In spite of some frustrating aspects, and some really bad stages, I came to enjoy the interesting take on the strategic gameplay in Valkyria Chronicles. The ability of physical objects or character presences to affect the outcomes of encounters outside of their turns, damn. This makes the game feel less conventionally turn-based and more like a pseudo real-time game. Fascinating stuff... Even though it doesn't always work, I have to respect the commitment to refreshing the situations you find yourself dealing with throughout the story.

Story is no slouch either. I certainly didn't expect the narrative of anime but bootleg world war 2 to be nearly as graceful as this turned out to be. It tackles some subjects you wouldn't expect, and I don't have many issues with the way they were handled, just that some parts didn't seem to go anywhere far. I also liked the main cast of characters, Welkin is such a dork xD Shame most of the side-characters don't get anything for themselves beyond combat traits and battle lines, but those do work out for seeing their nature and how they relate to each other.

The picture book approach to ui elements and visuals in general fit VC like a glove

VC is a unique game and you have to give merit where it's due. It's a hybrid mix of TRPG and third person shooter a way I've never seen before. As a kid, I always wanted to play this game but unfortunately I had no machine that was able to run it, hence I never did.

Unfortunately, the game is very far from being flawless and can turn into a rather frustrating experience.

By the way, there's another mechanic in this game which I find quite unique: you can play the same character multiple times per turn, granted you're willing to spend your command points on them and they'll have 33% less action points every time. This has its merits but at the same time, I think it also points the game into a narrower direction and encourages players to spam a small group of characters, if not just one or two and therefore lessens the strategic aspect of the game.


An opponent that doesn’t feel humane is not fun:

This game is frustrating in many ways. For example, you'll often find yourself shot by rocket launchers or tanks that manage to snipe you from very far away when you have nearly no chance of doing the same. Interception fire seems very useful until you realise that while you're getting shown under a rain of bullets every encounter, your characters will barely shoot any bullet before an enemy's turn is over because your opponent is a robot that doesn't hesitate and stops to get shot while thinking of what to do.

Your character has to be smart about approaching a tank because you'll get shot by the machine gun otherwise and die within seconds but when an enemy approaches your tank, they act so fast that your tank will hardly shoot once and deal extremely little damage to them, so they'll just come from the front. Essentially, the enemy seems to have many advantages the player does not, as if it were a cheating player.


Lack of balance:

All units except scouts also have a very low movement potential and it makes it so that the scout sets the entire pace of the game. Combined with the fact that you can use a single character multiple times per turn, it's really no surprise that the optimal strategy ends up being the "scout rush". Even if you want to use other characters, they seem to not be built for this game. What exactly are you supposed to do, spend multiple turns just to get them to the same position as a scout? The maps are big and not very dense, spending multiple turns just to move your characters from point A to B does not sound intuitive at all. Thankfully, there are mods that try to balance this issue.

Many things also feel very random: for example, the AI might decide to spend an entire turn spamming multiple attacks of the same character against one of yours and you see no strategic merit to it, it just feels unpredictable, random and fucks up your plans out of nowhere. It doesn't feel like the AI acted in a smart manner and managed to outsmart you so it's frustrating.


Too linear, not enough freedom. No strategies, just die and retry:

The game also seems to be designed more like a puzzle than a very complex strategy game. Oftentimes, it feels very limiting in the approaches you can take and it's even more so the case when there's a strict objective to follow. Some of them are really horrendous, boring and take a long time to accomplish. It's really easy to lose the game and restarting a map often involves redoing the exact same strategy until you arrive at the point where you fail and take another decision. It's very "die and retry" at times, which doesn't fit the genre. The worst about this part is that the game genuinely wants you to retry missions, there are so many things pushing you into this. You don't even get a map showing you the limits of the area before you actually deploy a character, there are hidden enemies whose placement only serves to kill the main character sending you to a game over screen, gimmicks are not explained or don't happen before you reach a certain point in battle (usually, you need to move to a specific part of the map) hence you can't take them into account on your first attempt...

There are many ways the game could have given more freedom to the player. For example, some maps have two paths where you need to deploy troops and simultaneously lead an attack from both sides. Why not... let the player take this decision on their own and simply create branches on the map? Why not have branches on EVERY map instead of having them be so linear? And I really think the game needs to be more forgiving considering all the uncertainty it involves.

If the above didn't clue you in to the fact the game is more about solving puzzles than tactics, then I'll let you know the game has absolutely no interaction with the environment. There's a crouch mechanic behind sandbags, that's IT. You can't crouch behind anything else, you can't hide behind walls and shoot, enemies have absolutely no sense of their surroundings and won't spot you for killing their friend right next to them, a mortar shot will not damage allies of the shooter or destroy anything, not even mines. Hell even the grenades are just another type of rifle, their area of effect is so reduced you can hardly hit two enemies at once.

This isn't much of a problem if you save and reload a load. It may just be me but I was completely unaware that you can save during a battle until the last third of the game and it's a game changer. It would certainly be better if you didn't have to rely on savescumming but I highly advise it since it allows you to counter many of the game's problems such as not having a proper oversight of the battlefield until you deploy or messing up a character's turn.


Gorgeous game with a unique artstyle, but uninteresting story:_

On another hand, the game is gorgeous to look at. The art style is very neat and I personally love it. It's a shame that most cutscenes are limited to 720p and suffer a lot from aliasing. These cutscenes don't offer much unfortunately, despite the game being very story driven. The story is a mess and not very substantial. While I enjoyed the banter between some characters, *it can get extremely tropey and even the characters end up very shallow, which is really a shame. All that's needed in this type of game is a solid cast with good interactions but I can't say this game goes far enough. One thing about the story that especially bothered me is that I was expecting a somewhat grounded war setting but at some point it introduces some kind of magical power... yeah.


So it's a fun, unique game overall but also a pretty frustrating experience and I would only recommend it while mentioning that you can savescum. Do it, do it a lot and at least use the "Quality of life" mod. It's not missing a lot to be an absolute blast but it doesn't have this "not a lot", unfortunately.

the tl;dr of this is that it's a skill issue on my part. If you enjoy strategy games, and think you'd like one with a more contemporary 1930s/40s era wartime aesthetic (albeit with a moe mask on top) that has guns and tanks, I think you'll like this one a lot. It just wasn't for me (at the time of dropping). I should note I made it to about chapter 8 I believe? Which isn't even halfway

For positives, I really enjoyed the characters and the story! Alicia is probably my fave. She's so bubbly. I also loved Ms. Ellet. I really liked Isara as well. Welkin is pretty good too, I dig his hyperfixations on wildlife. All of the squadron characters are also pretty neat for their surface level personalities, and they all have pretty striking designs. There's even two I believe gay and lesbian characters (albeit the former is a walking stereotype, but I still love him), and even a possibly bi dude considering he had both the "fancies men" and "fancies women" traits. Neat rep if small. The villains also seemed pretty cool.

I don't have much to comment on story-wise since I didn't get far, but it seemed well-done for a wartime piece. It was absolutely not afraid to show you civilians getting brutally killed, and it was even willing to discuss the topic of discrimination against its fictional ethnicity the Darcsens, which I thought was neat. Some characters openly dislike Darcsens and you're obviously meant to think this is bad, but afaik they don't get "fixed" or anything. You can't just power of friendship away bigotry.

The gameplay is what ultimately made me shelve it. It is usually very fun. I think having to (rudimentally) aim your shots for an srpg is very cool, and in general most gameplay aspects are satisfying and rewarding. I'm just kinda not sure what the game wants from me difficulty-wise. It acts like you have to rush in, both to get a good rank and to stop the endless hoards of reinforcements that can appear at camps, but when I do so (even at a pretty reasonable pace) a lot of my units get just domed. It really just feels like there's not a lot I can do to change the outcome of battle, unless I have absolutely perfect map knowledge. And replaying is tedious because there's always a tactics exposition dump at the start of battle and a scene of Welkin entering his tank, both of which are unskippable. Also, killing the enemy elites or whatever they're called to remove the enemy's command icons feels pointless, because a lot of the time they just end their turns with like 5 remaining anyways. There are a few other things but it's hard to put them into words.

Still, it was pretty fun, and I did really like the characters, so maybe I'll come back to it. Maybe just not the game for me.

Story can't make up its mind whether it wants to be funny trope'y anime game or serious war drama. Lemme get this straight, it features GENOCIDE and BEACH EPISODE.

Gameplay is hella fun, but has quite a lot of problems like "scout rush" tactic and stupid ranking system.

Otherwise quite a good game, but a bit flawed.

Whenever we talk about the best JRPGs of the PS360/Wii generation, one common name comes to mind: Xenoblade Chronicles. However, this top spot can be explained in the context of the time, as during those years the Japanese industry was going through a deep crisis on a creative and competitive level against Western AAA titles. Square's fall from grace, the numerous problems in the development of video games that persisted over time or were cancelled, and the shift of many productions to portable systems, as in the case of Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Sky or the disappointing Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, are just a few examples of how other great stories stood out from the rest. Not just because of how good they could be, but because they were limited. Personally, apart from Xenoblade Chronicles, I can only save Lost Odyssey and the game I'm reviewing: Valkyria Chronicles. As for these two games, I can't say that I played them at the time because I didn't have an Xbox 360 to play Lost Odyssey or a PlayStation 3 to play Valkyria Chronicles.

Valkyria Chronicles was a game that broke through with the same commercial success as the rest of the Japanese games outside the country, that is, it barely made a dent. It wasn't until late 2014, with its release on Steam, that the game's positive reception from the press and word-of-mouth from players allowed sales and player numbers to soar to the top of the charts in its first few weeks. On top of that, the game was occasionally discounted to just under 8€/$, making it a bargain to pick up one of the best JRPGs of its generation at such a tempting price. Something I couldn't resist.

I knew nothing more about Valkyria Chronicles than that it was a tactical JRPG and that it had been well received. The first thing you see on the screen is an opening with a precious watercolour art style, contrasting with a musical theme and images that evoke feelings of both sadness and grandeur. This is not surprising, as the composer is none other than Mr Hitoshi Sakimoto, and the staff is made up of members of the Sakura Wars team. The story takes us to a fictional Europe where a nation, the Principality of Gallia (geographically located in Switzerland), is threatened by the invasion of the Empire, a combination reminiscent of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The reason for this military conflict is to occupy a strategic position and to exploit a combustible mineral called 'ragnite', whose energy can be used to light the streets or to develop technological armament. The invasion should have been a mere formality for the imperial troops, since the real confrontation on a grand scale was the war between the Empire and the Atlantic Federation. But as soon as they reach the capital, they encounter the unwavering faith and resistance of the Gallian people. We, as Welkin Gunther, will lead the 7th Squadron of the Militia through various missions and skirmishes until the imperial troops are driven out and Gallia is liberated.

The plot is pure cliché from start to finish. A war between two nations leads one of them to invade another's territory in search of a mineral that can make all the difference in the end. And these poor, innocent people are subjected to the oppression and destruction of their country and home. Later, the existence of an extinct tribe called the 'Valkyrur', which gives the game its title, is discovered. However, the story leading up to the final battle doesn't add anything new. In terms of gameplay, the management of units and weapons is very simple. What is Valkyria Chronicles good at? It avoids falling into the stereotypes that characterise this type of story and creates a tactical JRPG that is more dynamic and closer to XCOM than the chess-like strategic gameplay of its counterparts.

First and foremost, the game opts for anime-style designs that fit perfectly with the saga's unique artistic style. The characters are genuinely charismatic, avoiding the need to push archetypes to the limit and cheap fanservice, which in later entries becomes more disgusting, especially considering how this first instalment struggles to give coherence to all these elements. The general tone of the fable revolves around peace and the legacy we leave to future generations, making a clear anti-war statement. At times, however, this message comes across as too soft. Nevertheless, the story remains entertaining, and the ending is very satisfying. It is impossible not to wish the Welkin/Alice couple happiness forever.

Secondly, the 'BLiTZ' system is about bringing tactical role-playing into real time. We control a certain number of units that are free to move around the map. Once we select a unit, we are exposed to enemy counterattacks until we decide to launch an attack or take cover behind a pile of sandbags. Each unit belongs to a specific class and, in addition to carrying different weapons, has a specific purpose: scouts are highly mobile units, but very weak against artillery; shock troopers have limited mobility, but are very tough units; lancers are key units for destroying tanks, and snipers take out enemies from a distance. Welkin, aboard the Edelweiss tank, has the power to issue orders that increase the stats of our units. It feels great to move around the map. It's a shame that if you're clever or on your second run, you can take Alicia, give her some orders, take advantage of her invincibility, capture the enemy base, and get an S-rank on the third turn. Also, some maps are too unfair, with constant ambushes in situations where you are completely exposed. Worst of all is the way the game rewards you based on the number of turns it takes to complete the mission you are given. It's not important to defeat all the enemy units or avoid losing allies. The important thing is to get there quickly and straight.

Although the issues described are minor and do not significantly detract from the overall experience, they are the nuances that separate a good game from an excellent one. Valkyria Chronicles deserves recognition as one of the best JRPGs of its time. The saga has four parts. The sequels have been spread across portable and home systems. It is never too late to remember this heartwarming tale. A story carefully crafted during a turbulent time for Japanese video games.