Valkyrie Profile Classic Jobs Part I
Jan. 4th, 2025 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingAt the end of my holiday break, near the dawn of 2025, I found myself with little to do and a few variant gaming ideas on my mind. In fact, having just posted my Year in Review for 2024, the fairly easy-to-run Classic Jobs variant of Valkyrie Profile was seeming like a nice, obvious choice. It's also a game I truly adore, and one I haven't played for a good few years.
Once again, the goal of my Classic Jobs variants - which I generally admit is pretty ill-defined - is to play a game using the tropiest possible setup of a "classic" adventuring party: a knight, a thief, a white mage, and a black mage. This is discussed in more detail at the start of the first page for a playthrough in this style I did, for Final Fantasy. With a lot of games, this has involved doing some analysis to figure out what this tropiest party is in that game's context, and then doing a ruleset, a hack, or a script to make it possible.
I did the analysis in a Google Sheet that I started in February 2024, apparently - probably while waiting around an airport or something. I considered which of this game's characters would fit into which role. For each class there was a clear shortlist, actually.
The first thing was the thief, since this game has no defined thieves or rogues besides Badrach, sort of. I thought about it decided Lucian was a better choice: he's a career bandit, he uses a sword instead of Badrach's gun/bow thing, he looks thiefy to me, and his Shining Bolt attack is the best way to make enemies drop treasure in the game. As well, Lucian is a character I haven't had much opportunity to enjoy, since in a typical best ending playthrough he's only even available for like 4 dungeons.
For white mages, the shortlist was Nanami, Shiho, Lorenta and Lyseria. So on the sheet, I made a mix of qualitative and quantitative: who has white mage-like appearance? Voice samples? Who is already a healer in title? Whose traits align with a white mage? Starting with healing spells or holy attacks was a positive, and starting with other offensive spells was a negative. It ended up that Shiho was actually a pretty clear standout.
For black mages, the process was similar, with the candidates I had in mind being Lezard, Mystina, and Gandar. I used the same sort of mixed analytical approach to pick who was most suitable, but naturally preferring access to offensive spells and lack of support spells. It ended up as Gandar, and I was surprised that it wasn't even very close.
For knights, the shortlist I had in mind was Valkyrie herself and Grey... but Grey is a fairly terrible character who I didn't really want to be stuck with for the entire game. I decided to keep an open mind and see what some numbers might suggest. Only three characters are actual knights in title: Janus the archer, Jayle the swordswoman, and Lawfer the spearman. I wanted a sword-user, so that carried some weight, and I also wanted a character who was visibly armored. I also considered their starting stats, since that does vary somewhat between characters. It ended up that Grey, Belenus and Jayle were at the top, in order, and very close in value. I chose to use Jayle; she's a knight in title, I've barely ever used her (I've used Belenus a fair bit) and she's much better than Grey. There's also something to be said for having another woman on the team; I've had a lot of nicely gender-balanced teams in these playthroughs.
It turns out you can just... replace a character slot with a GameShark code pretty easily, so I experimented with that a bit and it turns out the game doesn't get temperamental about removing Lenneth from combat at all. We can just dive in.
Gameplay began on January 4th, 2025.
Because I had been testing how the game plays with GameShark, I had a save at roughly the Lombert fight in the prologue. Given that this game has about a 30-minute almost-non-interactive prologue, I figured this was as good a place to start as any.
I disabled my GameShark code for Jayle briefly to unequip Lenneth of her Niblungen Ring, and then we were into it. The party is Jayle, Lucian, Shiho, and Gandar! These characters are all generally obtained in the second half of the game and you'd normally have access to good equipment and spells... it feels quite weird using Jayle and Lucian with a single attack, and Shiho with no offensive ability whatsoever. I gave Lucian a Viking Sword to enable his Shining Bolt attack.
I'm actually quite excited for this team, as I am not sure I've ever used Jayle, Shiho, or Gandar for more than a battle or two just to see what they could do.
Gandar was the only one who started out, um, useful. He started with several offensive spells including the all-targetting Poison Blow, which would clear most encounters in a single cast. This was only available in fights where I got the first attack on enemies. Regardless of how I combo'd, it was very rare that I could get enough energy to pull off my Purify Weird Soul (PWS) moves. This seemed to depend on how many times Shining Bolt hit.
Shiho started with just 300 DME (HP) and had very little to contribute in battle. I kept her in front of Gandar just because he's more useful. It was funny enabling First Aid at level 2 with each character using their initial CPs, and seeing them heal Shiho for a whopping 9 points (in a game known for 6-digit damage values).
Beating the first real dungeon and first boss was no real issue; after the first round, I had Gandar use Poison Blow to remove the adds and then Lucian and Jayle beat up the Vampire over several turns afterward.
I collected the artifacts. I was thankful to get Grimrist since it also enables Shining Bolt for Lucian.
With free access to the map, we got the Dragon Slayer sword, recruited Belenus and Llewelyn, and got the Pressed Flower.
The two areas that became available to us were a Cave of Oblivion and the Solde Catacombs. The Cave of Oblivion turned out to be no fun at all.
I tried it three times, including getting killed pretty badly by crazy, high-level enemies... and on the third time I found that the cave basically just looped to an exit with no treasure.
Solde Catacombs was nicer. The battles were very manageable and I gradually remembered more aspects of the gameplay, like the fact that status skills exist.
I was also getting better at the movement in dungeons, I think. It might've been unnecessary but I did a good crystal trick to get a very unimportant chest.
What I really wanted from this team - well, from Lucian - was some thievery. Normally his attacks yield lots of bonus experience crystals and chests, but we just weren't able to set up any amazing combos yet. Given the lack of goodies, sometimes it just made sense to get Gandar to wipe battles with Poison Blow.
We got a Fire Lance book which I transmuted into a Fire Storm book. I'm going to need to be more... discerning with spell learning, I think, as Gandar's going to fill up. I thought there was a way to forget a spell in this game but I couldn't find it. Perhaps it only appears when your list is full.
Against the boss here, the Drow Shamans, I weathered the first turn (which was tough!) and had Gandar cast Poison Blow on the second turn to take out the shamans, leaving us with a tough monkey fella. We won pretty handily.
I decided to get Jelanda and Llewelyn ready to transfer. Because Jelanda was overwritten in our party, this required a tiny bit of party manipulation via GameShark (but no stats were modified or anything). We kept Belenus for now.
Our prizes from the first sacred phase included, most importantly, Wait Reaction. This will give Shiho something fairly good to do.
By the time I started Chapter 2, the timing was good for me to be done... but I decided I would do one more thing: whatever popped up in my spiritual concentration, no matter what it was. It turned out to be Lawfer's recruitment.
And that's it for now!
Index | Next >
Once again, the goal of my Classic Jobs variants - which I generally admit is pretty ill-defined - is to play a game using the tropiest possible setup of a "classic" adventuring party: a knight, a thief, a white mage, and a black mage. This is discussed in more detail at the start of the first page for a playthrough in this style I did, for Final Fantasy. With a lot of games, this has involved doing some analysis to figure out what this tropiest party is in that game's context, and then doing a ruleset, a hack, or a script to make it possible.
I did the analysis in a Google Sheet that I started in February 2024, apparently - probably while waiting around an airport or something. I considered which of this game's characters would fit into which role. For each class there was a clear shortlist, actually.
The first thing was the thief, since this game has no defined thieves or rogues besides Badrach, sort of. I thought about it decided Lucian was a better choice: he's a career bandit, he uses a sword instead of Badrach's gun/bow thing, he looks thiefy to me, and his Shining Bolt attack is the best way to make enemies drop treasure in the game. As well, Lucian is a character I haven't had much opportunity to enjoy, since in a typical best ending playthrough he's only even available for like 4 dungeons.
For white mages, the shortlist was Nanami, Shiho, Lorenta and Lyseria. So on the sheet, I made a mix of qualitative and quantitative: who has white mage-like appearance? Voice samples? Who is already a healer in title? Whose traits align with a white mage? Starting with healing spells or holy attacks was a positive, and starting with other offensive spells was a negative. It ended up that Shiho was actually a pretty clear standout.
For black mages, the process was similar, with the candidates I had in mind being Lezard, Mystina, and Gandar. I used the same sort of mixed analytical approach to pick who was most suitable, but naturally preferring access to offensive spells and lack of support spells. It ended up as Gandar, and I was surprised that it wasn't even very close.
For knights, the shortlist I had in mind was Valkyrie herself and Grey... but Grey is a fairly terrible character who I didn't really want to be stuck with for the entire game. I decided to keep an open mind and see what some numbers might suggest. Only three characters are actual knights in title: Janus the archer, Jayle the swordswoman, and Lawfer the spearman. I wanted a sword-user, so that carried some weight, and I also wanted a character who was visibly armored. I also considered their starting stats, since that does vary somewhat between characters. It ended up that Grey, Belenus and Jayle were at the top, in order, and very close in value. I chose to use Jayle; she's a knight in title, I've barely ever used her (I've used Belenus a fair bit) and she's much better than Grey. There's also something to be said for having another woman on the team; I've had a lot of nicely gender-balanced teams in these playthroughs.
It turns out you can just... replace a character slot with a GameShark code pretty easily, so I experimented with that a bit and it turns out the game doesn't get temperamental about removing Lenneth from combat at all. We can just dive in.
Gameplay began on January 4th, 2025.
Because I had been testing how the game plays with GameShark, I had a save at roughly the Lombert fight in the prologue. Given that this game has about a 30-minute almost-non-interactive prologue, I figured this was as good a place to start as any.
I disabled my GameShark code for Jayle briefly to unequip Lenneth of her Niblungen Ring, and then we were into it. The party is Jayle, Lucian, Shiho, and Gandar! These characters are all generally obtained in the second half of the game and you'd normally have access to good equipment and spells... it feels quite weird using Jayle and Lucian with a single attack, and Shiho with no offensive ability whatsoever. I gave Lucian a Viking Sword to enable his Shining Bolt attack.
I'm actually quite excited for this team, as I am not sure I've ever used Jayle, Shiho, or Gandar for more than a battle or two just to see what they could do.
Gandar was the only one who started out, um, useful. He started with several offensive spells including the all-targetting Poison Blow, which would clear most encounters in a single cast. This was only available in fights where I got the first attack on enemies. Regardless of how I combo'd, it was very rare that I could get enough energy to pull off my Purify Weird Soul (PWS) moves. This seemed to depend on how many times Shining Bolt hit.
Shiho started with just 300 DME (HP) and had very little to contribute in battle. I kept her in front of Gandar just because he's more useful. It was funny enabling First Aid at level 2 with each character using their initial CPs, and seeing them heal Shiho for a whopping 9 points (in a game known for 6-digit damage values).
Beating the first real dungeon and first boss was no real issue; after the first round, I had Gandar use Poison Blow to remove the adds and then Lucian and Jayle beat up the Vampire over several turns afterward.
I collected the artifacts. I was thankful to get Grimrist since it also enables Shining Bolt for Lucian.
With free access to the map, we got the Dragon Slayer sword, recruited Belenus and Llewelyn, and got the Pressed Flower.
The two areas that became available to us were a Cave of Oblivion and the Solde Catacombs. The Cave of Oblivion turned out to be no fun at all.
I tried it three times, including getting killed pretty badly by crazy, high-level enemies... and on the third time I found that the cave basically just looped to an exit with no treasure.
Solde Catacombs was nicer. The battles were very manageable and I gradually remembered more aspects of the gameplay, like the fact that status skills exist.
I was also getting better at the movement in dungeons, I think. It might've been unnecessary but I did a good crystal trick to get a very unimportant chest.
What I really wanted from this team - well, from Lucian - was some thievery. Normally his attacks yield lots of bonus experience crystals and chests, but we just weren't able to set up any amazing combos yet. Given the lack of goodies, sometimes it just made sense to get Gandar to wipe battles with Poison Blow.
We got a Fire Lance book which I transmuted into a Fire Storm book. I'm going to need to be more... discerning with spell learning, I think, as Gandar's going to fill up. I thought there was a way to forget a spell in this game but I couldn't find it. Perhaps it only appears when your list is full.
Against the boss here, the Drow Shamans, I weathered the first turn (which was tough!) and had Gandar cast Poison Blow on the second turn to take out the shamans, leaving us with a tough monkey fella. We won pretty handily.
I decided to get Jelanda and Llewelyn ready to transfer. Because Jelanda was overwritten in our party, this required a tiny bit of party manipulation via GameShark (but no stats were modified or anything). We kept Belenus for now.
Our prizes from the first sacred phase included, most importantly, Wait Reaction. This will give Shiho something fairly good to do.
By the time I started Chapter 2, the timing was good for me to be done... but I decided I would do one more thing: whatever popped up in my spiritual concentration, no matter what it was. It turned out to be Lawfer's recruitment.
And that's it for now!
Index | Next >
