A port of Valis IV

Once upon a time, there was a prince named Gallagher. He was entrusted with a magical ring that granted him great powers. But he was too weak to control the power of the ring, and became possessed by it. The mad prince was sealed into a crystal, but many years later managed to break out, planning to wreak havoc on the Dream World and to conquer it! Yuko, the heroine of the three previous Valis games, is no longer a sacred Valis warrior - she has become a goddess. Lena, a young girl who wants to become a Valis warrior, is the new main character, who must prove to Yuko she is worthy to wield the sword of Valis, that will eventually stop the evil plans of Gallagher. Like the previous games in the series, this is an action platform game. You can fight enemies with melee weapons or use magic. In order to cast magic spells, you must gather special items while fighting off regular enemies. At the end of a level, a boss enemy battle awaits you. The game features cut scenes with animé-style graphics to advance the story.


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Very cool action from what I've played. I hate how hard they tried to make it look american on covers and all when by the immediate it's anime af.

Not a bad game, but incredibly hard, boring and frustrating

To be honest, go straight to the PCE version, this one deserves a lot more your time, and this version has the double of the content of SNES Version

The first level was bad. Not a good sign.

Not as good as the first three, but enjoyable. I suppose it might also be due to changing main characters.

Ah, damn. It's more Valis.

At least the cover is fun, because nothing else about this is. Almost reminds me of The Art of the Deal with its black borders and big bold gold letters. Its ostentatious art is more suited to some trashy pulp novel than the game it so flagrantly misrepresents and might trick some poor kid into thinking they're actually going to play something cool. Wrong, bozo, it's Valis.

You do have a run button and the sprite art is more fluid and expressive than the last few games, but it's really more of the same. After three utterly joyless forays into this series, my takeaway is that I'm not surprised they followed this up by cranking out a porno.

"Say no to the porno Valis." - Kim Kitsuragi

Angel_Arle Valis reviews
Part 1: Valis II for PC Engine CD
Part 2: Valis III for PC Engine CD
Bonus: Valis III for Mega Drive
Part 3: Valis IV for PC Engine CD
Part 4: SD Valis for Mega Drive
Part 5: Mugen Senshi Valis: The Legend of a Fantasm Soldier for PC Engine CD
Final Part: Mugen Senshi Valis for Famicom

Well here we are folks, I know I just reviewed Valis I for PC Engine CD but why not just get this done too! This time it’s Super Valis: Akaki Tsuki no Otome (translated as Super Valis: Red Moon Rising Maiden) for the Super Famicom. Lasersoft is back once again to take a crack at the final game we have for the Valis series for these reviews. Though let me ask you something. Have you ever heard of Akumajo Dracula XX? It was a Super Famicom port of Akumajou Dracula X: Chi no Rondo for the PC Engine CD that had to cut a lot of things but was very similar to it. Let’s just say that Super Valis is like that but with Valis IV. I remember playing this game back in 2020 and thinking it’s good so let’s replay it after now playing all those Valis games!

Super Valis has you controlling Lena as you go through 7 levels. If you have played a Valis game before you already know what to expect but there are a lot of differences to go through. First off let’s talk about the cast of characters with…wait it’s just Lena? Oh, you only play as her in this game, odd. Well she can attack with her sword, wait huh? Yeah she actually uses the sword as a sword this time which is just weird, no projectile or anything. What’s even stranger is you can even run by double tapping which I got to say, not a fan at all of this change. Sliding is now gone entirely and that’s such a shame because it was a nice speed and defense option. It was way more interesting than just a normal run plus it’s kind of finicky at times for me to use. She can’t even use magic anymore, that’s just been removed all together. At least Lena controls pretty well outside of the run being finicky, got no complaints there.

Lena does at least now have the ability to use emblems. She always has a weak one by default called the Shot Emblem which shoots a straightforward projectile that, while weak, can never run out. The Wolf Shot Emblem shoots a wolf-like projectile that goes along the ground great for hitting enemies that never leave the ground, I guess if you want to pretend to play like Asfal you could use this one a lot though be careful as you only can use it 20 times per emblem. The Bomb Shot Emblem lets you shoot a fast and strong projectile that is basically a better version of the Shot Emblem but only having 10 uses per emblem. The Multi Shot Emblem lets you shoot three projectiles that aim mostly upwards making it good for airborne enemies but is rather weak but you at least get 20 uses of it. The Homing Shot Emblem lets you shoot a projectile that homes in on any enemy it targets that’s pretty strong but you only get 10 uses. The Armor Emblem lets you wear the Valis armor and lets you take some hits before losing it. You’ll know it’s about to go away if the color turns red meaning one more hit and it’s gone. The Heart Emblem lets you heal a little bit twice which is good to have a few if you don’t mind going more offensive with the sword. While getting those sounds great and all, keep in mind you can only have up to 6 in your inventory, you press the X button to select one and use the triggers to move the one you wanna select.

If you’re wondering how the level design is, well it’s kind of uninteresting in this game. I think limiting the game to one character and even removing the slide makes a lot of the platforming very uninteresting as it’s now gotten a bit boring compared to previous games. Having a normal sword doesn’t help either as now the game has to accommodate for that kind of playstyle. There are at least a lot of opportunities to find Emblems making some of the more challenging platforming worth going for if you can succeed. Just getting from point A to point B though just feels off in this game for me. I really miss Amu and Asfal when playing this game as they were part of what made Valis IV interesting even if the levels weren’t perfect obviously. Trying to run in these levels sucks though because it’s so easy to get hit if you try to run but walking just feels too slow and I never really felt this way about Valis IV despite having only one movement speed. The difficulty also gets kind of uneven by the end and you’ll notice it gets harder once you reach the Crystal Pillar as there’s some dickish enemy placement, spikes everywhere, icicles to freeze you, and some tight platforming to avoid many spikes. Level 6 can suck too but I’ll talk about that in a bit. You know what also sucks? Not having any checkpoints! Unless you play on Easy, one death equals back to the start of the level and this is just so stupid, what happened to the lives system? They couldn’t have at least put a checkpoint at the boss? Well at least you still have infinite continues.

Speaking of those enemies, they can be a pain in the ass at times. It starts out good enough even if first impressions make me miss the projectile attacks of past games. Though they eventually just get annoying with the way they place some of them. They really want you to use Emblems in some cases because if you don’t, it will be hell for you. There’s stuff like the annoying enemies in Crystal Pillar, some questionable stuff in Valhalla and stage 6 as a whole can go screw itself! It not only has weird bubble enemies that turn into fake Lena all over the place but it’s also got dragon statues that blow you away and these annoying fire balls that if you even hit once, you take forced damage every single time and they’re everywhere by the end of the level! Like I said before too, you can’t really rush in this game because it’s just so hard to react. This game also has a love for putting enemies behind background elements at times which is bad design in my opinion. We haven’t even talked about the bosses and hoooo boy I got something to say about them.

Before we talk about the bosses, let’s talk about their health. This is the 2nd time in the series they actually have a health bar but it has a gimmick this time around. You’ll see a boss health bar the moment you start a stage but if you pay close attention, it’s filling up the more you stay in a level. So if you tell me before to just not rush through levels to not get hit, well the game kind of promotes rushing. This one gimmick gives you a completely different mindset about how you do progression. Should you rush risking some hits in? Should you take new paths to get items? It’s all up to you but it really sucks in a game where running can get you hit easily. There’s also the worry of getting enough points to upgrade your lifebar because yes, your score is tied to upgrades towards it which feels like such a stupid and unneeded idea. It’s not even a thing on the easy mode.

Now those bosses, oh those bosses! They can be fine at times especially early on but it’s when you get to the 4th boss is when all the good design goes away. I still have no clue how to easily dodge this boss. It's ridiculous, you’re barely given any time to react, it's just not fair! While the rest can be beaten pretty simply, they just aren’t that fun this time around due to the weird range of your sword, it may not sound bad but it completely changes how you do boss fights compared to other games and doing these right after playing Valis I hours ago really didn’t help my opinion on this. The third boss also drags way too long, she not only has three forms but the third one takes forever to attack like my god DO SOMETHING! Though we need to talk about something real quick. So the second boss is a rather simple one, just dodge the tiger and his fireballs but I have a story to share. So, I first played the US version of this game over 2 years ago and remember finding a trick where if you stand in the corner, he can never hit you. It makes the fight a joke but I tried to do it here but it just didn’t work like I’ll talk about the US version later but how did this get ADDED to the localized version? I can’t even process how that would happen. The final boss is also really hard with many attacks to dodge and he even sends out enemies that heal him if they touch you, it can be a pain if you aren’t prepared. Better yet, stage 7 is also a BOSS RUSH! Yep they make you fight the even numbered bosses again and it’s just ughh why?! Were they out of time to do an actual Stage 7? Valis IV didn’t do this so what gives?

You know what also pisses me off? The story or the lack thereof. Whether or not you agree with this doesn’t matter to me because to me you need to have a story in Valis to be interesting. It’s part of what made the series so interesting to me, they were never the deepest but they never felt as generic as other action games of the time and it really set them apart from some of the other franchises. Valis IV, while I couldn’t understand the dialogue due to me being an idiot and not knowing Japanese, I could still appreciate it even if I had to use a wiki to read the plot synopsis (yeah yeah shame me if you want). If you were to like what Valis IV did for its story, well there is none of that here. There’s no Amu and Asfal like I mentioned before and they basically cut anything that was of a story here. If you thought that was bad enough, the text after each level is so laughably bad. There’s stupid crap like “WHOM AWAIT CLISTAL PILLOR” or “RENA DEFEAT ATLAST… SHE SAID SO WHAT ‘ND SILENCED” or my favorite “GALGEAR LOOKING FORWARD TO DEFEAT M’AIDER MAIDEN” Ok I have to ask, what the hell is a M’aider?? When I went to look it up Google told me it was French for help me. What, is it a cry for help from the devs?? The pictures for inbetween the stages aren’t even new and are taken from the PC Engine version’s cutscenes including one where we see Amu’s grave HEY WAIT A SECOND! How the hell can you include that but not even have her in the game, that was one of the more important moments in the original! Even worse, this game just doesn’t understand the whole thing with Yuko. The whole reason Yuko gave her the armor and Valis sword was because she took that test, why isn’t that here?? Why is it at the beginning!? Why is Amu’s grave shown after beating the final boss even though she’s nowhere in the game. Why does the cutscene before the final boss use the cutscene from after Stage 6 in Valis IV? What’s even stupider is because the armor is now a powerup, the scene of her having it on before the final boss and the hard mode ending screen make zero sense now. So much about this pisses me off, I get this is a Super Famicom game but it just feels like such a disappointment…

That’s not all, let’s finally talk about the US version called Super Valis IV. So, since the US never got Valis IV due to the console being a dud here, we got only this instead. What did the team do next? Make the game a lot worse difficulty wise. Enemies clearly do more damage in this version and the game overall is made a lot harder and I swear bosses are harder outside of the whole issue with the 2nd boss I mentioned earlier. They even locked out Easy mode through a cheat code which still feels like it was made harder anyway. All the problems I had with the game already are made worse due to this crap, in fact I’d argue it just makes the game bad. It was already flawed in Japan but this just makes it harder to recommend but hey at least the English text is better here. No more M’aider Maiden here. Seriously if you decide to play this game, do not make it this version whatever you do.

Super Valis is fine graphically but it never does anything to impress you. While I was good with how the games looked on the PC Engine CD for the most part, it won’t get away with that here. A lot of it just feels the same which is not something I think they should have done. There are some things like the logo in the intro that do use the special effects of the console but in the gameplay itself it feels just so low effort like they copy and pasted PC Engine graphics. There’s just nothing good to say. The music on the other hand is good at times and I’d argue it’s the one thing better than the original. Stuff like Vecanti, Valhalla, Crystal Pillar, and especially Castle Vanity are really catchy. Give them a listen sometime if you haven’t heard them!

Sigh…what a disappointment. How did I like this back in 2020? Super Valis didn’t end the series in a bang at all. The Super Famicom deserved better than this, almost nothing is better here and I felt like the whole time I was just complaining like did anyone even have fun reading this? I hate ending the Valis reviews on this but even with all my negativity, it’s still a playable game at least for the Japanese version. I’m more so angry because of what it is, this isn’t like SD Valis where it was just a bad game, this is a bad port of a good game. Still no matter how mad I sound, I can’t say it’s a 4/10. You know I’ll give it this, the credits theme sounds so lovely, it feels like a true finale to all of this, like how Lena goes back to Yuko. I can walk somewhere with this song and maybe find my true self as the M’aider Maiden that I truly am. If you didn’t like Valis IV then please just stay away from this version. Oddly the US version was added to NSO back in 2020 with the Atlus copyrights removed. A Japanese version for the service has never shown up on Japanese NSO sadly. But with all that said, the review is done, bye.