Thanks Enix! Why should I thank Square? Enix made it originally!

Valkyrie Profile was originally on the Playstation 1. Due to only a few copies of the game being released, the game quickly became extremely rare. I've always wanted to get my hands on the Playstation 1 game but I never wanted to spend $200 on a single game. Square-Enix did a favor for rpg gamers everywhere by rereleasing this rpg great on the PSP as Valkyrie Profile Lenneth. The game is pretty much a direct port but they did add some extra things.

In Valkyrie Profile, you play as a Valkyrie named Lenneth. A war called the Sacred War is going on in heaven (called Asgard) and Lenneth's job is to train brave souls and train them and then send them up to Asgard and win the battle against the evil forces.

Valkyrie Profile has so many great and unique qualities to it and now playing it for the first time on the PSP I don't know why later rpgs didn't borrow some of the ideas that appeared in this game. First of all, Valkyrie Profile Lenneth is a sidescroller. Yes, it is an rpg, and a sidescroller. Here's how it works, you arrive at a dungeon and you just have to roam all around it switching rooms by going to different rooms that are either in front of you or to either side of you. Sometimes you will see a monster and when you run into it you will start a battle. You also have to solve various puzzles in the sidescrolling that are usually pretty basic and involves you smashing something or moving something.

The combat is some of the better combat I've seen in rpg games. You have a group of people, 4 at max. If you have 4 people you will be in the shape of a diamond. You know what else is in the shape of a diamond? The buttons on the right side of the PSP. If you press X, the person on the bottom of the diamond will attack with his default attack. If you press all the buttons all of your guys will attack. This is a lot more strategic than it sounds. If the enemy has a shield, use your mage to do an attack to get him in the air, and then get your melee people to attack him right when he hits the ground. If you succesfully pull off a good attack, one of your guys is likely to do a magic attack which are really elaborate and look great. These attacks just require you to press buttons when they tell you to. A magic attack is likely to kill the enemy because they are so long and have so many parts to them. The magic attacks sure look nice, but after a few times you are going to get bored having to watch them do the same old attack over and over again. As you battle, you have your basic level up system where your character gets stronger and more defensive, but your character also gets points to spend on himself. With these points you can improve his personality or make him learn new spells.

Through the whole game you play as Lenneth, but every chapter you get new players to play with. After a chapter that usually has a few dungeons to fight in you have to send your trained character up to fight the war in Asgard. You generally don't have your characters for too long so it is kind of a bummer because sometimes you really won't want to give up your guy. You do get a lot of background on the characters you are playing in various cutscenes that start every chapter and they can last up to an hour sometimes and a lot of times it is really too much and you will be bored to tears because you just want to play as the character and not have to know everything about him.

As you play you have to not die too many times, because you have a set amount of periods in the game, and if you die, 1 period gets knocked off your score. Once those periods are up, you fight the final battle and you have to hope and pray that the heroes that you made through the game are good enough to win the battle, or else you just wasted the 18-20 or so hours it takes to beat the game. Really, if you want to, you can just slack off and do whatever you want without doing the main story and just finishing different dungeons, but you probably aren't going to win the final battle if you do that.

If you are a fan of rpgs, and you haven't already played this game on the Playstation, I definitely suggest going out and buying this game immediately. It's not another standard rpg, and sometimes thats a bad thing, but in this case it's a good thing. I really enjoyed this game but I can see how some people wouldn't. I can understand if you don't like the fact that you can technically beat the game but lose at the same time if you lose the final battle.

The graphics are definitely some of the best sidescrolling graphics I've seen. The character models and the backgrounds are all hand drawn and are very vibrant and look fantastic. The character movements are smooth and look just like a professional cartoon. They some CG sequences that were not in the Playstation version, and these look terrific and are look as great as any Square-Enix's cutscenes and are actually pretty much comparable to the Final Fantasy movies graphics.

The game has some great upbeat and sometimes slow music, but they often repeat the songs constantly so they get annyoing. You hear a lot of voice work in this game. There are sometimes conversations between characters but they honestly are some of the worst voice actors I've heard. Not only are they overzealous and sound awful, but the sound clips aren't on sync so sometimes someone will say something and then the other character will answer a long time later. So you will hear "Bye." Wait five seconds "See you later."

So should you get this game? It's a terrific game in my opinion. But there are a lot of different things in the game such as the possibility of losing, and the fact that it is a sidescroller that would turn people off to the game. So if you think that this sounds like your cup of tea, definitely try it. When I was presented with the uniqueness of the game I wasn't sure if I would like it, but I tried it and thought it was a solid rpg experience.