Whilst looking similar to classic Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, The Adventure of Valkyrie – The Legend of the Key of Time (to give it it’s full title) is more of Namcot’s take on the original The Legend of Zelda although it plays more-like the recent 3DS eShop hit Witch and Hero. Amazingly for its time, TAoV has life meters for the bad guys plus you get to play as a female character and the game remarkably drifts from day to night and back to day again. Perhaps more impressive still is the beautiful box art. With little Japanese text and several RPG elements such as earning money through battles, buying (or finding) new equipment and learning new spells, this first paragraph sure implies that The Adventure of Valkyrie is a classic game.

Unfortunately I have to write this second paragraph. Despite all the positives above, they are all but out weighted by the negatives of high difficulty (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in-itself, but when aided by collision detection it becomes unjustifiable) and the player often finding it being of more benefit to wander almost aimlessly and avoid battles as opposed to standing and fighting which effectively just obliterates your precious life meter. I’d love to recommend this game but in its genre it comes a distant third behind the aforementioned original Zelda and The Mysterious Murasame Castle on the 3DS Virtual Console.

5/10