The Shrine

It's a slightly below average RPG. Star Ocean 2 was a better offering from Tri Ace.

I think it is pure RPG. I cant wait to get it, but i'm hardcore into the genre, i keep hearing great thngs about it.

If you're a casual RPG'er then you may get bored with it also.

Unless hardcore means 'restarting the game endlessly because you didn't go the right places within a hard time limit to see the real ending', there's nothing different about Valkyrie Profile compared to any other game.

It is certainly harder than the average RPG but like Star Ocean the difficulty comes more as a gimmick. As long as you got Guts maxed out you'll be fine even on the last boss who hits everyone for more HP than you can possibly have.

You say that about games that I had no problem beating (SO) and my friend beating (Grandia III). I think you play the things too fast, or just dont have good strategy in the way you approach fights... I'll let you know how i do when i get VP.

SO2 is very hard if you don't know the game's cheap mechanics like the blacksmithing armor, Eternal Sphere, and which characters have moves that can stun an enemy forever. But you shouldn't have to rely on the equivalent of the game's Knights of the Round to make it 'not hard'. It's not uncommon to game over on one of those chimeara type enemies near the end of first CD by either getting your party paralyzed or fire breathed for way more HP than you're supposed to have. Actually, some of the cheap regular enemies in SO2 are much harder than the bosses that actually don't have moves that just stun you forever or kill you in one hit. There is nothing challenging about playing Universe mode with Rena when there's a 50% chance on the easiest enemy you can get super blocked and die instantly so you end up hugging the town until you get lucky long enough to hit level 2, save, and then you repeat this until you hit level 3, and so on until you get to a level where you no longer get super blocked.

At any rate, you can't even level up in Valkyrie Profile because there is a turn limit and stuff you kill do not respawn unless you use up another turn. You can beat any boss with a combination of the auto-use-item ability and guts even on stuff where you don't get to move for 10 turns, but it's not exactly what I'd call an interesting system.