Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume (DS)

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume
Tri-Ace/Square-Enix

Review by Lauren

Oh, Covenant of the Plume, where do I begin? This game has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for me. If I were to write about it after one hour, three hours, twenty hours, and sixty hours, my views would be drastically different. I loved the game, then hated it, then tolerated it, then liked it again. I will now attempt to tie all of that together in something resembling a review. This is going to be long.

Do you like the Valkyrie Profile series? And tactical RPGs, you say? Great, but I'm still not sure I can recommend this game to you. Depending on how you play it, it's either frustratingly cheap and difficult, or easy to the point of being boring. But if you tough it out past the initial learning curve, or even the whole first playthrough, it just might be worthwhile.

The graphics are decent for the DS, but nothing spectacular. It's actually fairly hard to tell the difference between some of the character sprites. The FMV sequences are gorgeous, of course, though there are only a few of them. The music consists mostly of themes from the original Valkyrie Profile, which are all quite beautiful. There are a few boring filler tracks, but no RPG is free of those. The bits of voice acting are also decent, but some of the repetitive lines and odd accents can get a bit grating over time.

The game consists of five chapters, with three different moral "paths" from which to choose. Each will lead to different characters, battles, and endings. There's the Good (A) path, the Normal (B) path, and the Bad (C) path. In order to go from A to B or C, you must use a certain item in battle. This item, the Destiny Plume, allows you to sacrifice an ally in order to gain an absurdly powerful ability. Obviously, the downside is permanently losing that character and going down a path that clearly won't end well.

But what really matters here is the gameplay. It's a mix of classic VP-style battle combos and a tactical RPG. I thought that sounded pretty cool. Until I played it.

If you're experienced with tactical RPGs, toss most of that knowledge out the window. After beginning an attack on an enemy, all characters in range enter the familiar VP-style battle screen, where you can carefully time all characters' attacks in order to produce combos. As for the tactical RPG side of it, you still get to move on tiles and choose an action during your turn, but you won't be planning all of your characters' turns strategically in order to maximize damage through different actions. No, get ready to do the same thing over and over for the entire game. That is, you'll be surrounding each enemy on all four sides with your characters, and then choosing to attack. This will result in a powerful group attack called a Siege, which provides a guaranteed treasure drop and bonuses to the attack gauge, which help you achieve a long enough combo to pull off your special attacks - the familiar Soul Crushes. Doing so will become extremely important, because absolutely brutalizing an enemy is the only way to fulfill a certain important quota for each battle. Of course, there are different siege formations (two or three people surrounding the enemy from different angles), but none will provide the same combo bonus and guaranteed treasure drop of the four-person attack. The result is a lot of dashing around trying to position your characters correctly so that you can actually kill an enemy safely. Bear with me - it gets more complicated.

The aforementioned quota is called the "sin gauge," and it's increased by continuing to damage an enemy after you've reduced its HP to zero. It's an important part of the main game, and you'll likely spend a lot of time and frustration trying to meet and beat said quota, at least if you decide to take the "good guy" path. Beating the quota by 150% and 200% will gain you additional rewards, with very useful items available at the 200% level. If you don't meet the minimum requirement, difficult enemies called Realmstalkers will begin to seek you out in an attempt to force you to use the Plume. Again, if you're being a good guy, you don't want that to happen. It's not difficult to meet the minimum in most battles, but if you want those items (which do become important considering the lack of money for most of the game), you'll be aiming for a frustrating goal.

Of course, you can certainly try to whittle an enemy down before going in for the kill, but there are a few problems with that. First, it can be difficult to estimate how much damage your characters will do to an enemy, and killing one by accident can sometimes be worse than a game over, if you're going for maximum sin. Just barely killing an enemy without doing any Overkill will net you a whopping zero sin points. They usually allow you one mess-up in a battle when it comes to the 200% quota, but even a tiny accident after that will probably mean you'll want to start over. Secondly, in most cases, the enemy will have a counterattack. As you progress through the game, enemy stats become absurdly high, and this can often mean a one-hit KO for said character, further complicating the battle. You get to counterattack too, but you'll probably opt out more often than not, out of fear of ruining the sin requirement by doing too much or too little damage.

And finally, the worst problem of all, which baffles me to no end - you absolutely must use every single attack at your disposal, after you choose to perform an attack or counterattack. If Wylfred has three attacks total and so-and-so has two attacks left, you must use them all. No cancelling, no waiting until they go away. That sometimes means barely killing said enemy and therefore possibly destroying your chances at maximum sin, which obviously wastes a lot of your time and efforts. Or if you're trying to do a launching attack followed by a knock-down attack in order to faze an enemy (which becomes very important later in the game in order to minimize character deaths), sometimes you'll randomly get a gem which "grants" you one or two more attacks. Usually this is a good thing, as VP veterans know, but in this case, an extra attack that you absolutely must use is going to un-faze the enemy, ruin your strategy, and probably get said character severely damaged or killed. Thanks, programming.

Those who played VP2 can probably understand why this is confusing. Often the problem was the opposite - you'd want to continue your juggling combo, but the enemy would begin to fade and therefore the game would stop you from continuing your attack. Now all attacks are mandatory despite the fact that this can severely cripple the player's battle strategy. To make things worse, the Soul Crush menu causes even more interference with the combos. It'll pop up when you least want it to, and if you cancel it in order to do regular attacks instead, sometimes you seem to be able to continue your regular attacks, while at other times, it'll stop letting you attack. Obviously, this is another big problem for the sin gauge. I have absolutely no idea what the rules are for its timing even after 70+ hours with it, or its forcing/denying you to attack, and thus far I've found no information on it. Simply put, it's annoying and feels arbitrary. It also would have been helpful to have a Practice Mode for combo testing like VP1 did. Limited battles and no random encounters means you have to practice your timing in real battles which often have very little room for error.

Now, I've been speaking from the perspective of someone who chose the A path on the first playthrough, which is apparently not recommended. Most of this frustration is negated if you go for the C or even the B path on the first playthrough. Doing so allows you to gain some game-breaking abilities that will make most battles absurdly easy. I had heard that the game was too easy when done this way, so I opted for the A path instead. Your "reward" for choosing to be the good guy is a tougher playthrough, fewer characters, less rewards, and a pretty mediocre ending. Better to have the challenge once, though - all subsequent playthroughs are very easy since all items, equipment, and abilities are retained. It's clear from the plot that the programmers want you to go C-B-A or B-C-A, though, considering how much easier the game is with those Plume Tactics and absurd rewards available only on the other paths, such as earlier Expert's Experience scrolls and the Shackle of Sin (increases Sin gained by 20% - obviously incredibly useful).

Therefore, your best shot is to do the Grand Cross (four-person) siege. Over and over again. On every enemy, whenever possible. For the whole game. You can usually do something else with the character's turns as they move into position, but often they'll be required to use Dash, Transpose, or Encircle in order to get the positioning right for everyone involved. (Especially in later stages where many sections are only one panel wide, therefore making sieges by regular means impossible.) Sorcerers mix things up with their incredibly useful spells, but you'll start to feel that they run out of their vital AP far too quickly.

As I mentioned, there are no random encounters in CotP, and the extra battles available outside of the plot are very limited. Say goodbye to your chances of grinding experience points in order to make the game a bit easier. It's either going to be tough and frustrating (A path, first playthrough), or ridiculously easy (any other path or second playthrough). Imbalance is the name of this game.

And then there's the matter of the AI. Of course you'll have to deal with "Save the Suicidal NPC!" battles, as is always unfortunately the case with tactical RPGs. You'll especially enjoy the feeble mage who tends to make some very poor choices, often getting herself killed by choosing to attack something, and then getting counterattacked to death before you can even get near her. It brings back memories of Rafa and Malak in Final Fantasy Tactics, except I don't recall them ever dying within a single turn. Another rescue battle got me to the point where I had to restart, because the NPC kept attacking the boss of the area, which destroyed my shot at the sin quota since I had to keep the guy alive and worry about positioning in a cramped area. On the plus side, the enemy AI is pretty bad, too. They'll usually leave you alone until you get close to them, which allows you to recover before engaging them. Sometimes they'll get stuck behind a fence and just wander back and forth, back and forth, on every turn until you approach them. It's sad, in a way.

Let's take a look at the plot. Angry human seeks vengeance against the valkyrie for taking his father to an honourable afterlife. Said human is tempted by Mistress Hel and then has to choose whether to use the Destiny Plume for his vengeance or ignore the will of the dark side. Sounds pretty cool, actually. And again, I thought the same, until I played the game.

Yet another problem with playing on the A path is that you really don't get to see much of that side of the plot. Instead, you get bombarded with generic tactical RPG political drama. It was very boring for the most part, and I found myself feeling incredibly disappointed with the first ending. However, on the second and third playthroughs, the plot is much more interesting, as you see different sides of each scenario (allies become enemies and vice versa) as a result of your choices. In addition, you get to see more of the Valhalla/Niflheim story on the B and C paths. I was much happier with the plot after seeing all of the possibilities.

The script deserves a special mention. The dialogue is very well localized, and even poetic at times. I enjoyed reading through the scenes, even if I had no clue what the characters were talking about.

If you beat all three paths, the classic Tri-Ace bonus dungeon opens up - The Seraphic Gate. If you've played this dungeon in other titles, you'll understand that they tend to make the scenes amusingly non-canon. Apparently to offset the downer of a story, they made the scenes absolutely bizarre and hilarious in here. I genuinely laughed out loud at numerous scenes, and that alone was worth at least one playthrough. However, you can complete up to ten "laps" of the Seraphic Gate in order to find more rewards, different scenes, and of course, tougher battles. You can keep restarting your lap in order to build your characters up, but you can't jump back a floor, and that proves to be a problem if you have difficulty with the first battle. And it is indeed fairly challenging as you progress through its many levels and laps. You'll encounter some very cruel situations, such as an enemy sorceror casting Invoke Feather, of all things. Not only did this repeatedly revive an enemy that I took a full turn to kill, but it revived him with full HP. That, of course, never happens when you revive an ally.

All that hard work in the main game surely pays off in the bonus dungeon, right? Nope. All of your items, levels, equipment, money, and abilities are gone. You start from scratch, picking a party and gradually building it up again. It sounds unappealing, but in all honesty, I enjoyed the Seraphic Gate as a game on its own more than the regular game itself. Why? No more sin gauge. This allows you much more freedom to be genuinely strategic, much like a traditional tactical RPG. Sure, the gameplay flaws are still there, the stage layouts make it difficult to move around, and some very cheap tactics will be used on you, but at this point, you'll be used to it. Beyond that, it's a lot of fun.

After so many hours with this game, and so many curses uttered (or yelled) at my DS, I'm not entirely sure how to sum up the experience. It was not classic Valkyrie Profile, it was not a classic tactical RPG, nor was it a perfect blend of the two. I cannot recall a game that frustrated me as much as the first path did in this title, with its many confusing elements, cheap tactics, and limiting requirements. Admittedly, if I knew exactly how to do the battles right off the bat, I would have encountered fewer problems, but no one's an expert after simply reading the manual. I'd recommend anyone who plays this to consult an in-depth FAQ to learn what you'll really need to do in battle, because the game itself doesn't tell you much.

Again, it's either easy with continually awesome rewards, or it's tough with extra punishment and less rewards. Either way, all subsequent playthroughs are entirely too easy. It's one of the most imbalanced games I've ever played. But despite all that, the plot becomes intriguing, successful battles are very satisfying, and the Seraphic Gate is great all-around. I'd recommend getting this game used, if you can. The person who played my copy before selling it apparently only played for three hours. Now I understand why.