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PLATFORM
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Vita
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BATTLE
SYSTEM
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INTERACTION
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ORIGINALITY
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STORY
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MUSIC
& SOUND
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VISUALS
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CHALLENGE
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Unbalanced
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COMPLETION
TIME
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20-40 Hours
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OVERALL
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+
Interesting setting.
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Long load times.
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Tedious combat.
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Difficulty spikes at random.
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Classes lacking in depth.
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Boring side quests make
grinding a chore.
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Click
here for scoring
definitions
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Valhalla
Knights 3 is the latest entry in the now
long-running, but poorly received action RPG
series localized by XSEED. Developed by Marvelous,
the game at first glance appears to attempt to
finally bring something worthwhile from the
series. Sadly that couldn't be farther from the
truth. An interesting setting is quickly wasted on
a tedious story. Combat is boring and quickly
loses any level of fun due to the terrible
missions and the endless grinding that is often
required between them. Insulting "sexy time" mini
games don't help matters either. By the end,
players may wonder how the series even made it to
a fourth game.
Valhalla
Knights 3's story at first seems promising,
with a unique setting and premise. Taking place in
an ancient fortress that has been converted to a
prison, the player creates their own character who
is forced by magic to be a spy searching for some
sort of power hidden in the prison. The story
doesn't really develop beyond this basic outline.
Due to the grind required in the game, story
sequences generally come up infrequently. Even
when they do, character development is minimal and
even the party members forced upon the player for
a good portion of the game never manage to show
any real personality. Because of this, the
eventual twists and turns near the end of the game
fall completely flat. RPGs where the player can
create their own party aren't typically known for
good stories, but even so Valhalla Knights 3
feels particularly uninspired.
Sexy
time is less sexy than
originally advertised.
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Gameplay sadly
does not fare any better than the story. Right
from the start when creating the main character
the game attempts to hide its shortcomings with
tons of customization options. There are a large
number of classes, and with a max party size of
seven it seems like the game provides boundless
party customization. Once a player starts digging
into battles however, the true shallow nature of
the game becomes apparent. Players have a basic
attack, a secondary attack or block depending on
equipment, and skills assigned to the d-pad. A
shoulder button toggles to a second set of skills,
so characters have access to a wide variety of
skills. The problem is each class only has a small
number of available skills to learn to begin with,
and for some classes those skills won't even be
usable with certain equipment. The game seems to
remedy this by allowing multi-classing, but
considering the player has to start at level one
for a new class and the fact that the equipment
and stat differences between them may make many
skills useless, it hardly serves to fix the
problem.
Even if skill
variety weren't an issue, the combat would still
be largely tedious and uninteresting. There's no
skill or strategy to it. Either the player will be
mashing regular attacks to defeat weaker enemies
or spamming a class's few group attacks to take
down multiple enemies quickly. Switching party
members requires the player to cycle through the
whole party until the player gets to the desired
member, and there's no other way to control other
characters than giving vague "attack" and "defend"
commands to the whole group. Since the story
missions often take sharp increases in difficulty,
players are forced to grind ad nauseum, which
serves to further exacerbate the tedium of the
combat system. With nothing but a ridiculous and
borderline offensive "sexy time" mini game to
break up the experience, playing through Valhalla
Knights 3 is a complete chore that fails to
tap into the joy of creating a party of one's own.
Be
prepared to see more combat then
you'd ever really want.
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There are more
issues on top of this. The game world is extremely
small, containing a small number of outside areas
and an even smaller number of dungeon areas. These
are reused often for story quests. Worse yet, the
story quests generally consist of simply walking
to a location and then fighting a boss or two.
There's little to no variety at all. The final
dungeon eventually spices things up, but by then
it's far too late. To top it off, loot obtained
from chests and enemies is rarely worthwhile, and
combined with a slow leveling process means making
a powerful party is a glacial process.
Visuals in the
game are clean, but they don't push the hardware
very much, and often seem like they wouldn't be
out of place on the PSP. For the most part monster
designs are not complex or eye catching, and
rarely does the game provide anything more
fasinating than a slime. Music is similarly
unremarkable with a few standouts but mostly
forgettable generic orchestral themes. The only
major issue from a technical perspective are the
loading times. Despite the simplicity of
everything, each area seems to take a
painstakingly long time to load. Considering how
often reloading can be required once the game hits
a difficulty spike, these load times can become
maddening.
In the end,
there's simply nothing interesting or worthwhile
about Valhalla Knights 3. The story is
uninspired and underdeveloped. The battle system
is tedious and worsened by the fact that the game
requires the player to enter into it far too
often. The visuals are unimpressive, but not
awful, yet require some of the longest loading
time on the Vita. Even the class system, which
appears vast at first, turns out to be shallow and
an utter disappointment. It's impossible to
recommend Valhalla Knights 3 and may very
well be past time to put this series out to
pasture.
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