Valkyria Chronicles Video Game Review 80/100

This is a game that you truly don’t know what to think of until you play it. It’s a strange blend of third person shooting and real time strategy which is set in a World War 2 style world. It’s a very odd game but perhaps what’s stranger is just how much fun I had with it. For this review I was playing the Steam version of Valkyria Chronicles and it is a very impressive port indeed. Performance may vary but on my laptop it ran beautifully and best of all, I was never on a loading screen longer than a second. I feel if the loading times were longer it would worsen the whole experience as they do come up often but this game played lightning fast and for a JRPG that’s a massive plus.

The plot follows the exploits of Welkin Gunther who is thrown into the war once the empire attack his home town in order to take control of a precious resource mined by the countries called Ragnite. Together with his sister and a local bakery girl, they join the Military and work to drive out the Empire from the country of Gallia. The story of this game is actually really good. It manages to touch on racism and concentration camps without getting too dark. As well as the old horrors of war and political underhandedness. In looking are the story and the beats it hits I would say that Valkyia Chronicles would boast a very strong story. Well at least it would…if the writing was not god awful. I pity the English dub actors, they really tried and considering what they were given I think they did a great job but some of these lines just make me shake my head. The dialogue has a large amount of heavy handed preaching and utter cheese. In a way I would say this style of writing is a bit too “anime” What do I mean? Well it’s rife with anime clichés and mannerisms. The characters are not natural, they tend to have over exaggerated characterizations and quirks.

Now you get to enlist a number of people to your squad though they are mostly given one note personalities and are absent from the main storyline. Instead the story focuses on a small group within your squad. Welkin, Alicia, Isara, Rosie and Largo. Welkin is the leader and is a guy obsessed with nature, often talking about bugs and flora. You would be forgiven if you took one look at Alicia’s design and figured her to be a tsundere. She does have the trademark ponytails after all and at first she looks to fit right into the mold. However Alicia isn’t a tsundere, I was pretty surprised to see her handle her emotions well. She’s logical and well grounded though her primary role in the story is to be a love interest. There is a small subplot with her and a powerful weapon but its brushed off quick. Isara is the blandest of the group, she has very little to her. I was worried when the story made it a point to specifically address that she was none blood related to Welkin but luckily the two have no romantic events. You can assume the love each platonic and that’s just fine by me. Overall she acts as a representative of the oppressed race of people known as “Darcsen” and as the squads tank mechanic. Rosie is a singer and her character arc is simple. To learn to not be a racist bigot. Rosie hates Darcsens and is especially hostile to Isara. This is due to an event in her past that really doesn’t make much sense. As she goes through the story it’s mainly about her warming up to Isara and coming to terms that Darcsens are no different from anyone else. If she had better reasoning for her racism I would find her tale quite poignant but it can come across far too heavy handed at times. Finally Largo is the father figure of the team who has some strange fascination with vegetables. Not much to say about him besides his history with the commanding officer.

What makes the story much more of a drag is the games insistence to ask you if you want to watch each and every cut-scene. Every time you watch a cut-scene you are brought back into a book menu, where is need to select the next cut-scene and play it. You do this for every cut-scene in the game. It’s really odd as there are cut-scenes that continue without prompted but the majority require you to constantly agree to watch a cut-scene. The effort required for this is minimal and it doesn’t take long to load up the cut-scenes but it is a pacing breaker. In regards to user interface, its primary through menus. There is no hub world or over world and you essentially handle plot progression and equipment through menus. Leveling is not done through fighting in battle. Instead you earn experience after a mission and you can choose to spend it to unlock orders or level up a class. Individuals units do not level up, instead you level up a class and anyone in that class gets a stat boost. Weapons work in a similar fashion, you buy upgrades for a class weapon and everyone is equipped with it. The upgrades start very liner and later branch off slightly to allow you to focus on a certain aspect like firepower or accuracy. It’s not all that much but it gives a small bit of customization. You can also equip weapons manually to your units but you likely will never need to. Your units also have things called potential which grant they special bonuses in certain circumstances. They act as small character traits as well and can help endear you to characters. Such as Jane the shocktooper who gets a attack bonus sometimes because she’s a Sadist. The bonuses don’t make too much of a difference but its a nice quirk, even if it can prove to be detrimental at times. As units can have troublesome potentials, like the humanitarian girl who will sometimes refuse to shoot people even if you order her to.

This may sound negative so far but let me get to the meat of this game, the gameplay. Valkyria Chronicles has a phenomenal battle system called BLiTZ (short for Battle of Live Tactical Zones) that strangely reminds me of a old great game boy advance game called Advance Wars. You are given a top down perspective of the battlefield, seen enemies and your units. When you select a unit you are brought down to a third person perspective were you are given a meter to show how far you can move and a chance to shoot/heal. Despite how it looks, this isn’t a third person shooter. You may move and aim but whether your shots hit or not and how much damage they deal is dependent on stats you are given five classes. Scout, Shock troopers, snipers, lancers and engineers along with two tanks you get. Scouts can cover the most distance and are the most versatile units. But can be taken down quickly if faced with stronger units. Shocktoopers are the main assault force, lacking the movement of scouts but making up with firepower and defense. Snipers start off unreliable but with upgraded accuracy they can be one of the most useful units in the game. The have limited ammo but can kill anything besides tanks with a well placed headshot. Lancers are primarily anti-tank units, practically essential for a balanced team. The engineer is the weak link of the bunch but can be really useful for restocking both the sniper and lancers ammo and when paired up with a tank they can make it unstoppable. There isn’t a single useless class and the mechanics behind them make for some great strategic play. While moving on your turn, enemy units can shoot at you which can prove to be troublesome. However you can make use of this too and it prevents units like scouts from just walking headfirst up to people and shooting them in the face. I remember being surrounded by all sides with tanks and just saying “screw it” and rolling my tank straight into the enemy base and using volleys to blast every enemy solider out of it. And then sending in my scout to take out the last unit and capture the base, winning the mission. I remember moving my favorite sniper on to a hill, hiding in the grass and proceeding to pick off every solider in the field with a series of satisfying head shots as the computer proceeds completely unaware of my god of death on the hill. It’s moments like this that make Valkyria a fantastic game.

The graphics engine makes use of a style which gives the game a drawn look with the border of the screen being in sketch form and the center giving a watercolour aesthetic. It can be quite fantastic at times especially when you walk into smoke and everything suddenly looks like it was sketched on a page. Though the environments don’t quite show off what it can do as many of the environments are rather bland. It’s the cut-scenes that really benefit from this style. The graphics are not really impressive and the funny thing is that there is remastered version coming to ps4 that really doesn’t look too much different. Music is suitable though not too memorable. Valkyria Chronicles is a game I didn’t think I would enjoy as much as I did. It’s about 25 hours long and I was practically addicted to it. I had some truly great fun playing this game and I am most interested in the sequels. Sega, bring those games to steam so you can shut up and take my money.