Valkyrie Elysium (PS5) Review

Battle Hardened, Soulless Heroes

I’ve played enough games to feel when something could have potentially gone wrong during development and Valkyrie Elysium feels so much like a series of mistakes given form, possibly for the project not to be a complete waste of time and talent. I don’t necessarily know that something went wrong with this game’s creation, however, it is unmistakably a hollow experience. There is a bit of merit to be found but playing Valkyrie Elysium is a trial for only the most curious. 

Valkyrie Elysium was revealed to a quiet amount of fanfare. Valkyrie Profile has a slew of defenders and artistically it is one of the most beautiful pieces of 2D character art of the PlayStation 1 era, being just odd enough to be something special. In fact, Valkyrie Profile is so loved that there is a modern port coming soon, one that was supposed to coincide with the release of Elysium as a bonus. Unfortunately, the port was pushed back and maybe that should have happened to Elysium as well. 

If I were to make comparisons, Valkyrie Elysium is similar to NieR in how it plays and how it is structured but instead of the story keeping me playing it was Elysium’s combat and progression. Players control a single warrior, a Valkyrie given form and purpose by Odin in a dying world where Fenrir and the undead roam Midgard freely. There’s a bleakness to everything and few people have survived the war. Valkyrie, called Maria by one character so I’ll be referring to her as such, blindly follows the orders of Odin, gathering followers called Einherjar and searching for powerful weapons to use against Fenrir while being occasionally thwarted by another Valkyrie, Hilde. This results in a simple gameplay structure of getting orders from Odin in Valhalla, picking a main quest or subquest from a menu, powering up weapons and skills, and finding little bits of lore sprinkled throughout missions. 

The mission structure is not a strange one to several Square Enix titles; Crisis Core also uses this to a much greater degree of success but Valkyrie Elysium does nothing but string players along. Granted the game’s combat and leveling systems are just engaging enough to be satisfying and I loved finding new weapons and extending combos. Gaining power hits that part of the brain that likes to see numbers go up but the gameplay does get mechanically more complex over time in a way that is fun. Combat is the only interesting bit though and unfortunately, it overstays its welcome. 

Bosses and monsters are visually and mechanically interesting.

Midgard is mostly dead, leaving only hordes of monsters to battle. The main party Maria builds through the game is supposed to be the characters we connect with the most but their stories are delivered so poorly, almost as if the game was at some point a different title altogether. 99% of the lore bits found say nothing and even the game’s big revelation is written so matter-of-factly and so predictably.  

If there were to be a narrative theme in Valkyrie Elysium it would be the dangers of loyalty framed through a character whose entire existence is subservience to a higher power. Maria is a dry, boring character because she is a dutiful soldier. This doesn’t excuse the sheer lack of storytelling in the game though and by the end four endings are spun together to attempt to add any sort of weight to the 30-hour playtime, pulling all the tricks that I’ve come to recognize as a desperate attempt to save a sinking vessel. Gorgeously rendered cutscenes await in the four endings and some characters even have outstanding voice performances with Fenrir being the standout by far. Yet, a shoehorned romance, a trope-riddled cry of breaking destiny, and flashy battles cannot save Valkyrie Elysium, potentially doing far more damage than good to a small series that has tremendous potential. 

The people who worked on Valkyrie Elysium’s combat deserve so much credit. Each attack feels fun to string together. Elements are fun to use because they are essential to beating enemies quickly. There is so much stellar animation at play. The game immediately grants the player a grappling hook move that allows for one to stay in the fight to keep things fast-paced. Enemies are grouped in ways that are fun to pick apart, similar to how each monster in Doom Eternal has a vital role in the pacing of encounters. Said beasts have fascinating designs and boss fights are mostly fun and challenging.

Yet, that’s all this game has and it has a lot of it. 

Combat is frequent and some chapters can take several hours to finish. Not only that but one element is locked behind a pre-order bonus so any enemy with darkness as a weakness essentially has a defensive boost. Sure, there are a few dark spells but these are far less useful than most, hit less often, and with less impact than gaining the element for standard attacks. This coupled with fights that take several minutes to finish with a lot of inputs per skirmish and having to hack away at minions every few steps made finishing Valkryie Elysium a chore. I honestly hoped the game’s ending might pull things together; surely a release this devoid of merit had something at the end but there’s not really aside from an exceptionally cool boss and a predictable end to the tale. 

Valkyrie Elysium is one of the strangest games I have played in years. If it wasn’t for the prestige of Valkyrie Profile, me being generally into all games from Square Enix, and doing this review I would have walked away from Elysium way sooner. That said, I bested the game’s trials, gained all of the weapons, and beat one of the game’s final bosses. I couldn’t bring myself to replay every long-winded chapter just to see the other endings.

Thank goodness we live in a world where endings are uploaded online. . . 

Elysium may have been a resourceful way to recoup losses (again pure speculation) but the thing that suffers the most is the potential for the Valkyrie franchise to continue. In different circumstances, Valkyrie Elysium could have been fantastic but now it will live forever as an oddity. At the least, I can only go up from here when it comes to my experience with the Valkyrie games and I really look forward to the modern release of Valkyrie Profile. 

There is not much of a reason for anyone to play Valkryie Elysium, there are far better games out there for every facet of it. Drop this combat into another game with an actual story though and that could be special. 

SCORES

GAMEPLAY - 6/10

VISUALS - 4/10

SOUND - 6/10

CONTROLS - 6/10

REPLAY VALUE - 3/10

OVERALL - 5/10

Learn more about Valkyrie Elysium on the official website; the game is available on PS4 and PS5. A digital PS5 copy was provided for review purposes. Screenshots were captured natively on a PS5.