![]() Lots of winding paths, treasures to find, bosses and optional challenges. The dungeons are pretty darn great, some top tier JRPG dungeoning. I am of two minds regarding the exploration in this game. It's a really good climax to the game and works well also as a 'fight against fate' narrative, way better than a lot of more modern JRPGs that feel far less authentic in their portrayal of such a character (Persona 5, FFVIIR come to mind). It feels like a surprisingly well executed 'My friends are my power!' kind of moment, and Lenneth really comes across as this tortured expression of grief, loyalty, and straight up vengeance, leading into her complete and total rejection of any other plan or 'fate' for her mortal or God in kind. The additional scenes and dungeons throughout the game, the sequence of finding the earring, breakdown over Lucian's death, the confrontation with Hrist with Brahms and Lezard, and Lenneth's soul transfer leading into her being able to grow a la Odin to face off against Loki and finally protect her allies and acknowledge them as comrades is so good. This is something which I wish they hadn't done, but I also imagine if I was playing it without a guide as a kid and lucked into this on a third play through with a lot of experimentation and hinting from playground friends I would have probably lost my goddamned mind. It makes Persona 5 look like child's play by comparison. The True Ending requirement is probably one of the most obtuse ones I've seen in a game. It is nice that in some way it lets the player make connections for themself and speculate. I hope Silmeria doesn't do the same thing (I bet it does!). Stuff like the role of Hrist, all the Dipan stuff, and Silmeria + Brahms are just…unexplained? I suspect it's probably set up for the sequel going by the name, but if I played it at launch I'd have probably been a bit more miffed by that with no sequel on the horizon. The ways in which the stories do intertwine can also be very subtle and I quite appreciate that the game is willing to not make the narrative so obvious all the time.Ī fair amount of story threads also feel like they are introduced and then just dropped immediately. If more sections had extended playable backstories like the opening I suspect that might have gone a ways to alleviating this feeling. you never 'play' the story of the Einherjar outside of the intro). Some of the stories themselves are quite good, but they are all too short to get attached and don't really involve any actual gameplay (i.e. In a way it feels a bit like Octopath traveller, in that the characters are quite formulaically recruited, and have some relevance to each other occasionally but it's few and far between. There are a handful of them that have relationships with one another, and whose stories intertwine at times, but for the most part they are all separate - and because they have to die you can usually see how their story will unfold from the outset. The Einherjar story episodes in comparison that make up the bulk of the early game feel a bit too formulaic. I never thought I'd enjoy an amnesiac protagonist in 2021 though. This was the highlight of the story for me, and it only really kicks into gear in the latter half of the game. Everything that involves Lenneth's backstory and main character arc is just really solid, as well as stuff which speaks more to the interplay of the gods and humans in general. Both because it's a great acknowledgement of the universality of myth, but also because it gives the story a hook in the exploration of the conflict Lenneth feels between trying to empathize with human suffering while also fulfilling her role as Valkyrie. The choice to make the player play as an amnesiac goddess who goes back and forth between Midgard and Asgard, while paying tribute to a lot of Norse mythology was an exceptional choice, especially for a JRPG in the late 90s.
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