Valkyrie Elysium

Valkyrie Elysium arrives carrying a name with real weight behind it. Valkyrie Profile, the turn-based tactical RPG series it's named for, built a small but devoted cult following across two PlayStation-era entries, and this 2022 return -- the first mainline game in the franchise in over a decade -- swaps that structure entirely for fast, single-lane character action. Square Enix and developer Soleil Ltd. sent a new Valkyrie across a dying Norse world, collecting the souls of fallen warriors before Ragnarok arrives, and the result landed at a soft Metacritic 65 with critics and a Mixed 67% positive rating from its own Steam audience -- a genuinely divided reception that splits almost entirely along one line: how good the combat is versus how little else the game does to support it.

The combat is the one thing almost everyone agrees on

Strip away the story and the loot and what's left is a fast, flashy action system that draws consistent praise even from reviewers who otherwise can't recommend the game. Valkyrie strings together melee combos, elemental magic and up to three summonable "Einherjar" companions, each with distinct movesets that let players lean into ranged pressure, heavy melee, or a mix of both. Boss fights in particular are singled out repeatedly as a highlight -- more than one detailed review calls them the best individual moments in the whole campaign, with movesets and presentation that noticeably outstrip the regular enemy encounters between them. It's not a deep system by character-action genre standards, but it's responsive and immediately satisfying in short bursts, which is exactly the quality that keeps pulling mixed reviewers back toward a lukewarm recommendation rather than an outright pass.

Everything else feels like an afterthought

The trouble is how thin everything wrapped around that combat turns out to be. The campaign is linear and mission-based, sending Valkyrie through similarly structured arenas against repeating enemy rosters recoloured for later chapters -- several of the most detailed negative reviews describe the game as visibly repeating the same fight in a slightly different room dozens of times over a 20-30 hour campaign. Loot draws an even more specific, more consistent complaint: treasure chests scattered through each level routinely contain minor consumables rather than meaningful gear, which undercuts the basic risk-and-reward loop most action RPGs lean on to keep exploration feeling worthwhile. For a game built on an RPG's name, several reviewers note there's strikingly little RPG structure actually underneath the action.

A story that struggles to justify the return

Longtime series fans hold this game to a particularly high bar, and the story is where that scrutiny lands hardest. Reviewers describe the plot as forgettable and thinly sketched compared to the two PlayStation-era Valkyrie Profile games, with a smaller cast and less narrative ambition than the setup -- collecting the souls of the fallen before the end of the world -- would suggest. It's not universally panned; some reviewers specifically credit the einherjar companion vignettes, brief character backstories unlocked through side content, as a genuine callback to what made the original games' storytelling distinctive. But the more common reaction across the review corpus is disappointment that a franchise built on rich, tragic character writing landed on something considerably more surface-level this time.

The fanbase this was named for is largely unconvinced

Reading across Steam's negative review corpus, the single most common frame isn't "this is a bad game" but "this is not a Valkyrie Profile game," and that distinction matters for anyone deciding whether to buy. Several of the most detailed, highest-voted reviews come specifically from longtime fans of the tactical originals, disappointed that the turn-based combat, elaborate character-building systems and morally ambiguous storytelling that defined those games have been replaced almost entirely with a straightforward action framework. It's a franchise-identity complaint more than a quality complaint, and it means reception genuinely depends on what a player is bringing to the table: reviewers with no attachment to the earlier games are far more willing to take Valkyrie Elysium on its own terms, and rate it noticeably higher as a result.

Price, and what the achievement curve suggests

At full price -- NZ$99.95, with no discount active at the time of this review -- Valkyrie Elysium asks a lot for a campaign the review corpus consistently describes as repetitive and narratively thin. "Wait for a deep sale" is close to the single most repeated piece of advice across both positive and negative reviews, including from players who ultimately did enjoy their time with it. Global achievement data adds a supporting data point: the two earliest, story-tied unlocks sit at roughly 87% completion, but that falls off sharply by the midgame, with the hardest tracked goals down under 5%, consistent with a real share of the owner base either finishing the shorter path through the story or losing interest well before the credits.

Final verdict

Valkyrie Elysium is a genuinely competent character action game hiding under a franchise name that sets expectations it doesn't try to meet. The combat earns its praise -- fast, flashy and consistently fun across dozens of reviews that otherwise disagree on almost everything else -- but the story, loot systems and mission variety around it feel underbuilt for a full-price RPG, and longtime fans of the tactical originals have every right to feel shortchanged by how little of that series survived the transition. Taken on its own terms, and ideally at a discount, it's a reasonably fun way to spend twenty-odd hours. Taken as a Valkyrie Profile game, it's a disappointment its own community has been remarkably consistent about saying so.