Valhalla Knights 2 review


Valhalla Knights 2 came out in early October to less than stellar reviews. Having enjoyed the first game (and having bought a PSP to play it), I wondered why this happened, and decided to review it for myself. After having played the game, I now see why so many complaints were flying about, but as with everything else in life, someone’s trash is another’s treasure. For a good portion of time I just couldn’t put the game down!

Valhalla Knights was a dungeon crawler. It was short on story and the player was expected to grind. The sequel shares most of its predecessor’s qualities and pitfalls, with the key differences brought out later in this review. Having played the first one, I had no preconception that it would be heavy on the story. I got what I expected: a non-linear, mission-based, grind-fest. Sure there is an evil goddess from the past who will likely reawaken to destroy the world, but it is sure not the focal point of the game. The story is told through a series of missions that show up at the guild over the course of exploring the game world and sometimes figuring out which mission takes the story forward can be a little difficult to do (but taking all the quests will eventually lead to forcing the story forward). In other words, the story is nothing to care about, but this was expected from a game of its genre.

So if the story is almost non-existent and unimportant, why should someone play Valhalla Knights 2? There are a couple answers here: (a) to play around with character customization, (b) to overcome great challenges, and (c) to use the character customization to overcome great challenges. As with most dungeon crawlers, the game has a steep challenge curve. Entering new areas in the world cause a few things to happen: the party will likely end up taking an almost instantaneous dirt nap, and a previous area will find itself home to stronger monsters.

The challenge is the key part of this game and without it, the game would ultimately not hold any kind of appeal whatsoever. It is fairly reminiscent of older games (Dragon Warrior III for me in particular) in that the game puts a challenge before the player and the player is expected to overcome it. In traditional terms this might mean to retry until victorious or to power up the party and try it again. Valhalla Knights 2 is in the latter group—it forces the player to spend a lot of time strengthening their party to overcome the game’s challenges, but as the games progresses this becomes far easier due to the unique character customization.


Now all Jack needs is massive toast

So other than the racial, gender, face, and hair choices that form the character’s physical appearance, there are also ten classes to choose from. There are two other races (Canines and Machines) that only have one class choice, but they will only be unlocked by completing advanced quests. The humanoid races (Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Akatoki, and Halflings) can all choose between five base classes: Fighter (tank), Monk (melee DPS), Thief (light melee/ranged DPS, lockpicker), Priest (healer), and Mage (ranged DPS). Each class has specific equipment, skills, and spells. Each race is more ideally suited for certain classes, but towards the middle of the game, the difference is negligible. As the game progresses, the party finds job cards in chests or off of dead monsters that allow single characters to unlock advanced jobs, of which there are also five: Knight (heavy tank), Samurai (two-hander specialist), Anchor (Priest/Mage hybrid), Enchanter (effect magic), and Ninja (ranged specialist). A party can have as many as six members, but many more can populate the player’s guild.

Every time a character levels up, there is a random chance that some of their needed stats will increase. Each class has a different level of reliance on each of the basic stats (Strength, Intelligence, Resistance, Vitality, Speed, Skill, and Luck). To compensate for this randomness, the game also gives the player some points to spend on their stats as they wish. The way these stats are handed out and how they affect the characters needs to be understood to successfully deal with the high level of challenge.

In battle, the character’s weapon (WL) and armour level (AL) are the most important stats to look at. These refer to their proficiency in these regards, as well as the strength of their equipment. When hitting an opponent, the attacker’s WL is compared to the victim’s AL, and this difference is what forms the range of damage that will be dealt (further modified by Strength or Skill). An unexplained effect of levelling a class to certain levels is that their AL and WL will also increase (for example, at level fifteen a Fighter gets +1 to their WL). It is a shame that these increases are not made public in the manual or in game, as they are really useful, and one of the reasons why multi-classing is as useful as it is.

So taking into account the number of classes, the way that stats are increased at level ups, and the intrinsic increase of WL and AL, how do these help beat Valhalla Knights 2’s challenges? By using the game’s amazing multi-classing system, of course! The game allows for a character to change classes as often as they like and unlike other games, the game allows the character to keep all accumulated stat points, hit points, magic points, AL, and WL. To top it off, if the entire party drops to level one in new jobs, the experience curve gets reset too. Since the XP is scaled according to the highest party member, dropping to level one speeds up the experience gain tremendously (and level 2->3 in the Monk class is essentially equivalent to 36->37 in the Fighter class, except multiple level ups will be possible in the same amount of time), as the party members will all be stronger and better able to take on stronger foes (and thereby increasing the XP potential by leaps and bounds).

The battle system is exactly what was used in the first game: run into an enemy to be thrown into a small circular arena, pitting the party in a battle with up to six opponents. The player takes control of one of the party members and can easily switch between them, while the rest of the party is controlled by a customizable AI. Enemies are attacked by moving to them and hitting the attack button—there aren’t many extensive combos or even an auto-run to enemy option, which would have been nice. Spells are a little bit easier to access this time around, but getting to them is usually too slow. In fact, most battles fall into two categories: overwhelming victory, and overwhelming loss. Battles of these types are rarely long enough for a player-controlled party member to get into the thick of things, making spell-casting a good job to assign to the AI. I have made extensive use of the auto-battle feature to get through the majority of the battles in the game.


Venom Hare readies Carrot Toss

The party’s battle setup can be customized in a few ways. To start, each character is allowed to pick two subjobs that add bonuses to their primary job (like Monk adding HP, or a spellcaster job allowing its spells to be used). Each character is assigned a position on 3x3 square grid. This allows for a small measure of strategy—squishy casters get the chance to stand behind the meatier melee characters. Also, each character’s AI behaviour can be altered by assigning behaviour points to certain attributes. Need the Priest to stay focused on healing? Max out their healing behaviour and ignore their other stats. By levelling up, characters earn behaviour points that can be used to define how they act when controlled by the AI. Finally, at levels five, ten, and twenty, each job unlocks skills. A character can use any one of their unlocked skills for any job that they currently have equipped. All in all, there is lots of customization which leads to loads of fun.

From a technical standpoint, Valhalla Knights 2 is merely ok. None of the music or sound effects really stands out, and the same goes for the visuals. While cleaner looking and much quicker to load than the first game, there are still a couple technical issues here: (a) some character models (especially Dwarves) look downright ugly, and (b) there is often some nasty slowdown when fighting large battles.

While the battle system and customization are loads of fun, there are a few other issues with the game. First of all, the developers removed the ability to warp from town to other places in the dungeons. Instead this was replaced with teleporting from town to town, but this option is only available late in the game. This means that with every death, the party will need to walk all the way back to where they died. Another annoying thing is that the quest system limits the party to having one quest at a time and there is no way to track progress while on a quest.

Even with all of it faults, Valhalla Knights 2 is a very addictive game. It is hard and it expects the player to do a ton of grinding to overcome the challenges that it presents. I could not recommend it to those that require extensive story in their RPGs, or to those who get bored easily when grinding. It is a treasure for those that really like this kind of game—for those with enough patience to delve into the character customization systems that are in place. I am already looking forward to the third game.