Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume (USA) DS ROM

Review by LordZemus:

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume is a turn-based strategy RPG where you take the role of Wylfred , a young warrior who wants to exact revenge on the Valkyrie Lenneth for taking away his father from his family , causing the death of his sister and madness of her mother.In order to face such a powerful opponent , Wylfred made a pact with the goddess Hel : in exchange for his life within a year , he gains destructive dark powers (and a sexy assistant) that will allow him to annihilate his foes … for a price :the life of a friend.

The Game

1. You must fight enemies the ganker style : surround a single enemy with your units to gain attack and plunder bonuses and beat the sh*t out of your enemy.
2. You can just kill your enemies , or further torment them after their life hits 0 to gain SIN, which will fill the counter in the upper screen and this way please your goddess Hel, who will reward you with awesome and rare loot if the score is high (even more if you surpass the required SIN for that stage) so get out your sadistic persona and make your opponents abandon this world with cries of pure agony.
3. The key to exploit the enemy is to time your attacks : make two characters attack at the same time to break the enemy guard , then launch them airborne with another one and while you’re hitting it in the air the mage charges his spell to deal great damage when it falls and finish it with a Soul Crush … there are multiple combinations to tackle and enemy so experiment since every ally attacks at a different speed with different attacks depending on how many times you press their attack button.( when hitting them multiple times and/or airborne , you can get XP crystals to get more experience and Red crystals to further prolongate your combos.)
4. If a stage is too hard to fight (especially white phantoms) you can sacrifice one of your friends to Hell , she will give the sacrifice level 99 stats for that fight and give Wylfred a dark spell for future fights . Once the battle is over your sacrifice dies and won’t return to your party and the Valkyrie will claim their soul and add them to her own team , so use them with caution and only sacrifice them when a fight is totally impossible for you.(Guests cannot be used as sacrifices , only true friends , I personally recommend leaving at least 3 alive to serve as permanent allies in your team [you can only bring 4 fighters to combat , Wilfred and 3 others]

A quite interesting yet obscure spin-off of the Valkyrie Profile Saga with a very dark plot and a corrupted main character who apparently never played the first Valkyrie Profile (SPOILER Valkyries sense where and when people are going to die and go to take their souls , the never decide or take part in killing them SPOILER ) . You can’t grind your way through this game since it doesn’t allow you to replay stages , so you must make every fight count and rack as much XP as possible.You may have trouble understanding part of the plot since some characters talk old English , but those characters only set the subplot of what happens in the game’s world. The art is amazing (yet awkwardly enough some characters have a 3D render portrait sprite while others have 2D one) and has a very catchy battle theme.The battle sprites are very well animated and they even have in-battle voices.A must have for the tactical RPG fans.