Valkyrie Profile is a role-playing game about a goddess who collects the dead. It came out for the original PlayStation in Japan on December 22, 1999, and in North America on August 29, 2000, developed by tri-Ace and published by Enix. It sold over 700,000 copies. It earned its reputation the hard way: by being strange, difficult, and unlike anything else in its genre.
It is also very good, and it holds up. Score: 8.7 of 10.
Lenneth Wakes in Asgard
You play as Lenneth, a valkyrie and one of three goddesses of fate. Her sisters are Hrist and Silmeria. The three share the same body, though only one is awake at a time, and you can tell them apart by hair color and armor.
Lenneth has been tasked by Odin and Freya with recruiting einherjar — the souls of slain heroes — for the war between the Æsir and the Vanir. That war ends in Ragnarok, the battle to decide the fate of all creation. She travels Midgard, finds the dead, and decides who is worth sending to Valhalla.
The hook is not the war. It is Lenneth herself. She was human once. That life was taken from her memory when she became a Valkyrie, and the game spends its length handing it back to her in pieces. The result is a story that works as a slow reveal rather than a campaign.
Twenty-Four Playable Characters
Valkyrie Profile has 24 playable characters. Some are only available on normal or hard mode. That number is the whole design in miniature: this is a game about assembling a roster, and it is willing to hide part of that roster from you.
Each chapter, Lenneth must send at least one einherjar to Valhalla. Two is the maximum. There are requirements outlined at the start of each chapter, and sending the right soul at the right time matters. Send one, and that character is gone from your party.
That is a real cost, and the game does not soften it. You recruit someone, you learn how they died, you train them, and then you mail them to Asgard and keep playing without them. Most RPGs hoard their cast. Valkyrie Profile spends it.
Dungeons That Play Like a Platformer
Here is the part that still feels unlike anything else. Dungeon exploration plays more like a platform game than a traditional RPG. Lenneth is the only visible character. She jumps, slides, swings her sword, and shoots ice crystals.
Those ice crystals are the whole toolkit. They make temporary steps. They freeze enemies. They solve puzzles. They are not a combat gimmick bolted onto a dungeon crawler; they are the dungeon crawler.
Enemies are visible on the map. Attack one before it notices you and Lenneth gets the first strike. Walk into one instead, and there is a 50% chance the enemy attacks first. That single percentage does more work than most games’ entire stealth systems. It makes you pay attention to a room instead of walking through it.
On the world map, Lenneth flies over Midgard in a 3D third-person view. Press Start and she performs a Spiritual Concentration, which reveals new dungeons, cities, towns, and recruitable einherjar. Enter a town and the game switches to a 2D profile view. Lenneth disguises herself as a human and talks to people who have no idea what is standing next to them.
The Death Scenes Are the Point
The einherjar are the best writing in the game. Character development for most of them consists of their death scenes, and those scenes are dramatic, emotional, and steeped in symbolism and metaphor. You also get dialogue between them and the gods once they reach Valhalla.
This is the structural gamble. You meet a stranger. You watch them die badly. You decide whether they are worth a slot, and then you decide whether to send them away. The game makes you care about people it has already told you are dead.
Not every scene lands. The tone can tip into melodrama, and the symbolism occasionally does the work that dialogue should. But the ambition is real, and when a death scene connects, it connects harder than a hundred hours of party banter.
Platina, Lucian, and the Poisoned Field
The best of these belongs to Platina. She is 14, living in the village of Coriander with cruel parents. The village falls on hard times. Her friend Lucian learns her parents plan to sell her into slavery. The two run away. Platina breathes the toxic pollen of poisonous flowers in a nearby field and dies in Lucian’s arms.
That is the opening. It is also the game telling you exactly what kind of story this is.
Lenneth’s first recruits are the princess Jelanda and the mercenary Arngrim. Arngrim embarrasses Jelanda’s father without meaning to. Jelanda plots revenge, gets kidnapped by a traitorous court minister, and is transformed into a monster. Lenneth helps Arngrim kill the monster and claims Jelanda as an einherjar.
Arngrim then kills the man responsible for Jelanda’s capture, having aided the captors without knowing it. Rather than be arrested, he takes his own life. Jelanda asks Lenneth to make him an einherjar. Odin and Freya find him lacking and refuse him entry to Valhalla, so Arngrim stays at Lenneth’s side.
That is a lot of tragedy in one chapter, and the game keeps that pace. Along the way Lenneth meets Brahms, lord of the undead and enemy of Odin, who possesses her sister Silmeria. She meets the necromancer Lezard Valeth, who lures her to his tower and has been experimenting with half-elven homunculi as vessels for godhood. He wants Lenneth for himself. She refuses and destroys his experiments. The sorceress Mystina joins the story too.
Loki is the final antagonist. He is half-Æsir and half-Vanir by blood, accepted by the Æsir but trusted by neither side. Odin and Freya sealed his power so he stays young. He wants the Four Treasures, which would give him the strength to challenge Odin.
The Lenneth Port and the Two Prequels
The original release is the version worth knowing, but the enhanced port matters. Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth came to the PlayStation Portable on March 2, 2006 in Japan, July 18, 2006 in North America, and April 27, 2007 in Europe. That version later came to Android and iOS in March 2018, and was re-released for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
The series continued in both directions. Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, a prequel, came to PlayStation 2 in 2006 in Japan and North America and 2007 in Europe. Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, another prequel, came to the Nintendo DS in Japan in 2008, in North America on March 17, 2009, and in PAL regions on April 3.
The Numbers
- Developer: tri-Ace
- Publisher: Enix (now Square Enix)
- Platform: PlayStation
- Japan release: December 22, 1999
- North America release: August 29, 2000
- Copies sold: over 700,000
- Playable characters: 24
- Enhanced port: Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, 2006–2007
- Score: 8.7 of 10
Why It Still Matters
Valkyrie Profile is a critical and commercial success that never became a template. It sold over 700,000 copies and critics praised its deep and complicated gameplay system and its plot. Twenty-five years on, nobody has built a game that works quite like it.
The reason is that its parts are load-bearing. The platforming dungeons, the ice-crystal puzzles, the chapter deadlines, the einherjar you lose on purpose — remove any one and the whole thing falls over. The game is not a collection of features. It is one idea about death and duty, expressed in every system it has.
What matters most is the roster. Twenty-four characters, some locked behind difficulty, each with a death scene, each sendable to Valhalla and gone. That is the game’s argument: that a hero is someone you give up. The combat is strong and the story is stronger, but the einherjar are what make Valkyrie Profile worth playing now.
The noise is the difficulty. It is real, and some players will bounce off the chapter requirements. But it is not the point. The point is Platina dying in a field, and Lucian holding her, and a goddess deciding what to do with that.
8.7 of 10.
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