Square Enix has long been the king of role-playing, with games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, and Octopath Traveler. While those big hitters get all the attention, one of Square’s biggest secrets is the robust array of properties and classic games it has under its belt, something that more companies have started to utilize through various remakes and reboots. Cast and point: Valkyrie Profile. Twenty-five years later, this fantasy take on Norse mythology feels like one of the most visionary RPGs of all time — and it needs to come back.
Originally released on PlayStation in 1999, the world and narrative of Valkyrie Profile are heavily inspired by Norse mythology, casting you as a Valkyrie named Lenneth as she travels through the realms of Midgard to collect the souls of fallen heroes to serve as einherjar — warriors that’ll accompany her when the apocalypse, Ragnarok, comes. But Lenneth discovers a deep secret hidden in the human realms, as she starts to recall memories of her own human life.
The best word to describe Valkyrie Profile is unorthodox. It’s the most atypical RPG you can find, both in terms of narrative and gameplay. This is a game that constantly subverts the way you expect an RPG to play out, breaking the linear nature of games at the time for something more free-form, where you need to uncover the story, and the world, piece by piece.
Essentially you can travel anywhere you want on the world map of Midgard, with each location having its own kind of dedicated storytelling where you learn about a specific hero, or heroes. Once you land you can explore towns and dungeons on a 2D plane, poking around for secrets and side quests.
Every location in Valkyrie Profile has a self-contained tale that revels in dark and distraught storytelling. A poor thief who grew up in the slums, put down by soldiers before his life could flourish. A fallen soldier barred from entering the afterlife in Valhalla. A devoted Samuria struggling to find a cure for his terminally ill sister.
All of the stories in Valkyrie Profile weave together and intermix to create a rich tapestry of Midgard, one filled with tragedy, sadness, and, of course, hope. But it’s up to you to piece all the stories together. Of course, the other vital pieces are its expansive dungeons crawling and fantastic turn-based combat system.
In battles you and the enemy teams each take turns, and when it’s your turn you can hit different buttons to have your units attack, with each attack using up a portion of your action bar. If you hit buttons at the right time you can string attacks together to form a combo, injecting a little bit of action into the typical turn-based formula.
Between narrative, exploration, and combat, Valkyrie Profile crafted a unique identity, but the series would never again reach the height of that first game. In 2022, Square Enix released a new entry for the first time in a decade, called Valkyrie Elysium. While it bore the same name, and had impressive combat, Elysium inherited almost nothing that made the first game special and felt like a step back.
The last few years have proven that players are hungry for obtuse and frictional RPGs, games that really challenge you to dig in and explore. Just looked at the runaway success of games like Elden Ring and Dragon’s Dogma 2, or even smaller games like SaGa: Emerald Beyond. RPGs are on the rise, and a richly designed world with layers like Valkyrie Profile could make a huge impact right now. That’s doubly true for anything inspired by Norse mythology, which the likes of God of War has made more popular than ever.
Square Enix has taken to re-imagining class franchises lately, with Visions of Mana and Romancing SaGa 2 this year, and it’d be an absolute crime to not see Valkyrie Profile get the same careful treatment.
