In the game, the lead character is a Valkyrie named Lenneth. It's her job (more accurately, your job) to collect the souls of dying warriors in order to train them and send them to Valhalla to fight in Ragnarok -- the battle to end all battles between the gods and the forces of darkness. You'll fly around the world, picking up cries of anguish from prospective party members and sniffing out nests of evil critters and the undead. Characters you recruit are introduced in a short vignette, and you take them into said dungeons to kick some butt on behalf of Odin, obtain treasure, and gain experience in order to beef up your characters for the coming uber-conflict in the sky.
The game's main draw is an extremely interesting battle system that assigns each of your four characters to a face button and requires timing and strategy to 'purify' your enemies with extreme prejudice. Certain attacks can launch enemies, push them back, or drive them into the ground. With up to three attacks per character, the process can be quite a workout for your right thumb. Because it's so active and illustrated through great-looking, expressive sprites and plenty of 2D pyrotechnics and glowing effects, the battle system is the signature element of the series and should leave quite an impression on anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of seeing it in action.
Laying into an enemy who's already dead with three additional ultra-powerful attacks with names like "Nibelung Valesti" is one of the game's great pleasures, but there's more to the appeal than that. The game pairs this intense battle engine with an unlikely companion: 2D platforming. Towns and dungeons (speaking broadly, there are caves and castles as well) are composed of flat planes with paths leading toward and away from the screen to compose a map that occupies a three-dimensional space. Other games have done side scrolling in an RPG since, but Valkyrie was the one that inspired it.
