Valkyrie Profile Silmeria - Prequel or Sequel? The chronologically confused

"Come to me dark warriors; battle awaits us"

You probably heard that line over and over again if you ever played Valkyrie Profile. That was a good thing because the voice actress for Lenneth was great. Valkyrie Profile (VP) was an amazing game, my all time favorite. Its too bad I can't say the same for Valkyrie Profile Silmeria (VPS). The good thing about VP was the combat, combined with dungeons where it requires careful thinking to get past. The best part was the wide variety of Einherjar (souls of the dead that join you in combat) that you can get. On the world map while you are flying you can hit a button to listen to the dying souls until you find one then you fly over and you learn of their background and how they die then take them on your quest.

What exactly is VPS? Well its a sequel of VP, except you take everything good about VP and remove it. You are not a Valkyrie. You are Alicia the princess of Dipan, yes the same Dipan in VP. You share a body with Silmeria where she can take over you at anytime. Often you are talking with her to yourself which is quite awkward and the people you are with think you're some kind of nut job. One major thing about this game is that there are no Einherjar stories to watch/listen before you get them. In fact, you don't even get all of them. While randomly going into dungeons you will sometimes find a sword, two-handed sword, bow, or staff laying there on the ground. Touching them prompt a question "do you wish to take this Einherjar?" If you click yes then it goes "Jessica has joined your party," or something similar. That is it.

That's it, I'm serious. There is nothing else to explain about it. A sword is a light fighter, a two-handed sword a heavy fighter, a bow is an archer, and a staff is a mage. When you get an Einherjar you get a random one out of two or three that could possibly appear in that one item at that particular location. So you can never get all of them and you never learn of their stories. You can read their background in the status menu but its not the same. Would you rather watch a hockey game or read a book about what happened during that hockey game? Same idea. The background is very brief as well and it doesn't really explain much.

Now combat, you remember VP having very memorable combat right? There are four characters each with a different button controlling them. Well they decided to complicate battle. First Alicia can't use a bow like Lenneth so she's always got a sword. Second combat starts off with creatures everywhere. You are standing awkwardly in a group of four which you can split apart into two separate groups if you wish. The only reason to split is for boss battles as regular battles you just rush in and kill everything four on one. Most creatures are spread out so you can take advantage of that. There will be a red box in front of them telling you their attack range. You have a dash option that lets to "jump" across their line of attack if you wish letting you flank them from the sides or the back.

When you get into range to hit someone it'll be just like the original VP where you hit buttons and you start fighting. Exception is after the first few dungeons you get an artifact that allows you to hit more times than your weapon allows. Yes this means you can technically hit as many times as you want before you AP bar runs dry. Most creatures die before your AP bar runs dry anyways and you're always fighting four on one. Another thing I like to point out that's different to the old VP is that every character has the same moves and Purify Weird Soul (now called Soul Crush) skill. The exception is the storyline characters which has unique skills and Soul Crush. So there is no point in using your Einherjar. If you beat the "boss" of the battle, one mob that has a yellow health bar, the battle is immediately over so a strategy for this game is rush in kill the "boss" and the battle automatically ends. This happens for regular random creature encounters.

Soul Crush are built up the same way as in VP except its always up because there is no need to combo your moves to reach 100. You have endless attacks so its always at 100. Another thing about combat is depending on the direction and height you are attacking an enemy you hit different parts of their body and you can slowly break pieces off them. Like for example a giant crab you can attack its pincers its legs or its back, the shell. If you take the time to slowly break down parts you get more crystals (kind of exp) and occasionally item part drops. If you choose to attack their main body and kill them fast you won't get those parts. Those parts are to be traded in at towns to buy weapons. Yes NPCs don't carry much gear you need to grind endlessly to get these parts and trade it in. Most of the time its ??? so you don't know what you are really buying until you do.

Another thing you need to watch out for when you buy or gear up characters is the color and rune of the gear. There are red, green, blue. In your equipment screen is a diamond, weapon on the left head on the top does on the bottom arm on the right body in the center and four accessories on the four corners of the body. Depending on the color and the runes you can connect them together to enhance your effects or learn new combat skills. This means you have to keep changing your gears around to learn skills in combat. Once you learn it you can change your gear and learn another.

What's different for attack moves in this game which may or may not be a good thing is that everyone learns the same attacks. This means there is no difference in who you pick as an Einherjar, as you don't know their stories and they learn the same stuff. But this means that you can customize their attacks. For example you have a character that always does a low rising move you can combine it with another character which does an high move. Kinda like VP but you have more variety to choose from.

Lastly, everyone who's played VP are familiar with the side scrolling, crystal shooting and climbing around in VP. Well they removed that. It's still a side scroller except the controls are a little strange. Alicia moves awkwardly and when she jumps it feels like she doesn't have any momentum at all. She jumps way too high and you usually can't predict how far she can jump because she doesn't seem to jump very far or walk very fast. You can freeze enemies like the old one but now you can't freeze objects or walls. Your missile will bounce off walls and you can technically bounce it around and hit a frozen enemy. If you hit a frozen enemy you will automatically swap places with them. Its a very annoying thing sometimes when you accidentally swap with someone and ruin the ladder you were making. Also there is just not as many puzzles as the first one. If you count pushing a single block into a single hole beside the block a puzzle.

Another thing annoying about this game in dungeons is the use of seals. Seals can be put in a stand and everything in the room/section will get affected by some kind of status effect. For example a room has the seal no jumping. That means in that room you can't jump unless you remove the seal from the stand. If it says attack up 120% it means all enemies get 120% attack. If you were to take the seal off the stand you'd have 120% attack while you hold it. If you leave the dungeon seals are automatically reset. You can buy seals with your crystals if you break apart a lot of creatures. The better the seal the more expensive it is. there will be a shrine usually at the start and at the end of the dungeon to let you swap seals that you have "bought." You can only carry a few at a time so choose wisely. Do they really need to complicate thing so much? I know they are trying to do something different but this is just insane.

Also I like to point out that Lezard Valeth looks like Harry Potter and Rufus looks like Captain Jack Sparrow. I'm serious go google them up right now! Someone watches too many Hollywood movies.

Last but not least this is technically a prequel as it takes place before the time of VP but its also a sequel. How you ask? Time travel. You might find it weird that there is Lezard Valeth in your party as he is one of the main villains in VP. The story of VPS follows after the story of the good ending in VP. Yes the ending that's impossible to find out unless you look for a guide online. You find out near the end of the game when you meet Lenneth who introduces herself as not the Lenneth from VPS time but as Lenneth the creator in VP where she killed Odin or Loki or Lodin and remade the world after Ragnarok. She also tells you that Lezard Valeth went back in time to come to VPS time to plot something. Groan.

So what exactly is it? A prequel or a sequel? Its chronologically confused! The story line is awkward and boring as well. I rather sit though Persona 3 again than listen to the story of this game. Granted I never finished the game and I only got to the part where Lenneth comes and joins your party. But getting there is annoying enough. Enix and Tri-Ace made a perfect game but ruined it with the sequel or prequel whatever it is. I know they wanted to try something different but instead they got rid of the good things. Lets take Zelda series for example. Every one of them is slightly different but it keeps to its Zelda roots. This thing just says "screw the roots lets pull the whole tree out and plant a rock and hope it grows into a statue."

I'm mostly comparing this game to VP but if you were to compare it to other Square games its really not that different. I would say this game is more comparable to other Square games than to VP. The only thing similar is the name, the characters and a part of the battle. Battle isn't too bad but tedious as half the time is spent moving around and some maps have annoying obstacles where you team would get stuck behind and you are one man short.

The game itself is not that bad if you don't compare it to VP. The game itself is fairly easy, you just need to grind to get the stuff and then boss battles are pretty much the same. Spam all your moves and spam Soul Crush. If you can attack its weak spot for massive damage. Outside of combat its pretty complex with characters, equipment, skills, etc. Although not overly complex but enough to give anyone a headache without a guide. People who never played VP might enjoy it, those who have probably won't like the changes.