I'm with
Epic Sax CEO
. Valkyrie Profile is at least on par with other contemporary PS1 titles visually. Like allot of titles from the time, VP employed high-detail matte paintings as backgrounds. Allot of them aren't as distinctive or memorable as in, say, any of the Final Fantasy games for the console but that's another discussion (the thoughts running through my mind on that are mostly connected to how quickly you run through allot of these places and how little time you have to soak them in, comparatively - stuff like the intro animation in Valhalla is still beautiful).
VP also stands out for how wonderfully animated its characters are. Every character has several frames of animation for each movement on generally high-detail sprites, far above anything I can think of a generation prior. I've played most of the major Super Nintendo RPGs - Most of them consist of player character models that need to fit in set dimensions in and out of combat and the most flattering thing you can say about them visually is that the static sprites you're fighting look fantastic. Enemies in Valkyrie Profile are a step-down, in that respect - lower detail but they're all animated (and outside the scope of visual design discussion, I'll add that it serves to better integrate them for the general game feel by designing the player and enemy characters together on the same system).
What's put VP over the top in my mind though has always been the outstanding portrait work. Nearly every(?) character in the game has beautiful, traditionally classical art work in dialogue. I don't know whether or not that level of rendering is possible a generation prior. I don't see... why not (I'm not a graphical engineer) but the best thing I can say about it is that no game (that I know of) before
or since has ever had portrait work that good.
tldr version: Don't use hyperbole, man. Unless you can name any PS1 game that looks as good as Valkyrie Profile 2 or, I don't know, some Super Nintendo game (that seems like a good standard to go by,
if we're talking genre games - the SNES was the go-to that generation for RPGs) that looks as good as Valkyrie Profile 1, you look like you're blowing hot air. These games have never been a generation behind.