This game could have been pretty good if Soleil was given an actual budget... I got hooked from the demo only for the full game to be basically that >__>
I think what really held this game back was it didn't give itself a way to flesh out the story/characters. One of the best parts of the og valkyrie profile was the story and like... the bones of that were in this game if you dug around for them, but SO much of the content was so easy to miss. I found out by total accident that if you go idle for a moment the party will start to chat/reveal some info about the world. The closest example I can think of is in nier automata when you're running around a large area when 9S/2B would banter but that would happen regardless. Why would this game hide that important worldbuilding behind having to stay idle for at least two minutes?! The einherjar are decently interesting characters, but the format of having to listen to each of their backstory things in a separate menu you have to dig for individually was a hassle. Kristoff and Cypher in particular could have been GREAT characters but they didn't have the time or budget to make their personalities part of the story and made it totally optional. How are you supposed to feel bad about their deaths (in some endings) if there was no room to form a connection with them in the first place?
The combat starts out great... up until the Kristoff level where it sharply drops off. The animations are cool and combos are flashy but god that Kristoff level drags on forever and so does the last chapter when you're going to face off with Fenrir. It makes any RPG look like small potatoes with the amount of surprise encounters you have trudge through. They can go on for 10+ minutes with enemies that have massive health pools and 4+ waves of guys when you have like 1 special attack gem left and no meter to summon the einherjar. I would rate it slightly higher but that last act of the game DRAGS. It drags soo bad I find it so difficult to recommend this game.
The gameplay outside of combat is milquetoast. They tried(?) to incorporate some of the puzzle/platforming mechanics from the previous Valkyrie games but again clearly didn't have time to flesh it out. There was at least a dozen times in the game where you'd need to unlock a door or something and the "puzzle" in question was either: a) Fight a billion guys or b) Get the item in a room directly adjacent or IN FRONT of the blocked path. Sometimes I'd get a key item wondering what it was for to only need it for a door/gate maybe fifteen seconds later. The platforming is all-around bad. Jumping is janky and Valkyrie isn't satisfying to control in the overworld.
I think I'm upset at the potential of this game more than anything. If Soleil had the time/money to make fully animated cutscenes (and cutscenes for your party members!!) and made the story non-optional, that easily would've added enough runtime to the game to where they wouldn't need to pad out it out with repetitive encounters constantly. I can't overstate how annoying it gets in the last act of the game. Combat is well-balanced until after you get Cypher so I don't understand what happened. It's not even a difficulty spike, just the game throwing wave after wave of guys at you to force you into resource management mode (which is easy to circumvent if you have enough in-game monies) it SHOULD be fun at the end of the game when you finally have a full party you can go ballistic with and have all the weapon combos unlocked, but it really just becomes a tedious balancing act of managing your blue meter and special attack gems. Big time disappointing because there are some genuinely interesting character designs, animation, and environments but it gets ruined by the things that bog this game down. For the limited hand-animated cutscenes there are in the game, they're pretty great. There's some fantastic camerawork and some cinematic shots from the game that seriously stuck with me. I hope this game flopping doesn't ruin Soleil's chance to work on another ip because I feel like Squeenix kinda screwed them over.
I have a hard time recommending this one to anyone bc of how tedious it is but I still enjoyed... somehow. Hilde is cool lol. If you don't mind hack n' slash combat and doing your own digging for plot (a la character logs) give it a shot when it goes on sale. Absolutely not worth the full price tag. I hope SE gives Valkyrie another shot even tho this one was super disappointing :|

**random note-- I feel like SE shot themselves in the foot with the marketing of this game as well? I distinctly remember people being like "wtf" at the cypher reveal bc he was described as a slave trader. The wording makes it sound like HE was a slaver so I was surprised to learn in his story that no he was actually a slave... that was TRADED into a family that eventually freed him. Square... how did you mess up the translation THAT bad? Literally "former slave" or "freed slave" would have fixed that instantly. Maybe it was for engagement bait but I don't get it 😭 As someone who followed the promo for this game before it came out the final product was so different than what I was expecting. The bits and pieces of story revealed in trailers either didn't match up or were just translated weird. SE you gotta stop outsourcing to ppl if you're not gonna give them more than $5 to make and market a game plz