[[2026 Games]]  ## 2026-01-11 tri-Ace might be a rare case of taking [[Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain|goop]] too far. Theirs is a design ethos that, generally, I’m happy to leave behind in the [[PlayStation 2]]-era. Annoying missables, weird gimmicks, unexplained mechanics…it can get pretty ugly. All that said, when they hit, they hit. And at least of what I’ve played, **Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria** *hits*. It’s such a hard game to describe, but I’ll do my best. Most of the time it’s a gorgeous 3D game that runs in a 2D side-scrolling platformer perspective. Here you explore, solve puzzles, grab treasure and so on. Then in combat you jump to a 3D battlefield called the Advanced Tactical Combination battle system. Until you make contact with an enemy, of course. Then it switches to 2D *again*, to replicate the combat from the original **Valkyrie Profile**. You have a party of four, with each character representing a face button. You have to time your button presses so your characters coordinate properly and do more damage. The higher the combo number, the better, and if you can hit 100, you’ll be able to use soul crush special attacks. But wait, there’s more. First, positioning. In that 3D space, you want to try and get behind enemies to do more damage while avoiding their damage cones — step on one and you’ll get hit. And good lord do the enemies in **Silmeria** hit like a truck. Oh but maybe don’t always get behind an enemy, actually. Because you can break off parts of an enemy depending on where you attack it and what attacks you do. Doing this not only does more damage and disables enemy attacks, but lets you collect monster parts which you can equip as accessories. …Or you could sell them to shop keepers. If you do that, you can craft new, even more powerful equipment. I hope you like grinding. :) And did you think you could just equip that new stuff and call it a day, you silly fucker? I thought you’d figure it out by now. Every piece of equipment has a color and symbol attached to it. Group them together and not only do you get stat bonuses for said equipment, but access to new skills you can equip as well. I need to be very clear: outside of maybe skipping out on grinding the really good equipment, *you cannot ignore any of this shit*. **Silmeria** expects you to understand and fully embrace its intricacies, or else perish. You can’t just run in, mash attack and cal it a day. One optional dungeon I entered about 10 hours in absolutely beat my brakes off until I realized that my equipment was doing nothing to ghost enemies. I then had to swap my loadout, equipping holy weapons and skills that made it so my party did extra damage to ghosts. It’s the same with moment-to-moment combat too: don’t pay attention to what a monster is doing, and you’ll find ¾ of your party dying from an AOE blast. It’s not for the faint of heart. But for me, a certified grade-A systems-first sicko™, it’s exhilarating. I’ve loved every second of it. And this sequel eschews all the shit I don’t like from the original, like the silly time-limits and archaic path to the true ending. I’m not super deep into the narrative, but it’s a bit more focused than the original **VP**. I like the core cast so far, even if they all have that weird tri-Ace motion-capture feel to them. It kinda sucks that the Einherjar aren’t as integrated into the story, but reading the character bios is enough for me. Plus certain combos of characters will lead to unique conversations during battle. I’m determined to wrap this one up, so I should be back with my full thoughts soon.