This game deadass thinks people can be discriminated against based on hair color. Purple-haired people are this world's equivalent of people of color. There have been plenty of clumsy racial allegories in fiction before, but man, Valkyria Chronicles really takes the cake here. Being discriminated against because of your hair color - color, not hairstyle, very different - is silly. Such a thing does not exist. (Unless you're a filthy blonde or a ginger.) For Valkyria Chronicles to make the purple-haired people this clearly WW2-inspired story's Jew equivalent is insane, to say the least. Hating people for having anime hair is not a thing that actually exists.
The story is decent otherwise, albeit somewhat formulaic, the game's unique and appealingly watercolor-like visuals are soft and pleasing to the eye, and the gameplay is... interesting. It prioritizes speedrunning and finishing objectives as quickly as possible, and there's something admittedly very addicting about beating levels as quickly and as efficiently as possible, using proper positioning and making the most of your movements, resources, and member placement. Valkyria Chronicles has a crazy amount of characters (including guests from Skies of Arcadia! A pleasant surprise) and they all have unique character traits that can influence their performance in battle and cause either random stat boosts or stat drops. I like this. It makes organizing your squad feel like a genuinely tactical decision and more than just a game of 'pick your favorite waifus'. Mastering the levels of Valkyria and beating them in a handful of turns feels great.
It's a shame that they're often so chock full of bullshit. RNG rears its head frequently in this game, and wasting a valuable turn feels miserable when the game is centered around turn-optimization, especially in the moments when you line up a theoretically-perfect sniper or lancer shot and the game decides 'actually, uh, you missed just because'. Valkyria's just full of a lot of finicky and questionable mechanics. 2 out of the game's 5 major classes (snipers and lancers) are wildly inconsistent and often defined by RNG and random chance, and the Engineer class is next to fucking useless, especially when you're focusing on finishing quickly. Your tank unit takes up 2 entire turns, and yet it's slow as fuck, the traversal meter drains quickly, lining up shots feels like a dice-roll, and if your tank dies, then it's game over. Why even have the tank to begin with?? Most times it's best to have the tank just hang back and do nothing, because it wastes too many turns getting its sluggish ass off the starting line and being in the middle of the battlefield is too dangerous for a unit whose death equals instant loss.
Most damningly, enemies are actually able to shoot and kill you before your turn's even over. That's right. They don't wait like a gentleman for you to finish your turn - if you get close to the enemy, they will fire on you. That's ridiculous! I don't care if it's more "realistic", part of the Gentleman's Code Duello of turn-based strategy is that you wait your fockin turn, mate. Like, sure, allies on your side can auto-shoot the enemy as well, so it's not like this ability is unique to the enemies, but it's an asshole mechanic no matter what, an unnecessary difficulty-spiker that punishes you for making bold moves even though the game's scoring system revolves around making the boldest, fastest moves possible.
Jarring. This game is fucking jarring. So many bad ideas, so many good ideas, all swirling together in a primordial soup with an undefinable taste. Valkyria is messy, and the difficulty gets a little ridiculous as time goes on (hence why I shelved it), but sometimes it catches you off-guard and makes you feel like a tactical champ. Sometimes, you see the method in the madness, and that's probably what made this game get like a bajillion sequels. That, and the fact that it has waifus. Alicia's a babe.
The story is decent otherwise, albeit somewhat formulaic, the game's unique and appealingly watercolor-like visuals are soft and pleasing to the eye, and the gameplay is... interesting. It prioritizes speedrunning and finishing objectives as quickly as possible, and there's something admittedly very addicting about beating levels as quickly and as efficiently as possible, using proper positioning and making the most of your movements, resources, and member placement. Valkyria Chronicles has a crazy amount of characters (including guests from Skies of Arcadia! A pleasant surprise) and they all have unique character traits that can influence their performance in battle and cause either random stat boosts or stat drops. I like this. It makes organizing your squad feel like a genuinely tactical decision and more than just a game of 'pick your favorite waifus'. Mastering the levels of Valkyria and beating them in a handful of turns feels great.
It's a shame that they're often so chock full of bullshit. RNG rears its head frequently in this game, and wasting a valuable turn feels miserable when the game is centered around turn-optimization, especially in the moments when you line up a theoretically-perfect sniper or lancer shot and the game decides 'actually, uh, you missed just because'. Valkyria's just full of a lot of finicky and questionable mechanics. 2 out of the game's 5 major classes (snipers and lancers) are wildly inconsistent and often defined by RNG and random chance, and the Engineer class is next to fucking useless, especially when you're focusing on finishing quickly. Your tank unit takes up 2 entire turns, and yet it's slow as fuck, the traversal meter drains quickly, lining up shots feels like a dice-roll, and if your tank dies, then it's game over. Why even have the tank to begin with?? Most times it's best to have the tank just hang back and do nothing, because it wastes too many turns getting its sluggish ass off the starting line and being in the middle of the battlefield is too dangerous for a unit whose death equals instant loss.
Most damningly, enemies are actually able to shoot and kill you before your turn's even over. That's right. They don't wait like a gentleman for you to finish your turn - if you get close to the enemy, they will fire on you. That's ridiculous! I don't care if it's more "realistic", part of the Gentleman's Code Duello of turn-based strategy is that you wait your fockin turn, mate. Like, sure, allies on your side can auto-shoot the enemy as well, so it's not like this ability is unique to the enemies, but it's an asshole mechanic no matter what, an unnecessary difficulty-spiker that punishes you for making bold moves even though the game's scoring system revolves around making the boldest, fastest moves possible.
Jarring. This game is fucking jarring. So many bad ideas, so many good ideas, all swirling together in a primordial soup with an undefinable taste. Valkyria is messy, and the difficulty gets a little ridiculous as time goes on (hence why I shelved it), but sometimes it catches you off-guard and makes you feel like a tactical champ. Sometimes, you see the method in the madness, and that's probably what made this game get like a bajillion sequels. That, and the fact that it has waifus. Alicia's a babe.
Katsono
3 months ago