Long ago, in the ancient Land of Vecanti, a kind and generous King ruled the countryside. But alas, one day the mighty King Rogress died. As the people of Vecanti mourned his death, the country fell into a state of war and despair.
The latest game in my TurboGrafx journey is Valis II.
I had always been interested in the Valis series, mainly because of the ads that I saw in gaming magazines back in the day and the great anime art style the games had, but I never had a chance to play any of them growing up, so I was very excited to finally get a chance to play Valis II.
The actual experience though... may not have quite lived up to the hype I had for it.
Don't get me wrong, I totally understand and acknowledge that Valis II existed in a very different time and place when it first released.
I've also been on an action-platformer kick lately, so I've been playing lots of classic Ninja Gaiden, plus modern games like Vengeful Guardian Moonrider and Blasphemous, so that likely influenced my experience.
But let me get into the good parts first.
The cutscenes in Valis II are very cool, and I certainly would have loved them, along with the fully voiced (and cheesy) dialog, back in the day.
The graphics in the game itself are fine, but the enemy animation seems a bit lacking in detail and the gameplay graphics in general are decent but not amazing.
The gameplay isn't exactly what I would call hard, but there seemed to be a lot of cheap enemy hits where I would get hit by enemies dropping down from above or coming at me quickly from the sides of the screen before I had a chance to react.
Of course this is not uncommon in games back then, but I found it a bit frustrating after a while (in fact, I opted to not keep continuing during my first play session because it got to be a bit much after a while.)
EGM reviewed Valis II back in March 1991, and generally liked it. They mentioned the great sounds, music and cutscenes, but found it to be on the shorter side, complained it was too easy, and weren't impressed by the gameplay itself. You can see their review in the image below.
You can see my very first time playing Valis II in the video below:
While I'm glad I finally got a chance to experience Valis II, I'm ready to move onto the next game in my journey.
The next game I'll be playing is... Cyber-Core!
I don't remember hearing about this one back in the day. All I know is that it seems to be some kind of Shoot Em Up, but that's about it.
Until next time!
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