I don?t want to reduce a game to a single screenshot, but pretty much everything you could possibly want to know about Valkie 64 can be summed up with this:
Not only is the game heavily indebted to the N64 era of gaming, it?s particularly indebted to N64-era Zelda. You obviously have a female protagonist instead of a male one, but beyond that, everything here ? from the blocking graphics to the sword-based combat to the fact there are gems hidden in most of the objects you break ? comes straight out of the late?-90s.
I mean, you could probably have guessed the same from the game?s name, but the screenshot captures it even more perfectly.
Of course, the big difference between the two is that I don?t think people will be remembering Valkie 64 25 years from now with the same sort of reverence they currently hold for Ocarina of Time and Majora?s Mask. This is because Valkie 64 doesn?t have much of an identity of its own. It wears its influences proudly, as we?ve established, and it?s enjoyable enough if you don?t expect anything more from it than simply being an homage to N64 Zelda, but beyond that? It?s tolerable, but nothing more.
And honestly, even tolerating it will require making some concessions towards quality. The combat is your basic hack-and-slash: you have a sword, and you can use it to parry attacks, but generally speaking you?ll just be running at every enemy you come across and hitting it. To be fair, both the hacking and the running are better following a recent update, but they?re still nothing to write home about.
The same goes for everything else here, too. The music is repetitive piano tinkling that, again, wouldn?t have been out of place in an N64 game, but it also wouldn?t be remembered today. The world, too, looks exactly like you?d imagine an N64 game would look, but there?s nothing about it that makes it stand out.
Which is a perfect way to describe Valkie 64. It?s neat to see someone capture the feel of a bygone generation as well as this game does, but absent any real identity of its own, it?s hard to see why you?d play this instead of going back and replaying the originals.
Malte Glade provided us with a Valkie 64 PC code for review purposes.
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