Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume

Fans of the series will likely still find plenty to enjoy here, but may have trouble getting into it. Covenant is not a bad game, but on a system overwhelmed with RPGs, this one really needed to be exceptional to stand out. Instead, it falls a bit short of greatness.

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume is a rather enjoyable experience overall.

This may superficially resemble any of a dozen other DS SRPGs, but it has many twists and a clever, manipulative philosophy at heart that lifts it above the crowd. [May 2009, p.97]

An unexpected, but largely successful, change of pace as Norse melodrama meets strategic role-playing.

In the end, Valkyrie Profile series completists will probably enjoy it, but I'd tell most other people to steer clear.

For a cerebral experience like no other and a simple, addictive gameplay setup, Covenant of the Plume is an excellent choice.

In its attempts to fuse grid-based combat with the series’ RPG roots, Covenant of the Plume doesn’t capture the essence of either, descending into a jumble of mismatched design decisions.

Covenant of the Plume is a tolerable, if undistinguished, strategy role-playing hybrid.

With multiple endings and 20 potential allies to recruit across the adventure, as well as a tough bonus dungeon once it’s complete, there’s the promise of longevity here. But few will venture back to this curio once the end credits have rolled.

Valkyrie Profile: Convenant of the Plume has one of the most dark and dense histories we remember in a game. The new combat system, though, is a big mistake as it makes the game monotonous instead of fast and direct.

Combat is fun, but you realize that the game has to cheat a bit to make it work.

Trying to combine peanut butter and jelly into a delicious sandwich, tri-Ace instead takes two very different battle systems and combines them into something like ice cream with poached eggs on top. The tactical parts alone are decent with lots of customizability and strategies to ponder, and the Valkyrie Profile system is about as good here as it is in the first two games in the series, but instead of meshing and working together, they pull against each other as the player is left wishing he had just one system or the other.