Valkyrie Elysium (Valkyrie Difficulty) Part 2

Part 2. I know it may not be a popular opinion, but I think this may be my favorite game in the series. It like its predecessors is a solid AA tier JRPG title. They clearly don't have as large of a budget for these games so areas are reused a lot. The story is minimal and sort of takes a back seat to the gameplay. You mainly get story bits at the beginning of and end of chapters, sometimes there is a little sprinkled in during a chapter. On Valkyrie difficulty the game starts out absolutely brutal. The tutorial is a breeze and does not represent the pain that's in store from the outset. I died quite a bit and barely clawed my way to checkpoints. I misused items early and found myself up the creek a few times. Checkpoints are few and far between. When you die all your progress is wiped and it's back to the beginning. It's rough. About half way through the first chapter you find the heal spell and that helps a lot, but it's still pretty hard. Enemies hit like tanks and you can really only take 1 or 2 hits. Once you finally recruit an einherjar the heat is taken off of you a bit and things become infinitely more manageable. The combat is pretty simple but so much fun. Every enemy has a weakness and their info bar gives you all that you need. It tells you its weakness, its health and its crush bar. Enemies are weak to both a type of weapon and element. Each einherjar is associated with an element wand when summoned imbue your attacks with said element. You also have magic, as I mentioned earlier, and that is also enhanced by the einherjar's as well. It's super cool and there are a ton of different enemies to fight. Each with its own nonsense and attacks. Speaking of, you find a bunch of weapons. I think 6 in total and can be leveled in proficiency, through use, and power, with materials. When leveled you power them up and unlock new moves. I played with all of the weapons and used just about whatever I wanted and didn't have too much issue using them. I most ignored weapon weakness and stuck to just elements and magic. the levels themselves were a ton of fun to explore and there were lots of nooks and crannies to find treasure in. Treasure could have healing items, new spells, weapons, or even upgrades to your player bars like health, magic or soul. You also have 3 skill trees to level offering boosts to attack, defense and support. So there is quite a lot going on. The levels are fairly linear but very pretty to look at. Each level is unique and were pretty lengthy. In each level you can also find side quests which you can do in-between chapters and offer some great rewards. They are quick jaunts back into the same levels with a bunch of fights. You can also level your einherjar through use, but also side missions just for them. This game didn't really offer the standard Seraphic gate like the first two games. I didn't really bother with that. It did offer a challenge with one of the antagonists called Hilde's Vengeance and it takes you back through a bunch of the levels and re-fights with twists to the main games bosses. It's not all that long and after playing on Valkyrie is was cool to see what the normal game was like. All in all, I had a great time with this game. It's not super long and I am sure on easier difficulties it can be breezed through just about 20 hours or so. It's a really fun AA JRPG from Square Enix and I hope they continue to make fun and engaging budget lite games like these. Enjoy my blond playthrough.
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