Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume [DS]

Posted August 17, 2009 by Michael Curley in DS, Featured, Featured Home, Game Blog, Reviews.

Reviewed on the Nintendo DS.

Let it never be said that Tri-Ace lets itself be stuck in a rut, at least where the Valkyrie Profile series goes. The series has only three games so far, but each does something very different in its gameplay style, and each game plays very well in its own right, including the most recent entry, Covenant of the Plume.

The turn based strategy prequel to the original Valkyrie Profile — it’s sorta hard to make sequels when the first game in the series is about the end of the world — follows Wylfred, whose father was taken as an einherjar by the first game’s protagonist, Lenneth. Wylfred is not happy with this and vows revenge, eventually getting the goddess Hel’s help in the matter, which kicks off the game.

The main gameplay screen, that of the battlefield itself, bears a pretty strong resemblance to Final Fantasy Tactics, with a similarly polygonal field and an isometric camera, coupled with character sprites that look very similar in style to those of Tactics. The characters each have an interesting design, and the different classes are very recognizable. Occasionally, though, the scenery can get in the way, but a quick rotation of the camera usually fixes that.

The characters themselves are well animated, with plenty of unique poses for in-game cutscenes, but the actual gameplay poses, aside from attack combos, are mostly limited to lifting up their arms. The attack combos are well animated, and, as usual for the series, each character has his or her own special, over-the-top kill move, which is appropriately flashy and eclectic.

The sound design should be familiar to fans of the series, as most of the music is taken from the original game. It’s aged well enough and tends to fit the mood of the scene pretty well. Whether you’re watching a pair of warriors mourning their fallen comrade, or you’re getting ready to tear some vampire a new one, the sounds of battle are clear and crisp. And, though there isn’t any voice acting in the main story, each character has his or her own battle quotes that are recited at different times. The acting is generally adequate, though occasionally sillier than it really should be. But, with this much olde english being thrown around, a little hamming it up is probably excusable.

So, the gameplay. As mentioned, it’s different from either of the previous games in the series, being based around turn-based strategy, though some of the signature elements — the combos and Soul Crush finishers — have been brought back. In short, you move your team of four characters around the map, trying to outmaneuver your enemies and set up attacks. If you surround enemies in a certain fashion, you get a “siege,” which will give you an advantage when you go in for the kill, usually along the lines of making combos easier, or increasing the amount of loot you get once you make the kill.

Unlike other turn based games, though, once you launch an attack, you move into a new battle screen, where you can attack with any of your characters in range. Each is assigned to a face button, and you need to time their attacks to build up the combo meter, and set up the finishers. It adds a nice active component to the usual, slower-paced strategy of the genre and actually discourages button mashing, which generally doesn’t work out.

Of course, the game makes you focus on not just killing, but demolishing each enemy, which means, even in missions where your objective is to attack a certain character, you more or less have to go out of your way to wipe out everyone, and since the best way to do that is to gang up on them, you end up taking a long time on each battle, with some larger maps taking up to an hour to plow through. The game also has an occasional tendency to throw a difficult escort mission or boss at you unexpectedly. Eventually, you can bang out a strategy to get past it, but replaying the missions over and over to find that strategy can get frustrating.

Also, the game doesn’t feature the usual Valkyrie Profile side-scrolling dungeon crawling, which I missed, but admittedly wouldn’t fit so well in this game.

The game’s story is another high point, partly for the complexity and maturity and partly for the fact that your choices actually affect how it plays out over the course of the narrative, not just how the ending turns out. Depending on how often you use the titular feather, Wylfred will act differently and end up in different places at the beginning of each chapter, with three distinct paths through the game, making for a lot of replay value beyond just seeing the different endings.

Covenant of the Plume is a good, challenging game for fans of either the Valkyrie Profile series or turn-based strategy in general. Just make sure when you go into battle you’re not going anywhere for a while.

Tagged as Covenant of the Plume, Square Enix, TriAce, Valkyrie Profile, Valkyrie Profile: Covenant Of The Plume