Valis: The Fantasm Soldier

1991 | RIOT, Wolf Team | Sega Mega Drive, Evercade

In recent years I’ve started delving more into the other games developed by Wolf Team, or Namco Tales Studio as they’re now known by. The unfortunate by-product of growing up in the EU was that I had to rely on importing the majority of Tales of titles and the same went for a lot of the other games in the Wolf Team catalog. As such I missed out on a ton of cool games that were only released in North America. Luckily for me, Evercade would release the Renovation Collection 1, which featured a lot of the earlier Wolf Team titles, like Arcus Odyssey, El Viento and of course Valis: The Fantasm Soldier!

The original Valis: The Fantasm Soldier was an action platformer developed by Wolf Team and published by Telenet Japan in 1986 for the MSX, PC-88/98, X1 and FM-7. Each version would be slightly different depending on the system’s capabilities, with the MSX version standing out as the version with the biggest deviation of the game’s general visual style. The MSX version also featured a password system that allowed you to revisit stages instead of the save system present in the other versions. A complete rework was later developed for the Famicom, which overhauled the game from a straightforward action platformer to emphasize more exploration, with additional changes to the narrative. A full remake of the original version was then developed and published by RIOT in 1991 and released in North America under Renovation Products, a Telenet subsidiary. This version was again remade for the PC-Engine in 1992 and featured enhanced graphics and voice acting for the cutscenes created by series designer Hiroki Hayashi. The US only saw the release of the first and third game in the series in its original form and an SD, or super deformed, remake of the second with Syd of Valis. The series would receive its final entry with Valis IV, developed by Laser Soft, on PC-Engine, with a vastly different version releasing in the west under the name Super Valis IV for Super Nintendo.

The story of Valis follows a school girl named Yuuko Asou, who one day after school finds herself taking shelter from sudden rainfall. After the rain stops, Yuuko tries to get home only to find her hometown invaded by a horde of monsters. A mysterious voice rings out and Yuuko finds herself in possession of a mystical sword. From here we travel to the dream world to defeat the five generals of the evil overlord, Rogle, to find the five Fantasm Jewels. In the dream world we also encounter the mysterious voice, belonging to queen Valia, who gives Yuuko the powers of the Warrior of Valis to help her fight and defeat Rogle. The story is largely told through beautifully drawn cutscenes that play in between the stages, with the translation being somewhat wonky at times. Not Zero Wing wonky, but still wonky.

Valis is a rather straightforward action platformer with a few noticeable quirks that make it stand out amongst the crowd. Your primary means to fend of the hordes of enemies is the Valis sword, which can be upgraded from level 1 to level 3. Throughout the stages you can find variations of the sword which allow you to do different things, like fire a single projectile, or launch a homing attack at your enemies. When you pick up more than one of the same upgrade it increases your level, but if you pick up a different sword, you’ll have to start from level 1 again. The stages are fairly straightforward, with some branching paths to allow for exploration. You’ll often find yourself falling into pits, only to find a hidden tunnel underneath. A key component of Valis is strategizing around the sword upgrades. Sometimes it’s better to carry a weaker sword into a boss fight to deal with specific patterns, or to do a bit more damage than the other sword. By defeating bosses you earn their Fantasm Jewel, which grants you access to magic spells. These range from earthquakes to flashes of pure damage and can be used using your magic points. The stronger the spell the more it costs to use. While you can spam earthquakes to get rid of monsters in the earlier levels, you’ll quickly find that the damage lacks in the later stages, as well as leaving you somewhat lacking for options during boss fights.

Overall the game feels really nice to control, though I do have a few caveats when it comes to movement. One of my favorite elements of traversing stages is having the ability to high jump by holding up and the jump button. This allows you to quickly traverse the different levels within the stages and it feels kind of neat to find upgrades hidden off-screen after a well-timed jump. However, jumping is mostly limited to vertical movement, this means that crossing gaps by simply jumping will cause you to lose all momentum and simply plummet from the sky. In most cases you can use the slide to give yourself some horizontal air time and then jump at the end of the animation to bridge the last gap. For some reason the game keeps the forward momentum from the slide and makes you jump further. Additionally the slide itself doesn’t obey the laws of gravity very well, allowing you to slide in the air. What makes it a tad frustrating sometimes is that the controls aren’t the most responsive. It takes a while for the game to go from an attack to a jump or slide and vice versa. It would’ve helped streamline the the whole ordeal a bit more by allowing you to break out of an attack animation into a slide instead of leaving yourself vulnerable to getting attacked with each button. It’s all just a bit too sluggish for the amount of movement the game expects from you. In fact, a lot of the Mega Drive version feels rather sluggish.

Okay, admittedly I somewhat shot myself in the foot by playing the Mega Drive version over the PC-Engine one. The cutscenes in the Mega Drive version aren’t voiced and crawl by EXTREMELY slowly. It feels like the game is trying to find the right key to hit next on a keyboard in the next room to type out a sentence. You get the delivery of the story, barring a few wonky translation points, but it takes a lot longer than it should have. In contrast the PC-Engine version has fully voiced cutscenes that animate smoothly, giving the presentation a much nicer feel in terms of pacing. The story is roughly the same, however the latter is much more engaging because of the smoother presentation. I frequently found my attention drifting during some of the game’s longer cutscenes as bits of text took minutes to pass by, and I feel like this can be resolved by simply replaying the game on PC-Engine (which I will!).

While the Mega Drive version of Valis might not be the definitive version to play, it does a fantastic job at introducing the series. Despite my complaints and caveats, the cutscenes look absolutely stunning and the presentation of the story is something that you rarely see on the system. The soundtrack does a fantastic job at elevating the excitement of fighting your way through hordes of enemies. Some of the background work does tend to feel a bit on the flat side, which often left me unsure whether I could move to a higher or lower level, especially in the city levels. The sprites themselves are incredible with some rather well made animations for both the main character and the bosses. In the grand scheme of things, the Mega Drive version of Valis is a perfectly acceptable place to start your journey into the franchise. However, the PC-Engine is vastly superior in terms of performance, responsiveness and has voiced cutscenes that make the story flow substantially better. All it lacks is that very specific type of punchy bass sound that only the Mega Drive can blast process into your eardrums. It’s still a great experience, albeit not without its flaws.

Surprise downpour/10