Valkyria Chronicles

Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sega WOW
Genre: A cross between a 3rd person shooter, RTS, and a Strategy RPG
Release Date: November 4, 2008
Platform: Playstation 3

Reviewer: Dan

Talk about a game that fell through the cracks. In what could be considered the best 4 months in gaming history in terms of what came out since September, Valkyria Chronicles quietly made its way out for the PS3. After hearing a lot of good things about it I decided to pick up the last copy they had at my nearest Best Buy. I gotta say that I'm pretty happy that I did, because VC is a fresh take on the somewhat tired genre of Strategy RPGs.

That's not to say that there aren't already fantastic Strategy RPGs out there. What I'm trying to say is that VC brings such an interesting change to the concept of a Strategy RPG. But before I get to that, let me make a few comments on the story, which isn't this game's strong suit, but it isn't too bad.

The game takes place in a fantasy version of 1930's Europe with similar political conditions and technology paired with fictional countries and the fictional resource everyone is fighting over, ragnite ore. Gallia, which is basically the Swiss in this Europe, is sitting on a whole bunch of the stuff. So when the East Europan Imperial Alliance (think Axis powers) invade the various countries Atlantic Federation (think Allied powers), Gallia (which is a neutral country) becomes too tempting of a target for the EEIA to ignore.

But of course, tiny people from this tiny country band together to overcome the great evil power that's pushing through their country. The high level view of the plot is a bit stale, but the setting is refreshing enough. Anyway, the main character in this whole mess is Welkin Gunther (voiced by Dave Wittenberg who seems to be the Phil LaMarr of the American versions of Anime and Japanese Video Games), a nature lover and son of a great Gallian General. Pressed into service out of necessity, Welkin is given command of Squad 7 more out of who his father was rather than merit, which leads to some resentment from those under his command.

The story itself is actually told through the perspective of a history book with multiple chapters. The one thing that sort of annoys me with this game is that there seems to be as many cutscenes per chapter as MGS4. The silver lining behind this is that you can watch them at your own pace. There aren't any 45 minute epics, but some of them seem tedious. Fortunately for us, the battles are worth the wait.

Now this is where it becomes hard to describe the game. Like any decent strategy RPG, there are different classes of characters you can include in your squad. The Shocktrooper is the most well rounded of all of them, with no real weakness or any real big advantage. Your scouts have the most Action Points (I'll get to that later) and can spot hidden enemies, but they are relatively weak in combat. Snipers are very strong against personel at a distance, but drop like flies when they come under fire. Lancers are your anti-tank specialists, but thats about it. Engineers do a bit of everything from supplying ammo, providing extra amounts of healing, as well as repairing the sweet tank Welkin gets to ride around in.

But that's pretty much where things stop being familiar. The game uses SEGA's BLiTZ (Battle of Live Tactical Zones) battle system. You start combat with an overhead map (which fits the theme of a history book rather well) with all of your characters displayed as icons indicating their class. To go into the action mode, you select a character and the game zooms in to a 3rd person view of the selected character.

Remember the Action Points I mentioned? Well, think of that as stamina/range. As your character moves, your AP gauge goes down. Also while moving into a firing position, the enemy will be shooting at you, adding an action element to the game. Once you decide you want to shoot, you bring up your aiming circle (the best way to describe it). This allows you to actively choose where you want your character to aim for. Should you try for a weakspot and go for a quick kill or play it safe and aim for the torso? That's up to you to decide, which is something I really like about the game.

I did mention that the Engineer class can provide healing to your troops, but the nice thing is that everyone on the battlefield can provide each other a small amount of healing when their health gets too low. You (and the enemy troops as well) also regenerate some health between turns, so if you're going after an enemy, it's always best to try and finish them off in one turn.

Each turn, you and your enemy are granted a limited number of Command Points each turn which allow you to issue commands to your troops in battle. Unlike other strategy RPGs where you can only move a character once per turn, VC allows you to use the same character multiple times per turn (provided they have enough ammo that turn to do what you want). You can also spend those command points on temporary boosts to your character's abilities or other special bonuses that Welkin earns over the course of the game.

When moving your characters, you should also keep in mind their final position with regards to cover and firing position. When you're running around, as I mentioned before, you'll be under fire. But when your turn ends, your team will fire back at the enemy when they're on the move. If you position your troops well enough, you may be able to take down an enemy without them even firing a shot.

Character leveling is also done differently than other SRPGs. With nearly 200 different characters (each with their different quirks, I might add) to move in and out of your 20 person squad, you'd think leveling would be a huge pain. Well, insted of having a few powerful characters that you use all of the time, you instead level up entire classes. And even this is made less tedious by the fact that you collect experience into one common pool to distribute among your classes. For example, even if you never use the sniper (not recommended, but, anyway), you can keep them at the same level. You also have the ability to improve your character's equipment and your tank by purchasing R&D upgrades that improve things like attack power, accuracy, and defense.

Visually, VC is one of a kind, utilizing SEGA's CANVAS graphics engine. The best way to describe it is a detailed watercolor painting in motion. The cutscenes in Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions port to the PSP have a similar look, except the entire game is done in that style and look vastly better. The game also has a sort of comic book feel as well. The game obviously isn't going for extreme realisim, so the big "KABOOM" letters that flash on the screen when you blow something up is a bit out of place, but it does add a certain charm to the game.

The audio for the game is fairly decent. At no time did I notice the music becoming annoying, but it wasn't truly memorable to me. It's nice that SEGA decided to give every character in this game their own voice (and even personality), but my only problem with this is that it becomes rather apparent that the game was meant for Japan first. The script is well translated, it's just that it looks like you're watching a Godzilla movie with some of the cutscenes. However, the game does allow you to use the Japanese audio track with English subtitles, so if you don't mind reading them, that is one way to solve that problem.

Final Verdict

Ok, I know that you probably have a stack of games that you still haven't even touched (I'm looking at you, Fallout 3) and that you may have other games in that are must-buys for you. But I beg you not to overlook Valkyria Chronicles if you happen to be an RPG fan. It looks great and the battle system adds a refreshing feel to a somewhat tired genre (at least the genre will feel tired after you try the game). There are a few flaws with the game, like a lot of cutscenes, Godzillaesque voiceacting (using the English track), and a lack of online play (it could have been fun), so I can't give it a perfect, but it's still close with a 9 out of 10.