This game gets a bad rep from being a sequel to a ps3 game on PSP so the maps gets scaled back signifcantly but this causes the game to hit a different gameplay feel that felt more strategic than a majority of 1's missions. Maps are cut up into chunks which causes a shift in how you take on missions. Scout rushing is still pretty good in this game and doesn't punished that hard until the 3rd game but having a variety of units in this is improved compared to 1.

Upgrading classes is extremely grindy and annoying, you don't need to go out your way to grind to get super units to beat the game but its implementation here feels too random due to it being based off drops you get at the end of missions. The story is definitely extremely mid and the cast of the characters are the worst in the series. Still the game is worth playing and i hope more people look at it with a open mind.

It's okay to skip to 3 if your mid resistance isn't high enough.

Es difícil no ver a este juego como un downgrade en comparación a su predecesor. Los cambios hechos a las unidades ya existentes y el sistema de cambio de clases genuinamente agregan a la experiencia, y si bien en ocasiones se pueden llegar a sentir como limitantes, son estas mismas las que te incentivan a experimentar con las formaciones y el uso que le das a las unidades en las misiones.
También me gustó el como profundiza la presencia y tu relación con los demás personajes secundarios que sirven como unidades. Si bien en el primer juego las unidades tenían rasgos de personalidad bastante bien marcados, su relevancia fuera de las misiones era prácticamente nula en comparación a Welkin, Alicia, Largo y Rosie. En comparación, la presencia que tienen los personajes secundarios con sus secciones de "Vinculo" y sus misiones de compañero en verdad me hace creer que existe un vinculo genuino de compañerismo entre todos los personajes. Aún así, siento que muchos personajes secundarios terminaron con personalidades extremadamente arquetípicas. Esto también podría decirse de las unidades del primer juego, pero en ese caso, viendo que su rol se limitaba a solo aparecer en las misiones, era de hecho algo positivo, pues era su único momento para exponer su forma de ser al jugador y hacían un buen trabajo en dejártela clara, acá por el contrario, su simpleza hace que puedan llegar a caer en lo cliché la mayoría de las veces que aparecen fuera de las misiones, y si bien las misiones de compañeros por si solas son bastante buenas y presentan escenarios interesantes a superar, muchas sufren de que la historia que te lleva a esa misión es bastante... boba.
En algunas esta no es el caso, pero muchas misiones de compañero se dan por estupideces como "Ponerle laxante a la comida de un miembro del grupo y tener que superar la misión en menos de 8 turnos antes de que se cague encima" o "Otra clase esta ocupando el escenario de la escuela, así que hay que ganarles para quedárnoslo", y esta clase de tonterías llegan a afectar la historia principal.
Es interesante también el como decide continuar la historia tras los acontecimientos del primer juego. Es bastante lógico que tras la revelación hecha sobre la monarquía al final del primer juego, el conflicto social en Galia escalara hasta una guerra civil. Por desgracia, pese a lo interesante de la premisa y los momentos genuinamente buenos que tiene la historia, siento que sufre bastante de una disonancia tonal debido a lo cómico que pretende ser en la mayoría de ocasiones. Pese a eso, la obra es bastante consiente de la importancia del drama y el tono mas jocoso del inicio se reduce en gran medida llegando al acto final de la historia principal, lamentablemente debido al ritmo que esta avanza, esta parte de la historia puede tardar demasiado en llegar, ya que el ritmo en general se siente algo lento debido al sistema de avance de las misiones, el cual te obliga a completar misiones menores antes de seguir con aquellas que avanzan la historia.
En general, si bien en mi opinión el juego no llega a igualar a su original, puedo notar el esfuerzo por suplir las limitaciones que debe haberles generado el pasar a trabajar de la PS3 a la PSP con cosas nuevas, y si bien al inicio no me dejo con un buen sabor de boca, al final del día fue mucho mas lo que disfrute que lo que odié.

School setting and war never work well together and here is another example. The story is hard to take seriously. Compared to the first game (and third game), side characters are more fleshed out with their own quests, but the main characters are completely charmless and cliche. Both graphic fidelity and art style toke a huge blow. Maps are segmented due to hardware limitation as well, which does not hurt the core combat system too much. The nonexistent difficulty, on the other hand, reduces the fun factor quite a bit. The new elaborated class system is a plus and gives the game a stronger RPG flavor. Overall Valkyria Chronicles 2 is a step down from the excellent first game, saved by the solid core gameplay mechanics.

Valkyria Chronicles II sets you right in the middle of a war between a government and rebels of Gallia, but what you really get into are the characters themselves and how they cope with each other. The game is set in a fictional WWII type setting and is completely original. This turned based strategy game can get pretty complex, and is a lot to swallow at first, but after a while, you’ll get the hang of it.

The game is pretty menu heavy, especially before deploying into missions. You can level up your classes (instead of individual characters) as well as produce weapons for each class, and your tank. These are simple enough, but you have to unlock new weapons by leveling up. What disappointed me about this is that the weapon upgrades are very minimal and it’s not until later levels that the stat boosts are large.


Once you do all this you can re-arrange your groups because each mission requires the right kind of people. There are different classes like Lancers (anti-tank), Scouts, Shocktroopers (Heavy Machine Gunners), Engineers (medics), Armored Techs (melee) etc. You can only have 6 people deployed per missions, and only 5 for each area. While this may be a pain since you’ll have 5 guys in one area and 1 in another there are strategic workarounds for this. Once you start missions you get an overhead map that shows your guys and the enemies. Killing enemies is as simple as moving them around in real-time, but each character has a different stamina meter, so watch out.

Each character uses one CP (turns) and tanks use two, so you really have to choose your moves wisely. While you’re moving around to position enemies can shoot at you, but you can take cover behind sandbags. Killing enemies consist of getting the right amount of shots in before you reach your limit. Instead of relying on just draining HP you have a shot limit and when you aim at an enemy (depending on their type as well) another number will show how many shots it will take to kill that enemy. Headshots are always your best bet, but getting in close works too.


You can also find shortcuts throughout the map since most have you moving to different areas. Using a tank you can build bridges and flank the enemy or build ladders. Once you capture an enemy camp you can put your troops on standby and deploy them on captured camps in other areas. Be aware though because of enemies and recapture those and render you unable to deploy in the new area unless you have at least one person there.

The battles can be pretty intense, but they also require perfect strategy and it seems that most of the time only one will work. Certain missions have special requirements like escorting, or certain players must be deployed. If you find that you need other abilities you can retrain troops to different classes (if you’re short on one class) or change their abilities like making a scout a sniper, or make a Lancer a Mortar. Sometimes perks will be activated on the field that does good or bad depending on the character. If a character doesn’t like one it’s near it’ll have a negative effect. Details like this can really let you pin down a strategy, but most others can ignore it.


Outside the battlefield, you move around campus and talk to people to progress the story, but that’s pretty much all there is to it. The game looks really good with a nice anime art style, and the voice acting is decent, but not amazing. The small map size will make fans of the PS3 original angry, but it’s perfect for a portable system. The game is pretty stat and menu heavy, and the difficulty spikes may make you actually give up altogether. I couldn’t get past the second story based escort missions due to the insanely powerful enemies, and you have to get the strategy down perfect or it just won’t work out. Other than this the game is superbly fun and with about 40 hours of gameplay, you should be kept busy.

Valkyria Chronicles 2 is the game I've championed most in my entire life; it has been unfairly maligned by the few who've heard about it, including by its own series fanbase. From the moment it was announced, this game was fighting an uphill battle - it was on the PSP, a handheld that was very much despised at the time, and not many people were willing to even give it a fair shake. It was a sequel to one of the most beautiful, originally designed PS3 games - how could a handheld version ever hope to measure up?

This parody video I watched before playing the game for the first time encapsulates the many criticisms faced by Valkyria Chronicles 2. A school setting? Preposterous! Valkyria Chronicles is a game for macho men who smoke Marlboros. Never mind that it's such an anime game that they adopt a pig with wings as their pet mascot, this is blasphemy!

A commercial failure in the West, so much so that the third game didn't even get localized, most people are willing to take VC2's criticisms at face value. But where it has languished in the public imagination, it sure captured mine. It did when I was 12, and it still does now that I'm 25. This is the number one contender for my favourite game of all time, with only Resident Evil 4 giving it a run for its money. I hope that by reading this, a few more people will be willing to give this game its fair shot, especially now that we're looking back and realizing the PSP was actually a pretty good system.

Valkyria Chronicles 2 is the best game in the series. Unable to deliver the huge, singular maps of the original game, it opted for smaller environments interlinked by base camps. This makes it a great deal more strategic than VC1, and incentivizes using more characters. Where VC1 was built around bolstering your units, whether through orders or physical support, and rushing the objective, VC2 grants you a motive to cut your enemy off. Units can be deployed from base camps immediately, instead of having to wait a turn. This means you can blitz enemy camps with your infantry to take them over, then deploy specialized anti-tank and shielded units from that same camp to clear them out. Lancers, hobbled in the first Valkyria Chronicles due to their low mobility, are far more useful this time around, and environmental effects can be negated or negotiated through proper customization of your tank or APC.

Orders (instabuffs given by your leading unit) are now more costly, lessening their potential for abuse from the first game. There are more specialized objectives than simply taking over base camps or killing all enemies: you may need to retrieve hidden packages around the map, or escort a vehicle across the battlefield without letting the enemy blow it up. It's clear to see that not only did this game manage to retain the core gameplay of the PS3 original, it improved it. Valkyria Chronicles 2 is painfully addictive, better balanced, and far more strategic.

The only flaw is the randomized credit system, which may decline to give you the required materials to change your characters to a different class. You can plan out by viewing what credits a mission gives in the briefing, and you can use your units accordingly, but luck is still involved.

This is an unpopular opinion, even among the series fanbase, but having replayed both games now I can say it with confidence: VC2 outshines VC1 even in its story. The premise of a civil war was one begging to be explored after the revelations of the original game. The 'school setting' is a military academy in a country whose army is so depleted through the events of the first game that soldiers-in-training now have to act as full soldiers. The villains are compelling, the protagonists are likeable, the English voice acting is vastly improved, and Raita Honjou's character designs still captivate. The story events are no longer rendered in real time, but the character portraits are satisfactory - in all honesty, an improvement, as less time is wasted waiting for their animation to complete - and the FMVs are beautiful anime cutscenes by A-1 Pictures.

I've played the Valkyria series many times in my life, and none of them have as memorable a cast as this one. The removal of permadeath (now 'dead' characters simply get hospitalized for the next three missions) is a welcome decision, because in the first game, there was always that temptation to avoid using non-leader units, because they could die permanently and force you to either restart the battle, or carry on without them. They were also far less fleshed out. In Valkyria Chronicles 2, every single side character has a story arc of their own, encouraging you to get to know them better and keep using them in battles - to have them grow on you both as people, and as soldiers. Of course, some homages to anime tropes are particularly blatant - one character straight up poses like Kira from Death Note - but so what? Why does VC2 in particular get singled out for being 'too anime?' Did the first game's designs not clue people in?

We knew VC2 could never match up to the PS3 original's spectacular visuals, but even by PSP standards, the graphics are nothing special. Character models are low-polygon with flat and basic textures, and there isn't a great deal of detail to the environments. That said, it's not a bad-looking game. The tank models are quite impressive, and everything that is necessary is easily visible. Do I wish this game looked better? Certainly. But it's not a huge sacrifice. From a gameplay perspective, nothing's been cut back on. The maps are rife with potential for strategic decisions, for defilade, for judging which unit can cover how much distance - and while it cannot port over VC1's raw beauty, it still brings over its personality. Machine guns still go RATTATATATA, laser attacks go FOOM FOOM FOOM FOOM FOOM, mortars go BAKOOM!, tanks go VRM VRM VRRRRM, and it's all backed up by good sound design and a stellar soundtrack. Those action onomatopes always entertained me, okay? They're important.

For me, Valkyria Chronicles 2 is a game that keeps on giving. Even after the credits roll, it has so much substance. This game deserves a reappraisal, and perhaps a remake for an audience that would be more receptive to it - anime is more mainstream now, the PSP isn't as hated, small-scale games are better appreciated instead of being lambasted for a lack of polygons, and men are allowed to vape grape juice. Sadly, I don't think it will ever happen. This is the red-headed stepchild with a red-headed protagonist of the series, and it will always be the scapegoat for why Valkyria Chronicles never had much of an impact in the West. But I urge you to play it regardless. Mired in the swamp of pre-judgement - the graphics aren't as pretty, the characters are too cliche, the Valkyrias' titties are too big or aren't big enough - this is, in truth, Valkyria Chronicles at its incredible peak. What a game. How much it has meant to me over the years.

Give this game a chance. Do it for me. I'll be your best friend.

How did this series survive to get us to the excellent number 4? 1 was a breath of fresh air when it came out on the PS3 and remains one of my favorite games to this day, but 2 should have absolutely killed the franchise. Uninteresting characters and really horrible map design (due to hardware limitations) that leads to really uninteresting gameplay. If you thought the scout rush was overpowered in 1 and 4, you've seen nothing. There is no reason to use anything other than a scout or shock trooper unless the game mandates you destroy a tank.

I remember thinking this game sucked back when it came out, but I decided to give it another chance because seriously. How bad could it be? Did you even PLAY 4? That shit rocks! ...Nope, I was right. Avoid it.