It's been a while since I've played Valis, long enough that my ailing brain has forgotten much about it, including how it actually plays. If you've been following me and have been wondering where my bucket list reviews have gone, it's been a hot minute because I really didn't want to refamiliarize myself with god damn Valis. I have better things I could be doing, like breaking fluorescent lamps on my back porch, or dashing the sharp edge of a sheet of paper across my body many times to figure out where a paper cut hurts the most (the answer may surprise you!) Alas, I have a job to do, and the work must be done, so I finally got around to replaying Valis just so I could tell everyone what they already know: it sucks and I hate it.

Valis: The Fantasm Soldier was originally released for the MSX by Telenet Japan, and was developed by Wolf Team, who you might know for their "hit" action-platformer Earnest Evans and a bunch of other garbage that's not worth your time. I happened to play the 1991 Genesis version, and I had to look up the date to confirm it really was '91 because this feels more like a 1988 release, suffering from many of the same issues as the Genesis' launch lineup. It sounds clangy, the controls are clunky, and the graphics lack depth and vibrancy. Even then, it feels a bit unkind to compare it to launch games when Shinobi plays more smoothly and Space Harrier looks more impressive. No, this is just a very budget update to a game that looked about as good as Jetpac when it originally released.

You may be able to forgive the pace of the opening level. Yuko is fleeing from school during a monster attack, she's armed but has yet to attain the power and armor of a true Valis warrior, which she is destined to become. If the game was trying to communicate that Yuko were in some sort of depowered state, then her slow movement, rigid controls, and pathetic attack would perhaps make sense, but once you do power up and get the Valis armor she... still moves like that. Her jump feels both floaty in how easy it is to gain vertical distance yet rigid in how little she's able to move horizontally, which becomes a real problem in the third level when you have to traverse a cave that greatly limits your vertical space. If in that opening level you think "god, the hurt boxes on enemies feels way off" then I'm afraid I've got some bad news, because they don't ever improve, and some enemies (notably the floating skulls in the second level) just flicker around like they're teleporting. This is where I'd usually say "to be fair, I am emulating this," but Genesis emulation is pretty well figured out, I think it's just Valis. It's just like this.

The priority, it would seem, was the story. Cutscenes are done Ninja Gaiden style, and they look really sharp. Dialog is lengthy, and you can tell Wolf Team cared a lot about the lore of Valis, to the point that they would have perhaps been better off making a visual novel instead. Now that would be interesting. A Valis visual novel would be pretty cool and I bet totally normal and not made for perverts. The novelty of these cutscenes is unfortunately Valis' one notable quality, and not only is it not worth playing beyond them, I think if you stripped them away nobody would even talk about this game.

Wonkiness aside, Valis is as dry as an action-platformer can be. Uninspired levels that sometimes are so simplistic as to be a single diagonal line, boring enemy designs, unimaginative visuals... The core pieces are just so bland, and the fact that everything plays like crap is the icing on the cake. It is surprising to me that there's even enough of a conversation around Valis for several people I know to have played it, but my heart is at least warmed knowing we all agree that it stinks. If for some reason you're not one of the Valis initiated, then I ask that you exert some self-control and say no to its powerful 80s anime wiles. Just watch an OVA. Literally any. It doesn't matter. None of this matters.