The Shrine

Anyone play this PS1 RPG? I read a preview for it in some mag as it is being re-released on the PSP and supposedly it was the shit for the PS1, but was in very limited release. Ebay is selling the PS1 copies for 100+!

yeah, I played it for a couple of hours. It's very different and requires a little more invovlement as you merge items together. When you attack, it doesn't go to a separate screen. It sort of does a Chrono Trigger thing where you just engage the enemy (except the screen doesn't freeze). When you go to attack, and attack "bubble" comes up and you can pinpoint your attacks a lot more than in a normal game. The battle system is very in-depth and I only scratched the surface.

It was only one of 5 games to get a perfect 40 from Famitsu and is well loved by the hardcores, so it's worth at least a try.

Finally, a must have RPG for the PSP. I canhardly wait!

Different is one way to describe that game :p

Are we talking about Valkyrie Profile for the PS1? The battle system is pretty much the same as anything else that sometimes you can't hit all 4 buttons at the same if you're dealing with something that requires special attacks to hit (combo, flying, etc), and you've to know which order to do your special moves (e.g. having Valkyrie do Nibulung Valesti level 3 at the end does about 50% more damage as opposed to doing it first because of combo bonus).

The item creation thing is sort of unique but you can get better stuff by just stealing stuff from Odin. The only memorable part of the game is that it is stupidly hard compared to most RPGs because enemies don't even respawn and you end up guts your way through all the later bosses that can instantly kill you from full HP. Getting the best ending is unintuitive as well, to put it mildly.

Don Wang wrote:Are we talking about Valkyrie Profile for the PS1?

Yes, kinda... it is being rereleased for the PSP with cutscenes and some other added stuff.

Flip wrote:

Don Wang wrote:Are we talking about Valkyrie Profile for the PS1?

Yes, kinda... it is being rereleased for the PSP with cutscenes and some other added stuff.

There's two coming: one is a sequel of sorts (or maybe a prequel - called Slimera) for the PS2 I believe and one is a remake for the PSP I believe called Lenneth.

Zeus wrote:yeah, I played it for a couple of hours. It's very different and requires a little more invovlement as you merge items together. When you attack, it doesn't go to a separate screen. It sort of does a Chrono Trigger thing where you just engage the enemy (except the screen doesn't freeze). When you go to attack, and attack "bubble" comes up and you can pinpoint your attacks a lot more than in a normal game. The battle system is very in-depth and I only scratched the surface.

It was only one of 5 games to get a perfect 40 from Famitsu and is well loved by the hardcores, so it's worth at least a try.

Are we talking about Vagrant Story or Valkyrie Profile here?

You just described Vagrant Story by Square. It was developed by Matsuno's development team, who did FF12 which also got a 40/40, they also did Ogre Battle and Final Fantasy Tactics.


Valkyrie Profile on PSX got a 28/40 from Famitsu; it's a decent game, but I haven't played very far into it (and probably won't until there is nothing left to play, sometimes I put games off for years). Most of the gameplay is side scrolling exploration, you play the role of a Valkyrie who gathers souls for Odin to fight the last war. The battle system is fairly strange, you assign attacks to buttons on your controller and when you hit that button, the character who has the assigned hit will attack; it is probably closest to Xenogears in style. The game doesn't really have a story to it, if you have played games like Legend of Mana, you will feel right at home.

Sorry, you're right. I stand corrected.....

In Valkyrie profile, your party lines up in the same way as the buttons on the PS1 is aligned. So if Valkyrie is in the triangle position, hitting triangle makes her attack. Each character have between 1-3 attacks with allegedly different frame rates that you've to mix & match (for example Valkyrie's 2nd sword attack is a slide, which means you can't use it if the enemy is juggled in the air). As I mentioned earlier, some enemies automatically avoid certain types of attacks (e.g. flyer versus non arrow/magic) so for example if you're against a flyer you'd need someone hit the flyer with magic/arrow first, and then the rest of your party can pile on the enemy while it is in a 'being hit' frame where it can no longer evade. In reality, because nothing can avoid magic this means you just hit your magic user button first and then push the rest of your buttons as fast as possible.

Story-wise, it suffers from the Suikoden syndrone where it is never obvious who is supposed to be significant to the story (and at least in Suikoden you've a reasonably good idea of who is important). It turns out that all but one of the people that cannot be sent to Asgard are important to the story, and to see the story you've to already know where to go to trigger the story events. In other words, you have to already know the story (or at least have a FAQ), which I think is stupid. If you don't do this you'll go through the game without understanding what's going on. In fact it's quite possible you might never have the story-significant people in your party! For what it's worth, I do like the story, but it's too much work to need a FAQ to even see the story.

I remember enjoying this game a lot. The art style and music (done by Motoi Sakuraba, who also does music for the Star Ocean games) really stood out to me for some reason. There were way too many characters to care about, much less build, but then again, this was one of the few RPGs where battles were actually kind of fun, so I guess I didn't have too much of a problem keeping my party at the appropriate level.

Don wrote: It turns out that all but one of the people that cannot be sent to Asgard are important to the story, and to see the story you've to already know where to go to trigger the story events. In other words, you have to already know the story (or at least have a FAQ), which I think is stupid.

Can't stress this enough. If you want to get the most out of this game, buy the strategy guide. Some characters need to be at particular events to trigger certain scenes, which enhances the story quite a bit. Also, it's nigh impossible to get the best ending without knowing specifically what to do in some chapters.

I hate you Flip cause this game isn't coming out until July 18th, heh.

Thats ok, i still love you Eric.