Valkyrie Sky
Posted by L4G | Filed under Featured, Thoughts
Is it a coincidence that just as I’ve been getting back into bullet-hell shooting games again, I stumble upon a bullet-hell shooter MMORPG?.. :D
The game is Valkyrie Sky. Website is here. Trailer below. Take a moment to watch the trailer and clean your brains off the wall.
Before you get too excited about this I should mention a disclaimer. This game is being cancelled on December 14th, 2010 (the Japanese version has already been cancelled and not sure about the Korean version yet). I will cry in the fetal position later, but for now, the gameplay!
Q: “What score would you give this game?”
A: “Yes!”
Touhou Project (or insert your favourite Cave shooting game here) + WoW. That about sums it up. Levelling up, finding material drops, crafting gear, collecting phat lootz, fishing, cooking.. You’re basically playing WOW in between missions, then hitting up some crazy Espgaluda shooting action as the core gameplay instead of killing murlocs.
Was most impressed with how introducing classes to a bullet-hell shooter enriched the experience, and didn’t feel shoe-horned. It’s not simply, “you do more damage with your chain lightning than I did with my +1 sling”. While gear & stat related damage, crits and class skills are already interesting additions, it was how each individual class demanded a different playstyle from the player that I found enchanting. Mage typecasts have great AOE for cleaning up the small stuff, warriors actually have to weave patterns to engage in melee and hunters do high DPS to single targets (good for boss fights). This encourages good synergy when raiding in a party.
Wait.. raiding?.. wtf?! I’m raiding in a bullet-hell shooter?! Yep, up to 4 people in 1 stage battling their way to the boss for ‘phat loot dropz’. Obviously party class balance is important. I was also concerned about losing sight of my character amongst party members, but an elegant solution is in place for this. When layering over the top of each other, all party members dissapear except for their weapon (staff, sword, bow) leaving my character clearly as the only visible one left. Playing a bullet-hell shooter with more than 2 people, (that has had effort go into balancing and role creation) was really a unique experience. It’s like “raidin’ in Raiden”. Yeah.. I went there.
PvP looks fairly unique as well. Both of you are essentially bosses flinging spectacular attacks at each other in what usually pans out as an epic Boss vs Boss battle. Vid below has a nice example of PvP with a Swordsman vs Summoner. Skip to 1:55 if you want to see the battle fairly heated up.
I can’t help but feel RPG’s have all but moved on from their classic menu-driven models now. Taking Final Fantasy as a model example of the past, nowadays you can do almost anything BUT select Magic->Firaga from a menu to enjoy the RPG experience. Shooting stuff in Mass Effect or Fallout, matching gems in Puzzle Quest or weaving in a bullet-hell shooter blends the RPG genre with almost anything now. That input for the ‘combat aspect’ has been revealed to be arbitrary. It’s that experience of.. well, ‘gaining experience’ and story progression which makes RPGs fun. Levelling, crafting, getting new gear, defeating the villian… who cares what my method of input is for doing these things anymore. I mean, at least I’m not just selecting skills from some sort of drop down menu and…. oh…. ^^;
And now the sadness. :( A game aiming at such a niche market crossover as “bullet-hell shooter + MMORPG + PC” clearly needs to have an equally modest scope for its projected player base. I don’t believe you can spend big budget MMORPG dollars on this and expect a return, no matter how good the game is. This looks like a pretty well funded game.. can almost feel a ‘suit’ somewhere in the background tapping their fingers and staring at their watch saying, “Well, we spent $10mil on this, where’s our 100,000 players?” Need to weigh the cost of the game against it’s potential appeal. From what I understand, the stamina system also drove away many players (when you lose stamina you can’t do missions anymore. Must grind fishing/cooking just to run missions else buy Premium food). I am stunned that a game which would already face problems with building initial interest would choose to exacerbate the problem with a stamina system as their main revenue model within their micro-transactions.
While I don’t know the financial specifics, I would suspect that less staff making this with no 3D world, just a lobby screen to enter missions/PvP & manage crafting/gear funded on 50% of the budget might still be running their servers (would be happy for anyone to post more information in the comments. very interested as to what happened.).. It’s a shame, as the core gameplay is really good fun. >_<
Gaze upon what was. :(
November 28, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Wow. Sucks that this already got the can. Someone should really just buy the game and codebase and release it proper in an English speaking country. I think with the right marketing you’d have a good shot at the free to play market. Or make an iOS4 App out of it. :P