What the HELL Happened to Valkyrie Profile?!

This time we take a look at yet another one of my favorite franchises to find out what the hell happened to it.

[Truxzord]

When you realize that back then, when you saw the Squaresoft logo you were sure to experience something amazing. How greed destroys everything...

[CynicalGamingBlogTerry]

You're forgetting one small point, Yamagishi abandoned both the Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile series after Star Ocean 4. This forced tri-Ace to work on new IP's with different publishers such as Resonance Of Fate, Beyond The Labyrinth and Fronteir Gate. Resonance of Fate being the last game tri-Ace would ever release overseas for 6 years.

Seems all the games flopped in sales, tri-Ace were in a downward spiral with their games which led them to become liquidated into nepro japan, possibly due to the fact that they were broke.

If you ask me, the biggest mistake tri-Ace made was working with Konami as Konami didn't want to localize any of them which meant that tri-Ace weren't going to generate as many sales.

It came to the point of desperation when they started working for Square-Enix on their Final Fantasy games, with no Producer willing to stand in on tri-Ace's behalf, tri-Ace had nothing left, they put all of their chips on Yamagishi and with him gone, tri-Ace could no longer operate in the same way and the other publishers didn't really do them many favors either.

Then Kobayashi came in, recognizing the state tri-Ace was in, he decided to take on the reigns as producer in order to bring back Star Ocean, hence Star Ocean 5's existence. He also intended on bringing back Valkyrie Profile as well... but since Star Ocean 5 was poorly received by the masses (even though I enjoyed it a lot), the chances of that happening now are -1%.

So the reason Valkyrie Profile died? Yamagishi... that is all. Yamagishi killed Valkyrie Profile by abandoning tri-Ace... it's funny how he came back for Anatomia but didn't let tri-Ace play any part in it. He eventually left, mocking Kobayashi for his futile attempts to bring back the series.

But Yamagishi isn't the only thing to blame, tri-Ace's liquidation definitely didn't help things, they lost a lot of money, even after Yamagishi was gone, one of their projects, Judas Code was a colossal failure which was a massive money loss.

And the final reason is that Valkyrie Profile has always been a niché franchise. While the first game has a sizable cult following, the sequal and spin off are pretty obscure by comparison. As such, Square-Enix don't want to risk it.

As for Star Ocean 5's flop? That's simple, tri-Ace were already in a bad shape financially beforehand and now that they are owned by a mobile company, it's not very likely that they will be adequately funded as Nepro wouldn't want to invest their own money into projects that have barely anything to do with mobile gaming and Square-Enix definitely wouldn't offer enough money to fund it. As such what we were left with was an under-budget game that was clearly trying to be a big budget game...

I personally believe that tri-Ace were personally funding the development of their games, especially Valkyrie Profile 2 which was so well funded that Square-Enix decided to pump extra money into marketing giving it a live action trailer. Despite this, the sales numbers didn't bring a return on that investment, hence the fact why many tri-Ace games after Valkyrie Profile 2 were poorly received by the masses.

[Firion]

C'mon. We still need a game with *HRIST* as the main character. She's still being upstaged by her two younger sisters..

[robynfruend]

Valkyrie Profile is a story close to my heart. It saddens me so much that the series will just fade away into brainless phone games with zero plot. VP 2 should have ended better so that we weren't left with so many unanswered questions. I hate that Lenneth wasn't able to return to Lucian in her own timeline. Why destroy such a beautiful romantic story with some stupid reset button ending :(

[nisbahmumtaz]

Valkyrie Profile had some of the most beautiful sprite artwork in terms of FLUIDITY IN MOTION. When they leap in to do their attacks, and leap back out into position, the way their hair and clothes moves are some of the most delicately drawn spritework I've ever seen.

[gazzgaspay]

Someone should start a kickstarter campaign for the Valkyrie Profile 3: Hrist, for console players ofcourse.

[xenotypos]

Mobile phones destroying great series again. Japan in a nutshell.

[orakaa]

The first Valkyrie Profile is my personal favorite RPG of all-time. The music, the characters and each of their tragic story... Damn, I want to replay it again...

[keinsylvan]

2020, still no Valkyrie Profile Hrist 😭

[FredHerbert]

"It shall be engraved upon your soul... Divine assault...Nibelung Valesti!"

"Ye must desire respite for thy empty existence, thou shalt have it!"

[Sin]

Truly sad but when ever I do a survey for Square Enix I always bring up Valkyrie Profile and Hrist

[jojostark]

I still remember when they made a teaser of a new Valkyrie game...little did we know, it was a god damn Phone game. My rage is still at full blast to this day.

[atmaillumina]

Thank you for making this video. Just thank you. My frustration is boundless at this moment and I'm glad to see there are others who have the same frustrations as I do.

[finalfayth]

when I see this (valkery profile series), I want to cry ... one of the best jrpg of all time and I rank it in my top 3 games ever created ... it hurts me to not hope for a new sequel to this game

[shunme]

"Return from whence you came."

[BingBangPoe]

"What the HELL happened to Shining Force?!"

[diannerenard]

That's capitalism for you. Same thing happened to fallout when bethesda bought the rights and made those shitty the elder scrolls re-skins that were bastardized attempts to milk a beloved franchise.

Anyways, i would say a big factor is that in this day and age most companies such as squareenix plays safe.

It is way easier to make a final fantasy or kingdom hearts game that will sell like pancakes regardless of quality than it is to make a valkyrie profile game as fans expects certain standards on them and can and will boycott them if they are cheap products trying to cater to a broader audience AKA the lowest common denominator

[Scatterblades]

Valkyrie anatomia global is out. Guees what? Gacha games. You get characters from gacha. You get weapon from gacha.
But it has decent stories and not as hard as the other valkyrie profiles games.

[jesseleemata]

I love Valkyrie Profile - Lenneth... My all time favorite indeed!

[nesoukkefka]

Shame this franchise doesn't get as much attention as Star Ocean, for me it's far superior to the Star Ocean franchise (except Star Ocean 2 this one is really awesome) I really wish for a VP3 and/or a Valkyrie Profile 2 Remaster.
The difficulty of VP2 wasn't actually coming from grinding it was coming from the fact that the most efficient strat were risky in that had you running with a single character at low health with some statut effect on it and knowing the type of your ennemies to equip the good ability to increase the damage against them so no room for error sure you could play normally but then the fights were far longer, the 50 Crystals difficulty add to that by making the ennemies very durable so you have no room and you're facing ennemies that can tank you for a long time and so you have not only to deal damage but also know how to attack, when to attack and for some have to break some specific part of them for an early kill and/or to skip some phases where they gain access to some troublesome ability plus the ennemy are so strong that there is no other that using these risky strat.