Last review I talked about a videogame inspired by one of the most long-lived sagas of the videogame industry: The Legend Of Zelda. And this time I will talk about a video game that is inspired a bit by the Castlevania saga, one of the two video games that created, so to speak, the "Metroidvania" genre of video games. The game I'll talk about today is the first of a relatively long video game saga, with a good number of sequels and spin-offs behind it, a video game that I did not know until recently and which has a fairly marked anime aesthetic and even, after researching a little (just a little) about this saga, also has a manga and an anime adaptation of a few minutes, which were made by the same animation studio of one of my favorite anime, Cowboy Bebop and I'm talking about: Sunrise. Which actually has a different name, although this is irrelevant, so....
Today's Retro Review is about: Valis: The Fantasm Soldier.
The story of this game could be considered as the classic "chosen hero", although this time it would be "Heroine", since the protagonist Yuuko Asou is a student who was chosen by an entity of the "Dream World", called Valia, to become a warrior to fight against the forces of Rogles, which comes from the "Dark World". Because of this our protagonist Yuuko is given the sword called "Valis"; which will give her a lot of power to prevent Rogles from taking over the real world and the "World of Dreams". The also called "Demon Lord Rogles, the main villain of this story, has corrupted a friend of Yuuko and has turned her into a manga warrior, so the mission to save Yuuko's worlds and return her friend to normality will be very difficult to achieve.
Valis: The Fantasm Soldier is a fairly old game and it shows in its graphic section, although with this I am not saying that it looks bad screen, it has enough graphic quality to be a decent game graphically. The design of the character sprites is not bad, maybe a little small, but still with enough detail to stand out and be recognizable, especially the design of our protagonist. At the level of scenarios is not bad either, perhaps a little simple at the level of design and decoration, but they fulfill their purpose, but there are some scenarios better designed than others and have better elements that make them stand out from the others.
This game has a color palette a little dark and opaque, perhaps because of the dark plot of this game or perhaps a limitation at the time of its creation and programming. It is an aspect that I do not like very much, although this is a personal appreciation on my part, which may not bother other people, although it is not something that will affect my gaming experience. Valis: The Fantasm Soldier also has cutscenes in the purest anime style, some are static, others have certain movements in the characters, although nothing too exaggerated, rather something simple that adds a bit of dynamism to the scene itself.
With respect to the sound section I have no complaints, but neither any praise as it is a fairly "normal" aspect, which does not stand out much, but the melodies manage to fulfill their purpose very well, since in addition to having a decent variety of them, they also fit very well with the theme and scenarios to which we go. And although the sound effects are nothing spectacular, they are too simple and do not really add much to the game itself, let's say they are a 5 out of 10 (although I think this could really be interpreted as a complaint on my part), but finally, in the sound section let's say it is the aspect that wins the least points.
Valis: The Fantasm Soldier is an extremely simple game at the gameplay level, this is a side scrolling action game, which we must advance horizontally along several scenarios, that is why it is considered that this game has been inspired by Castlevania, also in some scenarios we also find elements of exploration, as it urges us to have to look for certain important things to advance or something necessary to fight against enemies. Like any game of this style, we can find in the scenarios various very useful items, we have the classic items that recover the life of our character, items that recover the life points and those items that improve the weapon of our character, so exploring to find these objects is very useful.
Our protagonist has the classic and basic skills such as: running, can jump at different altitudes for those moments where there are greater moments of platforming, you can also slide to dodge certain attacks and of course the attack using the sword, which can also shoot magical attacks from them with items that we enter the stage. In addition, after each end of each stage we will have to deal with the respective final boss, which will be a challenge to overcome because they have different skills. In general terms in a game that meets many of the topics of video games of this genre. This does not make it a bad game, it is not something spectacular, but it manages to entertain.
Valis: The Fantasm Soldier is a good game, it's not going to change your life but it manages to fulfill its purpose which is to make you have fun for at least a couple of hours (or less). I will play the sequels and spin-offs, but if I don't see much difference between this game and the next ones I won't review them. Only if they are worth it I will.
