First off, the game's art style is fine, but doesn't really seem to know what it wants all that much. The colourfulness and anime-ish drawing style is really nice, but it doesn't seem to connect with the more gritty/dark tone the game tries to convey.
The music is fine. Nothing about it ever sounds too repetitive or boring, and I'm always super-critical of music in vidya, so this isFirst off, the game's art style is fine, but doesn't really seem to know what it wants all that much. The colourfulness and anime-ish drawing style is really nice, but it doesn't seem to connect with the more gritty/dark tone the game tries to convey.
The music is fine. Nothing about it ever sounds too repetitive or boring, and I'm always super-critical of music in vidya, so this is really a compliment. It's not Nobuo Uematsu but there is nothing about it that makes me want to silence the game. Sound effects are nice too, albeit again are a bit cartoony and don't necessarily fit the "Abyssal City" side the game tries to push in.
Story is delivered in a let's say somewhat successful way. You're not showered with over the top characters or ridiculous lines. It's gritty as it should be, Wyatt(who I'm playing with) does have a few witty lines and I didn't have a single character that made me roll my eyes or laugh at him.
With that said, that's pretty much all the story has been able to do thus far. Considering that I'm several hours in, it's quite disappointing and it reminds me of modern Final Fantasy type of stories where the mystery is kept for over 30 hours before being uncovered, only to reveal itself to be a predictable and absolutely uninteresting secret. I can't say that I'm sure of this since I didn't finish the game, but if it ends up being that the Abyssal City has some sort of magical stone or super-machine that can end the war between Angels and Demons, I will not be one bit surprised and the whole "let's ellipse our way through the game" storytelling is really going to come off as lame.
In a simple line, it does atmosphere quite decently IMO, but it stops at that. Storytelling seems to be nothing fantastic, even a bit meh sometimes, and nothing has piqued my interest yet.
Characters are also usually defined with a few lines like FF NPCs, and that just sucks. I can barely remember Wyatt's personality, the fact that the rest of the people around usually don't really bring much more really make you feel like you're going through a land of pixels with cardboard cutouts in it.
Best and worst part of this game is probably the gameplay.
As several people have said, the combat is fast, energetic and erratic as hell, reflex-heavy and made in full 80s spirit: you will have to die, and die, and die, before learning the bosses' patterns and how to beat them. It's very fun and the RPG system's complexity and freedom of use allows for a ton of personalisation and upgrading. Every enemy and boss has a pattern to learn and beat, whose complexity gives the game's fighting system its really huge potential. I won't lie, it's terribly frustrating and infuriating sometimes. The worst during your first playthrough is that you are "paid" with experience depending on how well you've beaten the boss. Meaning that you will go through 1 full hour of pattern-learning before beating a boss that takes 5 minutes, only to be given a measly 20XP that any grunt can give you!
That system does encourage excellence but it's a terrible pain for newcomers.
The other and worst part of the gameplay is the platforming, as everyone's said already.
The controls are way too imprecise to do decent platforming. Jumping on the keyboard is binded to up, which is just plain stupid, but can be changed. Sometimes you will have to do extremely tight jumps on small platforms with controls that are obviously not meant for it.
Walljumping is too automatic, sometimes you'll go left, jumping from ledge to higher ledge on your left, and for some reason Wyatt will jump right and fall all the way down. This happens a lot and the opposite does too, you'll climb up ledges when you want to walljump because your inputs aren't mint precise. In a fast-paced game as this, having to slowly input everything under fear of hyperreactive controls is a really huge bother. But when this platforming is required for bosses like Treu, Magus, or Shu Gohth, you will scream in rage at the mad controls that are getting you killed!
The numerous speed platforming puzzles are just an incredible pain as they require extremely tight movement that the control doesn't help you with one tiny bit. I often thought of Sonic the Hedgehog, the original one, and how Sonic always has acceleration and slowing down to help him do precise jumps. Valdis Story does not offer that kind of precision at all and whether it's platform jumping, avoiding hazards above or aside of you or doing several jumps to avoid enemy projectiles trying to knockback you down to hell, you will suffer tons with this.
Along with all that, the lack of a world map makes finding your way very tedious as you will have to try every way out of an area to see the next area's map...and the area maps don't even tell you what the exits lead to.
As a whole, the game is very much worth trying at least, but only if you can get into a try-and-die spirit and are ready to face the horribly poor and frustrating platforming.… Expand
Valdis Story: Abyssal CityYour Score0 out of 10User Score
