Valhalla Knights - 4/10
Find every RPG out there to be too easy? even on HARD?
this game MIGHT be for you! but I doubt it
Valhalla Knights is an awesome RPG brought down to far by over the top difficulty. The difficulty means you need to do ALOT of grinding. Fighting the same monsters over and over until your high enough to beat the monsters in the next area. Unfortunately the game seems to punish you for doing this, quickly reducing the amount of experience you get to 1xp per battle, meaning you have to either fight hundreds of battles to level up once, or fight harder monsters in the next area and risk losing all your gold.
Its a terrible shame, because this game has some awesome graphics, and plenty of it is fun. its just SO hard!
I started a melee character, after doing the "intro" stuff, I set out on my first real outing into the world. the only place I can go is the castle, a haunted monster filled place. as soon as I enter I get a conversation saying I need to find and underground passage and go through a forest to a fort. this is what I need to do to progress the story. so of course I head out to find this passage. The first area is filled with relatively easy monsters to kill, that as long as I'm careful are no issue. so I level up to level 3. I head back to town and buy my first piece of armor. its expensive! anyway, I head back to the castle and find the underground passage. I promptly get my butt handed to me by the first monster down there! not even a chance of winning.
Back in town again, I hire a priest into my group and head back out there. this time I manage to last through 2 enemies. the first enemy takes all of the priests mana (healing me) to beat them, the second one kills us (LOL)
So I decide to grind in the first area. 5 hours and 7 levels later I head back into the underground passage. Now the enemies ARE just beatable. but they are all giving me 1xp. no chance of going up another level (needing 700xp for my next level). So I head to the next area (the forest) and promptly get my butt handed to me by the enemies.
and thats Valhalla Knights in a nutshell. too frustrating to waste your time on
Graphics :
AWESOME, they really are, fantastic models, great animations, nice magic effects, great special effects, detailed and interesting environments, crisp textures, all with a unique style.
Gameplay :
PAINFUL! the actual combat and environment movement all works quite nicely, plenty of easy to use options in battles to quickly and effectively combat enemies. relatively painless camera that can be kept behind your character with regular taps of the R button. There are too many controls to run down here, and honestly, the game isnt worth the effort.
Levelling in this game is great, theres alot of stats, and you can have multiple "jobs" or roles like fighter/magic/healer etc.
Sound :
not bad, nice classical rpg music score to run around and fight with, grunts and noises from your characters when they do things, swishes and clangs from weapons. sparks and swooshes from magic. its nothing special, but its definately not bad
Interface :
a little confusing. it gets the job done, and you quickly get used to its quirkyness. theres alot of info, and alot of screens, but there all quick to load (almost instant) and easy to read.
Multiplayer :
I think its broken. everytime my friend and I played, half way through a battle I would just stop doing any damage at all. at first I thought something had been cast on my character, but switching to my other group members did nothing, they all did no damage. and we were fighting the weakest monster in the game.
Also, you cant play co-op through the story, there are around 30 quests you can do multiplayer and thats it. which is a huge shame, because the endless grinding would be alot more doable with 2 people.
Bonus' :
I dont think there are any. I havent finished the game (and I'm not going to) but I cant see there been any. The game is apparently huge though
Conclusion :
This game COULD have been awesome. unfortunately the over the top difficulty and endless grinding make it a complete chore to play
Scores :
Graphics : 9/10
-1 for overly repatative rooms
Sound : 7/10
-1 for repative music
-2 for weak sounding spells and weapon effects
Gameplay : 2/10
-5 for grinding, grinding, more grinding and even more grinding
-3 for being WAAY to hard
Multiplayer : 4/10
-4 for being seemingly broken (it did work sometimes)
-2 for confusing as hell setup screens
Interface : 7/10
-1 for bad cursor that can get confusing
-1 for confusing layout
-1 for not being able to use equiped potions
Overall : 4/10
Submitted by templargfx
10/07/2008
3
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