I must start this post by saying that this is by far my favorite story so far, although I’ve only played the first three, so it really doesn’t much. Still, out of the three I’ve seen, “Valkyrie” reminded me of a play the most. My, if it had more irony (or any irony,) I would think it was Shakespearean (ok, not really, but you get the drift.)

“Valkyrie” is a love story, through and through. While there is certainly love in the the other stories, they are not quite as strong as the love in “Valkyrie” (and I’m willing to bet that “The Black Sword” has quite a bit as well.) Unlike the other characters, the Valkyrie’s actions are totally dictated by love. Please keep in mind that there are spoilers for the game. Just think of this as if this were an anime episode summary.

Image shamelessly taken from: アカラサマナ

Gwendolyn is the young Valkyrie princess of Demon Lord Odin, the ruler of Ragnanival, the land of the Aesir. Currently, the Aesir are at war with Ringford, the land of the fairies (sometimes referred to as the Vanir) over a magic cauldron that holds much power. Whoever holds the power of the cauldron We, at this time, are not told who started the war, but we do know that the fairies currently hold the cauldron.

The story starts out right in the midst of a battle between the Aesir and the fairies. The battle was going poorly for Ragnanival. Griselda, the oldest daughter of Odin, dies right in front of Gwendolyn. Before she goes, Griselda hands over her spear to Gwendolyn. The spear is a weapon known as a psypher. These weapons are crafted by dwarves from jewels stolen from the Netherword. They are known to be very powerful weapons and are the only things that are able to penetrate a dragon’s scales.

After her sister’s death, fights on the battlefield only to meet up with the enemy’s ace, the shadow knight, whom quickly pins Gwendolyn down. Instead of killing her, which Gwendolyn asks of him, he decides to spare her life and leaves the battlefield for some unknown reason. The Aesir lose the battle and are forced to retreat.

After several key events in the storyline, Gwendolyn is forced to marry the Shadow Knight, who goes by the name Oswald. It turns out that Oswald was madly in love with Gwendolyn, even though Gwendolyn still thinks of him as an enemy even though she clearly likes him too. Poor guy. Anyway, this is basically where her main story begins.

The remaining story deals with her coming to terms with her love for Oswald. The most touching scene is when Oswald finds out that Gwendolyn gave the ring, which Oswald gave her, to Odin. He looks generally hurt and leaves the room while Gwendolyn can only watch since she is reoccupied talking to a valkyrie about Odin’s recent loss to the Fairies which has left him injured. It just so happens that the Queen of the FairiesThe th acquired the ring during the battle. Unfortunately for her, Oswald is taken to the Netherworld while she is away.

The things I like best about the story are the lines that the characters deliver. Everything is so fake in the game (no one really speaks like that.) Usually, that would be a bad thing, but it’s perfect for emulating plays. All throughout the game I was thinking of how similar the lines were to an actual play.

A nice thing is that things weren’t too predictable. Once you get far enough into the story, you can kind of what’s going to happen, but things are ruined too much by that expectation. I say the one bad thing about this story is that it makes some events in the other stories pretty predictable (of course, since they crossover or mention them.) Another thing that doesn’t make sense is when certain events seem to conflict with one another. Now that’s just confusing and kind of annoying.

I think I’ll use this story as a benchmark for the other stories, especially since this was my original source of data for the key events in this game.