Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria



The prequel to Valkyrie Profile, Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria deals with the fate of Silmeria, who appeared trapped in a crystal in Brahms' castle in the first game.

Silmeria, it turns out, was sealed by Odin well before Ragnarok into Princess Alicia, sole heir to the grand kingdom of Dipan. However, the sealing process was incomplete, and Silmeria was still able to communicate with Alicia. This is particularly problematic as Silmeria became aware of certain plans Odin had, and was out to stop them before they could come to fruition. Meanwhile, both Odin and Alicia's father, King Barbarossa, are proceeding with plans concerning both the mortal realm and Asgard, which could potentially accelerate the timetable for Ragnarok.

The game is notable on a technical level for being one of four PlayStation 2 games (alongside Gran Turismo 4, Tourist Trophy and NHL 2004) to support "high resolution" graphics via an option to display at 1080i resolution. This option is only in the Japanese version, though with modern emulation upscaling the default 480p will produce a better picture than the interlaced output.

""It shall be engraved on your very soul!"
 * A God Am I:
 * after . Additionally, techically counts as well, as he  at the end of the game.
 * The hypocrisy of invoking this trope in spite of his hatred of the gods is lampshaded.
 * All There in the Manual: The various einherjar's biography screens tell of dramatic wars and doings that many of them were caught up in, giving much of the game's backstory. However, you need to go through a New Game+ multiple times to get the whole story.
 * Or just read this.
 * Another Dimension: Creating one of these turns out to be the goal of a couple big players in the game.
 * Becoming the Mask: Happens to.
 * BFS:
 * Sword: Arngrim and Dylan. Most of the other Heavy Warrior type Einherjar follow suit.
 * Spear: The Nibelung Valesti's (except Alicia's first one, which instead uses the crystals she normally uses to aid her platforming for combat purposes).
 * Bonus Dungeon: The Seraphic Gate, though unlike the other games in the series this one's located on the world map instead of through the start menu.
 * Boom! Headshot!: The game's battle system, as mentioned below, gives each enemy different body parts you can destroy as you attack. If the destroyed part happens to be the head, it's an instant kill no matter how many hitpoints the enemy had left. This doesn't work with most bosses and some endgame monsters though.
 * Broken Bridge
 * The Cameo: Early in the game, you meet a young, talented mage named Lezard Valeth, who's a reference to the character of the same name in the previous game, only this time he's a kind, courteous and chivalrous ally of the party.
 * Captain Ersatz: Arngrim, for Guts, as before.
 * Casual Danger Dialog: In addition to the standard battle quotes, if you put Einherjar into your party that knew each other in life, they might have a brief conversation at the start of a battle. Some are heartwarming bits where sisters reunite, and others are more amusing as enemies who killed each other basically go, "Er, no hard feelings, right?"
 * Chewing the Scenery: Hrist when she performs Nibelung Valesti.


 * Lezard, once he shows his true colors.
 * Continuity Nod: When you visit Dipan in Chapter 4, Hrist notes that she can sense Lenneth there. In truth, she is not sensing Lenneth from that time, but Lenneth from the first game who was sent back in time by the three wizards while exploring the ruins of Dipan.
 * Cosmic Keystone:
 * The Dragon Orb
 * Odin's spear Gungnir is also supposed to be one;.
 * Critical Existence Failure: Semi-averted for enemies -- you can target pieces of an enemy, and you can break off their body parts with enough damage. In addition to producing more items, this can result in enemies being unable to move or attack (and thus easy prey). Played straight with the player characters and humanoid enemies,
 * Dark Is Not Evil:
 * Despair Event Horizon: The bulk of Chapter 4 is dedicated to pushing Alicia closer and closer to this, until She bounces back, though, but is driven clearly over it later on when.
 * Disc One Nuke: If Dylan, Leone, Arngrim and leave the party at a certain level, it's possible to get some extremely powerful weapons.
 * To elaborate; you can get a bunch of game-breaking weapons that will last you all the way to the endgame if you manage to get the above-mentioned characters to absurdly high levels (40-50 depending on character, around twice as high as you'd normally excepted to be at that point in the game, although the accessories you get by grinding are hardly useful). These weapons are so hideously broken that you can one-shot every storyline boss with a single combo without even trying.
 * Driven to Suicide: after Dipan falls. And then  at the top of Yggdrasil, when  seems to have died. Only  prevents it.
 * Eleventh-Hour Superpower: Alicia.
 * Enemy Mine: Alicia manages to get to work together to keep
 * Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Rufus's aversion in regards to the valkyries is a rather nice piece of Foreshadowing.
 * Expy: Arngrim appears to be an Expy of himself from the previous game. According to the the third game, this Arngrim is a previous incarnation of the original.
 * Face Heel Turn: Lezard Valeth... It's not like he did anything obscene or disturbing in any Tri-Ace game he's ever appeared in.
 * Also, is forced into this; . This is reversed later on, though.
 * Finishing Move: The Soul Crush maneuvers. Each storyline important character gets a unique one which evolves into a higher form after a key moment of Character Development . Einherjar of a given type all have the same, and Sorcerors have one of the Great Magics.
 * Flat Earth Atheist: One NPC mentions early on that she only believes what she sees with her own eyes, and this apparently does not include the gods, despite the supernatural being fairly commonplace in the setting. She changes her tune, however
 * Foreshadowing: The first half of the game is filled with giving each other looks that get a lot more significant once you know what the twists in the plot are.
 * Fusion Dance:
 * The original plan was for Brahms to do it, what would that have looked like? A gorilla in a skirt and breastplate?
 * Gambit Pileup: Half the cast has its own plans involving the MacGuffin focused on in the first half of the game, and they collide quite a bit:
 * Odin:
 * Barbarossa:
 * Brahms:
 * Lezard:
 * Alicia:
 * Gotterdammerung:.
 * Glass Cannon: The best way to do signficant damage post-game is to use a setup so that there's only one living character in your party with only 1 hp, thanks to the various skills and sealstone effects that give cumulative damage boosts the lower your HP is and the less party members are alive. You'll do shit-tons of damage but one hit will be game over.
 * Grand Theft Me: Silmeria does this every so often to Alicia. You can tell who's in control by looking at her eyes or by listening to her voice; they sound rather distinct from each other.
 * Additionally, this is what Odin plans to do to if his body gives out.
 * Half-Human Hybrid: As in the first game, the secret to ultimate power is having human blood mix with the divine.
 * Heel Face Turn: It's that or an Enemy Mine, depending on your viewpoint.
 * Karmic Death:
 * Lighter and Softer:
 * Compared to its predecessor, the first half or so of the game is much more colorful and cheerful, with bright colors all around, and generally cheery music in towns as opposed to the drab colors and depressing score of the original game. Things take a nosedive in the latter parts of the game, of course.
 * Interestingly, the Lighter and Softer feel is justified in-game. is directly responsible for the world becoming crappier by the time the first game happens.
 * Load-Bearing Boss: When Anarchic Entity (the final boss) is defeated, the Tower Of collapses.
 * Magikarp Power: in the Seraphic Gate. He rejoins at the same level he was at when he left the party when  while everyone else is hovering around the 40s and 50s, making him pathetically weak. He eventually learns an attack with one of the highest damage multipliers in the game, however, can use  to boost his damage even further, and with the right Sealstones and Skills he can start doing ridiculous amounts of damage.
 * Memento MacGuffin: Rufus gives the ring that is initially used to keep Rufus as a host for Odin
 * My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Valkyries are good at this.
 * Nerf:
 * Inverted, as Tri-Ace took a look at how lousy archers were in the first game and seriously built up the class. Now, they're much more accurate to go with their more-hits-per-attack, so the fact that their hits do less damage than others' strikes is quickly mitigated. And as the game is heavily Combo-based, and their Soul Crushes do the most hits, they basically went from "Why would anyone ever use an archer?" in the first to "Why doesn't everyone use multiple archers?" in the second. Using them is also necessary if you want to perform an infinite combo, thanks to one of their attacks that hits large enemies repeatedly and recovers more AP than it costs to use.
 * Played straight with the mages, however. In the first game, magic was very powerful, likely to make up for the fact that mages had to recharge after each cast. Their Soul Crush finishing moves in particular went from the most powerful attacks you could do for the vast majority of the game to about the same strength as anyone else's Soul Crush or, in some cases, weaker.
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Alicia. Starts as Princess Soul Jar with traces of Valkyrie And its awesome!
 * Non-Linear Sequel: The game's location in the timeline is complicated at best.
 * Our Vampires Are Different
 * Preexisting Encounters
 * Rain of Arrows: All archers are capable of this for their Soul Crush
 * Rage Against the Heavens: The start of Barbarossa's plan. Also, one chapter of the game has Alicia and Rufus
 * Randomly Drops: Most annoyingly, the recruitable characters are completely random, which can be annoying if you're hoping to get a particular mage (and thus a particular Great Magic spell).
 * Scenery Porn: This is a very pretty game. It really shines at, and it's one of the few PlayStation 2 games to be Progressive Scan capable.
 * Sealed Evil in a Can
 * Sealed Good in a Can
 * Slouch of Villainy: Odin's standard pose.
 * Soul Jar: Alicia's old einherjar are trapped in their weapons, and can be recruited by letting them out.
 * Actually they are trapped in Silmeria, who is trapped in Alicia (russian doll Soul Jars?) The weapons they once owned act as physical conduits to release them.
 * Spam Attack: The game's combo system encourages you to carefully time your attacks to conserve AP and the number of attacks, and to make sure they all land. But when Break Mode activates, you have infinite AP and attacks for about 10 seconds, which will result in this.
 * Stalker with a Crush:
 * Surprisingly Easy Mini Quest: In Yggdrasil, at one point, Alicia is left as the only available story-centric party member, and has to backtrack through the place to retrieve something. Probably just in case you dismissed all your Einherjar, all the monsters and bosses are significantly nerfed. But chances are you'll have at least a full party's worth of Einherjar, meaning you're going to Curb Stomp Battle anything up to and including the area's boss.
 * Tear Jerker
 * Temporal Paradox:
 * Timed Mission: Reaching the Rainbow Bridge
 * Timey-Wimey Ball:
 * Took a Level in Badass:
 * Complete with an upgrade to Limit Break a few gameplay hours later and generally more Badass battle-quotes.
 * Unresolved Sexual Tension: Alicia and Rufus. Will They or Won't They?
 * Vendor Trash: Certain items are available only if you sell the right amounts of this to vendors. Plus, what trash you get depends on what you break off of enemies. While the "trash" items do give stat boosts when equipped, they tend to be non-runic (and thus don't contribute to the linked-equipment boosts), and the items you can get by selling them tend to be powerful weapons and accessories, although some of them are still worth using as accessories since they give large stat multipliers.
 * Weapon of X-Slaying: They're still around, but rather than the One Hit KO weapons they were in the first game, this time they just allow critical hits.
 * What Happened to the Mouse?: The ending promises that Lenneth has a new destiny to go to, but so far the series hasn't followed up on that.
 * It probably refers to her
 * Also, the game confirms that the original game's Golden Ending is canon, so what happened to Lucian?
 * While he doesn't appear, some of Lenneth's lines when she first appears (e.g."fight for the ones I love") clearly refer to him so it's highly likely she just didn't bring him along this time.
 * Possibly he's simply staying at home to watch the kids (and judging from the above line, this isn't too far-fetched at all). Still, his complete absence -- he's not even mentioned by name -- is kind of a let-down for people who liked him in the first game. But well, that's what happens when you're not as Badass as Arngrim.
 * Wham! Episode: The end of Chapter 3 and all of Chapter 4, which may as well be subtitled "Shit Gets Real." First, at the end of Chapter 3, ..
 * Then later on, this kind and friendly version of Lezard turns out to be
 * The Worf Effect: This is the second time in the series that is killed to show powerful the real Big Bad is.
 * Wrecked Weapon: In Chapter 5, Alicia's sword is broken during the cutscene when Of course, the sword is just fine by the time you get to the next battle.
 * Yandere:
 * You Kill It, You Bought It:
 * Yandere:
 * You Kill It, You Bought It: