robotzombie
Member
Honestly, this isn't even a good deal
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Valhalla Knights 1 free on US PSN
- Thread starter Tizoc
- Start date
BlackLagoon
Member
<Hangs head in shame> You're absolutely right, it was Rising Star. Dunno why, but for the longest time I've been absolutely sure it was done by you guys.
Freaky Fred
Banned
Wait is that trailer Sh@dow posted really Valhalla Knights 3? I picked up the first one for free last night and played for about 10 minutes before I got bored. How did the series go from a boring looking RPG to a "touch here to increase horny level" (I can only assume that's what's going on there) game?
EDIT: Hm.. reading further I guess it is real but isn't necessary to finish the game? So what's the benefit of it?
EDIT: Hm.. reading further I guess it is real but isn't necessary to finish the game? So what's the benefit of it?
BlackLagoon
Member
If the girls like you enough they become available for recruitment as party members.
DR2K
Banned
That's because it's a give away.
Game is pretty boring.
So, I gave this a go this morning, after not being able to sleep as long as I'd have liked, ha.
2 hours later, I... Like it better than I thought I would!
I thought I remember playing a pretty meh demo of the series not too long ago... this was nothing like what I remembered (maybe it was a VK2 demo? Or later into the game?)
From the very get-go, this already had some decent positives for me. You can back out of the way of attacks (unlike PCRPG "If you were in range when the attack roll started, you're hit anyway! Even across the screen!" garbage), the basic attacks ocassionally stagger / stop enemy casting, heal spells will go off at the end of battle, rather than being over-written by victory poses (I dislike when this happens in many smaller RPGs), and the focus on big groups (for your party, and the enemy) is a welcome bit of originality.
I dislike the ability to use Right stick to move the camera, but who cares, I have PSO style "L and R buttons for camera turning!", so I'm Ok. I would guess the Vita part 3 now has free camera controls, eh?
Sure, the "Grope the women in town" stuff in the new game seems pretty stupid... but at least it's something to DO in town! I really appreciate the personality the shopkeepers show personality in animation, but town is a basic, activity-less hub. The kind of thing that could be broken down to a bunch of menus in a Dungeon Crawl RPG, and you'd miss none of the functionality.
Battle is a straight-forward affair; See enemy, attempt to land a back or side attack (to do some damage to all enemies before battle), and then rush in, and start whailing away. It'd be nice if the O and X button attacks varied. This is the biggest weakness to me; the control is very simple to start off. You have no ranged weapon in the beginning, you only have 1 blade, and you'll be hurting like crazy if you don'r wisely invest that starting 500 Gold in recruiting a Priest(ess) for healing duty.
But beyond that, I like the fights. "Special attacks" fill up quickly, and do "single enemy slaughtering" damage. It gives a small tactical element to battle. Add the fact you can actually back attack, side attack, or crawl on the over-map, in order to lower enemies abilities to perceive you (like...Metal Gear?!?), and it at least has enough fun to keep you interested enough in seeing what's next.
Magic is also freely regained between battles, even though it takes a bit of time. I like this more than needing to depend on potions, and it's a bit more thoughtful than "everyone is full restored after battle just because!", as some other modern RPGs do.
Enemy groups are kinda impressive, in that they'll toss 6 enemies of mostly different types at you, all at once. Thankfully, you can draw aggro decently by running around, and your healer is smart enough to heal you when you start to get weak. They don't get stuck in "ATTACK BECAUSE I CAN!" stupidity, as is too common in other games.
The game loads very fast, in battle, town, between buildings, etc. Even pressing select to swap main party member happens instantly. There's no annoying pop-up, the camera doesn't often get stuck, the textures are OK for PSP, and you actually visably see the armor and items you put on, which I always love in games.
Ultimately, giving this away for free was a nice gesture, and these early 2 hours have made me look forward to the new game a nice bit more. Character Customization will be a very welcome addition, and being able to fight on the actual world map in the new game, should make things flow even nicer. It also has larger scale battles, looting of corpses, and actual network play in the US edition (added in since the JP release, which was Ad-Hoc only) which seem like nice changes/improvements.
What are some of the things that make Battle Stance Better? I'd be interested in going back and trying the game, if it makes improvements in the right places. Wasn't the Wii release of Eldar Saga 2P? Or am I remembering that wrong?
You can hire an underling with your starting 500 gold. The "Lump of Gold" quest item is a once-gain item, thus, you only need to kill 1 monster, and then return to the inn.
The game REALLY sucks at giving direction. I'm not too offput by this; in my limited experience with dungeon crawlers, it seems like they ALL kinda suck at giving instruction, as if putting things together through experimentation is a boon for the genre.
I think it just makes them clunkier, and leads to easy bad first impressions.
Even though this is much cheaper and lower budget, I like the combat in this so much more than the hands-off, auto-character-movement of Final Fantasy XIII. Free control of your character, and the ability to actually move yourself out of the range of attacks, would have made the battles in that game so much better.
2 hours later, I... Like it better than I thought I would!
I thought I remember playing a pretty meh demo of the series not too long ago... this was nothing like what I remembered (maybe it was a VK2 demo? Or later into the game?)
From the very get-go, this already had some decent positives for me. You can back out of the way of attacks (unlike PCRPG "If you were in range when the attack roll started, you're hit anyway! Even across the screen!" garbage), the basic attacks ocassionally stagger / stop enemy casting, heal spells will go off at the end of battle, rather than being over-written by victory poses (I dislike when this happens in many smaller RPGs), and the focus on big groups (for your party, and the enemy) is a welcome bit of originality.
I dislike the ability to use Right stick to move the camera, but who cares, I have PSO style "L and R buttons for camera turning!", so I'm Ok. I would guess the Vita part 3 now has free camera controls, eh?
Sure, the "Grope the women in town" stuff in the new game seems pretty stupid... but at least it's something to DO in town! I really appreciate the personality the shopkeepers show personality in animation, but town is a basic, activity-less hub. The kind of thing that could be broken down to a bunch of menus in a Dungeon Crawl RPG, and you'd miss none of the functionality.
Battle is a straight-forward affair; See enemy, attempt to land a back or side attack (to do some damage to all enemies before battle), and then rush in, and start whailing away. It'd be nice if the O and X button attacks varied. This is the biggest weakness to me; the control is very simple to start off. You have no ranged weapon in the beginning, you only have 1 blade, and you'll be hurting like crazy if you don'r wisely invest that starting 500 Gold in recruiting a Priest(ess) for healing duty.
But beyond that, I like the fights. "Special attacks" fill up quickly, and do "single enemy slaughtering" damage. It gives a small tactical element to battle. Add the fact you can actually back attack, side attack, or crawl on the over-map, in order to lower enemies abilities to perceive you (like...Metal Gear?!?), and it at least has enough fun to keep you interested enough in seeing what's next.
Magic is also freely regained between battles, even though it takes a bit of time. I like this more than needing to depend on potions, and it's a bit more thoughtful than "everyone is full restored after battle just because!", as some other modern RPGs do.
Enemy groups are kinda impressive, in that they'll toss 6 enemies of mostly different types at you, all at once. Thankfully, you can draw aggro decently by running around, and your healer is smart enough to heal you when you start to get weak. They don't get stuck in "ATTACK BECAUSE I CAN!" stupidity, as is too common in other games.
The game loads very fast, in battle, town, between buildings, etc. Even pressing select to swap main party member happens instantly. There's no annoying pop-up, the camera doesn't often get stuck, the textures are OK for PSP, and you actually visably see the armor and items you put on, which I always love in games.
Ultimately, giving this away for free was a nice gesture, and these early 2 hours have made me look forward to the new game a nice bit more. Character Customization will be a very welcome addition, and being able to fight on the actual world map in the new game, should make things flow even nicer. It also has larger scale battles, looting of corpses, and actual network play in the US edition (added in since the JP release, which was Ad-Hoc only) which seem like nice changes/improvements.
What are some of the things that make Battle Stance Better? I'd be interested in going back and trying the game, if it makes improvements in the right places. Wasn't the Wii release of Eldar Saga 2P? Or am I remembering that wrong?
You can hire an underling with your starting 500 gold. The "Lump of Gold" quest item is a once-gain item, thus, you only need to kill 1 monster, and then return to the inn.
The game REALLY sucks at giving direction. I'm not too offput by this; in my limited experience with dungeon crawlers, it seems like they ALL kinda suck at giving instruction, as if putting things together through experimentation is a boon for the genre.
I think it just makes them clunkier, and leads to easy bad first impressions.
Even though this is much cheaper and lower budget, I like the combat in this so much more than the hands-off, auto-character-movement of Final Fantasy XIII. Free control of your character, and the ability to actually move yourself out of the range of attacks, would have made the battles in that game so much better.
Black Republican
Member
Had to download this since its a free JRPG, cant go wrong right?
sixteen-bit
Member
Is the soundtrack any good?
sublimit
Banned
Yup just what i thought as well.
You know i still remember when i first heard about this game and i was kinda excited for it at first until all the previews (and reviews) started to appear.
After all those years i'll finally get to try it for free which is neat!Hopefully it will not suck too much.
poopninjamvc3mk
I sucked six dicks to get this tag.
Well the game does take longass time to even get good and a lot of it is dated so tread with caution.
People were banned for gamesharing etc not the oman thing
Selling more copies.
Zatoichi's Cane
Member
thank you for the heads up
In all seriousness, VH3 is day one for me.
The Red Light District stuff is probably a very small part of the game (Killer is Dead gigglo mission style) and the game being described as an offline MMO sounds good to me. The Western release apparently is being rebalanced to feel less grindy too.
The Japanese version got some significant and regular content updates too, showing the developer is committed to the game post launch.
The Red Light District stuff is probably a very small part of the game (Killer is Dead gigglo mission style) and the game being described as an offline MMO sounds good to me. The Western release apparently is being rebalanced to feel less grindy too.
The Japanese version got some significant and regular content updates too, showing the developer is committed to the game post launch.
Green Wiggly
Member
I'm a couple of hours in as well, currently grinding slimes in the first hallway to level up for the second quest. I agree with many of the positives you bring up, but I'm just not feeling the combat at all. To me, maneuvering your character just feels slow and clunky, with trying to strategically use space being a hit or miss affair. The seeming lack of active defense as well as the short range of your starting weapon means I do pretty much the same with button mashing as trying to be careful. This bothered me to the point that I set the AI to autobattle for a while, which actually worked pretty well (for basic slimes at least). I set it back though, because letting the AI do the combat means you're not doing much of anything at all. I wish they had kept the 3D models, but just made the combat turn-based and menu-driven. More generic maybe, but it would have been less annoying.
Other minor gripes are that you get warped to an upstairs room in the Inn when you rest, which serves no point other than making you run back out. Also, every time you kill an enemy, the chest that spawns is positioned just out of reach so that you have to go through a second or so of awkward fumbling to get it open.
The story so far is "something, something, amnesia", and the dialog is total shit. 9/10 times your character's response to anything is "...", and NPCs begin almost every sentence with ellipses too.
I'm going to give it a few more hours, see if i can get somebody with a bow and hope that combat becomes a bit more interesting. Hopefully it's just off to a slow start.