It's been a long time since I wrote a review, but here's one for the entire PCE series of Valis.
The was a lot of Valis talk in these boards in the past months, and that's what got me in the mood to play through the whole series. Before, I was never really into the series, having only
really played part III on the Genesis. It was okay, but there seemed to many better games of the type. I'm sure what drew the attention of a lot of people (including myself) into the series initially was because of the skimpy-clad anime chicks. This art style is dime-a-dozen in video games these days, but back in the 80's / early 90's, Valis series was one of the handful of games where it seemed like the designers really put some effort on the character designs.
Though the statement about there being better games of this type still may hold true, having played through the Turbo versions gave me a whole new appreciation of the series.
Just a short little blurb about each one.
Valis I - The only Super CD-ROM entry of them all. A very nice remake (or it seems to be, I've never played the MSX version) -- it's a pretty solid game. The graphics are cool, the cinemas, like all other valis games, are well done, and the character animations are done nicely. Yuko looks a lot lankier than she does in later entries, and her magic isn't as really necessary for this one (I don't think I ever really used it). The game is pretty easy, until you get to the last level, where you have to pretty much memorize each single enemy character location. I spent 2-3 times as much on the last level alone than on the rest of the levels. A really talented player could probably finish it in a day, it took me a few more sessions.
Valis II - This game sucks. People at least hold the music in high regard, but I didn't even think that was all that special, though I never thought it was bad. Crappiest graphics of the bunch. Crappiest control of the bunch. And finally, easiest of the bunch. I'd hate to have spent ~$50 on this when it first came out.
Valis III - This one seems to get the most love, as it's the finale of the "Yuko" saga. The characters aren't quite as varied as part IV (they move around at same speed, jump & slide the same height/distance), but nevertheless, learning to exploit the difference in their weaponry and magic is crucial in getting past many of the stages. The water level with the enemy freezing / bell ringing was brutal, but not too many games give you that "AHHHH" feeling when you beat the damn stage. Pretty challenging game, but not impossible by any means.
Valis IV - My personal favorite of the series. By part IV, the developers really seemed to have figured out the turbo hardware -- the stages look good, the cinemas are many time full screen and awesome, many of the bosses are huge and pretty damn cool, and it even has healthy amounts of parallax-scrolling in some stages. The characters are completely different in their skillset -- Rena has her slide, Amu has her double jumps, Asfa is immune to certain damage-causing elements, and their weapons/magic are completely different as well. Many levels in this chapter are challenging as well. Overall, there's more challenging stages here than all the others (but the water/bell stage from part III takes the cake as the most difficult one in the entire series). And the developers were able to squeeze all this using the paltry CD-ROM2 RAM (what was it, 64k?) - Quite impressive.
In all, a pretty good series. It definitely exploits the use of the skimpy-clad chicks to make an above-average platform action game little more enjoyable, but hey, nothing wrong with that.
My other PCE game reviews:
Ane-sanBabel
Blood GearCosmic Fantasy 1Dragon Slayer: Legend of HeroesDragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes IIDowntown Nekketsu MonogatariKO Seiki: Beast SanjuushiKuusoukagaku Sekai: Gulliver BoyNekketsu Legend Baseballer
Tengai Makyou: Itouryoudan & Iga Ninden GaiouXak I & IIXak III
Topic: Finished Valis I ~ IV! (Read 478 times)
