Valkyrie Elysium

Respectable combat carries Valkyrie Elysium through a bland-looking action-JRPG with predictable story and straightforward level design.

Valkyrie Elysium's mediocre action-RPG gameplay and threadbare story and characters wear out their welcome long before the game wraps up.

Have some high points, but they soon give way to glaring faults. Not the worst, but difficult to recommend.

Valkyrie Elysium feels much more like a spin-off entry in the Valkyrie Profile franchise than a full-fledged new main title. Its smaller scope, budget, and design lend it a “PlayStation 2 game” feel. The game’s combat is its saving grace, alongside some fun character interactions. Without the Valkyrie name and branding, Elysium could’ve very well been written off as a somewhat generic action game.

Valkyrie Elysium is a game of two halves. The level design and objectives feel at least two generations old and the characters and storyline are more like placeholders than the finished article. There's no capital F feelings here or much in the way of narrative justification, but if you're okay with that and you just want fifteen to twenty hours of fast, frantic, fluid combat then we can just about recommend this one.

While the combat to this Valkyrie Profile action RPG spin-off is top notch, the rest of the game ranges from mediocre to merely serviceable.

Valkyrie Elysium's character action combat and usage of Valkyrie series themes and elements make it an above-average action RPG, but it sometimes lacks ambition.

Valkyrie Elysium is a disappointing, befuddled, and mistimed return for the Valkyrie series. Its Einherjar-supported combat system only takes the game so far when it’s saddled by an underwhelming story and artificially extended by crude level design. It falls into the trap of chasing trends, turning classic JRPGs into action games and copying other successful titles like Dark Souls without adding much new to the genre, when many fans would have been more than satisfied with an updated version of a standard Valkyrie game.

Valkyrie Elysium delivers an average action experience that fails to revive a classic RPG series.

A fast-paced combat system and operatic soundtrack from Motoi Sakuraba aren't enough to save Valkyrie Elysium from a fate worse than Ragnarok: mediocrity.