Monthly Archives: July 2013

Valkyrie Profile Covenant Of The Plume Review: Ganging Up On Others For Fun And Profit.

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Old Norse mythology told of the Valkyries, the chooser of the slain, who would fly over the battlefields and chose who died in battle, these slain warriors became einherjar, taken to Valhalla, where they prepared for Ragnarok (well, about half of them, we don’t care about the other half. But if you must know, they go to Freya’s garden Fólkvangr, Odin knows what they do there…) this was considered amongst the highest honors that could be bestowed upon a fighter. But things are never that simple, and while honor and praise are all well and good, they do not feed a family, and in a time when men where undoubtedly the breadwinners and soldiers of a household many families would be left destitute, even worse perhaps, was losing a good father, a loving son, or a dear friend. This anguish is the main source of the conflict in Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume.

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, was developed by tri-Ace for the Nintendo DS and published by Square Enix in 2008, then brought over to the U.S. in 2009, still published by Square Enix. Covenant of the Plume it is the third installment in the Valkyrie Profile series and a prequel to the first game, Valkyrie Profile.

Covenant of the Plume centers, not around any of the titular Valkyries, but in a mortal youth named Wylfred. Wylfred’s father, Thyodor, was slain in battle and welcomed as an einherjar by the Valkyrie Lenneth, This doesn’t go over too well with his family, who were left in poverty. It didn’t take long for Elsie, Wylfred’s little sister, to die of starvation. And because the rule of three exists for a reason, Wylfred’s mother went insane from grief and regressed to her days as a young maiden in love, as such she only recognizes Wylfred as her late-husband (though this isn’t elaborated upon).

Having his family torn apart by his father’s death, Wylfred swears revenge upon the Valkyrie, Lenneth, and what better way to find her than in the battlefield. Thus, Wylfred sets out with his best friend, Ancel to become a mercenary. However, a mission gone wrong puts Wylfred on the verge of death, outraged at his quest for revenge getting cut short, Hel, ruler of Niflheim (the underworld), offers Wylfred the power to carry out his revenge, in order to use it he will have to sacrifice everything he has, but does he have the malice to carry this through to the end?

Four on one? Sounds fair to me.

Four on one? Sounds fair to me.

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Once I Left Wario’s Castle

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Picture a younger smaller version of me, Franklin Raines, not but single digits, sitting with my mom on an airplane ride going from one side of the country to the other. I remembered specifically that it was the last time I rode a plane at night, making the event stand out more than past or future rides. I found myself bored, which for a kid at that age, felt like a lifetime. I was getting close, but have yet not achieved the necessary skill to read the fiction I would soon like, so books are out of the question. This only left me with my trusted teal green Game Boy Color found in my possession. I used the excuse to go walk to the bathroom at the end of the rows of passenger seats, where I notice another young boy. Just like myself he was traveling with his Game Boy Color and his mom (thinking back, of course I noticed the Game Boy far faster than the mom), so I talk with him until I decided to loan him a game until the plane touches down. I forgot what I loaned him, but remember that what I got in return was Wario Land II.

Having played hours worth of the sequel, Wario Land III, I instantly started to look for similarities between the two. Wario Land II still had me playing as the money-grubbing anti-hero Wario, where III dropped Wario into an alternate universe by way of crashed plane (coincidence to my present environment not noticed), II found Wario asleep in his castle as three shadowed creatures steal his treasure and flood his home. The thieves even left Wario a living alarm clock just to spite him. Wario wakes up and I, now the player, decided to work with what I knew from my experience in III; otherwise known as find walls to shoulder charge and floors to ground stomp through to find coins, to which my younger self found oddly comforting in its familiarity. A younger me found just enough time to finish the first stage of five levels before he had to stop at the second stages’ forest when the plane landed. Figures one would have to leave right when they started exploring the area outside of Wario’s castle.

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Introductions

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Welcome to our first post at Oddity Game Seekers, where we write editorials, reviews, and opinions specializing in rarely discussed games from the past to the present. We mainly write about RPG’s, simulation games, puzzle games, action games, imports, indie games, and the occasional visual novel.

On board we have:

Franklin Raines- Co-founder, Writer, and Editor-in-Chief. The resident time traveler, most of what he does involves looking for games well past our decade, Our hot-blooded one.

Alejandro Hajdar- Founding Member and Writer: The guy who will try just about anything without bias. Our jack of all trades.

Francisco Garcia Fuentes-Co-founder and Chief-Writer: The guy who traded his life for games, and will let nothing, not even a Spanish-to-English-to-Japanese language barrier, keep him away from playing a gamer he wants. The sardonic one.

Everything starts from here onwards. Let us hope we don’t fade away into obscurity, like the games we play…