^
Good idea! I already started Castlevania, but I’ll shift Avalon Code up on the schedule.
If/when you do play VP:Lenneth, play it on Hard and use a FAQ to get the best ending right away. I’ve heard of people replaying it, but I can’t for the life of me imagine why.
Yes, maybe I’ll do just that. I’m really not fond of this whole concept of good and bad endings in games; it feels like some form of refined punishment, and the last thing I want when I spend 30 hours on a game is to have a bad ending shoved down my throat. From what I’ve heard, the requirements for the Good Ending in VP:Lenneth are insanely hard to attain, so yes, an FAQ may definitely be welcome!
No, they’re extremely easy to attain – if you know they exist. They mainly consist of visiting certain places at certain times and recruiting certain people, but you won’t know you’re supposed to do that without reading a FAQ.
Well, that’s good to know!^^ I usually don’t use FAQs until I’ve cleared the game at least once, but I think I’ll make an exception for VP:Lenneth.
Same here, I like to make my first run FAQ free, but this is the one game where I recommend against that.