Xenon Valkyrie + Review

Making its leap from its handheld debut on PS Vita, to PS4, Xenon Valkyrie+ greets players with an attractive pixel art style, coupled with a range of unique features that separate the game from its fellow platforming titles.

The game opens as a Witch intent on destroying the planet sets her plans in motion, with the player being tasked with locating and defeating her before it's too late. Before commencing their journey, the player is able to select one of three separate playable characters, each possessing three weapons in the form of a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, a number of grenades. However, what sets each character apart from the other is their special abilities which come in the form of a super jump, an upgraded radar, and a timed mine, each allowing the player to handle situations differently depending on their selected character.

However, Xenon Valkyrie+ truly reaches its potential when players are faced with its array of randomly generated levels, each posing a new threat and difficulty rating to the player. This feature, not only adds a significant level of replayability to the game, but also ensures players do not become relaxed with their environment and are instead kept on their toes being forced to constantly adapt to new environments and enemies. Within each level resides a mini boss which offers a new challenge to the player on each run, providing a key which they can then attempt to use in order to unlock a chest hidden throughout the procedurally generated area, awarding them with a new weapon if they are able to locate it and obtain the key although this is not an easy task.

After defeating clearing the level and defeating its boss, the game allows players a short respite from the action providing a small area after each level with a shop where they can buy items, upgrade their chosen character, and speak with the game’s NPC characters. When upgrading their character players are able to select upgrades from four separate sections including HP, defence, Strength and Ammo capacity. These upgrades can provide a major advantage to the player as they progress further into the game, with HP, and Defence taking the forefront when it comes to battling more dangerous enemies such as mini bosses. However, these upgrades can vary in price with some ranging far higher than others, forcing players to defeat any enemies they can find and even go out of their way to explore the level’s more conspicuous locations to earn coins, and obtain XP.

However, despite the game’s emphasis on progression and upgrading each character, it also harshly punishes the player for dying forcing any player who dies to lose all of their progress up to that point and restart their game from the beginning. Although, in order to counter some of the more tedious effects of the permadeath system the game allows users to open lasting shortcuts to areas, without forcing them to traverse the entirety of a newly generated level.

Although the game has a unique design, with ever changing levels and interesting enemies and bosses, it also has a few major faults with its key features. For example, despite strongly focusing on platforming, Xenon Valkyrie+’s controls are very difficult with sensitivity often making jumping onto smaller ledges and platforms far more difficult than it should be. As well as control problems, the game also contains features that add little to the overall gameplay, or even make the game’s levels more tedious. This issue comes in the form of Teamerite, a form of currency that players can obtain to purchase more powerful weapons that carry across playthroughs. However, when a player purchases these items they do not appear on their character but instead become available as possible loot available in chests littered throughout the map forcing players to search through the level for a chest from which they may not even obtain their purchase.  

Despite this, the game largely distances itself from its fellow platformers with an interesting art style, a limitless range of levels and secrets, and permadeath system that adds an extra challenge to an already unforgiving game.