Before the merger, Enix was Squaresoft's biggest competitor in the RPG market. Enix made plenty of decent games, but this one stands as one of my favorites. Unfortunately, Valkyrie Profile might just be one of the hardest RPGs to find at a decent price online, and I'm convinced that it probably doesn't even EXIST at your local retailer's anymore. Still, I'd advise you to go on Ebay or Amazon to hunt it down, as it's one of the most original RPGs ever made.

Based on Norse mythology (with surprising accuracy despite a few creative liberties), the game revolves around a low-level goddess named Lenneth, who is a Valkyrie. If you know your mythology, Valkyries are warriors of Valhalla, and Odin has charged Lenneth to find warriors from Earth to fight with the Gods against the Giants in an

impending war. So you (Lenneth) must go to Earth and collect them. Only catch is that you can only take souls, so you seek out fighters who are nearing the ends of their lives. Needless to say, some of these death scenes are very moving, like the noble who sacrifices his life to save a servant girl he loved or the adopted girl who dies trying to prove that she doesn't need to be in her family's actual bloodline to inherit their power. You grow to care about many of the characters.

After gathering your warriors for each of the eight chapters, you spend the remainder of the chapters fighting in dungeons. You can also skip ahead to the end of the chapter if you want, where you have to send up one of your fighters to

Valhalla as a tribute. However, skipping the dungeons will cause you to miss out on quite a bit of plot. Plus, it speeds up the game's only real detriment. It's VERY linear. Going places takes a certain amount of hours, and after a certain amount of hours, the chapter ends. When you get to the last chapter, the option to explore no longer exists.

Combat makes up for this flaw, however. A party consists of four people, although Lenneth is almost always required to be in it. They are arranged in a diamond formation with one face button assigned to each character. Each fighter can attack up to three times with three button presses (except for magicians). You can have them all attack at once, or you can use timing with your button presses to create combos

that build up a combo meter. If it builds up past 100, your characters can each perform a finishing move. It's always satisfying. For example, I had Lenneth slash someone up into the air, hit him with my magician's spell, had my samurai do a combo when he landed, then filled him with arrows with my archer. As if that wasn't enough, each character then got a finishing move. It's loads of fun and never gets old.

Even though the ultra-linear gameplay is a serious drawback Valkyrie Profile's positive aspects more than make up for it. With great effects (for its time), great combat, and hours of actual recorded dialogue (quite a feat considering the system it's on), Valkyrie Profile is good enough to tear you away from Final Fantasy VII for a while.

Score: 9.5/10