Valis II fails to honor the tradition of its namesake with this disappointing, lacking and derivative effort.
Not long after the events of the original game, Yuko Asou, a Japanese high school student who moonlights as a Valis Warrior extraordinaire, must once again call upon the powers of her Valis Sword and return to the Dream World of Vecanti to confront Emperor Megas, a powerful warlord bent on extinguishing the last remnants of King Rogles (the protagonist of the first game) to consolidate his rightful, authoritarian rule. The story is told through impressive, animated cutscenes in a vibrant (albeit horribly pixelated) Japanese anime-style---taking a page from the NES Ninja Gaiden series. Utilizing the extra-storage capacity of the Turbo Grafx CD peripheral, there is a good deal of voice acting to accompany crucial story scenes and dialogue that occurs before boss fights, as well as decent CD-quality music. Neither of these elements are especially noteworthy or memorable to say the least, but it barely reaches the threshold of not falling victim to your effervescent mute button.
The gameplay of Valis II shares some similarities to the original Valis on the Sega Genesis. As before, Yuko can nab different attack power-ups for her sword that can grow three levels, and she can call on various magic spells to clear rows of enemies, provide her with a protective barrier and deal damage to bosses. But, Valis II egregiously strips almost everything good about the first game to its bare minimum. Only six stages exist for the player to explore, and about half of them are poorly-designed, monotonous trudges through long corridors; broken only by occasional (and equally boring) mid-boss fights. There just isn't a lot of variety to these stages at all, and the graphical limitations of the Turbo Grafx (even with the added "processing power" of the CD unit) are clearly evident by fewer colors, choppy animation and lack of parallax scrolling. To add insult to irritation, there are unabated difficulty spikes that occur throughout the course of the game; ranging from stupidly easy boss fights to cheap deaths by seemingly unavoidable traps and fast-moving enemies. Furthermore, earlier versions of Valis II released on different platforms (even a cute, super-deformed port for the Genesis called Syd of Valis) featured a neat costume-change system that granted Yuko a variety of different abilities and defense parameters. For reasons unknown, the Turbo Grafx CD port removes this entirely, leaving a disappointing, empty shell that is about as derivative as a slow-moving locomotive.
As a fan of the Valis series, I'm forced to admit that the one game in the franchise I missed out on and wanted to play the most turned out to be a red herring. Its potential to follow up on the strength of the original game is utterly wasted by a lackluster effort and questionable design choices, leaving behind a mere shadow of the great game it could have been.