Valhalla Knights 2: Battle Stance came to me from XSeed for a review and I was excited when I read the write up. Then I got into the game and was completely disappointed. No, it didn’t take long to get to the heart of it, did it?
The opening cut scenes and story paint a vast picture of deep stories, interesting gameplay and stunning visuals. The game itself has none of those things. In fact, I was so disinterested that I could barely manage to put enough time into review it.
The game is a 3D fantasy RPG and offers you a range of races elf, dwarf, human, etc, and classes monk, mage, fighter, etc. All fairly standard for a fantasy RPG. The opening story for all of your characters is that the orphanage is burned down and you must sit through this totally boring opening scene (every time you play a new character) without hope of staying awake or skipping it. My question is, if you’re in an orphange, how did you become a monk, mage or fighter? Also, where did you get your equipment?
Once you finally get past the long-winded and uneventful story setup you then end up in a town five years later, where you base your operations while you try to find a reason to play this game. I mean progress through the story.
The graphics in the game are square, flat and jagged edged and are dismally disappointing. If this is how the first game looked, I can’t imagine why they made a second. All of the characters look lifeless and disproportionate. The enemies and battle sequences are yawn-inducing and generally it’s just not visually interesting.
The sound is much more of the same. It’s got a generic soundtrack and battle sounds that remind me of the NES days. For the PSP this is just poor all around. There’s no voice acting and so you have to read a lot of the story.
The lack of voices will definitely put you off talking to a lot of people because you have to read what they say which requires you to basically read one line, hit a button, read one line, hit a button.
The game does have some interesting strategic elements and a party system so you can organize the party in the best way to succeed in battle. But in the beginning, your characters will get laid out by a rabbit, or a bee. Then you have to go all the way back to the town and start again.
To save the game you have to go all the way to the inn. That’s also the only place that you can return to the title screen for the game as well.
The game has so many flaws that I could go on like this for days. But instead I’ll just sum it all up. Don’t waste your time on Valhalla Knights 2: Battle Stance. There are dozens of more interesting games to spend your money on and many of them will have far better look, feel and gameplay.
