Valkyrie Profile

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In your typical JRPGs, your mission is to stop the end of the world. In Valkyrie Profile, it's your duty to prepare for it.

Debug Features#

Debug Room#

To do: In typical PS1 JRPG fashion, this is a big, big menu that needs a lot of documenting.

In the Japanese version, using the GameShark codes D002B698 0104 + 801F61F4 0000 will enable a debug room that can be accessed by holding SelectandL1' at the start of a new game or loading a save file. At first, it looks like a duplicate of Camille Village, but the main debug menu can be accessed going to an invisible ladder in the middle, then heading to the left of said ladder.

The menus are mostly in Japanese, and among its many features, it allows for testing character portraits ("Hassy"->"その他"->"フェイスチェック"), the world map, the ending credits, various events, and toggling a debug mode. It's possible to load events from the other disc, but the game will crash when attempting to load voice lines that are not on the current disc. Selecting the world map option can possibly enable dungeons from all three of the game's difficulty levels at once. It's also possible to load unused scene setups, such as a daytime Weeping Lily Meadow map.

The debug menu remains in the PSP and smartphone versions of the game, accessed through save editing or save corruption glitches. The voice line crashing glitch also does not occur, as those versions do not split the game into two parts.

In-Battle Debug Menu#

At any time during gameplay, forcing the cursor during battle to the sixth position will highlight an invisible Debug option. The menu is mostly translated, and contains debug cheats that can allow playtesters to instantly win or lose battles, among other things.

Debug Console Text#

Throughout the game, the tty debug console displays "Field Start" on some scene transitions. This is not visible to the user.

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Field Start
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Unused Graphics#

Character Portraits#

Lemia is a character that is never actually seen, only heard during Grey's spiritual concentration sequence. Her backstory, according to supplemental materials, is that she was a sorceress who traded her life to save a mortally wounded Gray, and as the game events take place, he is recruited as a living armor.

The debug menu can display Lemia's portraits that would have displayed during her voice-only sequences (IDs 170 and 171). The high-resolution image above of Lemia is ripped from the smartphone version's files, for illustrative purposes.

Unused Items#

To do: Section under construction. Also rip graphics.

Two of the Legendary Treasures, the Sylvan Bow and the Holy Spear Gungnir, were planned and coded at some point of the development of the game. They can only be accessed via GameShark codes.

• Sylvan Bow - "A Bow once owned by a Light Elf King". Enables all three attacks; Attack Thrust=1 ; Hit Thrust = 50
• Holy Spear "Gungnir" - "Missing number", No parameter.

Watch on YouTube

Sound Test#

To do: I don't know how to type Japanese letters into my keyboard, yet alone translate them, and can only provide screenshots of the hidden tracks' names in the Japanese version. If anyone is interested in those just tell me where to upload them, as it doesn't feel right to dump them here.

As with Tri-Ace's previous games, Valkyrie Profile features a sound test menu. However, not all tracks can be played by it due to the menu ranging from 1 to 61, and looping back to 1. The game only checks to wrap the index at specific ranges and specific inputs on the D-Pad, meaning that one can set the currently selected track index to a number beyond 61 through a cheat (100 should be enough), then deactivate said cheat again, and just use Left on the D-Pad to iterate reversely through the track list. Pressing Right once will wrap the index back to 0 (displayed as 1).

Alternatively, one can use the GameShark code 3005DD56 00xx in the Japanese version and 3005DEEA 00xx in the North American version to play any of the tracks by substituting xx for the hexadecimal index from the table below:

All tracks that have not been specifically marked as unplayable are played correctly. The behavior for each track appears to be the same for both versions - the way the spectrum analyzer glitches out at track 69 is slightly different in each version, but that's about it.

Interestingly enough, of the 61 visible tracks, 42 have been given fully Japanese names in the Japanese version, whereas of the 14 additional tracks, only three have been given Japanese names (index 62 "Jesting truth", 67 "To be happy", and 74 "Wistful desire"). There's also four name changes of tracks with English names from the Japanese to the North American version:

• 0x11 / 17: "An inscription on a tombstone" => "Inscription on a tombstone"
• 0x41 / 65: "The neverending cycle of reincarnation" => "The never-ending cycle of reincarnation"
• 0x44 / 68: "Mission to the deep space" => "Mission to deep space"
• 0x45 / 69: "The incarnation of devil" => "The incarnation of the devil"

What's interesting is that while there have been a couple of changes in the North American release on a code level, no one bothered to fix the sound test, especially since the first three hidden tracks play just fine.

The tests have been conducted with Mednafen 0.9.44.1 on Linux.

Regional Differences#

Gameplay Changes#

The North American version features numerous improvements over the original Japanese release.

• You can now sort items in menu.
• You can change the equipment of all of your Einherjar, unlike the Japanese version, where only the four members in your active party were applicable.
• In the Japanese version, Lenneth's skills will all be unequipped when she changes weapons. Not only does this cause a hassle, but this adds fake difficulty to certain events where you're forced to change your weapons before engaging the fight. This was fixed in the English version by making it "remember" the skill set for each weapon.
• There was a bug in the original version that had prevented enemies capable of casting Great Magic, making some later-game boss fights rather pushovers. This was fixed in the North American release so that the bosses are as hard as they're intended to be.

Graphic Changes#

To do: Screenshots of these graphic changes.

• The pentagram was removed in Lezard Valeth's teleportation spell.
• Badrach's cigarette was edited out completely. This also alters his PWS. In the Japanese version, it involved him dropping ash from his cigarette around the enemy, then setting it on fire by throwing the stub. In the North American version, he drops gunpowder around the enemy instead, then ignites it with his gun.