With Final Fantasy XIII just under a month away, I decided to keep my time occupied with another RPG to take up that time until then. The game is Valhalla Knights 2 by XSEED Games. Now I’ve played a couple of games from the PS2 era that XSEED has developed, some good some not that great. But with nothing really hot out for the PSP at the moment, I decided to give it a try.

So the story goes like this: Every 1000 years, the Goddess of Judgement punishes mankind for their ways. But this time, a witch fought her, but failed. But in her attempt, she managed to destroy one of the Goddess’ wings and thus forced the Goddess to hide and recover, but her feathers cursed the land with monsters. 1000 years after the battle, the cursed land is trying to hunt down the cause of the suffering and thus the hero/heroine´s adventure begins. When the opening scene started and tried to explain the story, I really didn’t understand what the narrator was talking about. So I just skipped the intros and headed straight in the game and character creation.

Valhalla Knights 2 is an action RPG with dungeon crawler elements. When the game starts up, it lets the player choose their class, sex, facial features hair, etc, just like any typical RPG out there. Choosing a class is pretty cool since when picking different classes, the cloths and equipment will change to that specific class. After customizing the character and choosing their class, missions are assigned and carried out by joining the local town guild. After accepting a mission, it is a must to gear up before venturing out and carrying out the mission. Battling enemies’ takes the form of an action/dungeon crawler RPG being that the camera is adjustable and the action is in real time instead of turn based. At first, it’s a bit bland and boring but as the character starts to level up and learns new skills and spells, things start to get a bit interesting. And like all action/dungeon crawler games, Valhalla Knights 2 does suffer from some camera control problems, being that there is no second analog stick. So there were some cheap shots by enemies when trying to get the camera into the right position when fighting.

The game, by far, is not a pretty game. When creating the character, some of the faces look like if they were made to look constipated. They have show no emotion what so ever, just that one blank stare. The surrounding environment is pretty decent for a PSP game, although it looks like PS2 graphics. The PSP has already been out for more than 5 years, I would think that game companies would have plenty of time between then and now to get as much power of the PSP as they can, instead of creating games that look like they belong to the PS2. As for sound and the musical score, all standard sounds and music, nothing epic or awe inspiring to try to draw me in.

Replay value is a bit short, which is unusual for a RPG, but there is plenty of side quest and mini games to keep busy with. Also there can be up to four players in one party to complete quests with. Although to do that everyone would have to be either in the same room using Ad Hoc, or have wi-if in their homes. I didn’t get to have the chance to try out the wi-fi to test out for lag and any other hindrances that come with playing games on the PSP over a Wi-Fi. All in all, Valhalla Knight 2 is a pretty decent game. There are bits and parts of the game that do really need improvement and some areas that need to be redone completely. If your looking for a game to tie you over till the next big RPG, Valhalla Knights 2 is not the worse you can do, but I say either down load a demo or rent it before buying.

Official game site: http://www.valhallaknights2.com/