My new roommate has a PS3 and a PSP, so I took the opportunity to buy Valkyria Chronicles for twenty bucks new. Expect reviews for Folklore, Half-Minute Hero, and Brave Story: New Traveler coming soon,with hopefully others to come!
There’s something really ignorant and childish about how Valkyria Chronicles approaches the subject of war. Part of it is how they make war out to be some sort of righteous “kill the bad guys” affair, and part of it is just how flippant some of the characters’ decisions concerning battle can be. It’s almost as if they treat war like a game, which I realize in this context is extremely ironic.
Valkyria Chronicles’s story is portrayed as a book - On The Gallian Front - which covers the second Europan War, an obvious nod to history. Gallia, a neutral country between the east and west factions of Europa, is suddenly thrust into war as the Empire - consisting of all of the eastern countries - invades Gallia. They enter the neutral country in search for a material called Ragnite, a resource apparently so imperative in the daily lives of Europans that the entire continent is waging war over the commodity. What’s it used in? Well, they hardly mention anything, but most of it is for military weapons and fuel for military vehicles. Say, doesn’t that mean an armistice would solve the problem?
On The Gallian Front focuses on Squad 7 of Gallia’s voluntary militia. They are led by Welkin Gunther, who is put in charge of this squad in spite of having people in his squad with more experience than him. I guess when war is a game, a prettier hero is needed? And so, we watch Squad 7 as they battle off the enemy forces, which consist of soldiers with worse equipment, and supernatural powers of the ancient race of the Valkyrians, whose combat specialization is camping enemy bases and schooling the soldiers the second they deploy.
The narrative sections are broken into small chunks, likely because there’s absolutely no exploration to be done. Players simply watch cutscenes and do battles. Some cutscenes are skippable, and some are not. I probably wouldn’t have skipped the cutscenes anyways, but they are so awful that the option to skip them all would have been kind. The majority of them simply establish what the Squad is doing in a particular place and why their objective is tactically important. This is before ripping into a barrage of terrible anime tropes, which the narrative is doused in.
Characters have a lot of awkward, pointless filler conversations. The characters themselves are not particularly interesting; they consist of little else but a personality trait and a hobby. This is okay for the secondary squad members, which have no real dialogue in the game anyways. However, for the main characters, this is a little ridiculous. Welkin is gentle and enjoys nature. Therefore, every conversation of his gets dragged into some sort of pained metaphor about how similar the topic is to some random aspect of the wild.
Let me emphasize this: the dialogue is BAD. In the course of playing through VC, my roommate, my girlfriend, and every person that came over to my house laughed out loud when listening to me play Valkyria Chronicles. It’s embarassing to watch. To add insult to injury, the game rarely makes use of 3D for cutscene by allowing characters to walk around - opting to just show a huge close up of the character’s face when they talk. Fixing this would probably take care of much of the poor dialogue, because if the game was allowed to show a character’s body language, we wouldn’t have to have them awkwardly express every thought and feeling that they experience.
Everyone in Valkyria Chronicles seems to speak in proverbs, like they’re incredibly wise. Welkin himself drastically changes the way at least three people look at their lives in the course of the game. It’s alarming how easy it is to reach out and touch somebody emotionally in this game, like they’ve been living in quarantine all their lives and have never interacted with another individual. Even my best friends have rarely changed my whole outlook on life. Do people really feel that a main character needs to be a guiding beacon of light to be a strong main character? Wouldn’t it have sufficed to have made him more interesting than a rock?
Still, even though I think the story was about as exciting as a trip to the DMV, the combat of Valkyria Chronicles makes up for that deficiency in spades. VC mixes RPG elements with 3rd person shooting elements, to make a sort of tactical, turn-based action game. Players have a set number of turns - which consist of all the players taking their actions, followed by all enemies - to complete their objectives.
Instead of a Player Phase allowing all characters to take one action, as is typical of tactics RPGs, VC awards a player with Command Points (CP), which they can use to take control of any character on the map. A set number of CP is replenished each turn, and unused CP from the previous turn rolls over to the next. When selecting a unit, the perspective moves from an overhead map to the individual character. From there, they have a set amount of distance they can walk (which is lowered with multiple actions in the same turn). Each unit can attack or heal once per CP spent on them (tanks require 2 CP).
While VC isn’t in real time, the team that is moving can be hit by enemy interception fire - that is, the defending team will attack units that walk in their range, even if it isn’t their turn. Interception fire, in turn, can be used defensively by placing units in front of objectives that need defending, and it can also be mitigated by hiding behind cover as units advance - which blocks and reduces its damage. Lastly, there are five character classes (not including tanks) which have their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, Scouts can move far and have good range, but low firepower; Shocktroopers can’t move too far in a turn, but they hit incredibly hard; Lancers specialize in destroying armored units with rockets, etc. Most infantry units will counterattack after being fired upon.
While the genres of TRPG and action shooter don’t sound like a match made in heaven, the mix of genres is done very well. The game is still highly strategic, and focuses heavily on making sound tactical maneuvers. And yet, the third person movement gives the act of moving units a new strategic depth that isn’t seen in tactics RPGs; instead of characters mundanely moving across the map like a board game, players have to be mindful of enemies on the map as they move. Now, it’s far more important to consider where the enemy is stationed, how far away they are, and whether or not they can see you before boldly trying to move in for the kill.
VC also takes care of a lot of the tedious micromanagement of Tactics RPGs by streamlining equipment and experience. After completing a battle, players are awarded money and experience, which they can use afterwards to buy equipment, or level up any class in any way they desire. A player who enjoys the Scout class can put the bulk of his experience there, perhaps at the risk of shortchanging other classes.
Instead of buying equipment and leveling up individual characters, all units of the same class receive equipment and levels together; when leveling up the Scout class, ALL Scouts level up, and when buying a new Scout weapon, ALL Scouts are outfitted with a new weapon. This singlehandedly saves the game from becoming a grindfest, wherein the player needs to choose their favorite 8-10 characters right away and leave all the rest in the dust, and the game is much better off as a result.
Despite the story being one of the worst I’ve seen in a long time, I enjoyed Valkyria Chronicles more than any RPG I’ve played in this entire console generation, thanks entirely to the gameplay. The only thing about this game that really irks me is how it’s being touted as original and revolutionary. I remember when Valkyria Chronicles was released in 2003: It used dungeons with turn-based, non-random battles instead of strategy RPG battles. It featured a much more minimalist (and effective) story, which didn’t keep you away from the gameplay for long. Hell, it even had a unique art style, and featured the same composer. It was better in almost every respect, but everyone still hated it. It’s true! They called it Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter - Ever heard of it?