XSEED and Marvelous Entertainment’s Valhalla Knights action-RPG series has failed to deliver in its first two PSP installments, so the series is moving on to the greener pastures of a new platform. The third Valhalla Knights, subtitled Eldar Saga, is in development exclusively for the Wii and is scheduled for North American retail release this summer.
”We are looking forward to delivering the Valhalla Knights series to console gamers,” said Jun Iwasaki, President of XSEED Games. “Eldar Saga is a fantastic extension of the Valhalla Knights world/universe/story, and will offer a unique and engaging experience that is sure to please the Wii fans.”
For the most part, Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga sounds pretty similar in style to the first two PSP games. Like most RPGs, you will take on the role of a hero tasked with saving the world from a relentless evil, and you’ll crawl through a lot of dungeons, hack up a lot of monsters and collect a lot of loot to achieve that goal.
However, two key new features are coming that should hopefully propel this Wii adventure above and beyond its PSP predecessors. First, combat will be seamless. When you engage an enemy the ensuing battle will take place in real-time right on the world map rather than loading into a separate battle screen, making it much more of a true hack-n-slash action-RPG. Second, Eldar Saga will feature support for an online co-op mode enabling two players to experience the adventure together.
Sounds promising, but so did both of the PSP games and neither turned out so hot. I am interested to see how the series comes together on the Wii, though, so I’ll put my expectations at cautiously optimistic for now.
Well, the seamless combat has me interested, at least. I am very doubtful … but at least I’m no longer dismissing it out of hand.