Welcome to Eldar, the land of many grays and browns, brainless enemies and mercenaries, and mute characters. A console first for the action role-playing series, Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga presents plenty of problems from the beginning: an awful color palette, yawn-worthy cutscenes, stiff combat, poor enemy and mercenary AI, and a predictable story.
Vallkyria Chronicles shares the same frustrations as MGS4, with its gratuitous cutscenes redeemed by glimpses of genius. The premise might be unspectacular – set in a world at war, you control a military unit in a quest to free your country from Imperial occupation – but gorgeous presentation and intriguing gameplay make it a rare gem that stands out from the crowded shelves of RPG sequels and remakes.
If there were dieticians for videogame consoles, their diagnosis for the DS would be, "you're very healthy, but I think you should cut down on the RPGs. It seems like you have one every week and half the time they're just remakes filled with empty calories." But in spite of this appraisal, we think they'd make an exception for Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume.
We reckon developer Artoon’s mastery of irony is pretty spectacular: here’s a game called Vampire Rain; it features hundreds of vampires (check) and it never stops raining (check). That’s like calling Gran Turismo… “Car Drive”. Bravo, then, for that. It’s not that Altered Species is appalling.
Vancouver 2010 developer, Brit outfit Eurocom, have managed to perfectly reflect the public’s mood of total indifference with their game, and this is really the only score on which they can be warmly congratulated.
Featuring a stingy 14 events, only half of which are any fun to play, this isn’t what you’d call ‘good value for money’.
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