There’s this kid named Wylfred and his dad dies and a Valkryie takes his dad’s soul away and Wylfred is like “Nooo y u do dat? REVENGE!” and a dark goddess gives him power to get revenge on the Valkyrie by feeding souls to a magical feather and then a lot of other stuff happens… but I wouldn’t know any of it because I quit after chapter 1. Normally I wouldn’t even write a post about Covenant of the Plume after dropping it so quickly, but it happens to be one of my gaming resolutions for 2015 so a very brief explanation is in order.
…but since I don’t know the anonymous soldier who slew my dad, I’m gonna go after the Valkyrie instead.
Reason 1 – Wylfred’s anger is misplaced. As far as I can tell his dad was already dead when the Valkyrie took his soul away. It’s not like she killed him or anything. I rather dislike Lenneth Valkyrie for reasons I can’t quite remember, but outright murdering people isn’t one of them. It’s hard to get into a game when the starting premise is so faulty and devoid of common sense.
Reason 2 – There’s too much self-centered hypocrisy. People die in battle. The people left behind suffer. That’s life. Wylfred’s dad must have created his fair share of starving orphans in his time. You don’t see them running around shouting “Revenge!” all the time, do you?
Not to mention Wyl himself is doubtless causing even more poverty and misery by murdering many more breadwinners, he just doesn’t seem to realize it or even care. Who’s worse, the guy who takes a dead guy’s soul to a better place or the guy who befriends people for the express purpose of sacrificing their souls to a dark power?
Reason 3 – The requirements to get the best ending sound like a pain. So we have this magical Plume gimmick, but if we use it even once we’re locked out of the best ending for good? Then why have it in the game in the first place? Don’t tell me you’re supposed to get the bad ending first then get a better one in New Game+?
Reason 4 – The Sin requirements are onerous. I appreciate the attempt to add an objective other than “Kill all enemies”, but having to kill and then Overkill enemies to get enough Sin is a chore. And it’s not enough to just overkill them, you have to do it so that you’ll get lots of hits in after the enemy is dead, even if it means deliberately delaying a kill until the next turn. Who wants to go through that much trouble? If I wanted to smack corpses around, I’d play Resident Evil.
Reason 5 – I don’t need button-mashing in my SRPGs. I just want to walk up to people and bop them on the head, is that really so hard to grasp?
Yea it doth maketh me feel much bettereth.
Reason 6 – Minor nitpick, but the 19th-century English localization makes dialogue a little hard to follow. It’s not like they’re saying anything so uber-important anyway. “Let’s hang out.” “No.” “Okay.” “Wait, I changed my mind, yes.” “Okay.” Is that really the sort of thing to spend 5 minutes and countless reams of dialogue on? By the second or third cutscene my eyes glazed over as soon as the talking began.
And so for these and other reasons, for once I’m going to follow my instincts when they tell me Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume is not a game I’m going to enjoy. I don’t like the story itself, I don’t like the way it is told, I don’t like the characters, I don’t like the gameplay. And truth be told I’m currently nursing a small grudge against Square-Enix for the way Bravely Default turned out. I’m going to spend the time on something that’s actually fun from a company I actually like for a change.
Verily.
Anyway, kind of redundant answers since you dropped the game already but the answer to #3 is most likely “yes” and as far as the MC being a moron, I think the player was in fact actually intended to think he was being irrational and dumb rather than in the right, but I could be giving them too much credit.
You’re giving Squeenix too much credit. They made Bravely Default, remember?