Handheld gaming is more than a compromise of power and portability. Whether it’s the ability to play anywhere, multitask or hold an entire console in your hands, it’s a special experience consoles have never replicated. In a world where high resolutions and teraflops reign supreme, we take a look at a portable relic every month and reflect on what makes it memorable. Be warned, spoilers may occasionally populate these articles.

Back before Switch effectively killed off the dedicated handheld market, it was a common practice for home console games to receive handheld ports. Sometimes these were stripped down versions of current games, while other times these were ports of games that were a few years old, but thanks to tech advancements, could now be run on the current handheld devices without making massive concessions. Valkyrie Profile originally came out on PlayStation in the year 2000. It was generally well received by RPG fans and enjoyed enough success where it received an enhanced port in 2006 to PlayStation Portable where it was renamed Valkyrie Profile Lenneth.

The titular Lenneth is the protagonist of Valkyrie Profile. She's a warrior-maiden who serves Odin. Odin has tasked her with recruiting einherjar to fight with the Æsir in their war against the Vanir to prevent the destruction of Asgard in Ragnarok. In order to do this Lenneth needs to go to Midgard to recruit worthy souls that she can send to Odin's army. Thus unfolds a tale filled with tragedy, as each of the souls destined to become einherjar can only be recruited after their body comes to an unfortunate demise.

Valkyrie Elysium is a fun action game in its own right, but received criticism for having such a small emphasis on its story and reducing the number of available einherjar while essentially relegating them to being nothing more than special attacks. Valkyrie Profile is the reason why this change was so negatively received. There are over twenty einherjar that are available to be recruited, though the specific number will vary depending on the difficulty setting. When the einherjar are recruited a scene plays that gives a glimpse into what their life was about prior to their untimely demise before Lenneth meets and recruits. Once an einherjar is recruited they become playable character in Lenneth's party, but can also be sent to Asgard to serve in join Odin's growing army. Some einherjar's will flesh out the story in additional ways while others don't make significant contributions beyond their recruitment. The strong emphasis on world building through the einherjar had a lot to with how Valkyrie Profile remains relevant over two decades after its release.

Difficulty settings in games are usually straight forward. Normal is the intended way to experience it, hard is for people who enjoy a challenge and easy is for people who simply want to stroll through the game and enjoy the story. Personal attitude toward difficulty settings has always been play whatever will make you enjoy the game the most, but things aren't that simple in Valkyrie Profile where difficulty setting has more serious ramifications. The enemies have the same stats across all difficulty levels; it's the players who remain weaker because less experience is awarded on hard difficulty compared to the normal on easy, the latter which gives more experience than normal. New recruits also begin at level one on hard difficulty, compared to set levels they get on lower settings. Of the three endings, the best ending is only available on normal or hard difficulty. This is a game, however, where the best and most complete experience is to play on hard.

No difficulty has all dungeons as there are some that are unique to the easier levels and some unique to hard, but hard is the only difficulty that allows the player to unlock all the einherjar. Easy has the least amount of dungeons. The extra dungeons in hard offer more event experience which can be divided among the new recruits, which paired with the proper items to offer bonuses for leveling up can compensate for the low starting levels. Hard mode also has the greatest number of items, some of which unlock certain areas of the Seraphic Gate. With the einherjar stories being a highlight, hard is the recommended difficulty to get the most enjoyment out of Valkyrie Profile, but there are nice dungeons that aren't found in hard such as the snow covered Forest of Woe. Ideally, it's best just to playthrough multiple times on all the difficulties.

The story progresses from the actions Lenneth takes as she is flying high above Midgard. Using her spiritual concentration she can hear the anguish of the world below. This will alert her to the location of a potential einherjar that's near death or uncover the location of a dungeon that requires her attention. While she's free to fly above the world and visit places at her leisure, doing so is ill advised. Dungeons won't be accessible until she finds them, and even if the player knows what cities einherjar are in visiting those places won't trigger the necessary cutscene to recruit them unless she's already heard them through her spiritual concentration. It tries to have an open world feel, but progression ends up feeling more linear.

One of the things that was found to be less favorable about Valkyrie Profile Lenneth was the timer that discouraged open world exploration. It does a convincing job of creating the appearance of an open world game, but this is deception. Valkyrie Profile is divided into chapters and each chapter has a finite number of periods. When the periods are completed, Lenneth must report to Freya and a new chapter begins. When all the periods have transpired, Ragnarok arrives so the player can't make return visits to dungeons to grind or freely explore all the towns. With just about every action burning through periods, progression through the game can get reduced to using spiritual concentration to find the next objective, go complete that and repeat until it's time to move on to the next chapter.

The battle system in Valkyrie Profile Lenneth is a unique form of turn-based combat. Each of the four party members is assigned to a button and all attack at once. The order in which the buttons are pressed the determines the order in which they take action. Each warrior type has up to three attacks though their choice of weapon can reduce that number. Spellcasters don't have MP, but instead need a rest period after they act to recharge. Whenever the party is able to attack effectively enough in a turn where the hit gauge reaches 100, they're able partake in a devastating attack when the Purify Weird Soul prompt appears, and sometimes this action refills the hit gauge allowing other party members to follow up with their own powerful attack. There are some enemies such as Will-O'-Wisps will detonate and likely wipe out the party after taking too much damage so the Purify Weird Soul mechanic is essential to defeat them.

Valkyrie Profile Lenneth is a game that can offer a challenge on any difficulty setting, but also can be beaten on any difficulty setting by learning the intricacies of the battle system and getting the timing right. It isn't a game without its issues -- the controls in navigating some of the jumps in the dungeons are janky -- but otherwise it holds up well. The story is one of the big selling points, though the pacing can feel terribly slow in some parts, with the intro sequence taking around 45 minutes before the player can actually do anything. But once things get going, its emphasis on storytelling and unique gameplay style make this a memorable RPG.

Valkyrie Profile Lenneth was a stand-out title for the PSP. Even though Sony is no longer an active player in the handheld console market, games like Valkyrie Profile Lenneth show the potential PSP and Vita had. Valkyrie Profile Lenneth recently became available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. This port seems to be just a faithful transfer of the PSP version with a rewind feature added if the player wishes they did something differently in the last thirty seconds. While there are certain aspects that feel, dated it's still an enjoyable adventure.

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