If you’re a fan of Square Enix, you’ll probably know the company’s current line-up of upcoming JRPGs, and amongst your Dragon Quests and Final Fantasies is Valkyrie Elysium, releasing as early as September 29 for PS4 and PS5, and on Steam on November 11!
But there’s a lot more to talk about than just a release date. Today, SE has also shared a “release date trailer” of the Action-JRPG, depicting snippets of visuals and gameplay and receiving a mixture of praise and criticisms. We’ll get into the trailer responses in a second, but let’s first talk about what we’ll be expecting in the latest title in the Valkyrie series.
Fans can get a gist of not only pockets of Elysium’s new story, but also of how the game is going to play. It’s mostly a showcase of high-speed action combat at the hands of Valkyrie, the protagonist, who attempts to quell the imminent Ragnarok and to restore the world around her. We can see the addition of a very obvious combo system UI as an incentive of sorts to brandish the game’s intended playstyle of getting huge hit-combos from hacking and stabbing your enemies all over the place.
There’s also the showcase of the ‘Einherjar’, a spirit companion who fights alongside you in combat. When your ability to control your Einherjar is mastered, they provide both active and passive support to your battles. While the degree of tactical thinking will go appreciated by most players, there are still concerns about the game in its other aspects.
These new features are well and good, but what really brings a release like this together is its fluid controls, which really affect the impact your attacks have on your enemies, done well in series like Resident Evil or Dark Souls. And although Valkyrie Elysium’s story is dramatic and exciting enough to pique our interests, the edited gameplay looks quite cheap in comparison. The characters almost seem to be sliding back and forth when hitting enemies, and the animations in general look a bit rough around the edges. It could well turn out to be amazing, but it’ll have a lot to prove yet.
Nevertheless, if Valkyrie Elysium’s combat rigidity doesn’t drag it down, you can expect to fulfil your dreams of restoring a doomed world for the price across PS4, PS5, and Steam of US$59.99.
