Back in the day I bought Valkyrie profile. This game was insanely odd, it was a weird mix of Castlevania, Final Fantasy, and Dead or Alive, with a lot of roman theological influence.

"Valkyrie Profile is a complex, ambitious, and gorgeous title that offers much to like: beautiful aesthetics, an entertaining battle system, engaging characters, and a creatively balanced "dual" scenario."

http://www.gamespot.com/ps/rpg/valkyrieprofile/index.html

I really thought the game was cool, but I started to play it with a friend watching. This friend got tired with the incredibly long and time consuming opening story section of the game, and made me skip it. It did contain a lot of fighting, but the fighting was confusing and different. In the end I decided to return this game, because skipping story for me is something that I hate doing, and for some reason I didn’t want to go back and replay the first part of the game.

Anyhow, a couple years later I was thinking of this game and decided that I'd go on Ebay and pick it up for half the price I had pay for it before. I was shocked at how rare this game had become. For whatever reason the game's price rose from the $40 I paid for it in the store to $80 online. I lucked out and got it from $70, but unfortunately for me I had the ridiculous task of peeling off "rental tape" from the game(the game was playable, but when I buy a game for $70, I want it to look nice, call me crazy). Apparently the game was bought from a rental store, probably at a low price from a store who didn't know any better and someone made a bundle off of me. Oh well, anyways, after I got the tape off the game I had to clean off the sticky goop with this special crap my mom had. After all that trouble I got it working...

However, we are talking about a PS1 game here, and at this time I was well into the pure owange that was my XBOX. I also played a lot of WarCraft III, so I didn't have much time to play this game. Not only that, this game is really different, almost too different to where I felt as if I needed to read the manual. I decided to hold out until I could get the strategy guide, however, I never ended up buying it.

Whether or not I will actually play Valkyrie Profile is unknown, I hope I can get around to it. However, for the time being, there is a second game coming out, titled Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria. Square Enix and Tri-Ace are behind this one, the same people that made the first one, so I'm ready to check this out when I get a chance. I believe that it will be a similar game, so maybe I should go back, beat the first one before I get the new one.

More information can be found at http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/rpg/valkyrieprofilesilmeria/index.html